The Cinemagique we didn’t get…
Cinemagique is one of the top attractions in the Walt Disney Studios Park at Disneyland Resort Paris. The journey through the history of movies from the early days all the way to todays blockbusters like Monsters, Inc. enchants guests and regularly manages to get even applause. But us with most great attractions and movies before guests get treated to the finalized project the creative team considers many different concepts, ideas and approaches. Information about these early concepts is rather hard to get by - especially for theme park attractions such as Cinemagique which just don’t get released on official DVDs with comprehensive bonus material. But now and then fans are lucky - as right now in the case of Cinemagique.
Thanks need to go to the blog Cartoon Brew who got YouTube-user CyberShire to reveal the story behind his 6 chapters of “Famous Balloon Movies”…
CyberShire posted 6 short movie scenes from Casablanca (there are two scenes from this one), North by Northwest, Safety First, Butch Cassidy and Star Wars all of which feature a stray balloon cleverly integrated into the classic scenes such that the actors seem to react to it as if it has always been there. But where is the connection of this to Cinemagique? After all there isn’t any balloon drifting through the history of movies in that featurwe but a real for real person?!
Well, here is it where Cartoon Brew comes into the play as he reveals the backstory: accordingly an independent director frequently working for Disney did create these shots during the early phase of a theme park project as concepts for a subplot which was later cut from the project before the shots were finalized. And that theme park project has to be Cinemagique - after all Cartoon Brew cites the director as describing it
The main through line was a romance between a guy in the audience and a woman in the movie. The “every man” goes into the movie (right through the screen) and meets a beautiful woman there. There is a spark of romance. He is then chased by villains out of her movie and stumbles through many other classic films, lost and alone. The woman leaves her movie to go on a quest to find him.
He then goes on:
However, just before we committed to film the project, we decided to go through a kind of wild card period. Float some totally different ideas. I thought it might be fun to do a nod to “The Red Balloon”. I did a few of these balloon shots at home and took them into the studio. Everybody enjoyed them. So we explored a possible version centered on that idea. I did more and more shots, took them in, hunkered down with the editor and stitched together a draft. We all got a kick out of it, but utimately decided that we missed the romantic comedy of Plan A. So after the diversion, we returned to our original course.
Interesting information … somehow I think the version we got now has a much stronger storyline than just a balloon floating through the different movies. BUT I can’t stop wondering whether it might have been a great side gag if somehow a child from the audience would have had a balloon that got sucked into the movies at some point when the gateway is open for the audience member anyway. They could have used the balloon for a few funny extra scenes…