Everyone knows Disney has been planning something big, really big, for WonderCon this weekend. The assumption has been that they’re doing another Tron: Legacy viral promotion, but tonight when WonderCon opened its doors in San Francisco for a secret, invite-only preview night; they unveiled something foolish. Disney just announced that they’ve begun work on a big screen version of the legendary Michael Jackson 3D short film, Captain EO, with Eddie Murphy in the title role.

The original Michael Jackson short was shown only in Disney parks and utilized 3D in a way that, at the time, was groundbreaking. Now, with 3D all the rage, it only makes sense that Disney would resurrect their groundbreaking 3D franchise and take it out of the parks and onto the big screen.
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Disney is planning big things to celebrate the release of Tron: Legacy, and we’re not just talking dead-end scavenger hunts. For starters, they’re redoing the Disney parks Tron style.

They’re transforming their monorails into Tron monorails. How will that look? Like this:

The transformed trains will be visible on the Epcot monorail line as early as this month. And if you look close, you’ll notice that the design of the futuristic motorcycle-like vehicles from the upcoming film Tron: Legacy also includes walls of trailing colored light.

Disney is bringing Michael Jackson’s 3D sci-fi movie back to life. The film, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and co-written by George Lucas, ran at Disney’s parks in the 80s. It starred Michael as the captain of a ragtag spaceship crew who, of course, eventually ends up fighting bad guys with music.

Here’s Disney’s announcement:

On Tuesday, February 23, as a tribute to the magic, music and messages of “Captain EO,” the 3-D musical adventure is returning to the Tomorrowland theater in which it debuted. While it’s not possible to replicate some special effects elements from the original presentation, it will boast a new 70mm print of the film, and it will sound better than ever thanks to acoustic enhancements made to the theater since the film last played there in 1997.

Only less than 24 hours after debuting the movie and it’s title at the San Diego Comic Con, Disney has released the first ever teaser trailer for Tron: Legacy online in beautiful, glorious high-def. This is actually the teaser trailer which debuted at Comic Con in 08, but which never actually made it online. It’s been adapted to be the film’s first teaser trailer, and it’s every bit as eye-popping and unbelievable as you may have heard.

Watch it after the jump. read this entry »

Willem DaFoe was born to play an alien. So it’s good news that he’s been cast as one of the leading alien roles in Disney/Pixar’s upcoming adaptation of John Carter of Mars. According to Variety he’ll play Tars Tarkas, a fierce, green skinned Martian warrior.

In Edger Rice Burroughs original “John Carter” universe, Mars is populated by two distinct races. One, human in appearance, represents civilization. The other, more alien looking and green skinned is a race of barbarians. John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) befriends leaders both groups and leads them into battle. In fact, Tars Tarkas is the first Martian John encounters and he quickly becomes John’s chief companion. He’s present in all the books, at Carter’s side. That should mean plenty of DaFoe, and really you can’t go wrong with that.

Wall-E scraped together approximately $63 million in its opening weekend to take the number one spot at last weekend’s box office. The $63 million made Wall-E the third highest opening weekend ever for a Pixar film just after The Incredibles and Finding Nemo. So far, Wall-E is garnering universal praise from the likes of Cinema Blend, Rolling Stone, an, hell, even the Wall Street Journal loved it. High praise indeed! With the five day long Independence Day weekend beginning today, expect Wall-E to take in an additional $60 million by Sunday evening.

At first glance, WALL-E is a complicated science fiction tale, set against a grand post-apocalyptic backdrop. But it’s an illusion. More than any other recent film by the geniuses at Pixar it’s a kids’ movie, maybe their most simplistic and accessible yet. If WALL-E were a book, it’d be in the children’s department emblazoned with a title like “My First Science Fiction Story” and there would probably be a page for coloring somewhere before the back cover. They’ve taken a fairly ambitious sci fi concept and made it the perfect window for kids into a broader world of imagination and perhaps even activism. Does it have some appeal for adults? Sure. It’s still smart sci fi, just told in the most straightforward, easy to understand way possible. They’re happy to have you in the theater, but mostly they want your 8-year-old son or daughter. So maybe for adults there aren’t a lot of surprises, but that doesn’t mean you won’t revel in the Pixar-perfect execution of another story well told.

It happens in a far off future where mankind has turned Earth into a trash dump. I mean that literally. There’s no attempt at a complicated explanation for how our planet got screwed up. Basically we ruined the Earth by littering. It’s something kids can understand, why bother getting lost in a more complex problem like global warming? Man’s solution to the overabundance of garbage was to abandon the Earth, and live life roaming the stars inside spacefaring pleasure cruisers. Now, 700 years since our departure from Terra, the human race has morphed into a bunch of overweight layabouts. Basically we’re all starfaring, super-fat babies.
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This story title doesn’t even make sense does it? How can some craptacular movie like Speed Racer even begin to affect the amount of Wall-E Toys? At last week’s Licensing International Expo, Andy Mooney, chairman of Disney Consumer Products, discussed how stores had to make a choice on what to stock and they mostly gambled on Speed Racer. I sometimes question the intelligence of idiot execs at Wal-Mart, Target, and the like. Who in their damn right mind would have thought Speed Racer would be a success? It looked like blue screen shit from the get go.  These short sighted middle managers actually made the decision based on another Disney-Pixar film, Cars. While mediocre compared to other Pixar films, Cars has raked in the merchandising dough to a ridiculous amount. The merchandising bonanza is also the sole reason Cars 2 is in production before we get a sequel to The Incredibles if we ever do! read this entry »

It’s a safe bet to say if you are a reader of Giant Freakin Robot then you have watched Star Wars. George Lucas’s masterpiece was a pretty big part of my life just like the rest of you geeks. I watched all the movies and I wanted every toy they had although I never got the AT-AT Walker. Screw you, Santa. Anyways, my love of Star Wars never really went away. Of course, I kept it hidden from most people. My wife, Bethany, knew about it, but I made sure not to let her know how pathetic I was until after she was too far invested in me to run away.

Besides Star Wars, one of my other loves is Walt Disney World. When I heard about Star Wars Weekend 2008, I felt the little kid in me explode. Oh I had to go. Thankfully I have a sweet and understanding wife, and she was willing to go with me. The next thing I knew, we were off to Walt Disney World for June 6^th through the 8th.  Star Wars Weekends began in 1997 and has happened 9 times now.  For each of the four weekends, Warwick Davis (aka Wicket) is the host at Disney’s Hollywood Studios for the Star Wars festivities. Also each weekend, a few Star Wars “celebrities” also appear for autographs and photos. Now, don’t even think that you’ll ever see Harrison Ford or Mark Hamill. We’re talking small time celebrities. For our weekend, we had Jeremy Bulloch and Daniel Logan. Who?? Oh come on you have to know who Old Boba Fett and Young Boba Fett are! The other celebrities are: read this entry »

Good news: We’ve got a new trailer for Disney’s upcoming redo of Jules Verne’s classic tale Journey to the Center of the Earth, this time in 3D. Bad news: It still doesn’t look like it’d be any good. Unless of course your idea of good is lots of things flying at the camera in order to show off Disney’s gimmicky 3D technology. Somehow I don’t think Jules Verne would approve. Take a look: