Jungle Cruise accomplishes a complicated feat: tailoring a ride at a Disneyland theme park

There are enough theme park-based movies to make a ranked list, but how different movies handle the travel question varies dramatically. pirates of the Caribbean It didn’t acknowledge much about the journey it was based on, and many don’t even realize that the journey occurred decades before the movie. In The world of tomorrow, on the contrary, the characters make direct reference to Disney. Jungle cruise It includes many references to the ride, but more importantly, it captures the specific feeling and energy of the attraction. It’s one of the few travel-based movies that doesn’t just feel free.

The Jungle Cruise ride is located in the Adventureland portion of Disneyland, Magic Kingdom, Tokyo Disneyland, and Hong Kong Disneyland. Its first iteration debuted with Disneyland in 1955, and while each park has slight variations in the actual route involved (with the Hong Kong version culminating in a battle between jungle gods), the premise is more or less the same: the Visitors board a boat that is supposedly navigating several famous rivers, from the Nile to the Amazon, and observe some animatronic animals while a skipper narrates the journey.

The trip is not a serious nature tour, it is about 10 minutes followed by intentionally horrible and cheesy puns and jokes. The Hong Kong version is more serious, staying in line with the original travel concept of an informative animal tour, but the other versions of the trip are notable for being just an extended dad joke. The exact jokes vary from trip to trip, but there are some recurring classics.

For example, after pointing to a large rock, the patron will sometimes say, “This formation on the right is actually sandstone. Most people take it for granite. It’s one of our rock attractions here in the park. “

“Take as many photos as you want,” they might also say when they come across some elephant animatronics. “They have their trunks on!”

And one of my favorites, when passing under a water fixture: “Now for the moment you’ve been waiting for, the eighth wonder of the world: it’s the back of the water!”

Jungle cruise the film is an archaeological adventure that takes its inspiration from the 1999s The Mummy Y Indiana Jones Similary. But what makes it stand out is how it captures the quirky energy of the trip; This is not a serious movie, even if it does have some serious moments, thanks in part to the character of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The Mummy also has funny moments – Evelyn proudly declaring that she is going to kiss Rick and then passes out., for example – but there is a specificity to the nonsense of Jungle cruise that’s straight from the original attraction. Nobody goes in the Jungle cruise Ride to seriously learn about animals or let them take you to another world. (The fact that the riverboat jumps smoothly from the Nile to the Amazon spoils that illusion a bit.) They continue for the terrible jokes, fast-talking captains, and wacky animatronics.

When it comes to adapting theme park attractions, filmmakers face the unique challenge of trying to adapt without tangible plots or characters. Sure, there is Madame Lenora in The haunted mansion, or the bears of The bears of the country, but they don’t come with motivations or goals. The challenge is not to translate an existing story, it is to evoke a specific feeling, created by the atmosphere of the trip and the subtler narrative woven into the attraction. Pirates of the Caribbean, with its dark waiting area in a stone wall fortress, is going to elicit different emotions than the bright and silly Jungle Cruise, even though they are neighboring attractions.

It makes sense that in addition to capturing the general atmosphere of Adventureland – exploring jungles, encountering dangers, and encountering wild animals – the film also fully embraces the silliness. At first, that may seem like a trick. Ship’s captain Frank (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is introduced as he takes some tourists away, where he has put together makeshift contraptions to give guests some excitement so that he can rack up more tips. He even refines some falling water to squeeze that beloved Joke about the “back of the water”.

But it goes beyond that scene. Throughout the movie, Frank continues to make these silly jokes. The plot elements are over the top, whether it’s German aristocrat Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons) loading through a small dock with a giant submarine, or Frank keeping a trained jaguar below deck. The dangers that Frank, botanical adventurer Lily (Emily Blunt), and their uptight brother McGregor (Jack Whitehall) encounter on their adventure, such as intense rapids or undead conquerors, are not eliminated directly from the trip, but they feel they could do so without problems. be added to it in some way.

For the filmmakers, this fidelity to the ride also apparently meant acknowledging some of the attraction’s uneasy past. Several Disney attractions that incorporate controversial elements have faced a reckoning in recent years. Jungle cruise it also has the added burden of a whole genre full of outdated tropes. The way the filmmakers handle all of that is a mixed bag: On the one hand, the fact that the indigenous people of the Amazon are Frank’s friends and not faceless adversaries enhances the outdated images of the trip. On the other hand, why refer to an outdated character as Trader Sam (who has completely retired from the parks) if she’s still going to be a plot element for a note?

But overall, Jungle cruise it accomplishes that formidable feat of translating one type of experience into another form of media. Unlike The world of tomorrow, which was envisioned as a stark dystopia (even if it ends on a hopeful note) and contradicts the spirit of the actual Tomorrowland area of ​​parks, which have always been about a bright and beautiful tomorrow, Jungle cruise follow in the footsteps of pirates of the Caribbean. The filmmakers capitalize on the feel of the ride – cheesy and awesome to Jungle cruise, haunting with a dash of crafty fun to Pirates – to adapt that particular feeling of sitting in a boat, listening to a patron tell bad jokes at top speed, and feeling the vaguest sense of imaginary threat from the plastic animals above.

Jungle cruise is available on Disney Plus with Premier Access now.