A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980)

[GrahamB]

Is this the one you're talking about?
I think Dark Crystal should be the first logo to use this one. Either that or TRON? Or The Muppets Take Manhattan?​

That's the one.

A quick look at Disney's OTL filmography (thanks, IMDB!) for the 80's uncovers some real gems: Dragonslayer (1981) should already be in production at this time and probably a movie Jim can point to and say 'more of that, please'; Never Cry Wolf (1983), a landmark film that helps change people's opinions about wolves and nature in general (I doubt Jim would be involved with this but I'm sure he'd love it); Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), the premise of a terrifying circus just screams Henson/Burton.
Then in rapid succession through 1985-86 comes The Black Cauldron, Return To Oz, Flight of the Navigator, and The Great Mouse Detective. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't think even Jim Henson as Creative Director at Disney can improve that last one, especially Vincent Price's incredible performance. Finally to round out the decade in 1989 is The Little Mermaid and Honey, I Shrunk The Kids.

If Jim's influence can improve the showing from the middle of the decade, I think the 1980s can be a real watershed for Disney as the company shakes itself from its reputation of being stuck in the past. Emphasis on "if". It's not going to be all rainbows and unicorn muppets (or is it unicorns and rainbow muppets?) from here but I think Jim's talent for pushing creative people to push themselves will overall be a great benefit.

I just had a thought: if Henson is busy at Disney, Fraggle Rock might not get made. [insert scary music and the lamentations of children] Then again, if work consolidates in the USA, Jim might not wear himself out so thin trying to commute between three countries like he did OTL.

 

[Kalvan]

Eh, a healthier Jim Henson is something I could always get behind. Fraggle Rock is IMNSHO worth the sacrifice if it means a Labyrinth that could get non-technical Oscar nominations.

If he can live into the Nineties, then The Jim Henson Theater and/or Muppets Tonight could do much better than OTL.

Also, Henson and his influence could make J, K. Rowling look twice at Disney when the time comes for her to shop Harry Potter around the studios, since I don't see any of this butterflying away Legend Entertainment and Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers Get All The Chicks. If Mickey and Kermit snag The Boy Who Lived (R), even if it's under Touchtone or Miramax, it could mean Warner Bros dusts off DC's Books of Magic, Universal does the John Bellairs books twenty or so years early, and either MGM or Columbia does that Ur-Example The Worst Witch?

Also, will a successful Dark Crystal allow other attempts of Eighties High Fantasy to get off the ground, like the putative adaptations of R. A. MacAvoy's Tea With The Black Dragon, Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Ray Feist's Riftworld, and Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures?

Inquiring minds want to know!

 

[GrahamB]

...other attempts of Eighties High Fantasy to get off the ground

A Dungeons & Dragons movie that's not a bucket of hot garbage? It could happen. The animated series would be in pre-production around this point, TSR might look for something more robust and seek a partner for a live action creation.

 

[Nivek]

it could mean Warner Bros dusts off DC's Books of Magic, Universal does the John Bellairs books twenty or so years early, and either MGM or Columbia does that Ur-Example The Worst Witch?

they would got roll stomped...that is IF HP exist at all

 

[Igeo654]

In regards to the previously mentioned Return to Oz and Flight of the Navigator, am I the only one who thinks that the latter should be animated instead of the former? Just to switch things up a bit? A fully animated Sci-Fi adventure for families would be a great step forward for animation.

 

[marathag]

Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant,

First entry would turn a lot of people off with the first movie _Lord Fouls Bane_, making it the only one.

You can make films about anti-heroes, and outright villains, But ol' Thomas? Pacino doing Tony Montana made for an engaging villain, but nothing could be done from where Thomas arc starts at. Nobody could pull that off.

By the 3rd reel, people would be walking out

 

[Igeo654]

First entry would turn a lot of people off with the first movie _Lord Fouls Bane_, making it the only one.

You can make films about anti-heroes, and outright villains, But ol' Thomas? Pacino doing Tony Montana made for an engaging villain, but nothing could be done from where Thomas arc starts at. Nobody could pull that off.

By the 3rd reel, people would be walking out

Maybe Bluth could find a way to make it work. Maybe get Alan Menken to do the music, de-age Thomas a wee bit and you'd have something as out there as Disney's Hunchback but probably more successful.

 

[GrahamB]

...the latter should be animated instead of the former?

They were both live, actually. From what little I know Return to Oz was plagued by production issues, maybe something that can be avoided in this timeline. I agree a fully animated SciFi epic would be something to see, assuming they can avoid the inevitable comparisons with Star Wars (ROTJ is already in production at this point, I think). Maybe if Disney goes harder SciFi and takes some inspiration from 2001 and the 'High Frontier' proposals like Mobile Suit Gundam did (giant robots aside, the UC continuity of Gundam is surprisingly hard SciFi).

Had a thought after the talk of 80's fantasy movies: I wonder how this (potentially) more ambitious/adventurous Disney weathers the Reaganite Moralism and Satanic Panic that really watered down the genre through the decade.

 

[Shevek23]

Dare I ask at what point a Disney with Henson fully on board might tackle the Tolkien corpus?

In his lifetime, JRR despised what he feared Disney would do with any of his works--though he was considering a deal with some people who had really godawful ideas about how to move the plot forward (everyone rides everywhere on eagles, forsooth)! I rather doubt that Christopher Tolkien would be well disposed to thinking that mixing in the hippie behind the Muppets would improve things. But is it possible that various products of this fusion might persuade him over time that actually this ATL Disney has both the gravitas and the respect for what his father was trying to do to creatively put its spirit on the screen?

Or must this be left to Commonwealth artists, as OTL?

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Thank you all for the love. I've been very much enjoying a lot of the ideas getting thrown out here because, since I'm already dabbling in 1986 in the Master File at this point, it's very interesting to see where folks have guessed right or close and when not so much.

 

[marathag]

(everyone rides everywhere on eagles, forsooth)

Eagles? Not just a Deus ex machina, But Gandalf being an asshole. He could have called the Eagles much earlier. He wanted that furry-footed bastard Frodo to walk everywhere, and double that for the rest of the Fellowship, no matter that Frodo had the most important job in all the Ages.

 

[Nivek]

Eagles? Not just a Deus ex machina, But Gandalf being an asshole. He could have called the Eagles much earlier. He wanted that furry-footed bastard Frodo to walk everywhere, and double that for the rest of the Fellowship, no matter that Frodo had the most important job in all the Ages.

did you ever read the book? the eagle could got corrupted the longer they got the ring, the eagles was an emergency parachute, there was a reason why both bilbo and frodo endure so long, yet they failed, sam at the end was the hero too

 

[GrahamB]

I suspect that this version of Disney might eventually make an attempt at The Hobbit if The Dark Crystal succeeds, continuing under the Henson Studios banner for their live fantasy projects. I think trying to adapt The Lord of the Rings is too ambitious by half for Disney before the time New Line picks up the title. Honestly I wouldn't touch The Trilogy unless Henson can pull off The Hobbit.
Amusingly, a bit of digging reveals that Miramax went to Disney for assistance financing Peter Jackson's proposal before shopping it around and ultimately landing with New Line. This timeline's Disney might say "Yes" to the deal and then there you have it.

If half of what I've heard about Warner Brothers screwing over New Zealand's entire film industry is true, I'd be tempted to say Disney might be the better choice.

 

[Kalvan]

Tolkien never explained why the One Ring either couldn't or shouldn't have been much better protected on its way to Orodruin. Personally, I would have had it put in the most secure portable strong box possible, had it welded shut, and set a strict rotation schedule as to who"s carrying it. The Ring's call would be an exercise in futility if no one can slip it on a digit.

But this is hijacking the thread. Is there any possibility that Super Sentai could become Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers a decade early, and without borrowing action footage from the Japanese original? Let's say that "Dream Team" of Stan Lee, Stephen J. Cannell, and David Hughes, and Steven Spielberg come together to make it work.

 

[Kalvan]

Thank you all for the love. I've been very much enjoying a lot of the ideas getting thrown out here because, since I'm already dabbling in 1986 in the Master File at this point, it's very interesting to see where folks have guessed right or close and when not so much.

So, what's the overall accuracy rate of us respondents?

 

[Shevek23]

I also wonder whether Disney with Henson on board for insight might spin the 1980s "science fiction" genre off in directions that might allow SF to have a somewhat different character. When my life situation changed in the later '80s and early '90s so I lived in a household that paid a regular monthly cable bill and got the schedule guide (it was written back in those olden days) I was pretty disgusted with the offerings that were labeled "Science Fiction." Everything seemed to be a mishmash of ripoffs of the sensibilities of Star Wars, Alien and Robocop--it was all cop shows in space and what seemed to define SF to the company executives in charge of categorizing movies was "are there Old West style gunfights with laser special effects?"

Could or would Disney, with Henson involved, take on something like say Robert Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy or The Star Beast? How about say The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress? Could something like CJ Cherryh's Merchanter's Luck or her Chanur stories be filmed? Something like Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light or Doorways in the Sand?

DValdron, some years back, did "The Moontrap Timeline" in which a bunch of 1970s-90s dark "crapsack 'Verse" movies, some of which I had no clue ever existed (as with the titular Moontrap movie) such as the Alien series get integrated into a crapsack timeline of general degeneration and despair. I am wondering if a branch of ATL Disney might manage to engage with the corpus of written SF, or spin off some new stories, that would rival the Trek franchise at Paramount with a more positive, affirming bunch of visions of the future. There would be room enough for space battles in these stories, but also situating the combat and cop shows and tales of untouchable corporate villainy into a more, um, viable and optimistic view of possible outcomes.

Mind, there are and were ample reasons for dystopia to be a running theme in popular culture. I would fear OTL Disney would steamroller over the darkness for a saccharine and sanitized ultra-light, and ultra-lite, happy face vision. (Indeed many Trek fans accuse Trek of doing just that, and seem to think the proper answer is more grisliness and grim dark grit). I wonder though whether Henson might enable stories that, in the manner of say Buffy the Vampire Slayer, delve pretty deep into darkness but find the light in the struggle.

Certainly the authors and stories I have mentioned and others by them and others can offer frameworks to integrate the popular space battle spectaculars and corporate intrigue and some pretty grisly or otherwise disturbing stuff into humane outcomes. Certainly some of them would offer scope for Henson's peculiar skill set--Cherryh's Voyager in Night would have a lot of Tron-like virtual action; her Chanur stories typically would show just one human character, the rest being of several alien species.

 

[Nivek]

Tolkien never explained why the One Ring either couldn't or shouldn't have been much better protected on its way to Orodruin. Personally, I would have had it put in the most secure portable strong box possible, had it welded shut, and set a strict rotation schedule as to who"s carrying it. The Ring's call would be an exercise in futility if no one can slip it on a digit.

But this is hijacking the thread. Is there any possibility that Super Sentai could become Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers a decade early, and without borrowing action footage from the Japanese original? Let's say that "Dream Team" of Stan Lee, Stephen J. Cannell, and David Hughes, and Steven Spielberg come together to make it work.

And Even them someone might screwed it, that was the point of the ring, still make sense a collective burden(and would make frodo being the one who fall even bigger, even the more reliable one could fail too) as is the perfect allegory to corruption and evil.

About Power Rangers/Super Sentai..someone else might give a different name, but you don't need to much people, just people knew the source material and care the idea and franchise(see kamen rider dragon knight as a good example of that) saban missed a lot but cared on the idea.

I would wish till we get Bioman(one of the best of the classic sentai, alongside jetman and liveman)

 

[Red_Crate]

Speaking of 80s sci-fi, (just to add my two cents) what's going to happen to cyberpunk this timeline? I can only hope that a really good Neuromancer adaptation happens for it.

 

[Kalvan]

Speaking of 80s sci-fi, (just to add my two cents) what's going to happen to cyberpunk this timeline? I can only hope that a really good Neuromancer adaptation happens for it.

The problem is that the only live action cyberpunk works I can see from before 2005 are Blade Runner, Cherry 2000, Max Headroom, Robocop, Freejack, Total Recall, Johnny Mnemonic, and Dark Angel. Terminator and The Matrix are Robot War stories, while Tron is less about Kevin Flynn sticking it to Dillinger and more about experiencing a computer system from the inside for its own sake.

 

[marathag]

did you ever read the book? the eagle could got corrupted the longer they got the ring

Please list where in _The Hobbit_ or the LotR Trilogy that was spelled out.

No one brought up the Eagles once at the Council of Elrond, just that the One Ring would corrupt anyone who used it, and should be tossed in Mount Doom.
And that the Ring Bearer would walk it there with his companions.