DBWI: Peter Jackson Directed the Lord of the Rings Trilogy

As a theme park enthusiast I can't help but shudder at the thought of some company other than Disney making Lord of the Rings.

Tokyo Disney Sea was scheduled to launch in the same year as the first movie so in a "brilliant" bit of synergy one of the lands at Disney Sea is called Middle Earth. Obviously once the movies flopped this was a bit of an embarassment. But the Rivendell raft ride and Moria minecart ride are still absolutely amazing (as are all the Japanese girls in elf ears).

If Disney hadn't been able to use Oriental Land Company's money to develop those ride systems then they wouldn't have been able to bring them to the American parks as the Little Mermaid's Dangerous Journey and the Seven Dwarves Diamond Mine, two of the best family-friendly thrill rides ever created.

Disney hiring Peter Jackson to make the movies is an intriguing possibility though...

The thing is you should make the ride around the movie, and not make the movie around the ride. Back To The Future was a fun ride, because it came after the movie and worked within the boundries set in the film series. With LOTR it was obvious that Disney wrote the movie around a series of rides and Uwe Boll was more than happy to go along for the ride (no pun intended). Having Gollum, Frodo and Sam decide to take the coal transport rail cart to the top of Mount Doom was an insult to fans of the book. The climb up Mount Doom, and Gollum's betrayal at Cirith Ungol was a key element of the story, and they just removed it so they could have an Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom like Rail cart chase with Orcs that (suprise) had numerous drops and sharp turns. I nearly walked out the theater when Haley Joel Osment (who I might add was the worst person they could have cast to play Frodo) yelled "cool!" during this dramatic "chase".
 
No matter what Disney did to it Peter Jackson is a bad idea. He is primarily a horror film director. What does he know about fantasy fims? Nothing. It would probably wind up looking like a more sophisticated version of Friday the 13th or something.
 
The thing is you should make the ride around the movie, and not make the movie around the ride. Back To The Future was a fun ride, because it came after the movie and worked within the boundries set in the film series. With LOTR it was obvious that Disney wrote the movie around a series of rides and Uwe Boll was more than happy to go along for the ride (no pun intended). Having Gollum, Frodo and Sam decide to take the coal transport rail cart to the top of Mount Doom was an insult to fans of the book. The climb up Mount Doom, and Gollum's betrayal at Cirith Ungol was a key element of the story, and they just removed it so they could have an Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom like Rail cart chase with Orcs that (suprise) had numerous drops and sharp turns. I nearly walked out the theater when Haley Joel Osment (who I might add was the worst person they could have cast to play Frodo) yelled "cool!" during this dramatic "chase".

You know I heard that at one point Disney was going to make a movie based on "The Pirates of the Caribbean" ride. There was a script and everything. I wonder if the failure of "Lord of the Rings" with its ride-based storyline was what caused them to can it.
 
You know I heard that at one point Disney was going to make a movie based on "The Pirates of the Caribbean" ride. There was a script and everything. I wonder if the failure of "Lord of the Rings" with its ride-based storyline was what caused them to can it.

I remember reading about that. It sounded cool. It was all about unkillable, supernatural pirates and cursed Aztec gold. :D

Rumor was that Blackbeard was the bad guy, and that they were looking at Geoffrey Rush.
 
Something else just occured to me.

I remember seeing an interview with Brian Henson where he said that in the early 2000's he tried to organise a refinancing deal where the Henson family would buy back the Muppets from the German cable company who owned them and they would then be sold on to Disney. Without the prearranged deal with Disney there is no way the Hensons could have afforded it.

But apparently Disney wouldn't go for it. They said they wanted to concentrate on their own properties. I wonder if it was because they felt burned by how the last property they bought went (ie. Lord of the Rings).

It was so sad to see the Muppets be sold off piece by piece. Miss Piggy as a corporate mascot for a small goods manufacturer is just wrong. At least the Children's Television Workshop managed to buy up Kermit so he can still do news reports from Sesame St. Its kind of heartbreaking to think there could have been a rescue.
 
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