A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980)
- Thread starter Geekhis Khan
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I'm rather fond of the mentally unstable unrequited love version of the Mad Hatter from BTAS. I think it'd be a perfect characterization for him. Contrasting his more sympathetic moments with bursts of jealous rage.
Netflix did release its streaming service at around 2007 during when broadband was slowly becoming the dominant medium of the Internet, so the 2000s is actually OTL. But the 90s? It's going to take some real magic to make streaming happen.
Honestly I like Steve Buscemi as Riddler or maybe even Scarecrow.
Having a black Catwoman could be interesting for representation at this time.
Having a black Catwoman could be interesting for representation at this time.
With Let's Be Real premiering today I wonder about Jim Henson doing an American version of Spitting Image. With both his work with Sunset Puppetry and his connections with PBS I could see Jim Henson, maybe under a pseudonym, producing a late night Spitting Image style show on PBS.
The secret to Netlix's success was logistical, really. They began as a DVD-by-mail service. Nothing amazing there, really. But they took advantage of new technologies in web-based tech and automated logistics and routing to make an old idea work significantly better than ever. The website, which was well designed and reliable, allowed users to easily set up accounts, payments, and browse and rank movies in the queue for what they wanted when and with how many disks. Then they combined QR reader tech on their mailers to allow the quick and automated sorting of the disks for shipping and receiving taking human error out of it, with a web-based database such that the system knew where every disk was and where it was going at any given time. Even their mailer was brilliant: cheap and light but still able to protect the disks in the mail rather well, and with a sweetheart deal with the Post Office so they shipped cheaply. The mailer was easily reversible so the customer could ship the disk back in the same mailer, postage paid, super-easy, with the QR readers on the outside now for automated routing back to the distro center. It was so damned easy and cheap (~$6 a month vs. around $3-4 per 2 nights at Blockbuster and all from your home) that Blockbuster would have been challenged even without widely available broadband and new storage tech permitting mass streaming.
The streaming actually came as a near afterthought to the Netflix DVD business, but they were small and agile enough to adapt well. Blockbuster maybe could have made it if, say, they allowed a small team of innovative employees to work a "side project" that ended up taking over and were able to shift their primary business model, but even then there would be a long and ugly process of closing all the stores and firing thousands of employees, not just at store locations but at corporate.
This is why companies diversify into new areas. Disneyland and WDW probably saved the Disney corporation after Walt died and the studio side never willingly left a corny "family friendly" 50s/60s formula behind. If it had only been Disney Studios they'd have likely never made it to 1984 to be potentially bought out! The parks gave them the buffer to painfully reshape the studios for a new era of viewer tastes and drive out inflexible middle management.
Couldn't resist.
May steal that image. What's the source?Willem Dafoe as Batman? A lot more people peg him as the Joker. Still interesting choice- should be able to pulls off Bruce and Bats.
Robin Williams will make an awesome Joker. Go for that Oscar Robin!
Danny Elfman music? Interesting. Would add a certain quality to it.
Kevin Kline as Mayor Harvey Dent - at least that will be more consistent later on. Though Billy Dee as Two-Face would have been fantastic.
Glad it was still filmed at Pinewood Studios in England.
Raimi seems to made the Batman movie I would really want to watch! At least ITTL me got to see it- probably several times!
Great work @Geekhis Khan
Danny Elfman did the music IOTL too. It's easy to forget that since the soaring horns and strings, while so perfect for the film, are so unlike his usual staccato bounce.
He'll adapt and overcome. Besides, he'd tell you, Superhero movies were dead after SIII...at least until WB resurected them!
Oh there will definitely be MICKEYSs at CommuniCore. And yes, there will be internet based things. The old Commodore display had an exhibit on modems and ARPANET/USENET.
I wondered if anyone would catch that!
Hypocrisy and special pleading, thy name is Hollywood.Honestly, yea. Hell, there are former Muppet Show performers behind Spitting Image (e.g. Louise Gold) and Sunset Puppetry is just the avatar to conceal the Muppets involvement in something overtly political. I don't know why I didn't think of that, really.
I got it from here: https://weminoredinfilm.com/2014/08...ns-batman-then-the-riddler-in-batman-forever/ but they do not name the source.
A dig about on various reverse image searches does not name the source either.
I've enjoyed this timeline, but I do wish to offer some- hopefully constructive criticism. This is going directly against the grain of many of the responses here, and it's not meant to rain on anyone else's parade, just express my own tastes.
I do hope the focus shifts back to the corporate politics of Disney soon. It's not that these pop culture entries are badly written, but as you say they tend- as all pop culture timelines do- to be come a wishlist, post after post of descriptions of great movies that won't be seen.
Those can work when they're direct glimpses into the changed world, when they reflect upon how the world has changed- entries which suggest a changing culture with child actors, or how the computer revolution is coming to Hollywood slightly earlier, or what have you.
But all too often it's a film that didn't get made with a dream cast, and that's just not that interesting- it's a recitation of 'wouldn't it be awesome if they'd made x.'
Whereas the timeline was at its very best when it was about Jim and Bernie trying to change Hollywood- when we were seeing the complicated mess of human tension that was the ossified Disney corporation, the tension over the buyouts. And, if I may be so blunt, it was better when we were getting more shades to Jim Henson- an extraordinarily talented creator who was apparently a good and charismatic human being, but not a saint. It feels like of late Henson appears to save a life, to lift the spirits, to make things magically better.
That removes the tension from the narrative- why keep reading if the timeline is a list of films successfully made, parks successfully opened, every life changed for the better?
I don't mean to be too harsh- you've written a hell of a lot in a very short time, and in the main I think this is one of the strongest pieces of alternate history to deal with pop culture. But I feel that of late the dramatic air has gone out of it- it wasn't always so clear that things were going well, and the writing was stronger for it.
Feel free to disregard this, but frankly I respect the work too much not to try to engage with it.
I do hope the focus shifts back to the corporate politics of Disney soon. It's not that these pop culture entries are badly written, but as you say they tend- as all pop culture timelines do- to be come a wishlist, post after post of descriptions of great movies that won't be seen.
Those can work when they're direct glimpses into the changed world, when they reflect upon how the world has changed- entries which suggest a changing culture with child actors, or how the computer revolution is coming to Hollywood slightly earlier, or what have you.
But all too often it's a film that didn't get made with a dream cast, and that's just not that interesting- it's a recitation of 'wouldn't it be awesome if they'd made x.'
Whereas the timeline was at its very best when it was about Jim and Bernie trying to change Hollywood- when we were seeing the complicated mess of human tension that was the ossified Disney corporation, the tension over the buyouts. And, if I may be so blunt, it was better when we were getting more shades to Jim Henson- an extraordinarily talented creator who was apparently a good and charismatic human being, but not a saint. It feels like of late Henson appears to save a life, to lift the spirits, to make things magically better.
That removes the tension from the narrative- why keep reading if the timeline is a list of films successfully made, parks successfully opened, every life changed for the better?
I don't mean to be too harsh- you've written a hell of a lot in a very short time, and in the main I think this is one of the strongest pieces of alternate history to deal with pop culture. But I feel that of late the dramatic air has gone out of it- it wasn't always so clear that things were going well, and the writing was stronger for it.
Feel free to disregard this, but frankly I respect the work too much not to try to engage with it.
No need to apologize, this is excellent and helpful input. If nobody says anything then how do I know what they want? And more of the intrigue and storyline is certainly coming. In fact, I've moved a bit of behind-the-scenes stuff involving the parks up to break up the mass of summer movies. Yes, you're spot on; the little requests are adding up and I need to stay more focused here. Just looking at the years 1988-89 in number of posts vs. the prior years tells the story all by itself!
marathag
Banned
RealPlayer wasn't around until 1995. nothing really before that to get video across the web, beyond FTP, and then play that thru Win 3.11, and that was AVI at the time, IIRC, and only 320 by 240 resolution withMedia Player, if you had the add in for Video for Windows
Hm...Seems to fix some of the problems of OTL's Batman, like the whole "Batman straight-up murdering people" thing. I'm hoping that this version of the Batman costume is something the actor can actually, ya know, move in? Seriously, not to go into a rant, but I never got why every cinematic version of Batman goes for the armored look. I feel like Batman should be a lightweight, acrobatic sort, whose fighting style leans more towards dodging blows using nimble athletics rather then tanking them, and, thus, doesn't use a lot of armor. Think, well, Spider-Man, appropriately enough.
marathag
Banned
Earth Kitt did that in 1967, so not trailblazing, unlike Billy Dee Williams playing Harvey Dent
This read was quite excellent, and no doubt that their effectiveness as a company, regardless of their failures, will allow them to survive whatever stuff the timeline throws at them. Now it's the question at whether Blockbuster are willing to adapt in the same manner as Netflix does, especially if they actually do a partnership deal with them in 2000.
Time will tell, I guess.
It's weird why CommuniCore didn't even offer an internet cafe (no mention of it anywhere), but the MICKEY computers should provide an easy segue into providing one, due to their accessibility and family-friendly focus (I doubt you can even download or search up raunchy content on there, so Disney can feel confident at providing one to guests).
Speaking of buses, I guess we can expect an early iteration of this for Disneyland/Port Disney, allowing a WDW version of it to happen later on, albeit for different reasons (Disneyland to link up with Port Disney while WDW picks up guests from the airport to their hotels since the monorail can transport guests across multiple theme parks)
Disney's Magical Express - Wikipedia
Don't underestimate hackers (or what ever name they acquire ITTL), if there is a will they will find a way.
Absolutely this. There will be people who will hack it just for the challenge of doing so, though I expect they will not find it much of a challenge to start with. Writing properly secure software is slow and difficult, so almost no-one bothers. I doubt things will be different ITTL.
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