Will there ever come a day when Walter Elias Disney no longer motivates The Walt Disney Company?
Nearly 60 years after his death in 1966, that day has not arrived yet, at least not in Disney’s theme parks. Witness the new show coming to Disneyland this summer, “Walt Disney — A Magical Life.” The production will share the “Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln” stage and star Walt himself, in Audio-Animatronic form. To create that mechanical vision of the company’s founder and guiding spirit, Disney’s Imagineers not only had to dive deep into getting to know Walt, but they also needed to perfect the technology that he innovated.
“We’re building on the shoulders of those who created figures before us and trying to tackle things that have been problematic in the past,” Walt Disney Imagineering Senior Creative Executive Tom Fitzgerald said during a press preview last week. “There are so many what we call moon shots that are associated with this figure that will now become a part of what we do going forward with every other figure.”
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Disney did not show the actual Walt animatronic during its press preview last week. But Imagineers did invite us to walk up to the sculpt of Walt that they created to provide the exterior look of the animatronic. We could get as close as we liked, leaning in to inspect Walt’s face, hands and iconic grey suit.
It all really did seem even more lifelike the closer you get to it, which might be a first in animatronic technology. Imagineers voiced confidence that the moving figure will impress audiences, as well.
“Our teams have taken artistry and technology and really pushed the boundaries of all of those things to bring the most lifelike creation and presentation that we could do,” Fitzgerald said.
It’s not without controversy, however. Walt’s granddaughter Joanna Miller has objected in public to this project, saying that Walt never wanted to be portrayed as an animatronic.
Whether Walt wanted that or not strikes me as irrelevant. As soon as Walt commissioned an animatronic of Abraham Lincoln, a real-life person, he forfeited a moral argument against someone else making an animatronic of him. You reap what you sow. At least Walt is getting the latest and greatest in his company’s animatronic technology, handled by a team that has demonstrated reverence for his legacy.
“I think the notion of bringing Walt into the show was something that we had to wait for the technology to get to the point where we could do it to the level we wanted to, to give the respect to it and have the complexity that we need to bring it to life,” Fitzgerald said.
Now, if Walt had wished that his successors would find a better subject for a story than him, perhaps that is fair criticism. But people tell the stories they love. Walt wanted to bring Abe Lincoln to life out of his love for him. It seems that many Imagineers are called to bring Walt Disney back to Disneyland for the same reason.