Disney Editorial: Inside Out Edition

I just came back from watching the Pixar movie Inside Out, and I was very impressed with the concept.

Then I realized, Disney, you need to use Inside Out in the Imagination pavilion in Epcot. Have it be in the theater that housed Captain EO. I wouldn't completely remove Figment's ride, since he's become an iconic character in Epcot, but you can integrate him into Inside Out's Emotions.

I mean, this is common sense. And on that note, I think we need an updated Cranium Command. Inside Out's director, Pete Docter, did work on that.

My RT review of Tomorrowland.

Oh, boy. This is going to be the most complicated review I've written on Rotten Tomatoes yet. Head's up.

First off, while I like George Clooney as an actor, he came across as a bit too much mean spirited when he shows up halfway through the film. Blasting the girl with the door was a bit too much for me. Plus, he doesn't have enough chemistry with the other actors besides Hugh Laurie to be effective as Frank Walker.

But, why did we need all the end of the world stuff? I saw a preview of this movie in the Captain EO theater in the Tomorrowland zone in Disneyland last May, and the sneak preview looked really cool. It detailed how Frank Walker got to Tomorrowland, and I think a story of him growing up and putting his mind to work there would have been a cool, inspirational story to tell. Sadly, it looked like the scenes from the Disneyland sneak preview were the best scenes in the film, as it shifts tone for probably the wrong reasons to being an on the run urban movie, and it takes too long to get back to the fantasy. We didn't see enough of Tomorrowland to really get how that world works, and I think that's a missed opportunity.

The story also committed another sin in regards to the future world's existence, and this is where the film could be considered as having nuked the fridge. We start to talk about the end of the world through several means, including but not limited to global warming, icecaps melting, tornadoes, flooding, nuclear explosions, to name a few. Putting this particular plot point in, I think, was a big mistake.

Some of the characters need work too. You don't particularly care for the ones who die, and they are not written cleverly enough. It all leads to an unenergetic climax and ending, which really let me down.

And of course, the movie had a massive budget. This is the third Disney film in recent years to suffer this problem after John Carter and The Lone Ranger, which I have not seen. If you're going to have a James Cameron-sized production, the writing and action needs to be on the level of Titanic and Terminator. Tomorrowland wasn't.

Disney was hoping for a futuristic, invention themed film, but after seeing this, I'm afraid they have instead crafted their own equivalent to Universal's Waterworld, which is a very bad thing. Yeah, this film has the same potholes as 1995's Waterworld. Amazing how mistakes people have made back in the 90s are resurfacing now.

If you're just interested in decent action, you may want to give Tomorrowland a shot, but it's got the same style-over-substance problems from Waterworld, along with the overbudget from it and 2005's Sahara to match. I'm not going to really recommend it. Skip to after the end of the world with Mad Max if you DON'T take your kids, or go for a second dose of Avengers if you do.