A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Among the many ways popular American blockbusters have been commercialised and marketed, the theme park ride at locations such as Disneyworld, Universal or Warner Studios literally made rollercoaster rides out of movies designed to shake and thrill their audiences at cinemas to begin with. Jaws (1975), considered by most to be the first true summer blockbuster, still has its legendary spot in Universal Studio City, which I was able to witness this summer going back to L.A.: somewhere along the studio tour and just after passing the original Bates Motel does one drive by remnants of Amity Island, mostly small houses and a pond, in which a scuba diver gets suddenly and unceremoniously eaten in front of visitors’ eyes, just before ‘Bruce’ the shark himself unexpectedly pokes up his mouth out of the water for a quick but intense fright.

Fantastic stuff, for sure, and theme parks such as Universal Studios have made clever use of entire movie landscape recreations that lead their audiences up to the eventual ride. After all, as I soon found out the hard way, the wait for popular rides can easily extend two hours. Calculate this for one full day at the park and you would not be able to go on more than half a dozen rides! Giving movie fans and generally interested visitors some extra attractions while they wait is therefore almost half the experience. When heading up to the incredibly detailed Harry Potter World at Universal’s, one passes by a live train conductor in front of the Hogwarts locomotive, post offices and book stores, a faithful recreation of Diagon Alley and, of course, Hogwarts School itself, a magnificent recreation of the castle in which the eventual ride takes place, complete with the gallery of moving portraits and Dumbledore’s office. On the way up, I had unfortunately tasted too much of the sickeningly sweet butter beer attraction, so the wildly hydraulic ride full of flights over Hogwarts and Quidditch game sequences made me feel more than a little queasy.

I was almost relieved to skip the overly popular Jurassic World section, where waiting times extended to almost three hours. Instead, Simpson World offered a fun ride through an original Springfield adventure with slightly fewer stomach-churning moments, and afterwards, a healthy portion of Krusty burgers and fries soothed things down again. While digesting all this, I couldn’t help but wonder what the long-disappeared E.T. and Back to the Future rides must have been like and if I would have enjoyed them even more than, let’s say, the brand new Super Mario world. As a non-gamer and recent-blockbuster sceptic, I certainly would have had an even better time on rollercoaster rides over the moon or a DeLorean-drive backwards or forwards through time. It made me wonder what other theme park experiences there could have been! Imagine James Bond rides at London’s Pinewood Studios or classic movie rollercoasters through the original King Kong jungle, the cabinet of Dr Cagliari or Ben Hur’s Circus Maximus race!

I was left wondering if such theme park experiences can ever really do more than just reignite the thrill of the movie it is merely based on. Can the physical experience of being hauled through even your favourite movie landscapes ever go beyond the actual thrill of sitting at a cinema and immersing yourself fully into sounds and visuals? Historically, movie studios have certainly tried anything from VistaVision, Surround Sound and Atmos systems to 3D and so-called 4D experiences to heighten the intensity to the full. But what if you could actually walk into your favourite movie sets and start to interact with characters and storylines yourself? How far are we actually away from realising that?

And then I remembered Rise of the Resistance, Disney’s truly mindboggling new Star Wars ride introduced at Disneyworld in 2019! After a sturdy two hour wait, we had had the chance of actually walking into an original theme park adventure, written, designed and even Williams-scored especially for the park. The wait with its cleverly winded path through recreated Star Wars locations is fun by itself, but the ride on the transporter with BB8 and Admiral Akbar giving instructions, the walk onto a fully realised Starkiller Base and the incredible flight in magnetic pods all around the space station including an escape pod flight was simply mindblowing. I remember walking out into the Californian sunshine completely enthused and speechless, feeling exactly as I had as a boy seeing the original Star Wars!

So there it was: A thrill beyond the actual movies, an original piece using advanced animatronics, 3D projections, original storywriting and an original score, with potentially thousands enjoying it every day of the week, every week of the year, earning Disney incredible sums outside of cinemas. Clearly, not all of them have that creative potential (the Guardians of the Galaxy ride is a constant up and down a massive elevator shaft, and the Mummy ride is incredibly short and jerky), but if the minds of creators and theme park producers get together in ideal ways, rollercoaster rides of movies can indeed become theme park rides for the ages!

Finally, there are even some films that have eternalised themselves at theme parks, even if they had been terrible box-office disappointments. On my way out of Universal City, I made one final stop at Universal’s incredible Waterworld stunt extravaganza and was amazed to find the much-maligned Kevin Costner action flop turned into a fantastic display of dystopic storytelling, nasty pyrotechnics and acrobatic thrills. Movies experiences even much improved at theme parks: check!