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Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoiler Discussion
This isn’t so much a review as it is a discussion of some of the film’s core themes. Overall, I thought the film was excellent. It’s one of my favorite installments in the franchise. Go see it. And once you have, feel free to read this, since I’m going to get into some spoilers.
10/10
SPOILERS FOR THE LAST JEDI
The thing that really struck me about the Last Jedi was how thematically rich it was in comparison to previous Star Wars films. While the series has always had a specific formula, with a binary morality system, The Last Jedi blows that up. This is a film that is fundamentally about deconstructing these symbols and asking what they mean today. I think a lot of the divisiveness about the film amongst fans (although not all of it, there are plenty of valid arguments you can make against it), comes down to either frustration that they are being expected to do that, or a disinterest in the exercise as a whole.
I have trouble seeing eye to eye with that perspective. I’ve seen arguments stating that the characters are fundamentally in the same place at the end of the film, or that various strands don’t go anywhere, but I think that ignores a lot of what the film is doing. If Star Wars movies have always been about underdogs achieving success against great odds, Last Jedi is fundamentally about failure. This is not just me intellectualizing by the way, the film clearly states that intention, repeatedly, in every one of its storylines. So let’s go through this film narrative strand by narrative strand, and examine what it’s doing here.
I’m going to start with the film’s most criticized thread, Finn’s journey to Canto Bight in search of the code breaker. When we first meet Finn this time around, he’s acting very much like he did in the first film. He wants to flee from the rebellion ship, not out of disloyalty, but rather fatalism. To Finn, the Rebellion is doomed, and has always been doomed. Even his heroism last film was less about saving the Rebels base, and more about rescuing Rey. Finn sees the merits of individuals, but not of an organization or concept. The film proceeds to pair him with Rose not out of a desire to just include a new love interest, but to place him next to a true believer, someone he would connect with on an empathic level (her own wounds after the death of her sister, portrayed in one of the film’s greatest action beats, make her as much of a wounded soul as Finn himself). Their journey takes them to the Las Vegas of the stars, a tantalizing world of glossy imagery and beautiful looking prosthetic aliens (the most prosthetic creatures in any single set in the history of the franchise).
Finn is instantly enraptured by the place. Rose, in contrast sees what it really is, a source of oppression and suffering. The horse races hide the torture of sentient animals. Children and slaves are forced to work under the lash to keep up the façade. All of this while the rich gamble away more money in a day than most families will see in a lifetime. Most movies would turn around and look at this and merely state “this is evil”, but this film, wisely, refuses to do even that. When Finn decides to place his revelation into a new binary equation, one which merely condemns the wealthy as villains, Benicio Del Toro’s codebreaker character refuses to play into that illusion. Sure, the gamblers may make money selling arms to The New Order, Rose is right that’s an evil thing to do, but they also supply and in some cases fund the Rebellion. Canto Bight is not the dark side, it is merely opportunism personified. The codebreaker demonstrates that same opportunism when he gives up Finn. Finn meanwhile demonstrated it himself when he attempted to steal an escape pod at the outset.
To all the people who say Finn’s arc leads nowhere, that it’s simply a side-adventure intended for little but to provide the character something to do; I point you at the moments when they infiltrate the New Order’s fleet. When the Code Breaker gives them away and Finn yells that he’s wrong that none of this matters, that’s a change! In fact, it’s a complete reversal of who he was at the start. And yet, the film isn’t even done with his arc! We don’t simply go from “opportunistic Han Solo type” to Rebel; the film then asks us what kind of rebel Finn is going to be. When he finally kills Phasma, in a moment of firm rejection of his own past, he returns to the front and instantly uses Poe as a model for his own behavior. His kamikaze attack on the Walker is a clear echo of the bomber run at the start, and Rose’s rescue of him is a completion of her own arc. For them both, it’s realization that one’s role in the rebellion needs to be tempered through interpersonal relationships. Both motivations have to co-exist. The rebellion isn’t simply about destroying the New Order, nor is it about enforcing good. It’s about empathy towards the people around us, whether it’s the horses on Canto Bight, or the enslaved children in need of a symbol of hope, or the rebels fighting to survive against overwhelming odds. It’s not about heroism for the sake of heroism, it’s about protection. In this way, the entire symbol of the Rebellion, what that insignia means exactly, is deconstructed, and reconstructed, so in the end, when the child holds up the ring, it means something new, something bigger and deeper.
If Finn’s narrative forces that character’s growth through an examination of what the Resistance actually means, than Poe’s is a firm rebuke of the type of heroism Star Wars has always reveled in through a simple, but surprisingly elegant, little character arc. To Poe, heroism is about individualistic action. In the film’s opening segment, Poe is told by his commanding officer to abandon an attack on a battleship, but refuses to do so. Instead, he orders a bombing run on a battle cruiser, an attack that results in the destruction of five crafts but also destroys their target. To Poe, this is a sacrifice, but also a successful moment of heroism. It’s telling that the movie refuses to make the sacrificed soldiers faceless, instead keeping us locked in one of the doomed crafts. It’s a sad but in the end, rousing moment, which is undercut by Leia’s brutal disappointment in Poe’s action. To Leia, five less bombers for future actions, and while the Imperial ship was destroyed, the enemy likely has many more like it. More of those doubtlessly exist than Rebellion bombers.
When Leia is nearly killed and Holdo takes command, we’re left to expect a very traditional film narrative. In more blockbusters than I can name, our hotshot young lead will break the incompetent chain of command to make the final strike which will turn the tides of war. With the fleet under near constant duress in a lengthy space chase which brilliantly creates a ticking clock around the fact that the Rebellion is underfunded, Poe chooses to send Finn off in an attempt to infiltrate the Star Destroyer and save the day. This places him head to head with Holdo, who, as a viewer primed by dozens of action films, we immediately write off as an overly dismissive empty shirt without a plan. When Poe calls her a traitor, and perpetrates a coup, it’s a rousing moment with our ragtag leads desperately fighting to save the day.
Instead, the plan fails. Finn is caught and Poe’s coup is taken out, by Leia of all people, one of our original ragtag rebels. It’s easy to go “what was the point of all that”, and well the point is failure. In one of the film’s greatest moments, we just have Leia and Holdo talk about what it means to be a woman and a leader, and we realize that our stuffed shirt had a plan all along, one she kept close to the vest in case the issue was not an electronic tracker, but rather a traitor. Oh, and Poe’s failure not only led to the capture of Rose and Finn, but in turn, leads to the discovery of Holdo’s plan, and the death of nearly half the remaining rebels. And Holdo, who we are primed to believe doesn’t believe in individual heroism, sacrifices herself in one of the film’s most striking shots, not to achieve victory, but to give her people the time they need to escape. It’s a cruel calculus, but as Holdo tells Leia, the need for sacrifice should not be an easy or quick decision, but is sometimes necessary. That’s a lesson they’ve had to learn.
Think about what the film is doing for a second. Everything a Star Wars movie has primed us for in the past, a tidy narrative thread, an easy plot progression and a warm embrace of individualistic heroism as a means to win not just a battle, but a WAR, have been rejected. The film has dismissed tidy plotting in favor of thematic questioning and deeper character arcs. The narrative forces Poe to confront his own failure, and in turn, he learns from it. It’s a lesson Leia clearly learned between that initial trilogy and this one, that leadership sometimes involves heroic self-sacrifice, but it can also mean sending off someone to die in order to crawl away, or realizing that the deck is stacked against you. Poe, in turn echoes Leia at the end, ordering Finn not to do what he himself had done at the start before calling a retreat, an escape to reorganize and fight another day. The passing of the baton is codified in his final scene with Leia, when he gives the order to leave, the men look at her, and she says to follow his orders.
If Finn’s arc led to a re-evaluation of the rebellion, and a personal transformation into a real “rebel”, than Poe’s arc asks us to question our view of heroism, and how these films portray them. The conclusion appears to be that individual heroism is in some contexts important, Holdo’s sacrifice, and later Luke’s MATTER, but that it can’t be at the expense of grander strategy, or of the collective. Losing a dozen lives and five ships in a bombing run to merely take out a target that can be replaced is a waste, as much as we might enjoy the space battle, or the epic action. Losing one to give them the time to escape, that’s real heroism, a willingness to sacrifice oneself not for victory, but for the future. That’s what hope is.
This takes us to Rey, and the final major story strand of the film, and by far the most complex and interesting. Rey begins this film as a lost and dejected student, but also as someone we as the audience are meant to believe has a grand and dynastic destiny. Many of us believed at the end of the Force Awakens that she was clearly a Skywalker, and that this trilogy will clearly end with her redeeming Kylo Ren and killing Snoke in an echo of the finale of the Return of the Jedi. But first, we thought, she must seek the help of Luke, who will clearly teach her the ways of the force like Yoda did.
Instead the film pivots to the side in an incredible rebuke of the franchise as a whole, one that doubtlessly infuriated some fans, when Luke takes this symbol of the franchise, his lightsaber from everyone’s two favorite installments, and tosses it over his shoulder and walks away. We later learn that Rey, who we assume must be connected to the characters we know and love, came from nothing. She’s just… Rey. Rian Johnson proceeds to fundamentally dismantle the notion that the Force can be understood as a fight between Good and Evil, with the Jedi on one side and the Sith on the other. In one of the film’s greatest moments, he has Luke deconstruct the entire notion of the Jedi. If there is a force that connects all things, one that requires a balance of the light and the dark, and you were lucky enough to be able to feel it inside of you, understand it deep in your soul, and put out your mind and touch it, what hubris is required for you to think that you should control it and bend it to your will in order to do anything, whether good or evil. It’s so much bigger than any Jedi or any Sith, and the temptation to abuse it is to strong.
In fact, Rey, upon seeing the dark force hole beneath the ground, is instantly tempted towards it, not out of evil, but curiosity. This terrifies Luke, who urges her not to explore it, ignoring that his own evolution required him to confront the dark within his own soul. Rey, in turn, is changed by confronting the Dark side, but also by doing so, is able to see it for what it is.
The film de-exoticizes the dark side. In the Prequels the Dark Side is a fountain of youth, and that power is corrupting. In this, more interestingly, it is a false salve for broken souls. The Last Jedi asks if being a Jedi should be more than abstinence from the Dark and in turn, contrition, but rather should involve confronting it, exploring it, and through that process recognizing that it’s empty. That the Dark Side is portrayed as a mirror which reflects only what Rey puts into it is a striking metaphor. The endless reflection seems to promise that at the end there is meaning, but when she wills herself to see the front of the line, it is just another mirror. There is no deeper meaning there, only an endless and selfish self-examination. In the end, its emptiness will only leave you disappointed and broken, like it has left Kylo Ren. For me, that seems a particularly strong symbol for the uselessness of rage and petty vindictiveness. Frankly, it also works really well as a metaphor for substance abuse.
The Dark Side as a salve ties into the scenes where Kylo and Rey are connected. Those bits are charged with anger and rage, but also a sexual energy that hasn’t really been visible in the series before. That their plot culminates in a moment with the two of them, sweaty, back to back, swinging phallic blades in a vaginal red room in a desperate effort to free themselves of darkness is so on the nose that Freud would probably orgasm watching it.
For Rey, the dark side is tempting, but she chooses to reject it because of her need to protect others and live outside of herself. Kylo, in turn, is provided the same choice as Vader had at the end of Return of the Jedi, and chooses the opposite path, embracing the Dark Side. I think a lot of why that is comes down to motivation. For Vader, the Dark side was a path towards a power that he believed could help others, but it provided no such ability, only further self-deterioration. His transformation was a gradual path into sin, one that provided him with no rewards but empty power. Kylo Ren, in contrast, is a product of abuse, his embrace of the Dark Side comes from an internal rage and emptiness that are inherently part of his being, one that has likely always existed, but was perpetuated when he believed that his own trusted father figure had both rejected and considered killing him. The Dark Side, to Kylo Ren, provides a sense of meaning, an ability to violently erase the past and create a new future. He sees himself as the forest fire that will burn down the trees and leave the soil ripe to grow something new. In truth, as much as he claims he wants to “kill the past”, he is completely stuck in it.
This is a very different view of the Dark and Light side than we’ve seen before. It’s much less attuned to some religious binary of good and evil, and more in line frankly with what leads to real heroism and abuse. That the dark side and systemic abuse is linked in this film with violence against animals is in line with that. The light-side requires co-existence, as we see with Luke as he lives alongside the caregivers and drinks milk from the cow creatures who willing share it. He fishes yes, but only to eat what he requires. The Porg meanwhile co-exist in every crevice as urban animals, ones who can create their home on the Millennium Falcon, nestled in little nests in the nooks and crannies. To Rian Johnson, they are not pests to be eliminated, but the same life the Force represents.
Let’s talk about Luke, possibly the most divisive aspect of this film. It would be easy to say that Luke has become the “dejected martial arts master” trope, and there is some truth to that, but his reason for being that way are more interesting than the traditional model. It’s true that trope is built on the idea that your first apprentice turned evil and that in turn you are unwilling to train a new one, BUT, and this is a big but, in the traditional narrative the Master is, in the end, innocent of any transgression except ignoring the warning signs. One can look at Obi-Wan’s failure to notice Anakin’s fall in the prequels as a traditional example of that narrative. Luke initially pitches that version of Kylo’s origins to Rey, but we later learn that Luke had a “do you kill baby Hitler” moment where he considered murdering his newphew, a lapse in judgment which led to Ben’s rejection of his master and embrace of the dark side. The rise of the First Order and Han’s death are, by extension, partially his fault. It is that failure, more than any other lesson, which teaches Rey what she needs to know.
Yoda and Luke’s conversation about failure and the need to step aside for the next generation is a distillation of what this arc is about. The next generation has the capacity to outgrow you and learn from your mistakes. Rey can be a great Jedi Master because, in the end, Luke was both a great and a flawed one. She learns that even the Jedi are imperfect individuals who contain both light and dark. In the end though, the light side contains hope, and the dark side cynicism and nihilism. Kylo Ren has no hope that people can change or become something more than their origins, Rey, who came from nothing, but has become someone powerful, knows that’s untrue. To Rey, there is always hope. That hope is, as Poe says, the spark that lights the rebellion.
A lot of people don’t like how this arc plays out since they feel it cancels out Luke’s heroism from the original trilogy, or believe that Rian Johnson is rejecting what the Jedi are supposed to mean. I think, in contrast, the director just sees good and evil as more complicated concepts. To him, a cackling villain like Snoke is a dull one, and his off-handed killing of what we assumed was the big-bad is a rejection of that mustache-twirling concept. In turn, he refuses to portray his heroes as paragons.
Luke, as flawed as he is, is still a hero. Rian Johnson knows that the audience wants to see him use the force to destroy all of those walkers, or beat down Kylo Ren. Instead he portrays the opposite. Luke merely gives the rebellion a chance to escape by talking to Kylo and trying to teach his student a final lesson. He tells his nephew the truth, that his actions will only ever cause him pain while the hope that lives on in the Rebellion and is visible in Rey is more powerful than his rage. You can’t squelch that hope. The spark will always light. The Jedi will always continue. The film does this in a moment that codifies Luke Skywalker as a legend. He finds victory by admitting his failure, by apologizing and by embracing the future at the expense of himself. And that acceptance, allows him to pull off the most incredible piece of Force-use in the franchise, a “galaxy-spanning feat of astral projection that exemplifies his power”. It’s a soaring moment of character vindication, an impossible act that uses up so much of his spirit that it erases him from existence, although you can see a final moment of hope in his face and a sad recognition of where he came from as he sees the twin moons of tatooine set in his mind’s eye. I found his goodbye, and what it says about the franchise and where it’s going from here, surprisingly moving.
The Last Jedi is a near-perfect film thematically and from a character perspective. It has flaws otherwise. Like most of the films in the series it relies on a heavy use of coincidence. Some of the jokes don’t hit. It can be clumsy from a plotting perspective. There are moments of cheese in here that are either going to work for you or won’t. Leia’s reflexive use of the force to fly to safety struck me as especially problematic. It’s also a long film, and jumps between its three narratives so frequently that at times it can appear narratively disjointed, even if the various threads are on-track. This is partially because the order in which we watch events are clearly not the order in which they happen. Finn’s entire story takes place in about 20 hours in a single day, while Rey’s, in comparison, takes place over nearly a week. The cross-cutting is a narrative device, not a temporal one. I also think the film’s refusal to accede to narrative convention, and desire to really examine what the Jedi, heroism and Rebellion mean today, can also be deeply jarring to people who expected a more traditional follow-up to the crowd pleasing Force Awakens.
I see some issues in the film, and can nitpick various aspects to death, but the first time through, all I felt was joyous. I was so happy that Rian Johnson took these myths seriously. I felt ecstatic that he felt the desire to make sure that all four of our principal characters were given their due, while still fleshing out the universe in new and surprising ways. I like that the movie expanded the worlds, made them feel larger, and added stuff at the periphery that can be explored in the future by other writers and directors. Most importantly, I found the film to be a whole lot of fun.
It left me, for the first time since I was a child, deeply invested in this universe and where it goes. While I’m interested to know whether Solo will be any good, and feel excited to see what JJ does with Episode 9, I’m far more enthusiastic to see what Rian Johnson will do with his new blank-slate trilogy going forwards. That all three are coming up soon in the next few years, and are exciting in such different ways, is a terrific place to be as a fan.
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Grabbed by the Ghoulies Review (2003 XBOX)
During the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 era, few developers had as many critical and commercial hits as Rareware. Now, in 2017, the company is largely considered to be a shadow of what it once was. To many gamers, the issues with the company began when Microsoft bought them up from Nintendo in the early 2000s to make first-party games for their new gaming platform, the X-Box. The purchase was a big and expensive move by Microsoft, intended to show gamers that they not only meant business, but would secure the talent to truly compete with Sony and Nintendo. Unfortunately, at the time of it’s purchase, Rare had three games in development, and the company only managed to finish one during the X-Box’s entire four-year life-cycle, with the other two games being delayed so often that they were eventually released as 360 launch title. So how does the much-maligned Grabbed by the Ghoulies stand up? Well… unfortunately… it’s bad.
In Grabbed by the Ghoulies, you play as Cooper, a young man whose girlfriend, Amber, is kidnapped by the titular Ghoulies. As Cooper, you must fight your way through room after room of a cartoonish haunted house to eventually defeat the evil Baron who rules over it, and the various ghostly factions within. The story is slim, and the presentation doesn’t help what little is there. Instead of full cutscenes, the tale is told in rather poorly animated comic book sequences that play out after certain levels. Instead of using full voice acting, the decision was made to use odd noises like in Banjo Kazooie, an idea that worked for the world of those games, but which feels off-putting this time around. Luckily, the cartoony visuals and music have aged exceedingly well, which means that there is some charm to the entire experience, despite the overall weak narrative presentation.
Unfortunately, the gameplay is a mixed bag. The game is a dual stick brawler. The left stick moves your character, while pressing your right stick will cause Cooper to begin auto-attacking in that direction. A quick flick will do a different kind of attack than holding it, which provides some combat options. Most environments have weapons you can pick up which can also be thrown or used to bludgeon enemies with the right stick. The controls work relatively well, and I always found them responsive enough to handle incoming enemies from a variety of different directions. There is also something briefly fun about just destroying the various rooms you come across in search of items.
The game is exceedingly linear. While you have a (frankly quite awful) map of the house, you are always forced to continue forward in a specific direction. In every room, you will begin at the entrance, and must find and open the door on the other side. To unlock it, you might have to smash the room in search of a key, or kill all the enemies or… well… it’s probably going to be one of those two things. To keep it fresh, the designers periodically introduce new enemy types, many of which require different strategies. Some enemies require you to stay at range, or wait for an opening, or use specific weapon types. All these options make combat, for a time, feel rather fun. Other levels will have jump scares pop up as you play, some of which you just must avoid to keep from losing control of your character for a moment or two, others which require a quick-time button press sequence to survive.
The game also begins to periodically introduce “challenges” in every given room. You might for instance, need to kill every bat to leave, but you can only do so using weapons, or can’t accidentally damage any of the furniture. If you fail at the challenge, the Grim Reaper will appear at the exit door and begin to slowly walk towards you with his finger raised, and when he reaches you, It Follows style, you’ll die. You can’t avoid the Grim Reaper forever either, since he slowly but surely will increase in speed until he can overtake you. But, if the Grim Reaper accidentally touches any other enemies, including your largest adversaries, they’ll die instantly. So, sometimes it’s worth triggering the Reaper to take out your greatest foes.
If this sounds like a decent downloadable game, you’d be mostly right. If Grabbed by the Ghoulies had been released as a 15 dollar X-Box Live title, it probably would have been met with a relatively positive reception. Unfortunately, the game was originally released for sixty dollars, and was, as I stated, the first Rare title under the Microsoft regime. Looking at it from that context, Grabbed by the Ghoulies is a disaster. Despite some of the positives, and there are positives, the gameplay gets stale quickly, and the story remains tepid throughout. Since the game’s story has your character travelling back and forth through the house, there is also an incredible amount of backtracking for such a straightforward title. There are rooms you will repeat four times, and nearly all of them you will see at least twice, with only some enemy or objective variants between encounters.
That’s not even to mention that about two-thirds of the way through the game, Grabbed by the Ghoulies starts to get frustratingly hard. Some enemies will be able to demolish you in seconds, and I found myself dying more than five times in several of the rooms. The best strategies for most encounters require you to utilize the various items and power-ups hidden throughout each area, and the only way to find many of those is by smashing objects all over the place. As a result, sometimes it’s beneficial to have an initial suicide run to see what’s available and plan accordingly. If the gameplay was better, or I was still being introduced to new environments, or the story was pulling me through, I could likely deal with that frustration as simply part of the experience, but since the game’s focus is well… the gameplay… the challenge simply begins to drain the fun out of what had prior been a lighthearted experience.
As the final credits rolled, I thought to myself how much the last two hours of that game, where I felt like I was slowly pushing my way through a grinding mill of enemies, felt like a real drag. So, I was honestly surprised when the final time tally popped up and said that I had played for a little under four and a half hours. The experience had felt significantly longer. I have no problem with short games, but If you’re going to have a tight two to five-hour experience, especially for that price tag, it needs to not drag.
It’s hard to shake the feeling that Grabbed by the Ghoulies must have had a rushed development cycle… but it doesn’t even have that excuse. The development team, which was headed by the same people who made the classic Banjo-Tooie, worked on it for three years. I know that a year before the game’s release the team switched from developing it on Gamecube to X-Box, and that might account for some of the rough edges, but I have a lot of trouble believing, even if they had to throw a lot out, that this is the best work they could manage in that time. Grabbed by the Ghoulies feels like the team had a decent gameplay concept and a cool visual style which they then scotch taped together before realizing they only had two hours of content, at which point they spent the final four months remixing levels with the same enemies until they had something a little over twice as long. For a company that hadn’t had a significant creative failure in over ten years, Grabbed by the Ghoulies is a real stinker, and a very disappointing first step into the world outside of Nintendo’s shadow.
3/10
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Every Disney World and Universal Studios Orlando ride ranked!
Welcome to my completely subjective ranking of every single ride which was open at Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Epcot, Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure during my recent Honeymoon there. Since this list is going to include a lot of kiddy rides, feel free to skip ahead a bit past them if you’re looking to read about the good stuff. Enjoy!
83. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish (Islands of Adventure)
One First, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish is the Seuss-Land version of the traditional Dumbo Spinner ride. I would not have gone on this ride if I hadn’t made it a goal to go on everything at the 6 parks we visited, and frankly, this is one of only a few rides which made me second-guess that decision. The song that plays as you spin is annoying, the water-spewing fish weren’t spewing water when we were on it, and the cars themselves were kind of creepy. Not only that, but one of the only benefits of a spinner ride like this is the view that you get of a portion of the park, but since this one is set in the far corner of Seuss-land, you really can’t see much of anything. Unless you have a very young kid to entertain whose scared of even the most tame other rides, I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone.
82. Triceratops Spin (Animal Kingdom)
There is an entire section of Animal Kingdom called Dino Land USA which is themed after county fair boardwalks. This area is filled with carnival games, a couple of old-fashioned rides and some really clever marquees. The whole zone is actually quite lovingly crafted, although it’s an odd inclusion within a park as otherwise gorgeous as Animal Kingdom. Luckily, it doesn’t take away from the charms of the rest of the park since it’s hidden away unless you follow the path to find it. Triceratops Spin is the Dumbo-style spinner attraction in the heart of the area, and while it gives you a decent view of Dino-Land, it can’t help but feel less like a loving homage to a shitty theme park experience and more like, well, a shitty theme park ride. There is so much great stuff around every corner at Animal Kingdom; even for the youngest of kids, that it really feels like this is a waste of time unless your infant really wants to go on it.
81. The High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Ride (Islands of Adventure)
When I was a kid, I read a lot of Dr. Seuss. I loved his clever made-up words, his bizarre worlds and the boundless imagination of his rhymes. I still think that those books make for a great entrance into reading for young children. Despite really poor rides, I also really like the Seuss-Land area of Islands of Adventure, which is overall really well themed and filled with fun shops with some cool Dr. Seuss Merchandise. I was actually pretty excited to take the trolley ride and get a good view of the area. While the view is adequate, I found the ride pretty intolerable otherwise, with an annoying narrator teaching you the alphabet in a super weird out of order kind of way that as an adult I FOUND needlessly confusing. Unless you have a little kid who you really want to show the view, skip it.
80. Journey Into Imagination with Figment (Epcot)
I’m struggling with the words to describe my dislike for Journey into Imagination with Figment. I love Dark Rides, which this ride technically is. I also like Wackiness, which this ride is attempting to capitalize on. Hell, I even grew up in the 90s, which this ride is DEFINITELY stuck in (including references to the horrid 90s Flubber remake and Honey I Shrunk the Kids). Regardless, this experience is awful. When I walked into Epcot, I really liked Figment, the park’s adorable purple dragon of imagination mascot. We even took a photo in front of the giant Chef Figment topiary. After this ride, I hated Figment, who seems determined to ruin everything. The basic gist of Journey into Imagination is that you are being taken on a tour of the “Imagination Factory”. Figment, whose voice is startlingly annoying, believes that Imagination should travel beyond the bounds of the real, and diverts the guests from the tour by creating loud noises, disgusting smells, and singing a song that I think is supposed to be catchy, but sounds like a rejected children’s show theme that has been shoved through a shredder and is being played from a sound box deep inside of a squealing pig. I walked away from the ride thinking that we should box up our imagination real tight, since otherwise shit goes wrong. I’m pretty sure is NOT what the ride was aiming for.
79. The Cat in the Hat (Islands of Adventure)
The Cat in the Hat, like Journey into Imagination, is a bad dark ride, but it’s bad for very different reasons. If Journey into Imagination is awful on a conceptual design level, than The Cat in the Hat is bad purely an execution one. It’s clear while riding it that the Universal Imagineers don’t really have an affinity for dark rides, as your car rushes through various sets in a manic sequence of events. Even though the experience takes you through the plot of the original children’s book, I had a hard time telling exactly what was going on. It doesn’t help that the Cat in the Hat himself is portrayed as nightmarishly terrifying in a Slenderman kind of way. As Seuss-Lands signature ride, it’s unfortunate that there is little to recommend here.
78. Storm Force Accelatron (Islands of Adventure)
What if you took Walt Disney World’s teacups, removed all of the charming themeing and music, and replaced those with a County Fair quality paint-job and an aggressively bad soundtrack. Now let’s amp it up to eleven, by letting you spin EVEN FASTER. Storm Force Accelatron isn’t so much a BAD ride as it is a complete waste of time, especially since it’s situated right next to the excellent Hulk Coaster and Spiderman ride. Notice the empty vehicles in that photo? The only thing I can say to recommend this ride is that it’s so unpopular that you can probably get on it without a line on most days. I’d suggest taking the hint and skipping it yourself.
77. The Magic Carpets of Aladdin (Magic Kingdom)
Take the Dumbo ride, add the ability to tilt the vehicle up and down slightly, make it all look more cheaply built, and then place that ride in a spot with a bland view and you have The Magic Carpets of Aladdin. Adventureland is a really cool place, but the central square where this ride is situated is the least interesting part of it, (although you get to see some people enjoying Dole Whips). It’s a safe ride for those with little ones, but if you were going to choose one spinner at Magic Kingdom I’d suggest just heading to Storybook Circus for a go on Dumbo.
76. Caro-Seuss-El (Islands of Adventure)
The Caro-Seuss-El is a Carousel in Seuss-land. The vehicles are kind of charming, and they each have an interactive element kids can play with during the experience, so that’s fun. Some of the vehicles look a little scuffed up, but otherwise, you know what you and your kids are getting here. Ask yourself the question, do you or your family want to ride a carousel? If the answer is yes, well, here you go.
75. Prince Charming’s Regal Carousel (Magic Kingdom)
This is a classic ride from the earliest days of the park and, well, it’s totally fine. As you ride you can look around at the center of Fantasyland, and it’s well-maintained. The horses are all individually painted and look really good, and at night, the lighting on it is absolutely gorgeous. It’s just, well, it’s a carousel, and there is one of these things everywhere, so yah.
74. Mad Tea Party (Magic Kingdom)
Mad Tea Party is an iconic ride from the earliest days of the park which has been replicated at the Disney Theme Parks around the world. With that said, the experience did very little for me. I found the spinner unresponsive and, as a result, the whole experience fairly banal. It doesn’t help that the Alice in Wonderland themeing is pretty, but minimal. As is, it feels like one of those rides everyone goes on once since they are expected to, rather than due to any particular allure. I will most likely skip it the next time I go to Disney World. The best thing about this ride is that the Cheshire Cat Café is right next to it and you can get the most delicious treats there.
73. Woody Woodpecker’s Nuthouse Coaster (Universal Studios Florida)
At the far edge of Universal Studio Florida’s woefully underdeveloped Kid Zone is this children’s rollercoaster. As a first roller-coaster experience, its okay I guess, although it’s a little bumpier and worse themed than Magic Kingdom’s Barnstormer. If you have young kids who you want to introduce thrill rides to, this should be a decent first step to show how much fun they can be without scaring them. You might have to explain who Woody Woodpecker is though.
72. The Barnstormer (Magic Kingdom)
As far as “my first roller-coasters” go, the Barnstormer is totally serviceable, with decent Goofy related themeing. With that said, Magic Kingdom now houses the MUCH better “Seven Dwarves Mine Train”, and the only reason why anyone should go on this kiddy coaster instead of that one is queue size. As an adult, I feel no hesitation recommending Seven Dwarves Mine Train, while the Barnstormer, in comparison, is a waste of time for all but the younger guests.
71. Kang and Kodos Twirl n Hurl (Universal Studios Florida)
Universal Studio Florida’s small Dumbo-style spinner ride is actually a decent time. While the ride mostly feels like all the other variations, there are a couple of clever twists on the formula here. Firstly, the ride incentivizes you to steer the ship to hit various targets around the sides (although there is no points tally). Secondly, the dialogue, especially of the ride enticing you to join it and Kang and Kodos banter is all really funny. Finally, this short experience is a literal breath of fresh air after the Motion Simulators that make up most of that park’s offering.
70. The Carousel of Progress (Magic Kingdom)
The Carousel of Progress is a product of the 1967 World Fair, and was intended to show off the evolution of technology within the household, as well as Disney’s incredible (for the time) new animatronics. The fact that the experience has survived until today is surprising since it’s very dated. The animatronics are still cool, and the song “It’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow”, by the Sherman Brothers (who also did the music in Mary Poppins) is catchy and endearing. But these days, the stereotypical 1950s sitcom style “nuclear family” feels really uncomfortably paternalistic. On top of that, each room of the ride is a different technological era, and the final room has been updated to include current technologies like VR, but there is also this MASSIVE leap from 1950s America to 2010s America, whereas earlier the ride was showing evolution decade by decade. It felt like the experience really needed additional rooms to cover its subject. As is though, at over 20 minutes long, the Carousel already outlives its welcome. As a historical curiosity, I found the entire experience interesting, but I didn’t feel a desire to do another round. Parents who brought their kids though seemed to regret, as the children were clearly bored before the first transition even began, and at one point, when a child stood up because he wanted to leave, the lights went on and a voice of god popped in to say that they had to sit down. No ride at Disney World should feel like a prison to children.
69. Gran Fiesta Tour: Starring the Three Caballeros (Epcot)
Gran Fiesta Tour is a bit of an anomaly. It’s in the heart of the Mexico pavilion, and half the ride is a series of cheap-looking projector images of Donald flying around various Mexican locations (a-la the movie it’s based on), while the other half is a slightly more interesting It’s a Small World knockoff which lacks the artistry of that Magic Kingdom original. The finale, with three kind of shoddy looking animatronics Caballero dolls, is pretty representative of the ride as a whole. I expected better from the entire experience, but it’s a fine way to spend 10 minutes. The Mexico Pavilion it’s housed in is very beautiful though.
68. Doctor Doom’s Fearfall (Islands of Adventure)
Doctor Doom’s Fearfall is… well, it’s traditional drop tower, the kind of ride you can find in most decent Theme Parks where you get launched in the air, drop down, and then repeat a couple of times. It’s comfortable though, and I like all the 90s Marvel animation themeing in the queue. The ride just doesn’t feel “special” enough to be anything more than a decent time-waster though, especially in a park as full of great stuff as Islands of Adventure.
67. Tomorrowland Speedway (Magic Kingdom)
Magic Kingdom’s variation on the Disneyland original ride “Autopia” is a decent enough experience. Everyone gets their own little car, which is locked to a rail but you can still steer ever so slightly from side to side. You can determine the vehicles speed using the gas pedal. Trying to make it so that your car never touches the rail as you turn is a lot of the fun. Unfortunately, the entire area smells like Gasoline, the cars are kind of ugly, and either there are some really bad drivers out there or the cars go at slightly different speeds, which meant most of my trip down the Speedway felt like bumper to bumper traffic. The whole ride would benefit from electric cars, some slight rethemeing to make the environment look nicer, and maybe some clever use of lights at night to make the ride stand-out from the pack. As is, this is a really fun ride to take a kid on, and a decent “we should try this one” experience for adults, but nowhere near as special as it’s history and popularity would imply.
66. Liberty Square Riverboat (Magic Kingdom)
Disney Worlds “Rivers of Adventure” stand-in, which takes off from right near Haunted Mansion in Liberty Square, isn’t anywhere near as elaborate as the equivalent boat ride at Disney Land. As is, it’s a slow leisurely ride around Tom Sawyer Island, with some very simple displays along the edges and fun references to the various rides you pass. The vocal performance is pretty strong, and the boat itself allowed for a nice and relaxing ride, but it all feels a bit too long and by the end I was happy to be back on firm ground and heading to something a little more engaging.
65. Shrek 4-D (Universal Studios Florida)
Do you like the original Shrek? Do you want to watch a 10 minute Shrek short with some cool 4-D effects that feels like a good direct sequel to it? If you answered yes to both of those questions, then this is a solid enough attraction inside of an air-conditioned little theatre. Our experience was harmed by easily the worst staff-member I’ve seen at any theme park as our “host” (she couldn’t even pronounce the characters names), but once the show began I laughed and giggled a bit. I’d recommend checking it out at least once if you are a fan.
64. Dumbo The Flying Elephant (Magic Kingdom)
This is so high on this list just because of its history. I had fun riding Dumbo with my wife, and it was nice to get on this iconic ride at least once. Unfortunately, the controls were a little spottier than on some of the more recent variations. The ride also has a really impressive kid-friendly queue where you are provided with an electronic placement so the little ones can enjoy the play-areas around Storybook Circus. The ride is so popular with families that they added a second spinner, which means the queues are never that long anymore.
63. Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse (Magic Kingdom)
I don’t know if I would refer to the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse as a “ride”. but this brief walk-through attraction, in which you climb up into a large recreations of the sets from the 1960s film is a totally fine way to spend 5 minutes. The themeing is all solid enough, and it was nice to climb some stairs and move around for a few minutes. Having never seen the film, I didn’t really feel a strong burst of nostalgia, but I did like seeing recreations of the various knickknacks the family had apparently built out of scavenged material in order to survive the wild. If you are in the area and have a moment, it’s worth the walk.
62. Primeval Whirl (Animal Kingdom)
Primeval Whirl is traditional (and rickety) mouse coaster which is intended, like all of the Dino-Land attractions, to resemble something you can find at county fair. It’s actually a surprisingly fun little ride which has a lot of fun with that premise. It’s just, with everything else going on at Animal Kingdom, I’m not sure why you would choose to go on a Mouse Coaster instead of, for example, walking an additional five minutes and going on Dinosaur or heading across the Bridge to Expedition Everest. With that said, if you’ve been on those other attraction, or the only fastpass available is for this, it’s totally worth a ride.
61. Flight of the Hippogriff (Islands of Adventure)
Flight of the Hippogriff is much more in line with a ride like The Barnstormer or Woody Woodpecker’s Nuthouse Coaster than a more traditional thrill ride. This is a short and tame little roller-coaster. However, unlike those two attractions, this one, which is located right next to Hogwarts, is elevated by a lot of really cool themeing. As you queue for the ride you pass by an incredible animatronic Hippogriff, and while on the coaster you’ll see Hargrid’s house. It might not be worth a go if the line is long, but if you can get a shorter queue, definitely jump onboard for a quick trip.
60. Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin (Magic Kingdom)
This is a real mixed bag of a ride. I love the idea of shooting little lasers at targets for points and am a huge fan of Toy Story. The most impressive thing about the attraction is some of the blacklight paper-cut-out visual design and the amazing Buzz Lightyear animatronic in the queue. Unfortunately, I found the entire shooting mechanic incredibly frustrating. I was never able to tell which red pointer was mine, and the complete lack of feedback when you do hit something left me unsure why I was doing well or badly at any given moment. It’s definitely worth a ride, but Toy Story Mania and the Men in Black ride both do a better job with the same basic concepts.
59. The American Adventure (Epcot)
The American Adventure is a deeply impressive animatronic show which is heavily hindered by the fact that it’s bullshit propaganda which I have no patience for this year. The ride handles the Civil War without going into any of the reasons why the Civil War happened (the song was good though), and an odd aside about the Native-Americans which ends with an “at least we’re all brothers now” coda seems remarkably tone-deaf. I did love having Mark Twain as one of the hosts and the presentation is immaculate. I am really glad we saw it, but I have no desire to do it again. Just always remember, AMERICA! Spread your wings!
58. The Seas with Nemo and Friends (Epcot)
The Seas with Nemo and Friends is a dark-ride with minimal use of animatronics. Instead, most of the images are from the Finding Nemo movie itself. Clips from the movie are projected in various nooks and crannies of the sets, which is pretty disappointing in comparison to other attractions at the parks. I would probably rank this ride even lower, except that the show culminates in a joyous final moment. In the last few rooms, as a final song kicks in, the characters are projected onto the walls of actual aquariums at Epcot, which surrounds these animated characters with real aquatic life. It’s a really neat effect, and elevated the ride into something I would recommend trying at least once. I wish the whole experience had been like that.
57. Poseidon’s Fury (Islands of Adventure)
Have you ever watched an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess and thought to yourself “I wish I was standing about 10 feet away from that terrible acting right now”, well, do I ever have a ride for you. Poseidon’s Fury is half-ride/half-live action show. You are made part of a tour group, being led by an actor, through an archeological dig site. The sets themselves are immaculate (especially the outer façade, which is ridiculously pretty looking), and in our case, we had a really strong performer as our host. Early on, something goes wrong, the lights go out, and you have to follow the actor from room to room as he searches for the Trident of Poseidon in order to fight off an evil god. The attraction includes a lot of really impressive fire and water effects (there is a spinning water tunnel you have to go through at one point that makes the ride instantly worth the line). Unfortunately, once you start getting to actors on screen playing various gods the whole things takes a turn for the awful. For a ride whose sets and effects look like they cost a ton of money, a lot of these pre-filmed segments feel like third-rate extras that were shoved into costumes put together by their moms for Halloween. It really does feel like you are in the middle of a bad episode of Hercules. We both found the entire experience, including the ending, incredibly entertaining in a so-bad it’s good kind of way, and we both loved all the visual effects, but it’s a long wait and you need to be in the mood for something heavy on the cheese. We also got kind of lucky with the guide, and if you ended up with someone worse, this attraction could become an unpleasant slog in a hurry.
56. Turtle Talk with Crush (Epcot)
If you have a little kid, just ignore that this is #55, and go see this. This attraction is amazing on a purely technical level. Everyone sits in a little room (with the youngest kids sitting cross legged on the floor in the front) while Crush, the Sea Turtle from Finding Nemo, talks to them. Behind the scenes, an actor performs the voice and lip synching. The actor also can see the audience, which lets him address some of the little kids by their clothing (and eventually name) in order to ask them questions and in turn, answer questions for them. A lot of this comes across as adorable improvisation. As an adult, I was sitting there deeply impressed by the technology, and also really amused by how the actor goaded kids into asking questions, and skillfully handled shy little ones and various interruptions. He clearly had incredible training on how to handle most things a kid will do, and there are various tools at his disposal that he can use to distract from a difficult question. At one point when a kid asked to meet his wife for instance, he pressed a button so the turtle went away and then came back and did a different mo-cap performance with a fake “female” voice, before cracking up and going “sorry I couldn’t keep that up, she’s not here. She’s off playing with the little ones right now”. It was clever and had us all laughing. You could tell these kids believed in him, and were eating it up, and frankly, that makes it worth seeing once, even if you don’t have a little one who can be part of the interactions.
55. Jungle Cruise (Magic Kingdom)
I really wanted to enjoy Jungle Cruise more than I did (it’s obviously one of the most iconic, and oldest, rides at Magic Kingdom), but the two experiences we had on this pun-filled river outing left me rather flat. We saw the “Jingle Cruise” variation of the ride, which had a little bit of extra Christmas themeing everywhere, but both of our guides were pretty weak, stumbling through their puns with very little enthusiasm. I’d want to give it another ride to see if a better guide would improve the experience, but as is, Jingle Cruise was enjoyable enough, but left me rather cold overall.
54. Star Wars Launch Bay (Hollywood Studios)
I really struggled with whether to include this since I’m not sure if I would count the Launch Bay as a “ride” per-se, but considering the lack of attractions at Hollywood Studios right now, it feels appropriate. There is a ton of Star Wars material all over Disney’s mid-evolution park, including two live shows which rotate every 30 minutes, a kid’s show, a short film which recaps the original trilogy, and The Star Wars Launch Bay. The Launch Bay is where people go for most of the Star Wars Meet and Greets (if you want to get a photo with Rey, Kylo Ren, BB-8 or Chewbacca you can come here), but it also has a second wing. On that side of the Launch Bay, you can watch an eight minute behind the scenes documentary on the series. This documentary is updated annually with people who are involved in the current slate of TV shows, books, comics, videogames and the most recent film. I found the documentary rather moving, even though it hadn’t been updated from Rogue One yet. After that, you’re dropped into a museum filled with props, concept art and models of various vehicles and planets from both the original films and the most recent ones. I loved walking around and taking a look at all this stuff. Overall, if you love Star Wars, it’s worth taking a look whether you want to do the photo-ops or not.
53. Tom Sawyer Island (Magic Kingdom)
If I had been eight when I first went to Tom Sawyer Island, I would have loved this place more than nearly anything else at the park. In order to reach the island, you have to take a raft from Frontier Land. Once you arrive though, you find yourself in what amounts to a giant exploration-focused all-ages playground. There are various paths that lead to dark caves (which are actually pretty hard to see in and get, at times, so tight that I had to shimmy sideways through them) and old-forts, which include animatronic animals and, kind of weirdly, fake guns that you can use to pretend to shoot at people in other parts of the park. I loved crossing the various bridges, exploring the side trails, and traveling through the various caverns, all of which are themed slightly different from one another. And if you do have a young kid, most areas feel constructed to allow unstructured play. A game of tag in the caverns sure does sound like a lot of fun. I imagine on days where it does get crowded though that some of this could start to feel a tad claustrophobic. Regardless, if you have a little extra time after riding the attractions you can’t miss, even as an adult, it’s worth crossing for a relaxing stroll.
52. Peter Pan’s Flight (Magic Kingdom)
Peter Pan’s Flight is obviously an iconic original Disneyland attraction, and it’s the oldest dark ride at Disney World. From a historical perspective it has a ton of value, and the lines for the ride (which rarely dips below 90 minutes) demonstrate just how much families want to share that classic Disney Magic with their kids. It’s unfortunate then that, beyond the initial moments of flight, which still feel really impressive, the ride itself is only okay. While most Disney World rides use sound placement to tell a singular story, clips from the Peter Pan soundtrack play in a massive loop as you swoop and soar around Neverland, which leads to a fair amount of repetition. The animatronics, likewise, are all rather primitive, and feel like they need some refurbishment. The final experience is also very short. We fastpassed the experience, and it was worth doing once that way, but I think I would have been kind of pissed off if I’d spent 90 minutes in line to ride it.
51. Astro Orbiter (Magic Kingdom)
A quick glance at pictures of Astro Orbiter can make this ride look like a traditional spinner. In reality, the ride is a little bit faster, and tilts a bit to the side as you spin. With that said, the ride doesn’t spin fast enough to thrill, but just enough to lead to nausea. Regardless, as one of the highest points in Magic Kingdom, the Astro Orbiters definitely get a great view of the park, which makes it a must ride at least once.
50. The Simpsons Ride (Universal Studios Florida)
The Simpsons ride is the oldest Motion Simulator at Universal Studios Florida, and you can definitely tell. While the ride’s façade, queue, and entire Springfield area are really fun (and have some laugh-out-loud funny jokes), once you reach the final seats, you are, in the style of classic attractions like Back to the Future, simply raised in the air and swerved, dropped, tilted and bumped based on the action on screen. While other rides will blow wind into your face to simulate movement, or let loose a smell at a specific point etc, this ride simply moves. The actual motion simulated experience is fun, and the Simpsons “movie” is really entertaining, although it uses 3-D Simpsons models that don’t look “right”. I would have preferred if they had fun with the 2-D aesthetic of the show. As a big classic Simpsons fan, I personally had fun with the attraction, although it felt stuck in the past in a way other rides at Universal don’t. My wife though, who suffers from motion sickness, was nauseated more by this experience than any other ride at any of the parks, and since we did it so early, it meant that other rides were triggering her nausea much worse throughout the day. Those 4-D effects, or even the use of real movement like on some of the newest rides, can really help alleviate those problems, and it’s unfortunate that The Simpsons hasn’t been modernized at all in recent years.
49. Transformers the Ride 3-D (Universal Studios Florida)
Do you like Transformers? If so, you’re probably going to like this ride a lot more than I did. This attraction is basically the Spiderman ride if instead of flying through an episode of that 90s cartoon you were in a transforming vehicle in the middle of one of the Transformers movies. Technically this ride is incredibly impressive, making amazing use of both the motion simulation systems and a full track for the vehicles. The interaction between the screen and the vehicles is a big improvement over Spider-Man, especially since, unlike on that ride, you are more of an active participant. The main reason why this isn’t higher on the list is that I just really hate the Transformers movies. I had no idea what was going on during that entire ride. I didn’t know who was fighting who, or why I should care. The ride’s stated goal is to make you feel like a participant in one of the final battles in a Transformers movie, and it undeniably succeeds at that. The problem is, I hate the final battles in the Transformers movies.
48. Kali River Rapids (Animal Kingdom)
Kali River Rapids is a solid-enough water ride. You won’t get very wet, but the scenery is gorgeous and while the “anti-logging” messaging is a bit on the nose, I’ll allow it. I had fun. With that said, even only a few weeks since we’ve last ridden it, I can’t really recall that much about the experience beyond that. On a hot day, it’s a fun relaxing ride, and it would be nice to have a second experience on it. Just don’t expect it to be one of the more memorable experiences at Animal Kingdom.
47. Dudley Do Right’s Ripsaw Falls (Islands of Adventure)
Take Walt Disney World’s Splash Mountain. Replace the incredible Song of the South inspired themeing and replace it with a fun-enough Dudley Do-Right adventure. Then, instead of simply giving you a really fun drop photo-op with a chance of getting wet, make that final drop as wet as humanely possible. Spray the guest from every angle at once. Make sure that there is no escape from the onslaught of water. That’s Dudley Do Right’s Ripsaw Falls in a nutshell. It’s a fun dark ride that will get you totally soaked at the end. On a hot day, I highly recommend taking it for a spin.
46. Walt Disney Presents (Hollywood Studios)
Walt Disney Presents is less a ride than it is a walk-through museum attraction. It’s really interesting though, and definitely worth a look. The first half of the fairly large display focuses on Walt’s childhood, and the evolution of his company from the earliest shorts into the Film/TV/Theme Park Empire they had become by the time of Walt’s death. Some of the oldest Mickey Mouse toys are on display, as well as examples of old animatronics, some early animation technology, and fun memorabilia like Walt’s desk from grade school. The second half of the museum focuses on the future of the parks, with displays explaining the new expansions at Disney World and Shanghai Disney, as well as concept art of some of the upcoming rides. This section is planned to be changed on an annual basis, much like the Star Wars Launch Bay, to reflect all future expansions. A final room has a display for whatever big upcoming Disney release is on its way, including concept art, models and props. The display while we were there was for Coco, and the art on display was really cool. On top of that, for each new release they showcase they do a seven minute reel of behind the scenes information and film clips which you can only watch at the park. I read every display in the museum and had a lot of fun looking around in here, and highly suggest it if you have a chance to visit Hollywood Studios and have a little time to kill while waiting for a fast pass.
45. Mickey’s Philharmagic (Magic Kingdom)
Mickey’s Philharmagic is absolutely worth seeing once while you’re at Magic Kingdom. In this 4-D show, Donald Duck loses Mickey’s magical hat, and is forced to hop between movies in order to find it, invading some of the most iconic musical sequences from the 90s. Expect to get a little wet while Under the Sea plays in the background, have Simba pop out of a flower 5 inches from your face, and go on a magic carpet ride through Agrabah. Donald Duck keeps it all funny, all the songs are great, and the lines are never super long. We saw it twice and enjoyed it both times.
44. Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room (Magic Kingdom)
I expected to feel the same way about the Enchanted Tiki Room as I do about the Carousel of Progress. I thought it was going to be an interesting experience from a historical perspective, but a rather dull show. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying the entire experience quite a bit. The Enchanted Tiki Room famously innovated in regards to Audio-Animatronic designs, with its various birds all singing songs from the perches around the room. What I didn’t realize was that at a certain point, the room as a whole begins to sing to you, from the birds, to the moai statues, to the plants. The songs are all very traditional 60s Disney numbers, but there is something really charming and magical about the whole thing. The show also still works for kids. While some of the older attractions appeal mainly to Disney-History focused adults, the little ones in our group were all so excited by everything singing from all the sides. It was a really memorable little experience that I feel very happy to have experienced.
43. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (Magic Kingdom)
My favorite memories of Disney Land when I was a very young kid were going on the dark rides (like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride). There aren’t as wide a collection of them in Fantasyland at Magic Kingdom as there still are at Disneyland, but out of the various ones in Orlando, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is one of the better ones. The interactive queue looks like a ton of fun for the little ones, and the ride itself is a short trip through the plot of the original film. I like the section where the cart bounces, and the Huffalump song near the end. This is a gentle and adorable experience that is likely to be one of the best bets for families with very young children.
42. Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid (Magic Kingdom)
Continuing off of Winnie the Pooh, Under the Sea is a family Dark Ride in Fantasyland which traces the plot of the Little Mermaid. After taking a quick dip into the ocean (through a very clever use of temperature control and audio-visual elements), your cart will travel past a chorus of “Under the Sea”, an unbelievably impressive Ursula animatronic, the poor unfortunate souls squirming on the sea floor and finally back up to land. Some of the ride’s animatronics can feel a little too plasticy (for lack of a better word), but if you have any affection for the original film, the various sights and special effects are a lot of fun (especially scuttle) and the whole thing ends before it wears off it’s welcome. If you have kids, this is a must ride, but even for adults who grew up on those 90s films, this is worth at least one trip under the sea.
41. Muppet Vision 3-D (Hollywood Studios)
Do you like the Muppets? If you answered yes, than you’ll almost certainly enjoy Muppet Vision 3-D. The entire experience is a lot of fun, and comparable in quality to the original episodes. The show is actually one of Disney World’s first experiments with 3-D and while it looks good, there is a lot of “look at this thing get close to your face” gimmickiness to it. On top of that the one computer generated character is used in many of the show’s 3-D experiments, and he’s the single worst aspect of the entire experience. But he never really drags down what is otherwise a joyous ode to the characters past. The show gets especially fun when it starts using the real life theatre as part of the act. For example, the music is provided by animatronic penguins in the front row, while Waldorf and Sattler sit on the balcony hanging above the audience commenting on the action. At one point a real Muppet-costumed performer even shows up on stage for a moment. As a whole, the show is a lot of fun, although it needs to be updated a bit for the modern day. The sad thing is that the entire Muppet section of Hollywood Studios is now hidden away in a corner, and frankly, the fact that the Muppet store there has no Muppet merchandise (except for one shirt), and a ton of the area is covered in scrim heavily implies to me that it might be gone entirely by the next time I return. Hopefully the Muppet “Great Moments in American History” segments at Magic Kingdom (which are HILARIOUS) will stay or be expanded regardless.
40. Living with the Land (Epcot)
Living with the Land is a slow boat ride that gives you a glimpse of Disney’s greenhouse, where they grow all their own produce and do their own aquaculture. It was a bit weird following up an entire section about how they produce fruits and veggies in ways that are more efficient with fewer chemicals only to see a room with thousands of fish with no space to swim, but regardless, I found the experience both educational and a lot of fun. I especially liked how they put little signs near the various produce in order to show what dishes they were being used in at the Food and Wine Festival that was going on while we were there. I can’t imagine this ride will keep children engaged, but as an adult I really enjoyed it. I’d be especially interested in taking the longer behind-the-scenes tour of the greenhouse sometime in the future.
39. Spaceship Earth (Epcot)
The beating heart of Epcot houses one of the park’s original flagship attractions “Spaceship Earth”. This slow dark ride takes you on a time-travelling trip through the earliest days of human invention, past the Renaissance, into the computer age and finally onwards to a hopeful glimpse of the future. The ride epitomizes what Epcot is all about, entertaining guests, educating them and hopefully pushing some attendants into fields where they work towards a better tomorrow. The ride is a bit dated, and the entire experience is a bit too long, but no trip to Epcot would be complete without going on this at least once.
38. Men in Black: Alien Attack (Universal Studios Florida)
Men in Black: Alien Attack is Universal’s version of the Buzz Lightyear ride from Disney World. Like that ride, you’re handed a blaster at the start, and you’ll gain points for hitting various targets throughout the dark ride. Unlike at Disney World, the targets in this case are full animatronic aliens who are hiding throughout a really well-themed New York dark ride. A few of these aliens will even react when they get hit; dropping down into the garbage bins they are hiding in or spinning briefly in a circle. Some of these aliens will also shoot you if you don’t hit them first, which will spin your own cart briefly. The entire encounter ends in what amounts to a giant boss fight where you get a huge point modifier for taking out the lead alien. The ride’s a lot of fun, although, like with Buzz Lightyear, it’s sometimes hard to tell what your hitting, especially with so many red pointers from the various karts all aiming for the same targets. My wife also found the spinning both nauseating and unnecessary. Personally, I think the experience is a big improvement over the Walt Disney World variation.
37. Tomorrowland Transit Authority: PeopleMover (Magic Kingdom)
I’m sure you’re thinking “why would you put the Tomorrowland monorail so high on this list”. Honestly, while the PeopleMover isn’t going to thrill anyone, it’s a really relaxing, largely shaded trip over Tomorrowland with a fast-moving, often quite short line. It’s a great way to get out of the sun. More importantly than that, it serves as an incredible introduction to Tomorrowland, explaining the various attractions in this section of the park, giving you a quick glimpse inside of Space Mountain and Buzz Lightyear and serving as a teaser for all the fun you’re about to have. I wish every part of Magic Kingdom had an attraction like this, which can help make the various “lands” feel more like full and complete worlds. If you have the time, I’d really recommend taking a quick jaunt on this as a tone setter before heading off to do the various other excellent rides in Tomorrowland.
36. It’s Tough to be a Bug (Animal Kingdom)
A Bug’s Life is one of my least favorite Pixar movies, so I was pretty hesitant about this 4-D show. Thankfully, it turned out to be a really pleasant surprise. Like with all the 4-D shows at Disney World, the 3-D effects and smells (to represent putrid insects), wind effects (to represent stingers flying by you) and motion (including one incredibly cool moments where the chairs make it feel like roaches are crawling on your seat) are all a lot of fun. The show also takes place in the Tree of Life, which gives you a great view of all the immaculate carvings both inside and outside of Animal Kingdom’s centerpiece. There are also a couple of incredible animatronics (the Hopper one is INSANE) and a really awesome moment when spiders seem to be coming from the roof. On top of all that, the line is always very short. This is a great way to escape the rain or heat for a little while.
35. Race through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon (Universal Studios Florida)
Let me preface this description by saying, I’m not particularly fond of Jimmy Fallon. I’ve watched very little of his show, but what I have seen hasn’t really impressed me. He’s… alright. This ride though is just… so weird. This is the newest attraction at Universal Studios, and you can tell that they’ve really put everything they’ve learned about motion simulators into it. Despite being a stationary theatre set-up, there are moments which achieve a sense of weightlessness, other moments in which your vehicle feels ever so slightly nudged and others where you feel you’re going down a rollercoaster trail at a hundred miles per hour. The ride itself is, well, it’s bonkers. You chase Jimmy Fallon to space at one point, and there is a King Kong sized bear mascot. Some of the jokes are pretty funny, but others really miss (including one recurring gag where Fallon plays a young spoiled girl that… I guess it’s a reference to his show and I just don’t get it). I’m honestly not sure, even now; if the ride was really good or really bad, but I do know that it’s definitely a must-ride at least once. What I can say for sure is that the queue experience, which has you sitting in a waiting room filled with interactive experiences and screens playing clips, is great.
34. Star Tours: The Legend Continues (Hollywood Studios)
Star Tours is one of the first Motion Simulator rides, but you wouldn’t be able to tell that by riding it today. In 2010, the entire experience was revamped in celebration of Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm. The new version of Star Tours includes more comfortable seating, more animatronics in the queue and on the ride itself, and a completely new motion simulated adventure. The current version has several distinct advantages and disadvantages compared to other Motion Simulators though. On the one hand, unlike other modern motion simulators, your vehicle is completely stationary, and also includes no 4-D effects. Since you are supposed to be in an aircraft, there are no gusts of air that will help alleviate motion sickness, which means that if simulators tend to bother you, this one definitely will. But, on the other hand, if you are fine with them, Star Tours is an excellent one, with a fun adventure to various worlds which fully embraces the series history. Each time you ride it, the experience will be different as well, since the trip chooses randomly from a variety of different planetary destinations, and the simulation is completely different for each one. Lately, the ride has been updated with one new world each year, in celebration of the new films. During out trip, a rebel spy was spotted onboard our ship by an Imperial Probe Droid and to escape we rode through the depths of Jakku before ending up in a battle against AT-ATs on Crait, one of the new planets from The Last Jedi. In contrast, you might escape from Darth Vader alongside the Millennium Falcon before ending up in the battle on Hoth and finishing up on Naboo. There are currently eleven different segments, and you’ll experience three of them each time you ride. If you’re a Star Wars fan who isn’t prone to motion sickness, this is an incredible celebration of the films which is worth at least a couple of trips.
33. Revenge of the Mummy (Universal Studios Florida)
Revenge of the Mummy is a solid indoor roller-coaster/dark-ride hybrid that is a tremendous amount of fun. The ride starts as a traditional Dark Ride, taking you past various creepy sights within a Dark Tomb. At one point, the lights go out, mummies rise from the grave, and the ride transforms into a roller-coaster as you struggle to escape. As you speed past various obstacles the cart will at one point even travel backwards. It’s a short, intense and uncomfortably bumpy experience which at times resembles a more narrative driven Space Mountain. It’s unfortunate then that this ride culminates in such an odd final gag, with a really dumb Brendan Frasier joke which sits at complete odds with the rest of the experience. As a whole, Revenge of the Mummy is a great alternative to Universal Studio Florida’s overwhelming amounts of Motion Simulators, and a must-ride. It just lacks the consistency and burst of magic which could make it part of my top
32. Dinosaur (Animal Kingdom)
Despite the decision to (very loosely) theme this ride after easily the worst film of the Disney Animated Canon, Dinosaur is an excellent dark ride/thrill ride hybrid. I wish it was the Indiana Jones ride (like at Disneyland), but if that’s not an option this is a good side-grade. There are a couple of cool thrills (including a very impressive looking T-Rex), a silly but fun time-travelling narrative and a great (albeit cheesy) queue experience. In retrospect, it’s odd we didn’t get to give it a second go, and I hope it’s still around when we come back so I can try it again.
31. Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem (Universal Studios Florida)
Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem is my favorite stationary Motion Simulator at any of the Orlando Parks, and I say that as someone who, let’s say, isn’t necessarily fond of the Despicable Me franchise. I just found this simulator experience, in which you get transformed into a Minion and forced into various trials, really adorable. The sense of bouncing, jumping and being nudged is all surprisingly convincing, and the actual video was fun enough that it made me… well… like the Minions a little bit more. If you hate these little yellow guys, I’d still skip the ride, but if you want to try a fun motion simulator and have either kids or a remote fondness for the films, I highly recommend the experience.
30. Relaunched! Mission: Space (Epcot)
Mission Space is pretty much two rides in one, with the queue splitting into two completely separate experiences. The Green Side is considered the “tame ride” and takes you on a quick motion simulator journey just outside of Earth’s atmosphere, with a voice helpfully telling you what countries or places you are passing at any given moment. Visually, Green Side is really impressive, and it causes very little nausea. The Orange side is consider the more intense experience, and takes you through space, hypersleep and finally into a crash-landing on Mars. This version of the ride is actually going to hit you with some significant G-Forces and is easily the most intense attraction at Disney World. Both versions of the ride give every one of the four people in your pod a specific job (at various points a voice will say things like “Navigator, hit manual controls” and that person has to click a button), and end with a section in which everyone is supposed to take manual control together of the ship. If the Orange side is the more impressive ride from a physical stand-point, Green side is the better visual experience. I’d recommend trying both, although even with a fast pass the lines at Mission Space seem to move very slowly.
29. Soarin’ (Epcot)
Soarin’ isn’t a particularly exciting ride, but this attraction, which lifts your group into the air above a giant screen and uses motion controls to make you feel as if you’re hang-gliding over some of the world’s most gorgeous settings, is an impressively fun experience. I didn’t find the motion simulation especially impressive, but from a purely visual standpoint, there is nothing quite like sweeping over grand vistas, and the screen is beautifully clear. I found the transitions from location to location, with your craft passing through mist and then appearing somewhere else in the world, a tad distracting, but spent the entire journey in awe of the majesty of the world we live in. Definitely give it a ride.
28. E.T. Adventure (Universal Studios Florida)
E.T. Adventure is what I think families believe Peter Pan’s Flight will be. It’s an old-fashioned Dark Ride experience that captures the magic of classic cinema. This attraction stands up way better than I expected, with a fun jungle queue, excellent bike-style vehicles, and an exciting sensation of initial flight that rivals the start of Peter Pan. Unlike that ride though, the rest of the experience mostly stands up to modern scrutiny, with a fun escape from the police culminating into a trip to E.T.’s homeworld filled with odd creatures. The one downside, some of those creatures are pretty awful looking though. Luckily, the final gimmick, in which E.T. personally thanks the various members of your group by name before landing, is really clever. This ride no longer exists in California, and I feel like it might not be long for this world in Orlando either, so if you have a chance to take it for a spin, it’s a must-ride.
27. It’s a Small World (Magic Kingdom)
I know this ride is the butt of a lot of jokes (with its endlessly looping and incredibly catchy song earning most of the ire), but It’s a Small World is a charming ride through a child-like and stunningly crafted arts and crafts world. The various sets are all beautifully designed, with tons of animatronic variety. I would have loved the ride even more if we hadn’t gotten stuck near the end of it the second time through, which left me with that song stuck in my head and little desire to take it for another spin. Regardless, this is a classic attraction for a reason.
26. Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey (Islands of Adventure)
Islands of Adventure’s signature Harry Potter ride is a solid-enough experience with some pretty notable problems. After an absolutely incredible queue experience, with each room filled with video presentations, moving portraits and moments of real magic for fans of the book, riders are placed onto floating benches. The rest of the experience is an odd dark-ride motion simulator hybrid where your benches will sway, drop and swing wildly as you experience some screen-based flight bits (which include the actors from the original film) and dark ride segments including giant creepy spiders, dementors and various evil beasts. The entire experience, when you include the queue, is, as a fan, an awful lot of fun, but it’s a ride whose seams are very visible. The screens, for example, are really quite blurry, and unlike most other motion rides, are entirely 2-D, since the carts swing so wildly in the air that I imagine losing your glasses would be a real possibility. Meanwhile, the dark ride bits, while very fun, show their machinery a little too much, with the giant metal beams that hold the Dementors being visible for example. Some of this does hurt the magic, but honestly, the entire experience is so wild and unique, that I still really enjoyed it. I will say that personally, it’s the one ride at either park that left me really close to vomiting from all the bobbing and swinging in mid air. So take that into account.
25. Jurassic Park: River Adventure (Islands of Adventure)
As a fan of Jurassic Park, this ride was a whole lot of fun. The start of the experience is a slow dark-ride/flume-ride hybrid past various dinosaurs which both captures some of the majesty of the first film’s introduction and functions as an educational dinosaur travelogue. Than, like the film, about halfway through things start to go wrong, and your boat goes off course past various killer dinosaurs. The culminating T-Rex drop is a real highlight, and while the final splash doesn’t quite reach the heights of Splash Mountain, the experience as a whole met my high expectations.
24. Pirates of the Caribbean (Magic Kingdom)
It feels like blasphemy to have Pirates of the Caribbean even just THIS LOW on my list, but I have some nitpicks with this classic Disney attraction. I absolutely adore most of this ride (particularly the first drop, and the incredible raid sequence that takes place right afterwards) and the animatronic pirates are all a lot of fun. I just really don’t like the new additions over the past few years. I have no problem with Disney changing the pirate-auction sequence (the scene currently has pirates auctioning off damsels as their wives, and it is a little squirm-inducing on a children’s ride), but all the additional Jack Sparrow stuff, in which he is Where’s Waldoing through the carnage, feels a little weak. The original ride was all about pirates raiding a town, while the new one is about Jack Sparrow sneaking through the carnage to break into the vault. I like the first few Pirates movies, but I wish that they had left that character out of the original ride.
23. Affection Station (Animal Kingdom)
This is so high on my list just because of the sheer delight my wife had as we gave goats brushey brusheys. A bunch of really cute animals (including a surly pig), some decent cover for them, lots of food and plenty of brushes made for a delightful 15 minutes. In order to get to the affection station, you have to take the Wildlife Express Train, so it’s a bit of a trek, but if brushing cute animals makes you as happy as it does us, than you should do that. We didn’t check out the conservation station nearby, but that might also make the trip a little less painful.
22. Na’Vi River Journey (Animal Kingdom)
The Na’Vi River Journey ride at Animal Kingdom is the newest dark ride at any of the parks, and from a technical perspective, the only ride that rivals it is Flight of Passage. This slow water ride will take you through the Bio-Luminescent forest from the first Avatar film. There is real magic to the sheer amount of life in the environment around you, achieved by projections and some of the best lighting effects at the park. The entire ride is beautiful, and when the song starts to kick in, and you catch sight of Disney Worlds most impressive animatronic (the Na’Vi shaman, who looks utterly real), it’s hard not to be transported to another place. Unfortunately, since it’s a new ride, lines for Na’Vi River Journey rarely dipped below two hours while we were there, and as beautiful as it is, this no thrills, low narrative boat tour will doubtlessly underwhelm some people after such a long wait. We loved it though.
21. Frozen Ever After (Epcot)
Frozen Ever After is one of the most impressive Dark ride at any of the Orlando parks, with some absolutely gorgeous animatronics (the Olaf one at the start is utterly convincing), some terrific visual effects work on the walls, and an incredible finale. I loved everything about this ride, and from the excited sounds of the children around us, I wasn’t the only one. I would not be surprised if it goes higher on the list after I’ve had a chance to ride it again next time.
20. Test Track (Epcot)
This is the ride at Disney World I most wished I could have ridden one more time. On Test Track, halfway through the Queue everyone gets placed in front of a tablet and you’re asked to design your own car. You can choose various parts, all of which have an impact on efficiency, speed and handling. Once the actual ride starts, you pop into a default vehicle, and your car is taken through various tests. You’ll twist and turn around quick corners, make a sudden stop, and in the culminating moment, take a high speed trip around the titular “test track”. Your vehicle will be ranked for it’s various capabilities after each test, and at the end, you’ll be given a specific score and compared to both everyone else within your group and the best cars of any given day. The ride would be a lot of fun even without this gimmick, but it all comes together in one of the most unique rides in Orlando. The final room, which like most Epcot attractions includes a ton of play activities for kids, includes a bit where you can even create an ad for your vehicle based on its various strengths and weaknesses. It’s all very neat.
19. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (Magic Kingdom)
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is one of Disney World’s newest rides, and is intended to serve as a halfway point between a kiddy coaster like The Barnstormer and something a little more thrilling like Big Thunder Mountain. This combination dark ride and roller-coaster, in which you can actively bounce your car around as you ride, is a tremendous amount of fun, with just enough thrills to keep adults excited, and a smooth enough rides that the younguns likely won’t be too scared. The ride alternates well between its various elements, with dark-ride moments filled with comedy and songs from the film leading directly into the thrills. It’s a terrific rollercoaster for kids, and I think it will solidify its place as an iconic Disney World rides in years to come. It’s another experience which may rise in my own listings once queues get shorter and it’s easier to pop on it another time or two.
18. Kilimanjaro Safaris (Animal Kingdom)
This attraction is the heart of Animal Kingdom. Kilimanjaro isn’t so much of a ride as it is a tour of Animal Kingdom’s gorgeous safari. There are tons of animals to see here, and the tour guide we had was incredible at pointing out even the ones who seemed the most hidden away. Disney gives these animals a lot of space to wander and be themselves, which removes a lot of the negative feelings I sometimes have towards zoos. Do yourself a favor though and take the tour early, the animals have little hiding places where they can shelter themselves and in the midday heat you’ll probably see a lot less of them out and about than we did.
17. Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor (Magic Kingdom)
When we first walked into the Laugh Floor, and sat through the pre-show sequence, I felt pretty sure I was in for something that really wouldn’t appeal to me as an adult. I love both Monsters movies, but the jokes in the waiting room struck me as particularly unfunny. But then we sat down, and the show started, and I’ve got to be honest, I laughed SO hard. Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor is an interactive Improv show in which some members of the audience are forced to participate. The “monsters” that are doing their acts on screen, are, like Crush in the “Turtle Talk” attraction, entirely motion captured characters. Actors behind the scenes are watching the audience and listening to what they say as they do their comic performances, in a way that reminded me a lot of the Black Mirror episode The Waldo Effect. The comedians will regularly turn their camera on an audience member to make a joke, or force a volunteer into a comic back and forth. The try-outs for a role in this show must be challenging, since both times we went, the improve skills on the performers were incredible, with the show only getting funnier when an audience member didn’t respond (the deadpan “that’s different” when one of the monsters asked a crowd member to dance and he did a fake little dance with his hand instead of standing up left me in stitches). There is a kid-centric segment as well, in which children are asked to provide their own jokes, but once again the performers make the entire sequence work for everyone in the audience. We went twice, and the second time they completely changed up the first act and only one joke was otherwise repeated. This is a genuinely fun show and from a technological perspective, the way they are handling animation on the fly is mind-blowing.
16. Skull Island: Reign of Kong (Islands of Adventure)
In Islands of Adventure’s newest ride, Skull Island: Reign of Kong, guests are seated inside of a large moving truck, driven by an animatronic in the front seat, and taken deep into the titular Skull Island, from Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake. The ride itself is a dark-ride, motion-simulator hybrid, with 3-D screens surrounding the moving vehicle during the majority of the experience. Very quickly, things start to go wrong during your voyage as horrifying insects whisk away one of the researchers, dinosaurs attack and eventually the giant gorilla himself shows up. The greatest parts of the ride surround the Motion Simulated stuff. The Queue is amongst the best in Orlando, and actually includes real-live performers who will scare you, and an incredible looking native animatronic. The entrance of the ride uses forced perspective to create a sense that Skull Island goes off far into the distance, and is utterly convincing. The end of the experience includes easily the best animatronic in Orlando, a full-sized breathing King Kong head that is stunning. The Motion Simulated segment is fun, but also doesn’t really sell some of the movement (especially a moment where your vehicle is swinging on vines). While that’s unfortunate, some of the water effects are pretty neat and it’s awesome to have two separate screens on each side, which do make you feel like you’re in a full sized “world” rather than sitting in a moving theatre. Overall, the experience is one of the best at Universal, despite some minor nitpicks.
15. Toy Story Mania (Hollywood Studios)
Toy Story Mania takes the core score mechanic from Buzz Lightyear and perfects it. Riders are provided with 3-D glasses and seated in various vehicles. In front of each person is a Pop Gun which fires when you pull on a string. Your cart is then moved from screen to screen to play various midway attractions. In Woody’s game for example, you have to shoot various targets, while in another you have to throw rings around aliens and in another you have to pop balloons. The game barely pauses between activities, stopping only to show you your respective scores before moving your cart to the next experience. All of the games are based on Midway staples, but the screens are full of life, with characters darting through the action, tons of cute animations and lots of opportunities to earn bonus points. You are competing against the other people in your cart, and my wife and I became competitive very quickly. The whole thing is more fun than it sounds, and was so good that we willingly waited in line for an hour in order to do it a second time. We’d have done a third tie-breaking round if we had the time.
14. Hollywood Rip Ride Rock-It (Universal Studios Florida)
The Hollywood Rip Ride Rock-It isn’t as well themed as any of the other roller coasters at Disney Parks, nor is it as exciting as The Incredible Hulk Coaster. But what it lacks in imagination it more than makes up for in fun. As you hop into your car, each passenger will get a list of songs which have been synched up to the ride. That track will pump out of the back of your seat as you rise at 90 degrees up the first incline before charging down hills and careening around corners. The tempo of your song will change depending on where you are on the track, and the synching they’ve done is really impressive. As far as gimmicks go, it’s a pretty cool one, and the coaster itself is smooth and fun otherwise. This ride might have ended up a little lower on my rankings if it wasn’t for the fact that Universal Studios Florida really needs more experiences that aren’t motion simulators, and it was tremendously refreshing to pop on this after doing so many of those in a row.
13. Popeye & Bluto’s Bilge Rat Barges (Islands of Adventure)
When you go on a water ride, do you like getting really wet? If so than the Bilge Rat Barges is probably the ride for you. As you travel through this adequately themed environment, constructed to look like one of the classic Popeye shorts, you won’t just get wet; you’re going to get soaked. I’m talking so wet that your shoes are going to squish as you walk and water will drip behind you for the next 15 minutes. And the ride doesn’t just get you wet the once with a final drop like most experiences, instead, every animated object around you is going to try to spray you. Guests who are willing to pay money are going to spray you from the bridge above. Buckets full of water are going to get dropped on you. And the ride isn’t going to surprise you with it, it’s going to show you just how wet you’re about to get after every corner in order to raise your anticipation as you hope in vain that you’ll rotate just a little bit so that waterfall hits the person on the other side instead. I loved this ride, not only since I love to get wet, but because my wife was not expecting to get completely soaked, and watching her slow horrific realization of just how bad things were going to get again and again made me laugh maniacally. The only downside of the experience is that, on a day where it’s not scorching hot, the full body dryers nearby require money to use, and frankly, even after spending several minutes inside of one of those, we still weren’t that dry, which left us a little moist for the rest of the day.
12. Rock N’ Roller Coaster: Starring Aerosmith (Hollywood Studios)
This ride is just, so much fun. After a brief “studio tour” queue and a bizarre set-up video everyone gets into large stretch limo roller coaster vehicles inside of a stylized Alleyway set. When the ride starts, it doesn’t have a traditional roller-coaster rise and fall; instead it immediately revs up its engines and shoots you forward through a loop. The entire coaster is indoors in a neon-lit highway themed area filled with fun details. Both times we went on it left me giggling maniacally by the end. The only downside is that this feels like the shortest coaster at any of the parks, and since Hollywood Studios has so few rides right now the lines are going to be long.
11. The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman (Islands of Adventure)
The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman was the first Universal ride to combine Motion Simulator technology with a regular track in order to create a hybrid experience where you’re moving through environments while things happen on screens on all sides of you. The ride is themed, like most of the Marvel experiences at Islands of Adventure, after the 90s cartoon shows. The guests play reporters in a helicopter hoping to catch sight of the webbed super-hero as he battles against the Sinister Six, before getting stuck right in the middle of the battle. By the end, flames will have shot out of the walls above you as Hobgoblin shoots his pumpkin bombs, you might get a little wet, and without leaving the car, the ride will convince you that you were launched hundreds of feet in the air before being dropped down 10 stories into a web. While the 3-D versions of the 90s designs are a little odd, this ride is a perfect Motion simulator experience with enough feedback and real movement to alleviate motion sickness for those of you who are prone to it.
10. Splash Mountain (Magic Kingdom)
Splash Mountain is easily one of the most iconic rides at any Disney Park (so much so that we literally organized our trip around making sure it was open), and it lives up to the hype. Most people likely know this flume ride as “the one where you get that really big drop at the end”, and while that is the iconic moment, the experience is also secretly one of the best Dark-Rides in Disney World. For most of the attraction, you’ll be lazily going down a river surrounded by singing animatronics animals from the film Song of the South. That film, which has been hidden away by Disney Studios, is now mostly remembered for its troubling racial stereotypes. This ride completely ignores those sections in favor of a celebration of its excellent animated segments. Since the film has disappeared, the songs here are recognizable enough, but still fresh, and the animatronics are, as expected, very charming. Once you start with the short drops and prepare for the big one though, the ride goes from a solid experience into something truly magical, earning a place in my top 10.
9. The Country Bear Jamboree (Magic Kingdom)
The Country Bear Jamboree was a massive surprise to me. I expected to watch something that would be interesting solely from a historical perspective, and instead found a funny, impressive and catchy collection of short acts. The bears look incredible, and their various entrances (including one which swings above you as she sings) are a ton of fun. The highlight is Big Al, but the entire show was terrific, and we were still enjoying it on our fourth run-through. I look forward to seeing it again one day in the future.
8. The Incredible Hulk Coaster (Islands of Adventure)
I was tempted to put the Incredible Hulk Coaster a little lower on the list, since, in comparison to the immaculately storytelling on other rides at these parks, it’s a pretty traditional roller-coaster. But, while it’s a very traditional “ride”, it’s also the best pure roller coaster I have ever been on. All the storytelling in the queue, which is filled with pre-Cinematic Universe marvel fun explaining that you are about to undergo the same experiment as the Hulk did, is merely adequate. But once you’re actually on the coaster, and prepared for a traditional ride, instead of the mounting tension of the initial rise you might expect, you are launched up the first hill at incredible speeds. The rest of the coaster, with its various loops, spins and turns is accompanied by a synth score that mounts at the perfect moment, and the ride and music slow as you “land” at various spots before launching you again and again back into the thrills. It’s a heart-poundingly fun roller-coaster which we were more than happy to ride again a second time the moment we’d finished.
7. The Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror (Hollywood Studios)
Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror may technically be a drop-ride, but in execution it’s one of the park’s finest pieces of environmental storytelling. This entire trip into the Twilight Zone by way of a haunted elevator that serves as a mystical portal into another world makes incredible use of its license to tell a fun and silly little story through its pre-show, gorgeous queue and dark ride portion. The eventual elevator drop and rise is way smoother than I expected, and gives you one incredible view of Hollywood Studios at its highest points. The Disneyland version of this ride has been re-themed as a “Guardians of the Galaxy” attraction, but I hope that this version stays the same for the foreseeable future. As good as the Guardians ride doubtlessly is, there is something much more unique about the current experience.
6. Big Thunder Mountain (Magic Kingdom)
It’s not quite as thrilling as Space Mountain, nor as immaculately-themed as the more recent Seven Dwarves Mine Train, but Big Thunder Mountain is still terrific on both fronts, providing a fun and bumpy ride past solid animatronics, a beautiful town setting, and some cool little caves. I wish we’d gotten to ride it a few more times, especially at night, when some ingenious lighting choices make for an even more exciting ride.
5. Space Mountain (Magic Kingdom)
It would be easy to dismiss Space Mountain as a rickety old roller-coaster. More accurately, it’s a rickety old roller-coaster with funky music that you ride in the dark with only the lights of stars zipping by to guide and disorient you. Space Mountain is by far the most intense ride at Magic Kingdom, not because any specific drop or turn is particularly insane, but because, unless you’ve ridden it a dozen times, you never know when a drop is about to happen. Each time I rode, I would find myself yelping at a sudden turn I didn’t expect, and cheering as the ride would twist and turn at rapid speeds with little to orient me. I love this ride, and it consistently put a goofy smile on my face. It helps that the queue and exit ramp really capture the sense that it was all a timeless journey into the great big beautiful tomorrow which Walt’s team built Tomorrowland to exemplify.
4. The Haunted Mansion (Magic Kingdom)
Out of all the classic rides that were made during Walt’s lifetime, the Haunted Mansion is by far the best. I love everything about this experience, from its interactive queue all the way to the hitchhiking ghosts at the end. The translucent dancing ghosts still look incredible, as do all of the animatronics and sets. The final song is also very catchy, and the ride works equally well for adults as it does for children, who may be scared by the intro, but will likely find the experience as a whole quite light-hearted. It’s the kind of experience that will make someone less scared of haunted houses in the future. We rode The Haunted Mansion more than any other attraction at Magic Kingdom, and I easily could have ridden it many times more.
3. Expedition Everest – Legend of the Forbidden Mountain (Animal Kingdom)
Expedition Everest is, to my mind, the perfect combination of thrilling roller-coaster, immaculate themeing and a great view of a beautiful theme park. The Yeti himself is a tremendous animatronic (even though it no longer moves in the same way as it once did), the queue is great, the ride is smooth, fast and exciting, and whether you ride it day or night you’ll get a great view of the incredible Asian section of Animal Kingdom. We rode it about six times, and when we return to Disney World in a few years, we’ll probably ride it six more.
2. Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts (Universal Studios Florida)
Look at that photo for a second. See all of those goblins on the sides? Those are animatronics that look better than the goblins did in the actual Harry Potter Movies. “The Escape from Gringotts” is easily the best ride at Universal Studios, and it’s in close contention for the best ride in Orlando. This roller-coaster, dark-ride and motion simulator hybrid is an incredible 3-D experience where you’ll race through crumbling caves while being attacked by dragons, automated guards and finally Voldemort himself. The cast from the films return for this experience, the effects are all incredibly convincing (including a brief moment of flight) and unlike other motion simulators, nausea wasn’t an issue. The roller-coaster sections are also really quite thrilling. Finally, the attraction has the single best queue in all of the parks. Each room includes video displays, moving portraits, and tons of little details that make the wait much more bearable. This is a must-ride, even if you don’t like Harry Potter as much as I do. The best part is once you’re finished, you get to wander around the incredibly detailed Diagon Alley area that surrounds it.
1. Avatar: Flight of Passage (Animal Kingdom)
The lines are absolutely insane (even with a fast pass it took us forty minutes, and the regular lines regularly exceed three hours), but Flight of Passage is the single most impressive ride we experienced in Orlando. The 3D is gorgeous, the way they display the image in front of you feels all encompassing and the various physical effects are the most convincing I’ve seen on a ride. They literally make you feel as if something breathes on your leg at one point. Not only did I love this journey, which takes you on an incredible motion-simulated flight through the skies, forest, and lakes of Pandora, but if we weren’t able to get a fastpass for it next time we go, I’d probably be willing to stand in line for a few hours to experience it again. The best compliment I could give it is that it left me genuinely excited for Avatar 2, which is not something I never thought I would say.
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Epic Mickey Review (Wii/2010)
There are few American game-designers as influential as Warren Spector. As a producer and/or director, he was involved with the creation of the choice based first-person RPG with “Ultima Underworld”, the cyber-punk choice based RPG-Shooter with “Deus Ex” the first person stealth genre with “Thief”, the cinematic narrative game with “Wing Commander” and the first person isolation horror game with System Shock. All of these games are serious, narratively dark, and deeply ambitious experiments in choice and consequence which heavily influenced recent gaming trends. So, it may seem a little odd that after starting a new studio in the Mid-2000s, he would put together a large and talented team to make… two 3-D platforming games starring Mickey Mouse. I skipped the Epic Mickey games when they were released, but was recently surprised when Warren Spector declared them to be his personal favorite games from his illustrious career. As a big fan of Warren Spector’s original work, and an increasingly large Disneyphile, I felt like I needed to go back and give the first one a shot.
At the start of Epic Mickey, the titular character finds a magic paintbrush which can be used to create or destroy objects at will. While he experiments with the brush, he accidentally spills toner into a mystical portal. Mickey, thinking he has cleared up the chaos, returns to his daily life only to be pulled into the portal in the middle of the night. He finds himself in a world referred to as the “Wasteland”, which is where forgotten characters go to live out the rest of their lives. Here, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the Walt Disney created character from the 1920s who was the precursor to Mickey Mouse, rules over other forgotten characters like Horace Horsecaller in environments based on some of Disneyland’s original attractions. Mickey very quickly learns that the Wasteland have been transformed into drab half melted cityscapes due to the “toner incident” which let loose the monstrous blot into their world. On top of that, sinister blotlings are capturing residents and converting them into creepy animatronics. Finally Oswald himself, already jealous that Mickey replaced him in the real world, lost his girlfriend in the event. Mickey, determined to return to the real world, and perhaps even make things right, sets out with the magic paintbrush to stop the blotlings and their animatronic allies.
Epic Mickey is an odd game. Despite its status as a platformer, the title actually has a fair amount in common with some of Warren Spector’s earlier work. Much of the level design revolves around your use of toner and paint abilities to melt walls and platforms or create new ones. Some of the platforming areas, and all of the bosses, provide you with multiple ways to unlock the exit, some of which use your powers to solve puzzles and rebuild the areas infrastructure, while others cause chaos and mayhem before smashing out the door or melting down your adversary. While these decisions can feel like “good” or “evil” choices, the game never has you press A or B for specific decisions; rather consequences arise organically. I have at times made the “evil” decision simply because I assumed that was the solution the game was asking me to go for, only to see the aftereffect and realize I’ve made the lives of some of the characters a little bit harder. Once I got a hang of the tools the game provided me with, I found finding the positive solution to any given problem both rather rewarding and often far more challenging than I expected.
On the other hand, it’s difficult to get around the fact that, as a platformer, Epic Mickey largely fails. Mickey himself feels surprisingly difficult to control. The jumps are less responsive than in most similar games, which led to a lot of mistimed leaps. The motion controls, which are used to spray paint, frustratingly can’t be utilized while you’re jumping, while the paint button would sometimes fail to trigger. Worse, the game has an absolutely abysmal camera, often switching angles in ways that would lead to me tumbling to my death. Sometimes the wall behind me would block my view, which has gameplay implications, as pressing the “paint” or “thin” button will often make Mickey think you want to spray the wall behind him rather than the enemy you are initially targeting. The combat, meanwhile, feels particularly weak. Nearly all of the enemies in the game can be “rehabilitated” through the use of paint, which involves slowly rotating around them to avoid attacks as you hold the paint button on them for 10 seconds or so. That enemy will then fight the other enemies, and you’ll navigate the chaos as you attempt to rehabilitate everyone. The problem is that there are certain animatronic enemies you need to use your thinner on in order to defeat, and those ones often have a target hidden under their armor you have to hit. If those enemies are attacking your helper minions it can be much more challenging to find their weak point. The fact that the game revolves around choosing to defeat your enemies or redeem them but still requires you to kill some foes feels a tad weird.
But despite these problems, the game’s world continued to draw me in. As a disneyphile, Epic Mickey is a love letter to the company’s earliest history. There is a real pathos to seeing these forgotten Disney characters struggle to cope with the fact that the world has continued on without them. There is something sad about Mickey meeting characters who once starred alongside him who even he has forgotten. The designers have filled the world with references to those classic 1920s through 40s Mickey and Oswald shorts. As someone who has made a point to watch all of them, I often had a big goofy smile on my face as I walked into the various iterations of Pete or ran into obscure, but identifiable characters like Clarabelle Cow. Epic Mickey leans especially hard into that history in short side-scrolling sections which you visit as you travel from area to area. These little bits are direct adaptations of various shorts, such as the classic “The Lonesome Ghosts”, and “Steamboat Willy”, and are filled with characters and obstacles that directly reference classic gags. The black and white ones in particular are ingenious. As if all those references weren’t enough, Warren Spector made the brilliant decision to base each 3-D environment on classic Disneyland attractions. As someone who loves the Disney Parks and has a fascination for their history, I found something cool around every corner. There is something genuinely charming about jumping through environments based on the various segments of the “It’s a Small World” ride before fighting against the giant clock that presides over its façade. Later I wandered into an enchanted Tiki shop outside of a “Pirates of the Caribbean” themed sequence which culminates in an encounter with an animatronic Captain Hook lifted right out of the “Peter Pan’s Flight” attraction. Every one of these levels are filled with references to the park, some which anyone who has been there would recognize (like Space Mountain rising above Tomorrow City), while others, like scaling the ruined remnants of the Mission to Mars attraction, are sly winks to hardcore aficionados. One particularly clever level has you scaling “the Matador” ride from Disneyland, except the exterior of it is formed from discarded Mickey merchandise from the earliest days of the company, some of which are in the Walt Disney museum at Disney World. Jumping from a Mickey Mouse club button onto the arm of a tacky souvenir phone before running along discarded cartridges from long forgotten 1980s Mickey videogames is tremendously clever. While the Wii’s visuals are obviously, unimpressive from a modern context, the art design manages to shine through the muddy textures. There are no straight lines in this game, rather, like the original shorts it’s based on, the world is made of odd and quirky curves. Each world, from the Haunted Mansion themed Lonesome Manor through the bulbous Space environments of Tomorrow City uses color in new and interesting ways. There is clearly a lot of love on display here.
It’s when the game slows does between worlds that the seams start to show the most. Each world you complete unlocks a new “hub” area filled with NPCs who provide you with sidequests. These NPC designs are repeated endlessly, with only a few basic models, which can make it hard to remember who you’ve talked to. In order to unlock the next world, the player has to collect a small number of power sparks, which are given to you for solving various problems (or causing some mayhem for the more mischievous residents). Many of these tasks involve you travelling back and forth between the various areas. This type of backtracking is always annoying, but it’s particularly egregious in Epic Mickey. Let me give you a quick example of why this is a problem. When I first unlocked the Ventureland area, I travelled there by going through a short side-scrolling level based on an early 1930s short set in the jungle. Upon arriving in the town, I’m given a quest to help a lovelorn pirate win the heart of one of the local residents. In order to win her over, the pirate asks me to travel to Ostown in order to collect flowers. To get there, I have to go back to the projector through which I entered, which cues a 30 second load screen, repeat the side scrolling segment from the other direction, which takes about two minutes before cueing another 30 second load screen. I’m now in the Mean Streets Hub, and I have to go through a separate projector to Ostown. To get there, I have to go through a side scrolling section I have, at this point, already done four time based on the classic “Through the Looking Glass” short. This involves two more 30 second load screens and another two minute trek. After talking to Clarabelle Cow in Ostown, she informs me that she can give me the flowers but first she wants me to drop off a cake with Horace Horsecollar back in “Mean Streets”, which takes me back into the “Through The Looking Glass” level again, which means another two load screens and another two minute trek, followed by a quick run through “Mean Streets”, and two 30 second load screens as I enter Horace’s house, drop off the item, and leave. I then have to return to Clarabelle Cow, which means another two load screens back and a third trek “Through the Looking Glass”. Clarabelle Cow then gives me the bundle of flowers, which means I have to go back to “Mean Streets” again, through the same side scrolling level (now my fourth trip during this one side quest), and then back through the jungle area again (for now my third time), to drop off the flowers. That one throw-away fetch quest took about 20 minutes overall, about 18 minutes of which were spent either repeating a run through the same sidescrolling environment or in a load screen. As you can imagine, I did as few sidequests as I could to complete the game.
In another baffling choice, most environments hide secret “pins”, a reference to the collectables that you can find at the various Disney Parks. But only a few of them are named or have specific art. These pins are provided for solving challenging side content, so it’s weird to do something elaborate in an area, only to reach the end and receive a nondescript “silver pin”. It makes finding which ones you’re missing far too challenging. I felt disappointed every time I completed something I thought would give me an upgrade only to find that I had earned one of these instead.
Yet, every time I found myself getting frustrated with poor design decisions like those, I would enter a new 2-D area (most of which you only go through once) and marvel at the original art or some of the new ideas on display. I would feel excited to walk around the corner in a zone only to see the Astro-Orbiters from Disney Land serving as the means to reach the People Mover which jets around the area. Every time I would stumble because of a poor camera angle, I would have at least one moment where I would do something like melt a cord from the roof with my toner which would help create a path I could use to circumvent an area entirely. There is nothing quite as rewarding as using my ingenuity to find a solution around what would otherwise have been a frustrating platformer challenge. Just as I would start to get bored with painting a group of enemies in order to turn them to my side, a new boss encounter which could be solved in a myriad of ways would pop up, and I’d spend a good 10 minutes trying to figure out how I could rehabilitate this villain instead of melting him down, Every time I’d feel angry at another dumb fetch quest stopping the flow of the game flat, a charming cutscene would play which would provide a character like Oswald with a surprising amount of pathos and depth.
How much you like Epic Mickey is likely to be determined by how appealing you find its world to be on a conceptual level. If the idea of adventuring through lovingly crafted environments based on the classic 1930s-60s Disney content appeals to you, or you have any appreciation for Disney Parks history, this game is going to have a lot for you to love despite some issues which, while glaring, will seem like moments of frustration between bouts of enjoyment. If you just want a fun platformer with some cool mechanics, you’ll find a subpar adventure whose fresh ideas and clever level design are often undermined by imprecise mechanics, frustrating backtracking and a shoddy camera. Since I’m not pretending to be professional critic, I can just give it a score for each scenario. Speaking personally, I, like Warren Spector, really love this game, although I also believe his other work is objectively better. I will definitely get around to playing the sequel at some point though.
If you are a Disneyphile (or want to be) - 8/10
If you aren’t – 4/10
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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales Review (2017)
I have a lot of affection for the first few Pirates of the Caribbean movie. The fact that Gore Verbinski, the director of the Ring (of all things) decided to make a movie based on a Theme Park ride and not only was it not terrible, but it was, rather, fun, and vibrant in a way that many blockbusters of the time weren’t, was a massive surprise. It can be hard after so many poor sequels to remember just how clever that original film felt. It was a classical swashbuckler blended with some looney tunes comedy, several bizarre central performances, a distinct look and a touch more darkness than I expected. The two subsequent sequels by the same director demonstrated diminishing returns, but they both had bursts of the original films energy. Sadly, even with the exit of Gore Verbinski and most of the original cast, Disney decided that they couldn’t let this cash-cow of a franchise die, and the fourth film in the series, On Stranger Tides, was a boring mess filled with disappointing new characters, bland action sequences and a plot so forgettable that I had to look up a synopsis to remind myself of the basic events. Despite a general critical drubbing, On Stranger Tides managed to make an extraordinary amount of money at the box office, which is how we ended up here, with an inelegantly named fifth installment in a series that should have ended a long time ago.
Despite my general sense that this is a franchise that has grown long in the tooth, I couldn’t help but feel a tad excited about Dead Men Tell No Tales. Firstly, I’m a big fan of Javier Bardem, and although he’s an odd choice for the franchise, I thought he could make for a solid villain. Secondly, the creative team promised a capper to the series which would tie back into the original trilogy and delve deeper into Jack Sparrow. Thirdly, the rather fun trailers also promised that whether the plot worked or not, there would doubtlessly be some interesting set pieces this time around. Finally, while the film came out to poor reviews, fans in general have embraced it, with a relatively high cinemascore and a decent IMDB rating. I hoped that was a sign that at the very least it would be a fun sit.
Unfortunately, I was wrong to get my hopes up. This movie is an utter disaster. I can’t overstate just how much of a mess it is. Let’s get the few good things out of the way. Firstly, the soundtrack, which has mostly been pulled directly from the original film, manages to elevate a few bits here and there. Secondly, there are individual shots and ideas in this movie that are really cool on a conceptual level. For example, some of how Salazar’s undead pirate horde looks (with their disembodied floating body parts) is neat, and the way his ship bends and springs like a trap as it attacks feels fresh. I also like a couple of the film’s action beats.
Unfortunately, on an execution level, nothing else really works here. Johnny Depp of course returns as Jack Sparrow, but absolutely all the roguish enthusiasm of his initial performance is gone. This version of Jack doesn’t seem to have the wherewithal to manipulate anyone, instead simply marching through the events of the plot in a drunken sexist muddle. The film gives Johnny Depp and his character nothing much to do, and he does little to elevate any of the material. Geoffrey Rush, in contrast, is clearly trying, but is provided with easily the stupidest subplot of the entire franchise. More prominent than either of those two series mainstays is new characters Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) and Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), who act as the Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan surrogates this time around. Unfortunately, they bring absolutely none of the original casts charm to the proceedings. Brenton Thwaites attempts (and fails) to pull off the Orlando Bloom smolder while simultaneously fumbling the action sequences, pathos and romantic comedy. Meanwhile, Kaya Scodelario’s character is seemingly conceived as a pirate version of the hot scientist stereotype. Nothing about her personal arc makes much sense, which is particularly egregious since I think she’s supposed to be the emotional core of the film. Mainly the script has her state some exposition as all the male character sexualize her. David Wenham, who famously played Faramir in Lord of the Rings, portrays a British general named Scarfield who has a remarkable amount of screen time for a character who has absolutely no impact on the plot or any of the characters. The most interesting new addition to the cast is, of course, Javier Bardem who, in a career low-light, provides a performance so odd and off-putting that it honestly reminded my wife and I of Tommy Wiseau’s infamously bad acting in the Room. What’s most insane about all these various performances is the fact that, as uniformly bad as they are, none of them seem to belong in the same film as the others. Even Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush, who have now collaborated on five of these films, don’t feel like they belong in the same world.
Part of the reason for that disconnect is just how laugh-inducingly messy this film is. I would not be surprised if there was an hour of material left on the cutting room floor. I’m going to get into this a little more specifically in a later spoiler section, but I think it’s fair to say that there is never a sense of logical narrative progression throughout this film. Instead, things seem to happen because that’s how it is in the script, rather than any natural order. This is the type of movie where a character will be in a prison cell surrounded by British troops, he’ll make a cursory gesture towards a means of picking the cell’s lock, and then 5 minutes later you’ll smash cut to that same character having escaped and travelled across the ocean. Important objects repeatedly fly across the world to various locations with no narrative explanation at all, in one occasion with a throw-away line so egregious that I laughed out loud. Whole storylines are set up out of nowhere, and many of them seem to be drifting towards some type of narrative conclusion before simply disappearing from the film. Other awful segments appear randomly as short vignettes that are never mentioned again moments after they occur. Some of these feel so amateurish that it’s hard to believe there was a script at all, especially since they could have been excised completely with no impact on what passes for the plot. Meanwhile, the story centers around multiple magical artifacts whose abilities are loosely defined. The villains, likewise, are provided with no cohesive mystical rules, instead demonstrating new random powers even during the final encounter. The lack of thought placed into world-building feels genuinely lazy.
The action and many of the visual effects aren’t even consistently good. The first three Pirates movies all had a few rollicking and beautifully choreographed action sequences. Dead Men Tell No Tales, in contrast, is much more in line with In Stranger Tides. The various action scenes feel stilted, and more like a series of gags than a dance. A perfect example happens about a third of the way through the film, when Jack Sparrow is nearly guillotined, and, for various reasons, the guillotine ends up spinning around him, with the blade nearly cutting off his head before retracting repeatedly. That shot feels like it goes on for a full minute, and then happens again later, in case you didn’t get it the first time. The gag doesn’t crescendo into anything else, rather it just occurs in isolation since someone found the idea amusing. Later action sequences are just bizarre conceptually, including an undead shark sequence that I think would have functioned as a “jump the shark” moment for the film franchise if that hadn’t already happened several installments ago. The final action sequence is a cacophony of CGI that is both boring and incoherent. The worst visual effects are saved for the film’s lone flashback. In that sequence Johnny Depp is put through the same de-ageing process we’ve seen in various Marvel movies, but, in motion, it looks especially creepy this time around, with the placement of his head not fitting right on the film’s body double. I genuinely found it unsettling.
As for the much-hyped connections to the original trilogy. They are there, but this movie is so bad that, frankly, I think it existing as a coda to the Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann story makes the original trilogy actively worse. The emotional moments of the finale which were clearly meant to move people who liked those films feel so unearned here that I was actively angry at the end. This anger is aimed not just at this film’s status as an obvious cashgrab, but rather that it taints the earlier installments as much as it does. Not only do I hate this film, but it made me like the originals less, and that’s a massive shame.
2/10
SPOILERS
Sometimes a spoiler section is intended to allow a deeper analysis of a film. Sometimes you just need to rant a little bit. I really need to rant after watching this. Let’s just start with the film’s massive structural problems. Here’s just one example of an issue. About two-thirds of the way through the film after escaping from the undead sharks to a random island, our heroes are captured by a new set of characters we’ve never met before. To get back at Jack for an unexplained wrong he committed in the past, these captors, who I guess randomly live on the island, try to force him to marry an unattractive overweight woman who we are told has at least one STD. The movie subsequently grinds to a halt for what can only be described as a sexist “redneck wedding in a fish skeleton” sequence. The characters are then rescued, and that entire encounter is never brought up again. That lengthy scene, which is terrible, could have been cut with absolutely no negative impact on the film. Likewise, another terrible scene, with a sexist astrologer, breaks up an otherwise competent action sequence with some dumb jokes and then, once again, is never brought up again.
This issue extends beyond individual moments like those. There is a whole series of scenes with a British Navy captain chasing down Jack Sparrow with the help of an utterly bizarre witch character. Salazar later offhandedly destroys the British ship before they even encounter our leads. Once again, about 15 minutes of the film could have been cut here, and there would be no impact on the story. The witch character, likewise, is set up as a major figure, with a really elaborate introduction, and then is never brought up again.
That’s not even mentioning how fast and loose this film is with its mythology. Jack’s compass, which has obviously been a part of the series from the start, will now summon Salazar to find him if he attempts to get rid of it, an ability that is neither important plot-wise nor explained. The script then teleports that compass across the ocean; We first see it being bartered off at a bar near the start, then in what narratively seems to be a day after, it ends up with the witch on a different island, who then simply gives it to a third character. The only explanation for why she has it is an off-handed shrug of a line about how she has her ways. Meanwhile, the second artifact, the trident, not only controls the ocean, but also if broken cures every curse (which feels like something that should have come up in a prior film). I’m not sure why we needed this artifact to serve two such separate functions, especially since from a narrative perspective, everyone’s motivation for finding it revolves around the curse-curing. It just feels like a contrivance which allows for an elaborate final action sequence. This narrative laziness extends to Salazar, who has a random assortment of mystical abilities. His curse not only affects his crew, but also birds and sharks. Even his boat twists and transforms into various form. At one point, the figurehead of his ship comes to life for an action beat that doesn’t pay off. Then, as if those weren’t enough abilities, we learn right at the end with a super clumsy line that he also can possess people, but that he can only ever do it once. I wonder what mystical force explained to Salazar “hey you have a magical possession ability, but YOU MAY NEVER USE IT”. It’s especially hilarious since there is no plot-reason for the possession beyond a need to keep Henry involved in the finale. It all feels like things are being thrown at the wall to see what sticks, and no one noticed that none of it had.
But the thing that makes me mad is how much this film impacts the prior trilogy. The finale of this movie centers around Henry curing his father Will, and letting him loose from the curse of the Flying Dutchmen. But the core emotional arc of the original trilogy revolved around the sacrifice Will made not only to save Elizabeth and the pirate fleets, but also his father. His being “cured” this way cheapens what was one of the few good parts of At World’s End.
Even worse than that, however, is how this film treats Barbossa. The entire twist that Carina Smyth is in fact his daughter is played out in the most hilariously contrived and emotionally manipulative way possible. On top of that, it adds yet another massive coincidence to a narrative already built on them. To provide a real-life parallel, it would be a little like if the random friend your coworker brought over to a party turned out to be your long-long brother. Additionally, making the most boring character in the movie the daughter of the best one doesn’t make her better, but it does ruin a lot of what makes Barbossa such a unique and compelling character. Barbossa’s personal code has been at the heart of his performance in the last few movies, and the moment he learns about Carina, all that development is thrown out the window. His self-sacrifice at the end feels cheap and completely unnecessary, not only from a writing perspective, but also within the context of the film. There were a dozen ways to handle the problem he kills himself to solve which wouldn’t have involved throwing himself into the ocean. It’s such a wasted moment. The only positive thing about his death is that if they make another one of these cinematic monstrosities, Geoffrey Rush is out.
I think I’ll join him and sit the next one out myself.
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Outlast 2 Review (X-Box One/2017)
I pushed my body as close to the ground as possible. I heard them calling out to each other. Finally, one shushed the others, and all that I could hear was the rustling of the stalks of corn. I had to keep moving. I turned on my camera’s microphone. I didn’t have many batteries left, and the foliage was so thick that I couldn’t see anything, but I could use the microphone to figure out exactly where the sound was coming from. I cautiously started crawling, shifting directions to make sure that I was moving away from them. There were too many of them to keep this up. One walked right by me. If he had looked down, he would have seen me. I began to shuffle again, and then I heard it, “THE FATHER, HE’S HERE!”. I had no time to think… I heard movement towards my direction, and instantly I popped out from hiding and began to sprint. I could barely see. I stumbled right into one of them, he took a slice at me and drew some blood, but I just kept running. I could bandage it later. Finally, I saw the edge of the field, and then I darted towards the nearest house. I turned back for just a second, there were five of them, and one was just a few feet behind me. I shut the door and hit the lock. Suddenly, the closest pursuer began to yell and throw his body against the door, determined to break through. I didn’t wait to see if he succeeded, instead running down the hallway straight to the back door. I opened it, and suddenly, found myself years in the past, back at my desk. I’m at school, maybe 13 years old. I’m supposed to meet her. The one I’m searching for. What is that pulsing sound; That beating heart? And then the lights go out, and the tendrils begin to spread.
Outlast 2, like the original game, is a horror title which understands that there is nothing scarier than being powerless. Throughout the game, you are often being hunted by enemies, the most terrifying of which can kill you in a single hit. You never have access to any weapon to fight back, rather, you must sneak or flee through the environments to survive. Your only tool is a videocamera which can provide you with night-vision and a sound detector if needed. Both features take up battery life though, and if you run out, the camera will begin to flicker, leaving you stumbling in the dark. To survive, you must scavenge batteries and bandages, both of which will often require you to sneak directly into buildings which house the very enemies that are trying to kill you.
One of the benefits of this design is an elegant risk/reward system. In the dark outdoor environments, you’ll want to use your nightvision as much as possible to scan for enemies. But every second it’s active will drain the batteries which you may need to survive later, so it’s possible you’ll voluntarily stumble through darker environments in the hopes that you can stay safe and have the resources you need when they are necessary.
All of this (except for the new sound tracking system) was true of the original Outlast. Yet, Outlast 2’s focus is tremendously different, both tonally and in it’s use of environments. The first Outlast took place inside of an overrun Asylum whose patients were out to violently murder you. For most of the experience, you wandered through darkened corridors and maze-like floors as one or two enemies stalked you. To survive, you would hide in lockers, bathroom stalls and under beds while slowly searching for whatever key you needed to enter the next area. Outlast 2, in contrast, takes place mostly in darkened woods, farmlands and shanty towns. Instead of hiding inside of lockers, most of the time you are sneaking through long grass and around the darkened corners of abandoned domiciles. Instead of one sinister killer, you’re most often avoiding groups of enemies with flashlights determined to find you.
When you aren’t sneaking around, you’ll be exploring large open areas and attempting to piece together the mysteries of the past and present. While Outlast 2 is a tremendously violent game, much of it’s nastiest content is hinted at. While you will stumble across the bodies of dead children and other disturbing sights, the strong notes of sexual violence which the story confronts are mostly kept off-screen, leaving you only to see the aftermath. This is in strong contrast to the original Outlast (and especially it’s Whistleblower DLC) which includes some of the most disturbing visuals I have seen in any media.
That isn’t to say that Outlast 2 isn’t likely to shock you (it will, and there are individual scenes that aim to gross the player out), but the game is less focused on the gore and serial killer violence of the original in favour of more psychological themes. The real enemy this time around isn’t sadistic killers aiming to rip you apart, but rather guilt and twisted faith.
Throughout the game, you will be flashing back and forth between the present events, with the sinister cult, and a hell-like version of childhood memories. At the start of the game, these more quiet and contemplative sections serve as a break from the tension of the chase and stealth sequences, although gradually they come to be just as terrifying in their own, more scripted ways. The net result of all this is that whether sinister cultists are stalking you, or you’re unravelling the mysteries of the past, the game comes to feel like a descent into Hell itself. In some ways, it comes to resemble Silent Hill, which used its own twisted environments and monsters to illustrate the despair and emotional trauma of its lead characters. These tantalizing threads pull you through eight or so hours of Outlast 2’s runtime. The blurring of memory, reality, dreams, and guilt permeate the entire experience, and just as the game begins to feel like it’s shown you everything it’s going to do, the last third introduces new environments and threats.
It’s difficult to talk about Outlast 2 without getting into the ending (which I adored, but some have found profoundly unsatisfying) but I feel confident in saying that, if you like horror games, Outlast 2 is definitely worth playing. I think it’s a better game than the original, largely due to it’s more complex themes and more open environments. I loved every chase, most of its stealth sections and the various ways the game has you stumbling around in the dark for just long enough to leave you tense and lost, before subtly indicating the path you’re supposed to take. By the end, I felt moved by the tale, and also sick to my stomach.
9/10
Warning: If you have any aversion to child murder, suicide, or sexual violence as themes, this isn’t the game for you. The story revolves around how religion commodifies women’s bodies, and there are times you will find the corpses of children which the church has forced its leaders to murder. The game hints at these themes more than it shows them, but it permeates the entire experience. I think that the violence serves a purpose, but also believe the game would have benefitted from a female protagonist or more prominent appearances from the other two major female characters. As is, the viewpoint is very masculinized in a “male protective gaze” kind of way which makes the themes feel a little more problematic and exploitative.
SPOILER DISCUSSION AFTER THE IMAGE
Spoiler Warning: I thought it would be fun to end some of my reviews with a brief discussion of some spoilers from the media I’m discussing, since I think that some of the best criticism of a work can only be done looking at it in its totality. In Outlast 2’s case, I feel like it’s difficult to judge the game without talking about the ending. At the end of Outlast 2, you discover that the various cultists have all killed themselves, and that, as the villagers had hinted, somehow the woman you’ve been searching for has become magically pregnant, and gives birth to something… potentially the Anti-Christ. Then, the sun seems to explode, and you wake up as a child, next to the young girl who you may have once loved, and who was later murdered by the priest who molested her. You and her echo then hold hands in this hellish version of your school, determined not to leave each other again as the thing that chased you lingers in the halls beyond.
The ending is, of course, open to some interpretation, although I think the game wisely provides all the answers you need. If you choose to believe that this story is about the birth of the Anti-Christ, your characters inability to stop it, and in turn, your own descent into hell, as the notes and cult suggests, then you are left with the interpretation that the world ends, and you and the girl are left to protect each other in an endless chase.
The game provides a more tantalising option. During a bizarre interlude, you learn that across the water is a large factory which is owned by the same company that experimented on the asylum prisoners in the original Outlast. You also learn from a note that people who went across to meet the owners of the factory never returned, but that the cult’s dreams and belief in the Anti-Christ, as well as their eventual turn to violent fanaticism, began after it was discovered. As such, the main cause of the madness might be some type of experimental drug, and your falls into the hell dimension are not evil taking hold in the real world, but rather the guilt festering away at your protagonist in a drugged state. The final statement from your wife before she dies, that “there is nothing there” comes to mean not that there is nothing after death, as the prior reading implies, but rather, there is no baby in your arms.
This interpretation works so well for me since it reframes all the scenes in the past. Suddenly, the game’s climax is not the discovery of your pregnant wife, but rather, the moment in hell when you remember your young friend asking you to stay, and not leave, and your decision to walk away anyways, which the protagonist believes led to her molestation by the priest, and eventual death. The murder by the priest then is not necessarily a direct “murder”. It is entirely probable that the original version of her death you keep seeing, of her hanging, is her real ending, but that the actual MURDER you witness at the end is a metaphor for how, even if she took her own life, the priest’s actions are still what led to her death… and he got away with it. The ending then becomes even more bleak, not only does your delusion lead to the death of your wife, but it also locks you forever in your own mind, always in that closet, holding hands after a kiss, with a monstrous force lurking in the school’s halls. No matter how much you run, you can never fully move on from having walked away, and even when you escape, at moments where you close your eyes, some part of you Is always locked in that moment. That’s more terrifying than any monster.
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The Defenders Review (2017)
The Marvel Netflix shows have been struggling as of late. The first seasons of Daredevil and Jessica Jones were both excellent Prestige Television quality programs, but Daredevil’s Second Season floundered at points despite getting both the Punisher and Elektra right. Subsequently, Luke Cage started off perfectly before dropping the ball completely with an awful villain, a squirm-inducing love-story and a lot of clumsy writing in the second half. That’s not even mentioning Iron Fist, which, while not as bad as the reviews might make you think, was undeniably Marvel Netflix’s greatest failure. Most of the problems with these shows (once again, with the exception of Iron Fist) could have been easily fixed with shorter seasons which would have allowed the writers to “cut the bloat”. So when the Defenders, the big team-up event all these shows have been building towards, was announced to be a tighter eight episodes, I was excited.
I’m a little sad to say that the despite the short length, the Defenders as a whole is a bit of a mixed bag. If I was to compare its quality directly to a previous Netflix show, it would be Daredevil Season 2 (which had the same lead writers). Like that season, the show gets an awful lot right, especially in regards to characterization. On the flipside, it also struggles to provide a convincing villain, and stumbles in it’s execution of some of its epic ambition. It is unfortunate then that the expectations for something like the Defenders are so much higher, and as such, the shows issues, especially in its shorter run-time, are far more damaging to the experience as a whole.
The Defenders has a relatively simple three act structure. For the first few episodes, the various characters encounter the season’s big threat in scenes that feel ripped right out of their own individual shows. Thankfully, without Scott Buck at the helm even the Iron Fist segments are actually fairly enjoyable this time around. The pacing in these episodes is a little on the slow side, but the crossovers are rewarding enough to make up for that. As the series goes on, and the various characters meet, the series begins to really shine. The first encounter between Iron Fist and Luke Cage in particular an awesome fan-service sequence, and it becomes clear very quickly how much chemistry all four of these actors have together. Scenes of them just sitting around a table and talking are very engaging, and the writers aren’t afraid to expose the flaws in their various personas or the ridiculousness of some of their powers. For a period, the show has a lot of fun teaming up characters like Matt and Jessica up for an investigation or, most wonderfully, having Luke Cage school Iron Fist on his privilege.
It’s in the third act that the show really begins to stutter. The first two thirds of the season have some of the best action sequences on any of these shows, but the budget seems to dwindle as the series continues. The last episode in particular has one of the most terribly choreographed giant action sequences in recent memory. That climactic sequence is made even worse by one of the most bizarre song choices I’ve ever seen in a major production. The individual villains, many of which are provided with really exciting entrances, are left with little to nothing to do as the season continues, to the point that I can’t even remember what happened to some of them during the finale less than a week after finishing the series. Only Elektra is provided with a full arc, and even then, it’s one that grows increasingly unmoored. By the finale, characters are literally yelling their motivations at each other mid-fight as the writers lose their grip on the material entirely.
It really doesn’t help that the Defenders is picking up the story strands from Daredevil Season 2 and Iron Fist. The main villains this time around are again, the Hand. Yet, both previous shows really struggled to explain who the Hand are and why we should care about them. The organization never seemed to have an engaging human face, someone we can point to and feel frightened of, like we were of Kilgrave or Wilson Fisk. It doesn’t help that the grounded tone of these shows is really muddied by the mystical resurrections that are a big part of this group’s motivation. Defenders attempts to fix part of the problem by introducing the viewer to the Hand’s various leaders. Yet, instead of feeling like a threatening force, these characters seem to mainly bicker behind closed doors. Instead of targeting the family and friends of our heroes, which the show consistently hints will be part of the arc, they seem more interested in whether or not they should assassinate each other. I genuinely have a hard time understanding how all of them have survived this long, even with their mystical resurrection technology. Every time we see them being sent on missions, they seem to fail pretty miserably. If you were wondering if five decent supernatural martial artists backstabbing each other are any more threatening than the faceless ninjas from Daredevil Season 2, the answer is no.
Furthermore, the Hand isn’t just a dull physical presence; they are characters that require a lot of explanation. And this show certainly does explain who they are, what they want, and where they come from. But, since, like with Iron Fist, the show lacks the budget to show the mystical city of Kun Lun which is a huge part of their backstory, or any of their lives prior to our meeting them in flashback form, it sure does feel like people just talking to each other about places we have never gone to instead of focusing on what is really working, our four heroes and their chemistry.
If I sound especially negative, know that it doesn’t come from disliking the show as a whole. It’s just hard not to feel frustrated when all of the character stuff that really works is being constantly undercut by ungrounded villains and eventually by a terrible action finale. Right near the end, the show loses focus on the fact that we’re here not for the Hand plot, but instead, because we want to see these characters work as a team. It’s funny that The Defenders finds its rhythm again moments after the threat is dealt with, and that all the characters are given codas that remind the viewer just how good parts of this series were and just how much some of the characters have evolved. By the end, I was excited to see what the next set of seasons will look like, and felt hopeful that, if we do end up getting a second run at a team-up event, the showrunners will do a better job focusing on what works. Just please, let’s be done with the Hand and get past this shaky period sooner rather than later.
6/10
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Coco & Olaf’s Frozen Adventure Review (2017)
Pixar Animation has produced a stunning series of hits throughout its tenure, from the game-changing Toy Story trilogy to the more recent Inside Out, which has provided families with an entirely new vocabulary to help kids understand their own emotions. Lately, the company’s early and uncontestable critical and commercial success has led to an endless series of think-pieces that Pixar might be going downhill, particularly after the messy Good Dinosaur, middling Brave and Pixar’s only bad movie, Cars 2. These takes have always struck me as a cynical exercise in clickbait. A few near-misses amongst a canon of over a dozen other works that range from very good to amongst the best films of any given year is nothing to scoff at.
I’ve been excited by Coco for many years, in large part since I have a deep affection for Day of the Dead iconography. As a child, one of my favorite videogames was Tim Schafer’s Grim Fandango, in which you solved puzzles and unwove a tale of corruption within the Land of the Dead. Pixar melding that aesthetic with their own storytelling tendencies seemed a winning match. And in many ways, in a political climate in which there is so much hostility towards Hispanic families and so much racially-tinged propaganda against them, it felt surprisingly transgressive to make the stars of your tent-pole animated film a young Mexican boy and his family.
So, I’m happy to say that Coco not only met my heightened expectations, it managed to exceed them. This film is Pixar at its very best. It’s a deeply moving experience with some of the studio’s best animation, an imaginative and well-constructed version of the Land of the Dead, some incredibly catchy music and deeply memorable characters. Coco not only stands confidently within the Pixar ranks, I think it fits comfortably besides Up and Toy Story 3 as the best works the studio has produced.
So much of the film’s success comes down to how well it represents the main family. Miguel is likeable as the twelve-year-old protagonist who dreams of becoming a musician, like his hero Ernesto de la Cruz, against the wishes of his family. His family, both on the living and dead side, are all equally well-characterized. The titular Coco, his great grand-mother, has the single best face in computer animation history. Her daughter, Abuelita, is a study in contrasts, both serving as one of the film’s antagonists through her squashing of Miguel’s dreams, while also coming across as a Matriarch who deeply loves her family, and her grand-son, and genuinely believes she’s doing the best for them. Her quick temper, use of shoes as deadly implements and moments of tenderness create a compassionate, yet complicated, portrait. By the end of the film, I loved these people, and their undead familial counterparts, and I was reminded of so many families I knew. The fact is that these are people who don’t exist within traditional White American media. They are a product of a culture where families live much more closely together, and where understanding the role your great grandmother played in who you are today is considered more important. In my theatrical crowd, which was filled with diverse faces, I heard people whispering to each other about how much one character or another reminded them of their own family, or chuckling delightedly at small character beats.
The plot revolves around Miguel’s struggle between his dreams and his love for his family. His quest to assert himself takes him deep into the land of the dead, in search of his musical hero, Ernesto De La Cruz. This journey leads him to meet long-deceased members of his family as well as an exploration of Mexican music culture within a gorgeously realized Land of the Dead. That world, from the flower bridge that leads to it, to the colorful spirits which serve as the protectors of the deceased, to the sadness of those who are fading as their living relatives slowly forget them, is perfectly realized. While Coco is a complete adventure, I wish I could have spent even more time in that world.
There are some twists and turns (most of which are, in my only criticism, predictable and a tad melodramatic), some incredible humor (I still chuckle over the Frida Kahlo gags) and some terrific music. Most importantly, Coco is deeply emotional. I am not ashamed to admit that I had tears in my eyes multiple times in the theatre, including during its moving finale.
Thankfully, the film also serves as a loving tribute to Mexican culture and myths, exploring these mythical concepts with a tenderness that more gag-filled comic adventures struggle to manage. Like the best of Pixar movies, while kids will enjoy the experience for it’s delightful dog character, Miguel’s relatable quest to find himself and the sense of adventure that permeates the world; Adults will find even more to love through it’s contemplation of death and the importance of family and how it shapes us. I can’t recommend it enough.
10/10
Olaf’s Frozen Adventure.
Coco opens with Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, a 22-minute feature. It’s been highly contentious with audiences, and a quick Google search for Coco will find many articles filled with people complaining about it. Is it really that bad?
In Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, the holidays have come to Arendelle, and as the villagers go off to enjoy their regular traditions, Anna and Elsa realize they don’t have any of their own. This leads Olaf on a well-intentioned quest to help them find one. Cue an extended, adorable sequence in which Olaf goes door to door, learns about various religious traditions, has a short adventure, and sings a few songs before learning the true meaning of the holidays.
If this all sounds a lot like those old straight-to-DVD sequels to Disney films that came out in the late 90s and early 2000s, you’re not wrong. It should come as no surprise then that this “short” was originally intended to be an ABC Christmas Special.
When you compare it to those old sequels though, the short stands up well. While Olaf’s Frozen Adventure isn’t as funny or well-written as the original film (nor are its songs anywhere near as catchy), it’s adorable, has a few good laughs, and some moments of stunning animation. I found it quite charming.
As a TV special, I think it would have been released to positive reviews, much like the Toy Story TV specials were received a few years back. It’s unfortunate then that the decision was made to stick this in front of Coco. At 22 minutes, the short feels intolerably long when you’re waiting for a film you’ve heard is a masterpiece. More than that, the audience who loves Coco isn’t necessarily the same audience as that who would adore Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, which is clearly intended for younger children. Additionally, there is something a little off about tempering your bravely multi-cultural release by pairing it with a short about a bunch of white people singing about Christmas. It can feel a bit like a corporate attempt to lure in families who might be turned off by a film focusing on another culture.
If placing the short in front of the film isn’t fair to Coco, I don’t think it’s fair to the Frozen short either. I think it’s unfortunate that the short is likely to be castigated as awful by the critical community and many adult film-goers when, for what it was intended to be, it’s a pleasant surprise. The backlash isn’t going to hurt Frozen 2 (hearing thousands of kids joyously scream at Disney World every time they saw Elsa or Olaf is a pretty clear indicator that the weird online backlash against those films is out-of-touch navel-gazing), but it’s unfortunate that Disney didn’t go ahead with their original release plan.
As a Stand-Alone Christmas Special – 7/10
As a short subject prior to Coco – 3/10
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New Beginnings
Hi everyone. I’m starting this tumblr in order to share my thoughts on pop-culture, politics, life and anything else that pops through my head. I hope that you end up enjoying the content and we’ll see what this transforms into in the coming year!
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