Casper Gutman
Well-Known Member
I'm feeling ranty this evening, so I thought I'd pontificate on how badly conceived TSL really is:
What do people remember about the Toy Story movies? Buzz lying in despair, emotionally and physically shattered, at the bottom of the stairs; Woody, Bo, Buzz, and Jessie standing on the windowsill, quietly accepting their mortality; every major character joining hands in silent resignation as a conveyer belt carries them to fiery destruction; and, most of all, "When She Loved Me." This is a series that uses bright colors and plastic toys to deal very intelligently with core themes of mortality and loss. A lot of early Pixar films dealt with fairly mature themes very well - Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, etc - even touching on some of those same themes of loss (in a lot of ways, the early films feel like they were made to address the concerns of men in their mid-30s, obsessed with the anxiety of fatherhood and fear of aging). But none did so to the extent of the Toy Story films.
Now, does that mean you can't make a theme park attraction out of them? Nah, but it means you have to design those attractions with a modicum of care and wit, respecting the source IP. We could have at least expected something with the intelligence, humor, and kineticism of the climactic sequences of each film. instead, we get a kiddie-land with mindlessly copy-pasted decorations.
The very concept of a kiddie land, of course, runs entirely to the Disney Park's founding philosophy. Putting that aside, there are Pixar films that are more suitable for a purely kiddie land - Bugs Life (a good film) and Cars, for instance, are a lot more simple and straightforward then the rest of the Pixar canon. Ironically, of course, those are the two Pixar films that have received the most elaborate treatment in American Disney parks.
As to this particular restaurant, it just embodies the massive laziness of TSL. Woody's Roundup is a specific thing in the film, a 1950s puppet show with its own aesthetic. Trying to replicate and expand on that might make this eatery, unnecessary as it is, interesting. But nope. This features the EXACT same aesthetic as everything else in the land, most notably the TSMM queue. That's made even more egregious by the fact that the art makes clear this is a basic square room in a basic square building with flat decorations slapped on the wall. And in the end, of course, that's why Toy Story appeals to Disney so much - not because of the greatness of the franchise, but because they've developed a very cheap, very basic, easily replicatable look that can be stamped out over and over again with little thought or expense.
And Toy Story isn't even the franchise they're treating the most poorly. As I noted above, I'd argue the MCU, the most successful franchise in film history, made out even worse in the theme parks. Disney is a corporation that does several things very well - Disney Animation, Pixar, Marvel - and several things very badly - live-action films outside the Star Wars (I know that will incense some, but its all my opinion) and MCU silos and theme parks.
What do people remember about the Toy Story movies? Buzz lying in despair, emotionally and physically shattered, at the bottom of the stairs; Woody, Bo, Buzz, and Jessie standing on the windowsill, quietly accepting their mortality; every major character joining hands in silent resignation as a conveyer belt carries them to fiery destruction; and, most of all, "When She Loved Me." This is a series that uses bright colors and plastic toys to deal very intelligently with core themes of mortality and loss. A lot of early Pixar films dealt with fairly mature themes very well - Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, etc - even touching on some of those same themes of loss (in a lot of ways, the early films feel like they were made to address the concerns of men in their mid-30s, obsessed with the anxiety of fatherhood and fear of aging). But none did so to the extent of the Toy Story films.
Now, does that mean you can't make a theme park attraction out of them? Nah, but it means you have to design those attractions with a modicum of care and wit, respecting the source IP. We could have at least expected something with the intelligence, humor, and kineticism of the climactic sequences of each film. instead, we get a kiddie-land with mindlessly copy-pasted decorations.
The very concept of a kiddie land, of course, runs entirely to the Disney Park's founding philosophy. Putting that aside, there are Pixar films that are more suitable for a purely kiddie land - Bugs Life (a good film) and Cars, for instance, are a lot more simple and straightforward then the rest of the Pixar canon. Ironically, of course, those are the two Pixar films that have received the most elaborate treatment in American Disney parks.
As to this particular restaurant, it just embodies the massive laziness of TSL. Woody's Roundup is a specific thing in the film, a 1950s puppet show with its own aesthetic. Trying to replicate and expand on that might make this eatery, unnecessary as it is, interesting. But nope. This features the EXACT same aesthetic as everything else in the land, most notably the TSMM queue. That's made even more egregious by the fact that the art makes clear this is a basic square room in a basic square building with flat decorations slapped on the wall. And in the end, of course, that's why Toy Story appeals to Disney so much - not because of the greatness of the franchise, but because they've developed a very cheap, very basic, easily replicatable look that can be stamped out over and over again with little thought or expense.
And Toy Story isn't even the franchise they're treating the most poorly. As I noted above, I'd argue the MCU, the most successful franchise in film history, made out even worse in the theme parks. Disney is a corporation that does several things very well - Disney Animation, Pixar, Marvel - and several things very badly - live-action films outside the Star Wars (I know that will incense some, but its all my opinion) and MCU silos and theme parks.
