Darkbeer
02-12-2006, 05:56 AM
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...l=la-home-oped (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-disney12feb12,0,6432909.story?coll=la-home-oped)
QuikQuote: That particular tableau found its way to the big screen in the first "Pirates" movie, serving as a not-so-inside joke, one of those increasingly rare cultural references that almost everybody understands and finds inoffensive. Which is what's so appealing about the Pirates ride: its rickety, old-fashioned sense of humor, its G-rated, family friendly take on some pretty brutal subject matter — the pillaging of a colonial seaport — and its refusal to acknowledge the rapidly changing world outside its caverns. Knowing that the ride was the last to be supervised by Walt Disney adds still more texture to its anachronistic charm.
The ride will certainly continue to thrill, or at least amuse, when Johnny Depp joins the cast. But makeup and dreadlocks aside, Jack Sparrow's face is easily identified as that of a modern movie star. Among the swarthy animatronic commoners, Depp's mug will collapse the decades of history that would have reminded riders of why exactly Pirates — however hokey and out of date — was evocative enough to win stamps of approval from both Walt Disney himself and modern-day moviegoers.
QuikQuote: That particular tableau found its way to the big screen in the first "Pirates" movie, serving as a not-so-inside joke, one of those increasingly rare cultural references that almost everybody understands and finds inoffensive. Which is what's so appealing about the Pirates ride: its rickety, old-fashioned sense of humor, its G-rated, family friendly take on some pretty brutal subject matter — the pillaging of a colonial seaport — and its refusal to acknowledge the rapidly changing world outside its caverns. Knowing that the ride was the last to be supervised by Walt Disney adds still more texture to its anachronistic charm.
The ride will certainly continue to thrill, or at least amuse, when Johnny Depp joins the cast. But makeup and dreadlocks aside, Jack Sparrow's face is easily identified as that of a modern movie star. Among the swarthy animatronic commoners, Depp's mug will collapse the decades of history that would have reminded riders of why exactly Pirates — however hokey and out of date — was evocative enough to win stamps of approval from both Walt Disney himself and modern-day moviegoers.