Disney’s ‘Tomorrowland’ Takes Advantage Of The Dystopian Fad
Tomorrowland is an actual place — in Disneyland. Tomorrowland has been with the amusement park since it opened in 1955 — even if it wasn’t quite completed when the doors opened. It originally included such attractions as the TWA moonliner rocket ship, the Monsanto House of the Future, and the Kaiser Aluminium Hall of Fame — all corporate sponsors.
Which is kind of fitting now Disney has turned Tomorrowland into a dystopian movie, Tomorrowland. Using a theme that is raking in big bucks with movies such as The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Maze Runner, Disney has decided to give its theme park some backstory.
The synopsis for Disney’s Tomorrowland (or, as its called in the U.K., Tomorrowland: A World Beyond) is as follows.
“Bound by a shared destiny, a teen bursting with scientific curiosity and a former boy-genius inventor embark on a mission to unearth the secrets of a place somewhere in time and space that exists in their collective memory.”
According to USA Today, Tomorrowland tells the story of Casey Newton, a science whiz who has managed to slow down a NASA project in order to keep her dad employed. Casey gets in so much trouble that they send her to jail, where she comes across a mysterious pin emblazoned with the letter T. Upon touching it, she is magically teleported to a uptopian world, Tomorrowland.
While Tomorrowland appears great on the surface (as is the case with the dystopian genre), there are problems that only Casey seems able to fix. In the process she befriends Athena and Frank Walker. As is a common theme in Disney movies, Tomorrowland is based on the theme of children having to fix the grown ups problems.
Tomorrowland stars George Clooney (Gravity, ER), Hugh Laurie (House), Britt Robertson (Under the Dome), Raffey Cassidy (Snow White and the Huntsman) and Tim McGraw (Flicka). The movie is directed by Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, Incredibles). Tomorrowland was written by Brad Bird, Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers, World War Z) and Jeff Jensen. Brad Bird actually turned down Star Wars: The Force Awakens in order to make Tomorrowland.
Tomorrowland is currently playing and is expected to do well over the Memorial Day weekend. Although, if estimates from Variety are accurate, Tomorrowland won’t be nearly as successful as last year’s Memorial Day weekend where X-Men: Days of Future Past brought in $122.9 million. Instead, is is expected to bring in somewhere between $40-50 million.
Are you planning to see Tomorrowland this weekend? Let us know by commenting below.
[Image credit: Disney]
