All language subtitles for The Imagineering Story s01e06_English

(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)

(ROARS)

(ROARING CONTINUES)

DORIS WOODWARD:
As experienced as our company is,

it's still always new, and it's still
not a hard and fast way of doing business.

We have to be dynamic,
and flexible, and adjust

because who knows what happens, right?

Each year, the economy,
and the environments,

and the people's interests
and desires change,

so, we have to do it at the same time.

(THEME MUSIC CONTINUES)

(MUSIC ENDS)

-MALE VOICE: Light him up.
-(VEHICLE REVVING)

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
-MALE VOICE: Perfect.

NARRATOR: Behind the magic
of every Disney theme park

lay mud, sweat, and fears.

After ten long years of negotiations
with the Chinese government,

Walt Disney Imagineering
received permission to build

their newest Magic Kingdom,
the Shanghai Disney Resort.

(VEHICLE WHIRRING)

DORIS: Here is the enchanted
storybook castle.

So, imagine seeing it and figuring out
how it all fits within that pad.

I'm sure, all of our designers
are out here going,

"How the heck is it gonna fit?" (CHUCKLES)
Because it's such a large castle.

NARRATOR: Initially 3.7 billion dollars,

this marked the largest ever
foreign investment made by Disney,

yet, they remained the minority owner.

The company navigated miles of red tape
and yielded its usual control.

The Imagineers faced pleasing
an unknown consumer.

From 60 years of past lessons learned,

the endeavor hinged on striking
the right balance

between Chinese heritage
and Disney tradition.

DORIS: One of our challenges
on this project

is, like anytime we go into a new market,

is really trying to teach
our culture, our history,

the Disney tradition, our heritage.
It's such a rich heritage.

It all started with one man,
one man with two daughters

that cared so much about their happiness,
sitting in a park wondering,

"How can I make this more fun
for more people?

"Not just me or my girls,
but for everybody."

And for him, to have that courage
and that vision to do that,

I think it's inspiring.

My roots is from Shanghai,
my family's from Shanghai,

my parents and my grandparents.

It was very cosmopolitan.

There were many, many cultures
that lived here.

My mom is full Chinese,
and my father is European.

I have in my blood the mix
between the East and the West.

In a way, it's sort of coming back home,

but it's a home that I don't know
as well anymore,

but I'm rediscovering it now
in a different light.

MURRAY KING:
This market faces the same issues

that Walt saw almost six decades ago.

Issues around safety, issues around show,
issues around quality.

Shanghai is retooling as a city to be
a city focused on the service industry.

And what Walt brought to America is
what I think we're doing for China today.

BOB IGER: We were announcing the deal

and I wanted to convey to the world

we're going to be extremely mindful
of entering China...

with a great deal of respect
for the people of China and its culture.

-(CROWD APPLAUDING)
-IGER: We were wordsmithing

the press release and I said,

"Well, how about 'Authentically Disney,
distinctly Chinese'?"

And it stuck.

IGER: This is a landmark occasion...

and it is a major step in our journey
to create a destination

that will be authentically Disney
and distinctly Chinese.

(CROWD APPLAUDING)

DORIS: I could see that there would be
challenges from the standpoint

of understanding the Chinese culture

and not taking
the stereotypical point-of-view.

As we started working
with our Chinese partners

and the information funneled down
to the team levels.

It was the bigger, the better, the wider,
the higher, the more unique,

the unusual, never been done before,

but yet it's a magic kingdom
like none other,

and that none other is the part
that we all kind of go around,

scratch our heads and go,
"What does that mean?"

NARRATOR: The Imagineers broke many
of the sacred design principles

established six decades ago.

They removed the Americana,
like the paddle wheeler,

the steam train,
and Main Street, U.S.A.,

inspired by Walt Disney's hometown
of Marceline, Missouri.

The Imagineers did keep
the overall layout of four lands

but altered the central hub.

DORIS: We actually turned it into a land
and called it the Gardens of Imagination.

Made it into a garden environment.

DORIS: This market is what we call
the 421, four grandparents,

two parents, and one child.

We need to appeal to all of them.

So, this garden was great

because it provided
a very simple enjoyment

while perhaps the older generation
stay behind

and hung out with the babies,
and enjoyed the carousel.

The Chinese workers,
they all want to do it,

but if they've never had the exposure

and the training that took,
for instance, for me,

from the time I started with Disney
in '79 to now,

I'm still learning. How can we expect them
to learn overnight?

So it requires that patience,
that learning curve,

and here we're hitting the dirt running.

(CEMENT SPLASHING)

FABRICE KENNEL:

(SCRAPES)

FABRICE:

DORIS: Hmm-mm.

DORIS: Mm-hmm.

FABRICE:

DORIS: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

And this texture...

(SPEAKING CHINESE)

FABRICE:

People in China build big,
it's a big country.

Scale is evident in the skyline.

The tallest buildings in the world
are here.

The distinctly Chinese aspect
of the iconic center of this resort

is the scale of the castle.

NARRATOR: The largest
of any Disney castle.

The Imagineers designed four stories
worth of interior walk-through spaces

including a grand rotunda
that resembled a cathedral.

ALI RUBENSTEIN:
It's a fairly harsh environment,

there's pollution, there's a lot of rain,

and there's a lot of dirt in the air.

Hopefully that's gonna get cleaned up
over the

(CHUCKLES) in the near future,
but for now, we know that we're gonna be

getting a lot of color-fading,
we're gonna get...

The castle's gonna get a little bit dirty,
so the color is gonna dull down.

So, we have to kind of account for all
that as we're addressing

color and finishes.

NARRATOR: For the eight castle finials,

the designers relied on a traditional
24-karat gold leaf technique

which doesn't tarnish.

One spire featured a decorative crown
representing the Disney princesses.

The tallest tower showcased
a lucky Chinese cultural symbol.

LEIA MI: (SPEAKING CHINESE)

(LEIA CHUCKLING)

-(CONTINUES SPEAKING)
-(WORKERS CHATTERING)

(MAN LAUGHING IN DISTANCE)

NARRATOR: Based on their research,
The Imagineers dropped Frontierland

in favor of the pirate-themed
Treasure Cove.

There would also be
no It's a Small World,

-(CROWD APPLAUDS)
-...no Jungle Cruise, no Haunted Mansion.

-If any classics were to remain...
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

they had to evolve.

BOB WEIS: I took a group of Chinese
visitors to Disneyland

and we went through
Pirates of The Caribbean, the original,

which we've all grown up with.

If you look at it
through the eyes of someone

who has no nostalgia for that,
who doesn't know anything about it...

they said, "Wow, this is slow and boring."
(CHUCKLES)

And they said, "I felt like I was
looking through little windows

"and the action was out there somewhere,
but I wasn't in it."

They wanna be in the ship battle,
not watching the ship battle.

LUC MAYRAND: Our attraction has some nods

-to the original Pirates of The Caribbean
-(SCREAMING)

-'cause that was the original inspiration,
-(GUNSHOTS)

but it's an extension,
it's a whole new story.

It's not a retelling of the movies.

(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING)

We wanted to tell the equivalent
of a ten-minute long movie

that is really three-dimensionally
happening around you.

You happen to be there
and you're part of it,

it acknowledges you sometimes,
it knows you are there,

and you're part of the story,
and there's no interruption.

NANCY SERUTO: When you say,
"I'm gonna seamlessly merge

"the physical world and the media world,"

all kinds of things come into play.

The media becomes an extension
of the physical world.

That perspective and that scale
all have to work together,

the lighting has to work together,
the color.

You don't want it to look
like a movie screen

at the end of the ships.

You're the center of the action,

so, if a cannonball is being fired
at the ride vehicle,

you want it to come right
at the ride vehicle,

and that has to intersect
before the ride vehicle, say, turns right.

NARRATOR: The Imagineers achieved
a controllable point-of-view

by untethering the boats
from the chain mechanism

of earlier versions.

Instead, programmable magnets
under the surface propelled the vehicles.

That gives us the ability
to turn the boats around.

They can go sideways, they can
go backwards, we can moderate the speed,

but we also simulate
the feeling of sinking.

(SCREAMS)

IGER: You're basically immersed
in a room that is an IMAX room.

-INTERVIEWER: Uh-huh.
-By the time you sink,

you look up
and there are fish swimming above you.

There's a lot of technology involved...

-INTERVIEWER: Hm-mmm.
-...but there's huge media in the space.

-(INDISTINCT CHATTERING)
-(MACHINES WHIRRING)

It's an Imagineering cultural thing
when you're on-site to build a new family.

In my lifetime, it's the first time
where the tools we have

matched the ambition of what we create.

We never did anything like Pirates before,

because we didn't have the right toolkit
to actually do it.

WEIS: Even we pride ourselves
in innovation.

When you're under pressure
it's easy to think conservative.

We should lift Space Mountain

because we know it,
we know how to build it,

we know how much it costs, it's popular,

and so surprisingly,
one of the great hurdles you have

-in a project like this is ourselves.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

Should we do Tron
or should we do a Space Mountain?

...in an all-new way.

SCOT: Welcome to Tomorrowland,
this is where the future is happening.

Currently, we're standing in front
of the Tron Lightcycle Power Run.

So, what you're seeing here
is just what we call the gravity box.

This is the inside portion
of the attraction.

-(MACHINE BEEPING)
-There's a large section of the track

that darts out into the land.

It's gonna be launched
at 60 miles an hour every 26 seconds,

and that's gonna be protected
by this big superstructure.

(MACHINES WHIRRING)

NARRATOR: Even though movies
from the Marvel Cinematic Universe

broke records in China,

The Imagineers opted to reboot
Tomorrowland with Tron,

a property they felt better reflected
the futuristic elegance

found in the metropolitan hub
of Shanghai.

(WHIRRING)

SCOT: You can't have a vision
of the future without really cool vehicles

and that's what we've been trying
to deliver.

The ride vehicle is always
a key storytelling device for us,

and that's why I'm so proud
of the Tron vehicle,

is 'cause we are reintroducing
how a roller coaster is looked at.

We have on-board lighting,
on-board audio,

it's really a character,
and you become a character

as part of this attraction.

(ENGINE REVVING)

SCOT: This is Disney's fastest coaster
we've ever built.

There's some dynamic architecture
in Shanghai

but nothing quite like this.

Trains of Light Cycles
surging through it, right?

So, this is dynamic architecture in form
and in function.

We talked a lot about the shape language
of this being...

like the tail of a dragon,

and the strength of those kinds
of Chinese imagery.

(PEOPLE SCREAMING)

SCOT: Everything is big,

all of our set pieces are big,
our signage is big.

Tron was always something that really
set a new bar for the aesthetics,

and how this sci-fi world could
and should look,

and we're redefining that,

but we've created a whole new style
for the grid that you're racing through.

(PEOPLE SCREAMING)

SCOT: I have two daughters here,
and a son that we're adopting here,

it's my goal for them to walk this,
and this,

what we're building is just the spark,
right?

What their imagination
fills in after that,

that's the true genius
of the original Disneyland,

when we would walk through Tomorrowland
as kids, and we saw that rocket,

we weren't seeing a fiberglass
and steel rocket,

we were seeing space travel,
and that's what we're trying to hint at,

the possibilities are endless,

and if we can inspire the next generation,

I can't wait to go
to the next Tomorrowland.

As Imagineers, we have to be
prepared to iris back and forth

between the big picture
and every little detail.

That means you're involved with dishes,

and furniture, and fabrics, and tiles,

and a myriad of detail
that you have to be able to master.

(SPEAKING CHINESE)

NARRATOR: Within the Gardens
of Imagination,

the Imagineers blended Disney characters

with the 12 animals
of the Chinese zodiac calendar.

The inclusion of the horoscope
honored its role in Chinese daily life.

Each mosaic mural would serve
as a playful photo op.

For me, it's like a kid in a candy shop,

I love looking at all of these tiles,
look how gorgeous this is.

This shows how they handle
a lot of their other jobs.

You can see, it's very pixelated.

It's truly a cut technique,

it's taking a tile factory made
or manufactured,

and then it's cut into shapes
so that it would fit

within the overall shape
that you need it to be.

If it's an eye,
then you have to create

all of the different fractions
and little pieces

that would create the pupil,
and all of the different colors within it,

and the eyelashes, and all of that.

It really becomes an expression of art

in another form, another technique,
another material.

This is you proverbial jigsaw puzzle.

These folks don't really follow it down
to the tee...

-(TILES CLATTERING)
-...because you really can't.

'Cause the way they cut their tile,
sometimes when it's cut,

it actually cuts the wrong way,
and they'll just work with it.

As you can see,
she's laying it down one by one.

It's a very laborious job.

This would give me high anxiety,
I think (CHUCKLES)

to try and find that piece.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

(SPEAKING CHINESE)

DORIS: Sometimes you get lost
in the details,

and you can't quite think about,

"Well, wait a minute,
what am I doing right now?"

So, you have to constantly remind them
of the big picture,

"Oh, this is one of the twelve,"

and it just made it
that much more special for them

because they put their heart into this,

and so it... You need to do that,
and you always have to remind yourself,

"What is it for in the long run?"

TOM MORRIS:
You can think of it as an heirloom.

It's something that is precious,
and it's gonna be

handed down from family to family,
except from millions of families

to millions of families.

In that regard,
it is like opening up a giant present.

There's like a big wrapped ribbon
with a fantastic bow

that is... They're tantalizing
our new audiences.

When we finally open the park,
it's like pulling that ribbon

and, you know, the ribbon comes apart,
and the paper comes apart,

and the park is there for the guest
for the first time.

HOWARD BROWN: We went up to Beijing
last month and asked the contractors

to support the project even more,
and they said, "Well, you know,

"in China we don't really know
how to run a marathon.

"But we really know how to sprint."

They know how to do
the last 90 days,

and when we talk about the rush to finish,

everybody's out there
in the sprint right now.

ALI: My team is going so strong.

They have been painting like fiends.

(DRUMS BEATING DRAMATICALLY)

This castle, a week ago,
was covered in scaffolding.

(DRUMS CONTINUING)

Level two, I think this is our
big hit zone

because we wanna knock down the red,

probably gonna have to hit more
like 80 percent of them to some extent.

Take out all the gray stones.
If we focus on lightening level two

and cooling down level four,

we're gonna have to dialed in
the majority of this castle.

IGER: We all shared the stress,
the eyes of the world were on this.

We've been there sixteen times
in six months.

I was completely strung out,
I had nothing left in the tank.

The pressure on us...

we had the board,
we had senior executives,

we had investors, we had the press.

We had to tour, wine and dine everybody,
we had the government.

(CHUCKLES) We had the Imagineering team
and the construction team.

And we had this thing that we had to open.

It was quite something.

(CROWD CHEERS, APPLAUDS)

DORIS: There's always a certain
sense of urgency

and it is urgency
because we're down to the wire,

and there's still so much left to do.

You go home at the end of the day
and go how are we going to do this?

But the next day comes,
you take a deep breath

and the show must go on
and you start again.

I am pretty philosophical
about stress... (SIGHS)

because we're not paramedics.

We're not rocket scientists,
we're not flying airplanes.

We're building happiness.

NARRATOR: Before a rare public meeting
with China's President,

Bob Iger learned that Xi Jinping's father,
a revolutionary leader,

had visited Disneyland in 1980.

Bob pressed his staff to find a photograph
and presented it to Xi

as an optimistic symbol
of their future partnership.

IGER: I could tell he got
very emotional about it,

and he didn't cry
but tears welled up in his eyes.

And he said to me at the time...

"My interest in Disney is not rhetoric,
it's from the bottom of my heart."

I had never heard a Chinese official
echo anything like that...

injecting your emotion into a discussion.
It was a big deal.

NARRATOR: After nearly 20 years
in the making

and a total cost of 5.5 billion dollars,

Disney's 12th theme park
opened its gates to the world.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

The Imagineers had planted Disney
roots deep into mainland China.

A model city stood as a symbol

-of patience and collaboration.
-(CROWD CHEERING)

LUC: When creating a project for China,

we found that faced with a challenge

to accomplish something,
especially something creative,

people rally around it.
People want to do it. They're excited.

When you come to know other human beings

through the lens of working together
every single day,

it's very enriching.

NGAKWAN CHAN:

To all who come to this happy place...

Welcome.

Disneyland is your land.

Shanghai Disneyland is your land.

Here age relives
fond memories of the past.

And here youth may savor the challenge
and promise of the future.

Here you leave today
and discover imaginative worlds

of fantasy, romance, and adventure

that ignite the magical dreams
within all of us.

WALT DISNEY: Disneyland is dedicated
to the ideals, the dreams,

and hard facts that have created America.

IGER: Shanghai Disneyland
is authentically Disney

and distinctly Chinese.

It was created for everyone.

With the hope that it will be
a source of joy and inspiration

...for generations to come.

-Thank you.
-(IN CHINESE) Xiexie.

That was the highest high
that I've had in this job.

INTERVIEWER:

(CHUCKLES) To Disneyland.

Of course, now that I've done this,
I go to Disneyland.

(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

NARRATOR: During the first year
of operation,

over 11 million people

passed through the front gate
of Shanghai Disneyland,

exceeding all expectation.

Like the original Disneyland,
the gamble paid off.

The synthesis of Chinese
and Disney elements

created an experience greater
than the sum of its parts.

NANCY: When you go to a different culture,
and you live in a different country,

and you work differently,
it changes you.

It changes you forever.
You don't just go back.

This idea of Yin and Yang

that I kept thinking
about when I was there.

I keep saying yin and yang,
this is yin and yang,

and then I looked it up
because I really wanted

to understand what the heart of that was.

And the heart of it isn't just about two
different things coming together,

it's about the fundamental change
in both that happens

as a result of them coming together.

I think that was our experience there.

I think that philosophy
very much captures it.

The idea is, if they tear that thing...

WEIS: As I think back on Shanghai,
what we've learned is

that it's harder for people to come back
than it is to go.

You go, you're excited,

new life, new place,
project, all that stuff.

But then you've been away
for five or six years,

and look around at this great people.

What are they gonna come home to?
What's their next big thing?

And how do we make sure
that they come home to a company

that understands their contribution
and how we leverage

this international experience
we've had in Asia.

It's always tough,
it's always got to evolve.

The challenges are gonna change.

And our job is to constantly
refresh that engine.

NARRATOR: After spending six years
in China,

Bob Weis came home to a promotion.

From a young coordinator in Tokyo.
to the creative lead in Shanghai

nearly a four decade-long journey.

Bob was appointed the new President
of Walt Disney Imagineering.

He inherited a huge menu of work
already in progress.

Empathetic to the pressures
on creative minds,

Bob focused his energy
on keeping the teams motivated...

even the veterans.

INTERVIEWER:

Interestingly, yes, I do get assigned
to projects I am not excited about...

but my job is to figure out

what it is about that project
that is exciting.

For example, I did not have
a clear way of understanding

how Avatar was even possible to do.

People love the movie, but is it feasible?
Can we do it?

It's all organic,
so there's no repeating forms.

That means everything
has to independently engineered,

so there's no economy of scale.

Everything is gigantic.

It's a tremendous investment of time.

You have a world
where things float in the air,

which looks great in a CGI film,

but I do not know how that could
ever be done in the physical world.

The key characters are 12 feet tall
and really skinny.

They're not gonna fit
inside of a human costume.

What about this is a smart idea?

But then I get it.

Avatar is about the intrinsic value
of nature,

Avatar is about a personal call to action.

So, it fits really neatly
into the mythology of Animal Kingdom

even though
it's a science fiction adventure.

JON LANDAU: The Imagineers
were very apprehensive at first

about working in a partnership.

It took time to get that trust,
to get that relationship,

but the door was always open to us.

Joe and Jim hit if off
because I think they both realized

the importance of creating content
that has a theme.

The experience of the ride itself,
the wows of it,

is what you leave at the theme park.

The theme of the ride,

the theme of the land
is what you leave a park with.

JAMES CAMERON: Joe is just a ball of fire
which was, you know, match made in heaven.

Joe Rohde really understood Avatar.

He really understood
what we were trying to do.

He distilled the very best messaging
from the movie,

and he put it into the fabric of the land.

LISA GIROLAMI: We can envision something,

but you don't really know
if it's gonna go over well.

That was the biggest unknown for me.

The movie had come out
quite a while before.

Were people really gonna
wanna hang out on Pandora?

Were they really gonna wanna,
you know, wonder around

and kind of experience that whole land?

I was a little nervous about,
"Would this be enough?"

JOE: We took about a year in engineering

to develop the structures
of these mountains

which I wanna make clear

does not include
these giant aluminum poles.

What we did was to take
the structural steel

and redesign the structural steel,

so that it appears to be nothing
but limp, draped vines.

It's these little skinny vines
that are holding up the mountain.

But your mind's eye
won't let you believe that.

It's like a classic magician's trick.

ZSOLT HORMAY: Throughout the design,
we really wanted to make sure

that the guest will not connect

this structure is supporting
those mountains

and the other structure
is doing the same thing.

So, what we did, we actually
pushed them apart from each other,

so when you look at it,

visually you just don't connect
that it's an arch.

JOE: It looks like confusion, but every
piece is designed, placed, engineered,

that's what's amazing about it.
Every piece.

LANDAU: Those trees play great,
it's far enough away from me.

I'm not sure...
You know, here, I worry...

-MAN: Too close.
-Too close.

ZSOLT: You think it's...
They're too big or...

They play as plants to me
and not as far away.

The challenge is to force
the perspective vertically

and into the distance too,
so it's a tricky one.

ZSOLT: Normally,
we have hero shots point of views.

On this project,
everything is a hero shot,

you know, that so, we have
to pay attention to everything,

360 degrees, all the way around.

JOE: One of the most important things

that the Avatar Project is doing
for animal kingdom

is bringing animal kingdom into the night.

The world of Avatar glows.

It comes to life.
It's full of bioluminescence.

So, we have bioluminescence
spread throughout the land.

All of those plants are actually
electric lighting fixtures.

They all light up at night.

They are all connected
to a centralized show control system,

so not only can we make them light up,

we can send waves of illumination
through all of the plants in the land.

And then these mountains
are projected onto

with mapped projections that covers
the mountains in bioluminescence.

So, you see these sort of
waves of luminescence

crossing through
the mountains themselves at night.

It should be really neat.

NARRATOR: The Imagineers invented dozens
of bioluminescent plant species

and mixed them with the natural flora.

Throughout the darkened
Na'vi River journey,

the designers hoped to induce an emotion
rarely felt in a theme park...

serenity.

JOE: This all the R&D area.

Behind all of these curtains
are different projects going on.

This is the cutting edge
of the technology of Imagineering.

And in our case, this incredible figure.

I can't even say that it represents
a next step.

It's really like a completely
new animation technology.

Traditionally with animatronics,

we sculpt an expression
into the character

because they just don't have that much
range of motion in their faces.

We wanted a character
that could express emotion.

At some level, it's a matter of creating
enough movements inside the face

that you can actually reproduce
what people or creatures can actually do.

AKHIL: One of the technologies
that's allowed us to do that

is to move completely towards
electric motors and electric actuators.

Now, we can get motors that are
the size of my little finger

that 30 years ago would have been
the size of my hand, right?

And it allows us to place them
inside the face.

So, a face like this has 42 different
electric motors inside of it.

And each one of these motors
is controllable very accurately

to within a fracture
of a degree of rotation.

If the skin thickness is wrong,
if the sculpt is wrong,

if the placement of the motors is wrong,

or if where you move them is wrong,
it very quickly goes to,

"This is creepy,
it's deforming in the wrong way,

"and it doesn't look realistic."

JAMES: We were able to plug in,
almost as a module,

our way of capturing motion
and performance

that we had used to make the movie

became the front end
for the programming of The Shaman.

So, it actually represents real, human,
instinctive movement

that's now being manifested through
an incredibly complex machine.

LINCOLN: We all declare for liberty...

but in using the same word...

JAMES: I remember when Lincoln
blew my mind, and that would have been,

what, in the mid '60s?

When you think about how crude
that figure is now

in terms of number of actuators,
number of axes of motion,

subtleties of movement.

But to see something right in front of you

that's undeniably real
and appears to be alive

and can't possibly be real

because she's ten feet tall
and she's got three fingers

and she's got the widely spaced eyes
and giant eyes of the Na'vi,

-and yet she's real.
-(NA'VI SONG PLAYING)

I look forward to seeing you on Pandora.

(SPEAKS NA'VI LANGUAGE)

Was that okay?

NARRATOR: For the premier attraction,

the Imagineers attempted to recreate
Soarin', over Pandora.

The feeling of flight
seemed elusive enough

but this ride system had to move
and breathe like a living creature.

Performance capture is a way
to translate human actions,

human performance
into a digital character.

AMY JUPITER: We were able to sort of
put banshees on a stick

and have our designers
go and act out, perform,

puppeteer the flight of the banshees.
And that provided our first ride profile.

This expression of joy,
and ballet, and dance.

The technology enabled us to,
in a very intuitive way,

-capture that spirit.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

JOE: We were riding that ride
at a pretty rudimentary scale

when all of us kind of have this joyful,
weepy sensation

at the beginning of the third act.

We're flying through,
like, computer graphics.

Like, what is this feeling?

How do we make that better?
How do we feed this?

What do we take out?
What do we put in?

And so, you could go in
and do this strange, dream-like

level of correlation that pushes it
to another level of experience.

But you found that.
You didn't know it was there.

You found that.

JAMES: I felt early on that it was too
rough, that the ride was too rough,

that it was trying to compete
with hardcore iron rides

and hardcore simulator rides
for an adrenaline rush.

And so, I asked them to back off on that.
I think we met in the middle.

I felt that the visual experience of it,
with the big dome screen

and the high-resolution projection
and the super bright projection of the 3D,

would be so compelling

that you wouldn't wanna
just get pounded through it.

You'd wanna take it in and enjoy it.

(AVATAR THEME MUSIC PLAYING)

(CHEERING)

NARRATOR: All of the analysis,
calculation, and technology receded,

the emotion remained.

Avatar Flight of Passage took guests
to a world of pure exhilaration.

(SPEAKING NA'VI)

NARRATOR: On the same weekend,
Pandora: The World of Avatar opened,

another science fiction universe debuted
on the opposite coast

-to equal anticipation.
-(CROWD CHEERING)

NARRATOR: Disney California Adventure
had no room for expansion.

When operators first asked
the Imagineers to re-theme

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
with a Marvel footprint

some fans voiced outright disapproval.
Others called it

a millennial pop culture marketing ploy.

But the Imagineers confronted
the directive,

"Use valuable characters, make it current,
keep the same box."

JOE: It's amazing how much
flat scenic painting works,

when we get above this line.

-You can paint almost anything...
-Right.

...and get people to believe it.

It's a hundred and fifty feet away
from our viewer.

You know,
when you look up at the building now,

-there's this big Art Deco zigzag thing?
-Yeah.

-That's painting.

That's flat. You'd never know it was flat.

We have a machine.
It only does one thing.

It goes up and down.
That's all it does.

It won't do anything else.
We can't change it.

We can't rebuild it.
All we can do reprogram it.

AMY: It was a little terrifying
and daunting because it was so beloved.

And we just wanted to understand,
what is the essence of that attraction.

The essence of going up and down,
the essence of it.

How much motion can we get out this?
How much emotion can we get out of it?

So, we wanted to make it a giggle machine,
the Guardians are funny.

So, like, what is the motion
in that attraction that is funny?

Well, God, tummy ticklers are funny.
All up and down is funny.

Surprise is funny.

(UPBEAT ROCK MUSIC PLAYING)

Tower of Terror is modeled to produce
a sensation of fear.

It's a scary ride. This is not scary.

This is an irreverent ride.

So, we need to change the emotional
feeling of the ride

to favor a kind of floating sensation.

You know, when you take the baby
and you throw them up in the air

and you catch them, you throw them
up in the air and you catch them,

and they giggle, right?

'Cause it's a fun feeling to be
tossed up in the air and caught again.

So, the little baby is giggling
'cause of that feeling. That feeling.

The filmmakers shot the live actors
with a vertical array of seven cameras

which allowed the ride engineers
to seamlessly match the perspective

with the physical motion of the vehicle.

The script writers harness
the irreverent nature of the characters

to further fine-tune that feeling of fun.

-ALL: One, two... Yeah!
-JOE: These are hard things to measure.

The micro adjustments is where the emotion
is and why people feel the emotion.

The stuff has no emotion in it
until you load it,

and you load it by making these
very careful decisions.

(GRUNTS)

(LAUGHS) You're welcome.

(LAUGHS)

When you're directing for a ride,
people are in a much different state

than they are when they come in
and see a movie.

When they come in and see a movie,
they're mellow, they're listening,

they're excited to be there
but they're listening.

In a ride, people are so amped up
and so crazy,

you really need to move fast,
you need to pound it home.

Everything's a little bit bigger.

Everything's a little bit more grand
than it is in the movies.

-And the actors reflect that.
-(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

Ladies and gentlemen,
the Tivan Collection is official open.

(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

-ROCKET: Rocket unplugs you...
-(WIRE STATICS)

-...and start things rocking.
-(WIRE STATICS)

NARRATOR: Guardians of the Galaxy:
Mission Breakout! won over many critics.

It also served as a prelude
to the grand Imagineering plans

yet to come.

Plans that included three separate
but interconnected superhero lands

spread across the globe.

But until then, the promise of a galaxy
far away

grabbed the public's attention.

("STAR WARS: MAIN TITLE" PLAYING)

SCOTT TROWBRIDGE: When we announced that

Lucasfilm is gonna become part
of the Disney family,

all of Imagineering was abuzz with,

"Oh, my gosh, now we can go big."

But also, it went from, "Oh, my gosh,
look at all things we can do,"

to, "Oh, my gosh, we better
get this right," pretty quickly.

MALE VOICE:
The ambition level was going to be high.

You can see that this was going to be
built both in Orlando and in Anaheim.

But, at that point,
it was quite malleable.

It was a ball of clay to be shaped.

NARRATOR: From one rabid
fan base to the next,

the Imagineers wrestled with what to build
and from which movie.

They debated whether the guest should be
treated as a witness or participant.

Against conventional wisdom,
the Imagineers opted to conceive

somewhere entirely new.

This way, each guest could follow
their own immersive heroes' journey.

KATHLEEN KENNEDY:
I don't think there's any more

innovative team than the Imagineers.

Just that name alone is something
that immediately conjures up excitement.

When you start thinking
about what's possible

in terms of immersive entertainment,

it's often the way you think about making
a movie when you're translating a book.

You look at the book and you think,

"I'm not gonna do a literal translation
of that.

"I'm gonna try to find out what feeling

"are they actually taking away
from the experience?"

DOUG CHIANG: It's an interesting
transition to design for theme parks.

It's a whole another level
of thoroughness.

Sometimes, you know, I would insist

on having something look a certain way
because it was very authentic Star Wars,

but it broke all the rules
in terms of what they had to do.

And so, we had to find a happy medium.

And by working together as one team,
we were able to bridge those gaps.

NARRATOR: The Imagineers spent
months digging

through old paintings of Ralph McQuarrie,

the concept artist
on the original Star Wars film.

They assembled a patchwork
quilt of sketches

that helped define the shapes, colors,
and landscape of Planet Batuu.

It's really important to find
that one ingredient

that actually defines what that planet is.

For instance, Endor is a forest planet,
and Hoth is a snow planet,

you know, Tatooine is a desert planet,
Batuu is a petrified spired planet.

We're creating a new world
that represents

our largest single-themed
land expansion ever.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS, CHEERS)

The image comes up
Bob gives the announcement,

and the place erupts.
I mean, it goes crazy.

We were backstage and we were,
like, high fiving each other... (CHUCKLES)

hugging each other,
mostly out of relief.

SCOTT: One of our core guiding principles
from day one...

was to build a place that felt authentic.

Everything from the buildings we build
to the wardrobe that the cast members wear

to the merchandise in the stores
to the food in the shops.

If you wouldn't see something in a film,
you shouldn’t see it in this land.

(MACHINE WHIRRING)

CHRIS:
We wanted this land to feel mysterious,

and we wanted it to feel
a little bit dangerous.

And we wanted it to have a sense
of history.

I remember standing
in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.

It's incredible to actually
close your eyes,

stand in the middle of the bazaar,

and you hear the shopkeepers
yelling at each other.

-(CALL TO PRAYER)
-You hear the call to prayer.

You hear all these different people
speaking different languages pass by.

And you can smell the Turkish coffee.

And you can smell the wet stone
'cause it's been raining that morning,

and the stone just has a smell to it.

The ground you're walking on,
those cobbles have been walked on

for a thousand years.

If you close your eyes,
you could be in a Star Wars film, right?

You could be on the planet Batuu,
You could be on Black Spire Outpost.

It gave us so much more
than just the visual look of this planet.

DOUG: This is gonna be
an unguided journey.

The guest will be able to roam,
go wherever they want.

They'll be able to smell, you know,
the fragrances that we're gonna create.

They're gonna be to touch
materials and fabrics.

They're gonna basically live this place
as if it's real because it is real.

CHRIS: We always bring a sense of play

and a sense of discovery
to everything we design.

I remember building play sets
in my backyard

and having my figures
have these epic battles

and, you know, TIE fighters coming in
and X-wings battling.

And now as an Imagineer,
I can imagine being that ten-year old kid

with his action figures in the backyard.
It's just on a scale that's full size...

(CHUCKLES) ...you know, and epic.

MALE VOICE: Yeah, we can come back in
and slush...

CHRIS: What we love as storytellers
is not showing you everything at one time.

What we like to do is come in,
give you a little taste of it.

Give you a moment where you're like,
"Oh, my God. We just arrived.

"Look at this building. This is
the Droid shop. This is incredible."

And then as you turn the corner,
we open this amazing view up to you.

-(MACHINE BEEPING)
-Almost like a cinematic reveal.

And we're excited
because this isn't the only one.

Every time, you turn a corner,
we paint one of these reveals for you.

We're always pulling you through the scene
to a destination

you just haven't seen yet.

(DRILLING)

When you think about Star Wars,
it's not a high-tech galaxy.

Most of the stuff,
the screens and all that,

are never anything
after the '70s and '80s.

So, there's a particular look
of the propping to make it look Star Wars.

NARRATOR: A band of Imagineer scavengers
rummaged through airplane graveyards,

flea markets and ministries of defense,
gathering parts to recycle.

(CLATTERING)

(MACHINE REVVING)

NARRATOR: In a secret Orlando warehouse,
the small team constructed thousands

of custom props to decorate the planet.

The Imagineers thought of one
hunk of junk as the main character

and the land's central icon.

What a piece of junk.

(STAR WARS MUSIC PLAYING)

Every time we said, "Look,
we're gonna do something Star Wars,"

people said, "Oh, I wanna fly
on the Millennium Falcon."

NARRATOR: Where the Millennium Falcon:
Smugglers Run, the Imagineers partnered

with game engine software developers
to create an interactive adventure

light years beyond a videogame
played from a couch.

We knew we needed this to be
near cinematic quality imagery

rendered at a high frame rate
in real time.

That was not technology that exists.

We started marching down that path
with the expectation

that by the time
we were getting ready to open,

it would all work. We didn't know.

Months before opening, it doesn't work.

It almost works.

It has almost worked for a very long time.

As we start to fix these bugs,
connect this piece of technology

with this piece of the technology,
figure out why this impediment is there.

But that's what life is like,

when you're working
on the cutting edge of technology.

You're treading in territory
that no one's been in before,

yet we're counting on this

all working flawlessly
and seamlessly on opening day.

That can keep you up at night.

I can tell you,
we've solved those problems.

-INTERVIEWER:
-Yes. Almost. (CHUCKLES)

Almost.

NARRATOR: The design team faced
another dilemma.

Deliver a personal experience
to an individual flight crew,

yet accommodate 1,800 guests per hour.

After a month of puzzle solving,
they devised a massive

three-dimensional Swiss watch mechanism

that contained four turntables
with seven cockpits each,

all hidden from the guests.

ROBIN REARDON: Often times,
I find myself as the translator,

where you're trying to translate
this crazy vision of what we're gonna do

to the operator who's never heard it
before and the...

the park operator is going,
"You wanna do... you wanna do what?"

It's like, "No, no, no.
It's not gonna be that bad."

-(MACHINE BEEPING)
-(ENGINE REVVING)

ROBIN: This was a huge win
for all of us...

but Rise of the Resistance
has always been the critical path.

STEVE DAVISON: I don't know if you've
ever walked through the hallways

of a Star Destroyer before.

At least, a Star Destroyer
that's under construction.

NARRATOR: Designed as a 15-minute-long
immersive experience,

Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance

earned the distinction
of the most complicated attraction

the Imagineers have ever created.

The main storyline revolved around guests
being captured aboard an enemy ship

and attempting to escape.

This scene, we find ourselves
actually coming face to face

with this amazing
armored transport vehicles.

We know what laser bolts looked like.
We know what spaceships look like.

And it's movie special effects.

-(LASER ZAPS)
-And so for us to actually recreate

those CG-style effects
but do it for real, in the real world,

requires us to bring a whole bunch
of technologies together

and kind of create
these amazing technology sandwiches.

In this scene,
lasers are a big part of that.

And so what these folks
are doing right now

is actually calibrating
and programming those lasers

as part of the special effects
that'll happen inside this scene.

Outside these windows,
we see the battle is raging.

And these giant blasters are just...
(IMITATES LASER BEAMS)

...and we have to kind of cat and mouse
our way through them to get to safety.

NARRATOR: The Imagineers
combined dimensional sets,

audio animatronics,
and media on an epic scale,

which require precision timing.

Over the course of four years,
the designers pre-programmed

and pre-visualized every element
across 18 different scenes.

STEVE: You don't know how it's gonna feel
until you start seeing it for real

in the site.
And you just saw it, like, for the...

-...first time.
-First time.

Yeah. For the first time. So?

-And...
-It's a good place to start.

-It's a good place to start.
-So...

MALE VOICE: Containment breach.
Closing blast doors.

-There's no escape.
-(MACHINE WHIRRING, BEEPING)

You will tell me the location
of the secret base,

and then I will destroy you
and the Resistance.

JOHN: So, right now you can see
sight lines are a little...

He was a little too far to his right
when he looks over here.

And as well, I'm gonna destroy you
and the Resistance

-and I'm waiting for it.
-Right, right.

So we have to add the rest of Kylo's line
in there, "Once and for..."

-(IMITATES EXPLOSION) ...like that.
-Yeah.

SCOTT: Some of the things we were thinking
for Rise of the Resistance were

"How do we explore a Star Destroyer?"

A trackless ride vehicle
like Ratatouille or Mystic Manor

where you don't see the obvious track

and you can... and...
and your vehicle's making choices,

and you don't know
which direction you're gonna go,

felt like right answer,

but we also knew that we needed
a bit more thrill

and a bit more visceral thrill.

So we came up with the idea of
"What if we take

"that trackless ride vehicle
and what if we mount it to

"a motion-based experience
like Star Tours?"

It's not just about zipping through
this Star Destroyer

but it's a moment of kind of like
being very, very active

in a simulated motion environment.

But then we said, "Okay, let's take
that trackless ride vehicle,

"let's put it on that motion-base,

"and then let's take
that whole motion-base

"and attach it to free fall drop tour."

That is a crazy idea but that was
the best way to bring Star Wars to life.

ROBIN: The secret sauce of Imagineering
is instead of building complex

power plants or roads or movies
or special effects,

you're doing all of those things at once.

And that puts a different perspective
on each one of those jobs.

And when you put them together,
it is the combination of those voices

and those points of view
that allow us to build this.

IGER: Ladies and gentlemen,
George Lucas.

I'll first say, you did a great job.

IGER: Thank you very much.
Coming from you, that means a lot.

-Well, it could have gone very bad.
-(ALL LAUGHING)

I'd also like to thank
all the Imagineers

that made this thing possible
'cause it's really something

that couldn't even dream about
20 years ago.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge is now open.

-ALL: Three, two, one.
-(CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

NARRATOR: With the opening
Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge,

the Imagineers created a new
kind of experience.

Boundaries blurred between what's
an attraction and what's not.

On the verge of the next frontier,
they aspired to design every aspect

of an environment,

one where the guest steps into a living
theater and plays make believe.

MALE VOICE: Checking status.

Uh, all the servers are fine.
Voltages are good.

Temperature is fine.

-Prelaunch position.
-Here we go.

I suspect a lot of places
around the world have robotics labs.

And we think of this
as our characters' lab.

JON SNODDY: You know, when you look
at the latest characters

from Star Wars,
from Marvel...

those characters
are not planted to the floor.

Those characters are
not connected to the ground.

Those characters move.
(CHUCKLES) They're exciting.

They do big crazy things. And I feel
like it's the same kind of thing

that kicked it all off with Walt back,
you know, all those years ago.

That thing of saying,
"I wanna build something extraordinary.

"I want people to walk in and go,

"'Oh, my goodness, I...
where did that come from?'"

MALE VOICE: Ten, nine, eight,

seven, six, five, four,

three, two, one. Go!

-That's a beautiful one.
-(MAN LAUGHING)

Awesome.

-I'm glad you hit a bird.
-(LAUGHS)

-I never get tired of that, my friend.
-(LAUGHING CONTINUE)

That's great.

SNODDY: The same people that dream this up
are still dreaming. (CHUCKLES)

And that just goes on and on and on.

The next decade,
it's gonna be pretty amazing.

I think it's gonna be truly revolutionary

in what we're able to deliver
to the parks.

NARRATOR: With every breakthrough
discovery, past and present,

comes a relaxed tendency toward
maintaining something proven to work.

As the saying goes,
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

But there lies today's threat.

The next generation of Imagineers
must continue that innovative spirit.

Exhibit the sheer desire
to obsolete themselves and advance.

Blue sky is not the limit.

I often kind of fantasize
when I'm driving home about,

"What's Imagineering gonna be
a hundred years from now?

"What are the parks gonna be like?
Where are the parks gonna be?

"What's Disneyland gonna be,
and what's still gonna be there?"

It's kind of fun to think about that.

MARTY SKLAR: It's a philosophy.

It's an ethic that Walt brought
to doing these parks.

His attitude about the public,
it was never putting down people.

It was always about meeting the needs
of people as he saw them.

DORIS: I've been with this company 26,
almost 27 years now.

And I view this company as my family.

To carry that sort of aspiration

about what it is that we do
and engage that into other people

and inspire them,
I think that's the greatest gift.

JOE: People want to participate.
They want to belong.

Human beings are emotional first.

You have to find their emotions.

That's what runs this thing, emotions.

You have to let yourself feel emotion
in order to do this work.

NARRATOR: For nearly 70 years,
the Imagineers cultivated an idea

from the mind of the one man
into a global phenomenon

of 12 theme parks and counting.

The balancing act continues
between cultural influence

and the constant stream
of new characters and stories.

An Imagineers' work
will never be completed

as long as their imagination
keeps asking the question...

"What if?"