As CinemaBlend’s resident theme park expert, whenever Disney (or Universal for that matter) comes out with something new in theaters I begin to consider how the characters or story could be adapted into theme parks. After watching the recent trailer for Fantastic Four: First Steps, I am, of course, considering how they could appear at Disneyland, and my idea is not the obvious one.
Certainly, the place the Fantastic Four will almost definitely appear is at Disney California Adventure’s Avengers Campus, the land dedicated to Marvel characters. It’s where every other character in the MCU makes at least the occasional appearance, especially when a new movie or Marvel Disney+ series makes them relevant. However, I don’t want to see the first family of comics at Avengers Campus, or even at DCA. I want to see them at Disneyland’s Tomorrowland.
Disneyland (And Walt Disney World) Need A More Timeless Tomorrowland
Tomorrowland at Disneyland, and for that matter at Walt Disney World, needs help. Honestly, in the 70 years that Disneyland has been around no land has needed more help more often than Tomorrowland. It has an intrinsic problem, because eventually, tomorrow always arrives.
A land dedicated to the future only works when it’s looking forward, so Tomorrowland has needed to evolve to keep pace. The land once had an attraction called Rocket to the Moon, which became a lot less impressive once people had actually done that.
This problem is well understood at Walt Disney Imagineering. It’s the reason that when Disneyland Paris was built, it was given, not a Tomorrowland, but a Discoveryland. It wasn’t supposed to reflect our actual future, but a steampunk-style future that never came to pass, but had been conceived of in fiction.
Disneyland and Disney World’s Tomorrowland need overhauls to some sort of similar concept. To make them more timeless, they should be removed from time, and placed into a futuristic world that will never exist. Just like the new Fantastic Four movie.
The Fantastic Four’s Retro-Future Look Belongs In Tomorrowland
As the recent Fantastic Four trailer shows, the new movie is set in the 1960s, but not the 1960s in our own past. Instead, it will be set in an alternate universe version of the ‘60s that never really existed. It’s a perfect look for Tomorrowland.
A great deal of Tomorrowland’s look is from the actual 1960s. The Peoplemover opened in 1967. While Space Mountain didn’t open until the 1970s, the attraction was first conceived and designed in the 1960s. Of all the transformations that Tomorrowland might get, doing this would likely be easier and faster than anything else.
Tomorrowland doesn’t need to become a “Fantastic Four land” it can still be a Tomorrowland, just a different world’s view of tomorrow. But including the Fantastic Four as walk-around characters in such a land would go a long way to reinforce that retro-future vibe we want to achieve.
While Tomorrowland will continue to be updated and evolve as all theme park lands do, this update makes future updates less urgent, as Tomorrowland can't fall behind a future that never was and never will be.
The Aesthetic Has A Disneyland Connection Outside Of Marvel
Redesigning an iconic place like Tomorrowland after a single movie, which isn’t even a guaranteed hit yet, may seem like a long shot, but the movie isn’t the only reason that a design like this would actually work well inside Disneyland.
Back in 1964, Disney was a major contributor to the New York World’s Fair. WED Enterprises, the company that became Walt Disney Imagineering, contributed four attractions to the fair, including It’s a Small World, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, the iconic Carousel of Progress, and the Ford Magic Skyway, which used the Omnimover technology that would become part of multiple Disneyland attractions. Those attractions, and their design elements, would go on to become part of Disneyland, and then Walt Disney World.
Back in August, I attended a panel at D23 about the 1964 World’s Fair, and surprise guest Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel Studios, spoke about how the design elements of the fair were specific inspirations for the look of Fantastic Four. He said…
Right now, we’re doing a movie called Fantastic Four: First Steps, and that entire movie is inspired in large part by the optimism and the forward-looking nature of the ‘64 World’s Fair. We have giant sets built right now in London of New York City. And what we had said is, 'Imagine if, in the - we call it a retro-future look - that in the ‘60s it wasn’t just a World’s Fair, that architecture those buildings were not just the World’s Fair, it was the world.' That’s what the Fantastic Four movie is attempting to be.
So even if you take out the Fantastic Four as characters, the look still has a historical connection to Walt Disney and his creations, making it right for Disneyland. When the day comes that the MCU Fantastic Four is no longer relevant, they can be removed, and the focus of the land can shift to a more general retro-future without actually having to change much, if anything.
Walt Disney World Could Get The Same Overhaul, If Disney Shells Out The Money
I’m mostly talking about Disneyland’s Tomorrowland when discussing this idea because, while Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland is in need of the same level of TLC as Disneyland, even if Walt Disney Imagineering actually decided to do this in California, making it happen in Florida would be significantly more difficult.
This is because of the contract that Marvel signed with Universal Destinations & Experiences years before Disney ever bought the House of Ideas. Universal has the rights to most Marvel characters for theme park use, which severely limits which characters Disney can use for attractions.
Universal’s Islands of Adventure is home to Cafe 4, a quick-service eatery themed after the Fantastic Four. While they don’t have their own attraction or appear as characters in the land, the fact that Universal uses them means Disney World can’t.
That is, unless Disney and Universal were to come to terms and end the existing contract. There have even been rumors that Universal might be interested in doing exactly that, though it would probably involve Disney paying a chunk of money.
There’s probably another direction that Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland could go that would make it just as timeless, but also unique from Disneyland. Since Disney World has Tron: Lightcycle Run, perhaps something a bit more digital is the way to go there.
An Updated Tomorrowland Is Probably A Long Way Off
Between the laundry list of new attractions coming to Walt Disney World and the upcoming DisneylandForward project in California. The fact that none of it includes changes to Tomorrowland means it’s probably going to be a long time before anything happens there. And, when it does, it probably won’t be this.
Still, I can dream. When I’m watching the new Fantastic Four movie I expect I'll be wishing this was a place I could visit in a theme park. Maybe, if enough people feel the same way, this might have a chance of happening.
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