Disney bucks convention, makes movie out of one of its good rides for once
We need to accept, as a society, that we probably did Disney a little bit dirty when we all lost our minds over the first few Pirates Of The Caribbean movies. Yes, Gore Verbinski’s hyperactive approach to action directing was fun, yes, Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightley made for fetching protagonists, and, yes, Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow once felt fresh and exciting, and not like the living ghost of regrettable Halloween Choices Past. But still: The idea that Disney could take it’s oldest, crappiest theme park rides, adapt them for film, and then milk them for literal billions has produced some very weird decisions in recent years, from the utterly shruggable Haunted Mansion movie, to the upcoming Jungle Cruise, to news today that the company is moving forward on a Space Mountain movie.
Now, to be fair, Space Mountain The Ride does have one major advantage over Pirates, Jungle Cruise, and, to a lesser extent, the Mansion: It doesn’t totally suck. (In fact, it’s still a pretty great rollercoaster, 45 years after its debut, at least if indoor rides are where your tastes lie.) Still, it’s not like the ride has a plot: You get in the car, you go to space, you briefly contemplate what it would feel like to freeze to death while choking on your own lungs in vacuum, you return to safety. Providing said plot will apparently be the job of writer Joby Harold, whose previous credits include King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword and Zack Snyder’s upcoming Army Of The Dead, but who’s most notable at the moment for being the guy putting together that Obi-Wan Kenobi-based Star Wars series for Disney+.
It’s also worth noting that this isn’t actually the first time Disney has floated the idea of a Space Mountain movie; Max Landis apparently wrote a script for one a few years back that sounded, from rumors, like it was cribbing a lot of notes from Event Horizon of all films—a bafflingly weird decision that still only qualifies as like the 20 or 30th most awful or regrettable thing that Max Landis is alleged to have done.
