On Theme-Park Acting
I hear you're a fine-looking bunch of recruits.
As I noted in the last couple newsletters, I spent last weekend visiting some theme parks. I could use this edition to go on lengthy diatribes about the exorbitant costs of everything from water bottles to T-shirts to stuffed animals at Southern California theme parks (because while I would love to blame it all on Disney, they’re not the only offender). But I won’t — not because the expense isn’t high, but because I don’t need to be another drop in that very large bucket.
Today, I want to talk briefly about something else I was reminded of during my trip to both Universal Studios Hollywood and the Disneyland Resort: theme-park acting. Now, any actor worth his or her salt will tell you that there are different modes of acting: acting for television, for film, for theater, etc. Don’t believe me? Just let acclaimed actor Timothy Olyphant explain it to you. (Watch the whole clip for some valuable acting lessons.)
See? There is a difference!
Anyway, one of the growing types of acting is theme-park acting, which is on full display in many of the bigger marquee attractions at both Universal and Disney. Where once the E-Ticket attractions were “just” roller-coaster mountains, so many of the big rides now come replete with pre- and in-show aspects featuring well-known actors. It’s part and parcel with Disney buying out Pixar and Marvel and Lucasfilm, and with Universal leveraging its various pieces of intellectual property — we naturally expect (or executives and/or theme-park designers think we do) that the same people from the films will show up in the rides inspired by those films.
As this trip reminded me, some actors are better than others at theme-park acting. In some cases, as with the cast of The Simpsons or The Secret Life of Pets, the bar for success is low because these actors are being called upon to do voice work…which they do anyway in the films inspiring the rides.
So, I want to dedicate one paragraph here to The Secret Life of Pets: Off the Leash!, a new-ish attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood. I get that Disney has been doing dark rides a lot longer than Universal has, so maybe it’s just that my expectations are automatically high — especially since USH is so light on all-ages attractions. But, uh…man, that is not a good ride. First of all, it raises an interesting challenge for anyone who is not intimately familiar with the characters in these derivative-of-Pixar films; the ride is full of these characters and you’re meant to recognize them pretty well. (Unlike many family-friendly dark rides, this doesn’t walk you through the plot of the film all over again.) But more importantly: this ride is incredibly, incredibly slow, and I don’t understand why. It’d be one thing if the ride was overly reminiscent of Monsters, Inc.: Mike and Sulley to the Rescue! (It is.) But it moves at a snail’s pace, to the point where I am more than sure that I could’ve walked through the ride twice before it finished once. It’s not worth the “Virtual Line” reservation experience, especially that is currently the only ride at Universal Studios Hollywood with said experience. Hard pass.
Theme-park acting is a lot harder than it looks, because of how big it is. Watching various actors try to pull it off, I’m reminded of the overly theatrical, playing-to-the-back-row style of acting you can see on Disney Channel sitcoms and the like. That these actors try to go big makes sense — at any given time, you’re “performing” for moving groups of audiences that need to get more out of your performance than just “Hey, look, that one guy from the movie!”
You know who’s good at theme-park acting? Chris Pratt. Tom Holland. (Tom Holland is going all-in and then some on theme-park acting, as you can see from his work on the WEB Slingers attraction at Disney California Adventure.) Dwayne Johnson, too, in the truly execrable Fast and the Furious section of the Universal Studio Tour.
You know who’s bad at theme-park acting? This guy.
Now, listen. Oscar Isaac is one of his generation’s best actors. If you have not seen his star-making turn in Inside Llewyn Davis, you need to. An actor whose work is without peer. But every time, and I do mean every single time, I go on Rise of the Resistance in the Galaxy’s Edge section of Disneyland, I laugh my head off when he says “I hear you’re a fine-looking bunch of recruits” to guests in the first of a series of pre-shows. It’s not a hard line, but Isaac — who is, as Poe Dameron, looking directly at the audience — looks as willing to sell that line as the one in the GIF above. Just watch. (It starts at about 6:43, but I believe I’ve linked it correctly so that’s where the clip starts when you click Play.)
Some actors are very good at theme-park acting. I don’t think it’s an accident how many of the actors in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, especially those who are Isaac’s age or younger, are very good at theme-park acting (in attractions and elsewhere), more than other types of acting.
Just One More Thing…
As it happens, there’s a lot going on in my world this week, so this section’s gonna be fairly weighty.
First, as you may have heard, Bob Iger is returning to the Walt Disney Company as its CEO after Bob Chapek was booted out on Sunday night. If you haven’t seen this news, welcome back from your restful vacation in a cave, or somewhere without Internet or phone service! Kidding aside, you may wish to read my thoughts on the matter here.
Or perhaps I can interest you in a brief history of Bob Iger’s time as CEO the first go-round, over at Slashfilm? If that’s not enough, I shared some thoughts with Steven Zeitchik at The Washington Post, as well as the ramifications for streaming when speaking with Eric Francisco at Inverse.
Speaking of Disney, they released a brand-new animated film, Strange World, on Wednesday. And let me tell you, it’s a fun and exciting adventure that the studio is absolutely burying. (I’m sure I’ll say more on the subject in a future newsletter, but it mystifies me to no end that the big studios decided to cede so much of the year to just a handful of films, and then act surprised when only, like, one of those films was a true, undeniable success.) Strange World is a boy-centric film from a studio that seems badly to want one, and I wish they were treating it better.
Also speaking of Disney, this week also marked a new collaboration between the company and The Criterion Collection, with the release of WALL-E in a new 4K release. The edition is, as you may expect, truly phenomenal, and I was fortunate enough to interview Andrew “I won an Oscar for this, but I still should’ve been nominated for Best Picture” Stanton to discuss the long road to the robot who could becoming a Criterion title.
But it’s not all Disney this week. Two of the other films opening in theaters this weekend are two of the year’s best. First, there’s Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, which is an autobiographical look at the great director’s youth. And yet it strangely put me in mind of another of this year’s best films, and a film undoubtedly inspired by Spielberg: Jordan Peele’s Nope. I wrote about their weird connection points at Slashfilm.
And also at Slashfilm, I wrote about the only movie that has rivaled RRR as my favorite of 2022, at least for now: Glass Onion. Now, first of all — you should see Glass Onion, and while I want you to read my essay on the film and how it connects to Columbo, you need to see the film first. Lots and lots of spoilers in this essay. Consider yourself warned.
On Monday: The 64-seed Disney Parks Live-Entertainment bracket begins. Get excited.