They are going to cause the 90s answer to the #MeToo movement ITTL, calling it now.
A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980)
- Thread starter Geekhis Khan
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Yeah, anything that stops them (and numerous others) earlier than OTL is a good thing...
We could just stick with Jack Nicholson, but barring that out of all the candidates mentioned who has worked the most with Sam Raimi, if anyone. I like Crispin Glover for Joker:
Robin Williams should be Riddler and it's too early to learn how awesome Mark Hamilton is as Joker.
ITTL Bruce Campbell said he didn't want to be Batman (I think), I still like Val Kilmer as Batman.
No offense but I hope it's after Ren & Stimpy.
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I think the main appeal of Dr. Who is the infinite places and times that the Doctor and his campanions can go to do some wacky adventuring, with new or returning characters or villains. Not to mention the regeneration aspect that has kept the show going for the past 2 decades, which is an amazing feat.
It's a likely possibility that Disney will make a show involving the Dreamfinder, Figment, and Gellz at some point, probably an animated series in the 90s and so forth since the overall lore for the characters has been further expanded and Disney probably has more of a reason to keep them as a new IP. Maybe they'll adopt some concepts from Doctor Who since I think what they'll find through their own world is pretty similar to Doctor Who's overall premise.
Absolutely agree. Beastly Kingdom is supposed to be a land of fantastical and mythical creatures from all across the world, not just a specific subset. It allows Imagineers to be more creative with their ideas in a land that isn't that dependent on IPs (although I think some might inevitably enter places such as Dinoland or Beastly Kingdom). We wouldn't have stuff like the Dragon roller coaster ride or the Fantasia Gardens in that case, and that would be a pretty huge blow to the overall identity of Beastly Kingdom.
I think William Dafoe or Mark Hamill would do well as the Joker in my opinion.
You can tell that Tim Delaney and the rest of the Imagineers were thinking BIG when it comes to Discoveryland and the mountain pavilion attraction. Like, they were going to put an entire coaster, Horizons, the Nautilus, an underwater restaurant, and everything under the sun encased in this massive mountain. I don't think that even with A Small World's possible success and the overall financial stability of the Disney company is going to allow something like this to happen.
I think this concept art is a more accurate visualization of what an expanded Discoveryland could look like in Disneyland Valencia, if such a land was even created in the first place. It's possible that much of the attractions proposed by Delaney, Baxter, and the others at the I-Works could make their way here, including a Horizons ride that would be very interesting of all and be the main separation of this Discoveryland compared to OTL.
Anyone wanna speculate what the lands/attractions of Disneyland Valencia could be?
My thoughts of what it could look like would be this, in terms of theming or new attractions:
Disneyland Valencia:
- Main Street, U.S.A.
- Standard theming around a 1910s/1920s American town
- Fantasyland
- Themed either as a Basque village or a more standard European setting (A Bavarian one like in Disneyland or maybe a Venetian one with canals?)
- Sleeping Beauty Castle (inspired by Spanish/Andalusi alcazars like the Alcazar of Segovia)
- Curse of the Dark Crystal
- Themed either as a Basque village or a more standard European setting (A Bavarian one like in Disneyland or maybe a Venetian one with canals?)
- Adventureland
- Themed around China / Japan, Africa, and the Caribbean
- Indiana Jones and the Mask of the Monkey King
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Themed around China / Japan, Africa, and the Caribbean
- Frontierland
- Standard theming around the Wild West
- Big Thunder Mountain
- Phantom Manor
- Standard theming around the Wild West
- Discoveryland / Tomorrowland
- Either a Discoveryland inspired by H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and other notable European sci-fi writers (including Spanish ones!) or a direct copy of Tomorrowland
- Space Mountain from the Earth to the Moon / Space Mountain
- Journey to the Center of the Earth / Star Tours (if butterflied then Journey into Inner Space)
- Horizons / Autopia
- The Timekeeper / Carousel of Progress
- Club Cyclia Theater
- Nautilus Restaurant / Tomorrowland Terrace
- Orbitron / Astro Orbiter
- Either a Discoveryland inspired by H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and other notable European sci-fi writers (including Spanish ones!) or a direct copy of Tomorrowland
- Muppetland / Mickey's Toontown / Hollywoodland (optional sixth lands)
- Either a land inspired by the Muppets, the other Disney animated characters like Mickey Mouse, or ones inspired by Hollywood and their numerous movie IPs
EDIT #1: Added theming + ride suggestions
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If Ren and Stimpy must be spared, I'd want them to only get the initial six-episode season. This would mean that, while the Happy Happy Joy Joy song, the iconic side characters of Powdered Toast Man, Log, and Muddy Mudskipper, and even classic episodes such as Fire Dogs still exist, we would end up missing iconic scenes like Ren's freakout in Sven Hoek, the "touching" episode known as Son of Stimpy, and most especially George Liquor.
Actually, while George Liquor, American would be butterflied away (except that I believe he adopted the Dynamic Duo in "Bighouse Blues" before he even had a name), George Liquor the distilled spirit of the Northwest Territory had been produced since at least the 1880s. It's an unclassifiable booze with an apparent mash bill of sweet potatoes and sugar beets aged at least four years in fresh (but seasoned) charred beech barrels. (In other words, it's not a whiskey because there's no grain whatsoever in its mash bill, and it's not a vodka because it spends way too long in a barrel at one time).
On the one hand, it was nice to get a little history lesson out of this.
On the other hand, I probably wouldn't touch this "drink" even if I was old enough for the good stuff.
Reading the update, am I the only one among the readers who is sick and tired of the constant bashing of 80's cartoons? It makes no sense to me how the rest of you guys praise whenever a medium takes a bold and new directions but 80's cartoons are lame garbage. Yes, objectively they are not some great piece of art and as a collective whole are not nearly equal to how modern cartoons have evolved in quality of writing, but at the same time they are not some garbage. The 80's spawned many great franchises like Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that while they may have had mediocre or simple beginnings, evolved into greater works later on.
Also I'm incredibly annoyed by the constant moral superiority that 80's cartoons are just "Mindless low-quality violence." Yes, so many animated shows today do conflicts and action far better, but at the same time it was the fact that 80's shows had been so loosely restricted that they could get more violent in an effort to sell toys that we no longer had moral guardians hamstringing cartoon development "For the Children" and later cartoons could get more mature and serious in their presentations instead of dumbing down for the "Stupid Kids". Lots of people here bash Reagan yet you have the tone of moral Puritanism far greater than him with regards to 80's cartoons.
Overall, yes the 80's weren't some utopia of entertainment and it was flawed, but it wasn't some dark age and a necessary transition period to get to the cartoons of today.
Also I'm incredibly annoyed by the constant moral superiority that 80's cartoons are just "Mindless low-quality violence." Yes, so many animated shows today do conflicts and action far better, but at the same time it was the fact that 80's shows had been so loosely restricted that they could get more violent in an effort to sell toys that we no longer had moral guardians hamstringing cartoon development "For the Children" and later cartoons could get more mature and serious in their presentations instead of dumbing down for the "Stupid Kids". Lots of people here bash Reagan yet you have the tone of moral Puritanism far greater than him with regards to 80's cartoons.
Overall, yes the 80's weren't some utopia of entertainment and it was flawed, but it wasn't some dark age and a necessary transition period to get to the cartoons of today.
Amen! If it wasn't for GI Joe, He-Man and Transformers, I'd probably be some kind of weird hermit.
I hadn't planned on going into the '88 Godzilla cartoon, mainly because I can't find anything about it on the web other than "it was considered but dropped". If anyone knows where there's actual details let me know.
My only experience with Valerian is the recent Luc Besson movie, which was an amazingly gorgeous dumpster fire of breathtaking set pieces and the most thoroughly dislikable protagonist in recent memory. I assume the original comic was better. I'm very curious what Bluth would do with the franchise, actually, possibly in league with Pathe, and may steal that idea.
I have to say, the evidence presented is less convincing than the Kimba/Simba thing, which I don't really buy into as much as I like to troll you all about it. I think enough about it has been said at this point.
Will be answered soon.
1) It's an hour-long animated show. The first half-hour is essentially Duck Tales, the second essentially Goof Troop, but with some crossover between them and occasional cameos like Mickey Mouse.
2) ABC acquires DIC in '89 IIRC. Mainframe doesn't yet exist, but an intriguing idea.
I'm probably not going out on a limb to say that BKP may just meet the technical legal definition of "hostile work environment". Stay tuned on that...
All in good time...
Dr. Who gets mentioned Thursday, at least for the near term butterflies.
There was a Figment and the Dreamfinders show I briefly mentioned. They likely explore different times and places. Probably don't have a device disguised as a Police Call Box. Perhaps a flux capacitor, but most likely just The Power of the Imagination.
Just to be perfectly clear, the purpose here isn't "80's cartoon bashing". For the record I loved GI Joe and Transformers and I make no bones about it. I watched them religiously in the '80's. Looking back on them as an adult I can see why my parents didn't like them, but I still have a personal soft spot for them. Part of why I bring them up is just an excuse to talk about them. I'm sorry if you misunderstood my intentions and I'm sorry that it's getting old for you (I keep getting requests for more on them, so I've made far more posts on it than I originally intended, which was two or three at most) but rejoice in the fact that this post is IIRC the last to go into it in any detail on the merch-driven cartoons of the era.
Unless you'd like me to post a "counter-opinion" post, which I'd certainly be happy to do. You can even PM me some counterpoints.
The reasons why '80s toy-driven cartoons were the way that they were are many, from the economics of "runaway production", to the deregulation that allowed producers far more leeway to market straight to children without oversight, to the changing societal attitudes about violence and the military. Other "kids shows" of the era like The A team and Air Wolf were very violent and militaristic as well, so they're all really a part of the larger 1980s zeitgeist that I'm trying to express and demonstrate here. Since this is a Jim Henson TL, and Jim Henson was on record for not liking the trend at all, unavoidably the opinions of the central character/person become the perspectives of the TL.
Many of us, myself included, who grew up in the '80s have a love for the cartoons and see past their flaws - and let's take off our nostalgia glasses and acknowledge that there were certainly many flaws - but that's not necessarily the opinions of the animation industry, which are what's being expressed here.
And just to be clear in general: 1) the opinions of the characters/fictional writers are not necessarily the opinions of the author (me). 2) the opinions being expressed were very common at the time among the animation industry "snobs" and parent's groups on both the left and the right and are still being expressed by many animation historians and parent's groups looking back. 3) I'm setting up background for later butterflies. 4) I'm establishing the zeitgeist as stated.
My ultimate goal here is verisimilitude. I don't promise that every opinion expressed by the fictional or historical characters will be universally popular. They're not even universally popular with me, and I wrote them. I have a story to tell and I have only so many posts to tell it, so generalizations are inevitable. If there's one central idea that I want everyone to know from yesterday's post, it's that those factors I listed above are changing, and that this will affect how animation is made going forward in this timeline.
My issue is not that there was story content that criticizes 80's cartoons. Like I repeatedly said in my post above, as much as I love 80's cartoons they were admittedly very flawed and for all the good that came from them, it wasn't necessarily created with the best intentions. My issue is that there have been multiple posts within the story that all repeat the same theme, that 80's cartoons are trash and a dark that the enlightened modern cartoons have moved so far beyond. Reading your statement, it makes sense why these particular characters and Henson with his mindset and ideology would state so, but when they are the only biases and point of views that we are introduced to on the subject, it makes one such as myself believe that these viewpoints are God and thus the definitive outlook on the era.
When it comes to the subject, my gripe doesn't come with the fact that 80's cartoons are critiqued, I'll happily point out the flaws and sometimes I laugh at the mistakes of the era, but how they are critiqued. Unlike other eras of animation which are frequently less lenient in criticism or excused for being "Products of the time", 80's animation seems to be a heavy target of bashing with scathing reviews of the stories of the time and rarely any consideration given to the positives that were developed or how the flaws could lay the groundwork for the praised developments in animation in decades since, not to mention hypocrisy of the "Mindless violence" of the time yet today's action cartoons feature far greater violence at times, not to mention our worship of violent media like Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, or Walking Dead. 80's critics outside of professional reviewers and historians can also get incredibly irritating when lots of these same groups, parents especially; look down on animation as a whole as an immature work that could never possibly be on the same level of quality or maturity as live action, or frequently hand-wave flaws such as the degradation of cable animation in the late 2000's as "Well it's a kid show so who cares." I'm tired of the moral hypocrisy and how 80's content gets no kid gloves when arguably it's a massive leap in quality in comparison to the 70's Hanna-Barbera rot where creativity was practically non-existent thanks to the studio's monopoly on animation and lack of care towards the industry as a potential business.
Throughout the entirety of this story, there have been many creative decisions in either the paths of historical characters or developments in fiction and media that I have greatly disagreed with. What stopped me from posting a critique like I did in the above post was that I could understand how it happened, lots of times it was due to alternate histories created by Henson Disney that prevented a series of particular events from occurring that lead to the outcome I like, and it was written in a way to express how media is greatly changing from our history with the purpose of focusing on divergences in entertainment and occasional nuance and counterpoints. For the 80's cartoons, there has rarely been any counterpoints or nuance outside of the POV bias, we haven't been hinted at how 90's tv cartoons are going to change from the 80's, the 80's cartoons that aren't involved with Disney haven't changed, and it seems that for posts it only exists to negatively compare to the divergent media. One case being the Transformers chapter where the main takeaway is that Jim Henson hates the movie because somehow a film that shows kids tragedy and that sometimes great change and good endings requires great sacrifice is bad and heroes always got to win.
So when the latest chapter came out and there were a number of commenters who had an attitude of "Boy I'm glad the subpar 80's are getting their just deserts, that will show Reagan and his damned deregulation! For the Kids!" I was worried that there was no point in the creative decisions besides "80's are Bad!". Outside of that the update was well-written and thank you for your well-thought response and reasoning for why it had to be written in such a way. I understand after your answer why it came out like that, especially with Jim Henson being the hero of this story, but the presentation just set off a personal gripe to myself that I felt had to be addressed. Thanks for writing.
No, thank you for expressing your concerns. I actually pride myself on achieving nuance, so when I fall short it's good to know so that I can course-correct. I'm dead serious about that "counter-opinion" post. I've already started kicking around the language and POV in my head and if you have specific points for it you'd like to see made clear then please do PM them to me; I'll even give you the hat tip. Like you, I grew up with these cartoons and have a fondness for them and most certainly do not look down on animation as "kid's stuff", quite the contrary.
And if Henson is showing bias, blind spots, and special pleading in his opinions, then I guess that he's coming across as a human after all, so mission accomplished, to be blunt.
Not to be rude, but I actually mentioned Log as one of the side characters that we'd still get if The Ren and Stimpy Show only got its first season made.
So, the closest equivalent this show has from OTL is The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show mixed with the range of cameos from Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law?
Considering that they acquired DIC in 1993 IOTL, I think they have a good shot at beating Disney in the syndication market. Oh, and when I suggested having them buy Mainframe, I was basing this suggestion under the guise that it would happen in '95 or '96, while ReBoot was almost ending its first stage of production, so that the show wouldn't take a 2-3 year hiatus in the States and move to Toonami.
Sorry, accidentally missed it when reading the post. If we get Powdered Toast Man and Log in the first season I okay with just one season.
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Ah yes, an excellent way to make Figment and the Dreamfinder a permanent part of the Disney family. The Dreamfinder does have a ship though:
I think it'll be heavily modified in the show to accommodate any human passengers (maybe taking some cues from Doctor Who in making the inside bigger than the outside) ITTL while Gellz and their assistant probably gets a ship of their own if they make a cameo. It should be an interesting time when they do update the ride (probably improved animatronics based on the show and the addition of Gellz) but at least they'll treat it better than what the company did to the ride OTL.
Man, what a tease! 88 is so close and yet so far.
People were alluding to an earlier #MeToo movement in the 90s, and I'll be curious to see what makes that happen ITTL for BKP, since it would have to be a really bad case of sexual harassment. It'll take the moniker "Bat-Shit Productions" into a whole new meaning.
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Sure, they'll only appear through shorts after the episodes, but they do make appearances in the first season.
Do you mean "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets"? Nothing much about that movie sticks in my mind, aside from "spectacle". Other movies have had more memorably obnoxious main characters, though him being a jerk rings a faint bell.
When The Simpsons eventually comes up, can it be killed off around season 8 (1996-1997)?
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