Is Disney's Hollywood Studios' theme a bit loose?

[BiffyClyro]

Huh? The biggest successes of themed entertainment have strong themes.

I meant the park as a whole.

 

[lazyboy97o]

I meant the park as a whole.

That's the problem. The park as a whole inherently supports weak concepts of place and theme.

 

[George]

The theme ain't the only thing about the Studios that is a bit loose, if you know what I mean.

 

[mharrington]

The writer is incorrect to call this as a "cop out".
As it was originally designed, every attraction at MGM Studios was designed to "exist" within the framework of being in an actual, working movie studio. The film equipment or soundstage theming was admirably consistent, so your suspension of disbelief and your "connection" with reality was only tested at very specific moments, like when your tour guide on the Great Movie Ride hops off the vehicle, or Robin Williams is "actually" turned into a cartoon character, or you enter the Star Tours building and leave the Endor "set" behind. A lot of their newer attractions like Midway Mania and Tower of Terror have completely dispensed with the conceit, and have gone back to the tried-and-true theme park approach of having each individual attraction temporary impose its own "reality" on the guest.

So if the Star Wars land gets built, you hope to see lots of film equipment/soundstage theming everywhere you look?

Universal Studios Florida used to have a similar unifying attraction conceit, but it was never as uniform.
The queue for the Mummy ride is a really interesting example of the "studio tour" reality blending and fading into its own substituted reality, and things get only more complex in the ride itself.

In the article I put up of Yee's review of Universal Studios, he takes the Mummy ride into account:

[T]he ride is indoors, so the tracks have that level of theming. But the waiting area and queue provide theming that resist complete immersion. Instead of wandering through fully realized tombs, we walk through soundstages built to look like tombs. Disney would have used this space to make us believe we were actually in ancient Egypt. Universal wants us to think we are watching a film production take place in present-day ruins that look like ancient Egypt. The difference between the two prevents us from actually sinking into the role. It’s like the difference between a regular stage production and one written by Berthold Brecht. Brecht, you may remember from college theater or literature courses, was famous for staging productions that included elements designed to intentionally break the “fourth wall” dividing the audience, and call attention to the whole thing as an artificial construction. It was called the Verfremdungs-effekt (V-Effect), or in English the alienation effect. Because the overall result was that you felt “alienated” from the supposed events on stage. The wink-wink discussion is sometimes called critical distance, since we are meant to analyze rather than merely consume in a Brecht play. It’s the anti-immersion.

So based on the article, it is argued that the Mummy ride never wanted it to be anything more than a "studio tour" (in this case, of one movie). It reinforces the fact that it's all fake and proud of it.

 

[Bairstow]

So if the Star Wars land gets built, you hope to see lots of film equipment/soundstage theming everywhere you look?

Not at all. The ship sailed on the original MGM/Disney Studios concept a long time ago.
Even if it hadn't, the very idea of a Star Wars "land" wouldn't have meshed with that concept anyway. It would have been a "Lucasfilm Studios" area with attractions about special effects, computer animation, and how the best way to direct is to sit in your chair and drink your coffee.

So if the Star Wars land gets built, you hope to see lots of film equipment/soundstage theming everywhere you look?



In the article I put up of Yee's review of Universal Studios, he takes the Mummy ride into account:

[T]he ride is indoors, so the tracks have that level of theming. But the waiting area and queue provide theming that resist complete immersion. Instead of wandering through fully realized tombs, we walk through soundstages built to look like tombs. Disney would have used this space to make us believe we were actually in ancient Egypt. Universal wants us to think we are watching a film production take place in present-day ruins that look like ancient Egypt. The difference between the two prevents us from actually sinking into the role. It’s like the difference between a regular stage production and one written by Berthold Brecht. Brecht, you may remember from college theater or literature courses, was famous for staging productions that included elements designed to intentionally break the “fourth wall” dividing the audience, and call attention to the whole thing as an artificial construction. It was called the Verfremdungs-effekt (V-Effect), or in English the alienation effect. Because the overall result was that you felt “alienated” from the supposed events on stage. The wink-wink discussion is sometimes called critical distance, since we are meant to analyze rather than merely consume in a Brecht play. It’s the anti-immersion.

So based on the article, it is argued that the Mummy ride never wanted it to be anything more than a "studio tour" (in this case, of one movie). It reinforces the fact that it's all fake and proud of it.

Yee's wrong about Mummy being Brechtian because the goal of Mummy's nested realities is completely opposite from that of epic theater. For one, Yee seems to be forgetting that by calling itself a "movie set" and the guests "extras", Mummy is adhering to the continued "themed reality" of Universal Studios Florida telling guests it's actually a movie studio. So, there are at least three realities at play here: 1) Theme park ride, 2) Studio Tour [which is Universal Studios Florda's "default" reality] and 3) Haunted studio tour/Egyptian Hellscape. Most of the queue and the intricate little bits of storytelling found there is about the haunted reality from the movie itself imposing itself on the museum of antiquities/movie set reality, so as spectators we're moving further into the created realities of the attraction rather than out of it. Without spoiling the ride, there are two potential V-Effekt moments, but both serve only for the third, deepest reality present in the attraction's mytholgy to triumph over our own reality, not the other way around as would be done in Epic Theater.

A much more apt example of what Epic Theater in a theme park is, appropriately, the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, where the audience is constantly reminded in very specific terms that what they're seeing is a stunt show, the purpose in doing so being that they will hopefully pay more attention to the methods of how movie stunts are performed rather than simply to what is happening onstage.

Hey may be right though, in saying that Disney wouldn't have attempted something as avant-garde as Mummy. It's not the best ride in the world, but it does some really creative things in both the queue and its combination of dark ride and coaster elements that have furthered the theme park ride as "art." Not all rides need to try these things, but a least some should.

 

[BryceM]

So if the Star Wars land gets built, you hope to see lots of film equipment/soundstage theming everywhere you look?



In the article I put up of Yee's review of Universal Studios, he takes the Mummy ride into account:

[T]he ride is indoors, so the tracks have that level of theming. But the waiting area and queue provide theming that resist complete immersion. Instead of wandering through fully realized tombs, we walk through soundstages built to look like tombs. Disney would have used this space to make us believe we were actually in ancient Egypt. Universal wants us to think we are watching a film production take place in present-day ruins that look like ancient Egypt. The difference between the two prevents us from actually sinking into the role. It’s like the difference between a regular stage production and one written by Berthold Brecht. Brecht, you may remember from college theater or literature courses, was famous for staging productions that included elements designed to intentionally break the “fourth wall” dividing the audience, and call attention to the whole thing as an artificial construction. It was called the Verfremdungs-effekt (V-Effect), or in English the alienation effect. Because the overall result was that you felt “alienated” from the supposed events on stage. The wink-wink discussion is sometimes called critical distance, since we are meant to analyze rather than merely consume in a Brecht play. It’s the anti-immersion.

So based on the article, it is argued that the Mummy ride never wanted it to be anything more than a "studio tour" (in this case, of one movie). It reinforces the fact that it's all fake and proud of it.

I feel like you can turn this around and apply this to many attractions at Disney's Hollywood Studios, such as Star Tours and Indiana Jones Stunt Show Spectacular. It's the major flaw that all studio themed parks suffer from. And then both parks have completely immersive ride experiences that are straight forward and not movie studio themed; Tower of Terror and Men In Black.

 

[mharrington]

Yee's wrong about Mummy being Brechtian because the goal of Mummy's nested realities is completely opposite from that of epic theater. For one, Yee seems to be forgetting that by calling itself a "movie set" and the guests "extras", Mummy is adhering to the continued "themed reality" of Universal Studios Florida telling guests it's actually a movie studio. So, there are at least three realities at play here: 1) Theme park ride, 2) Studio Tour [which is Universal Studios Florda's "default" reality] and 3) Haunted studio tour/Egyptian Hellscape. Most of the queue and the intricate little bits of storytelling found there is about the haunted reality from the movie itself imposing itself on the museum of antiquities/movie set reality, so as spectators we're moving further into the created realities of the attraction rather than out of it.

Excuse me?