Disney’s TOMORROWLAND – In Theatres Everywhere

Tomorrowland was created by Walt Disney as a section of Disneyland in 1955. It was a time when Americans imagined an optimistic future. Over the years since, the public’s view of the future grew dark film’s director, Brad Bird, “Any time that there is an empty canvas, there are two ways to look at it: One is emptiness and the other one is wide open to possibility. And that’s how I like to look at the future—wide open to possibility. It is a view that has fallen out of favor in terms of looking at the  future.”

This shift in thinking also intrigued writer-producer Damon Lindelof,so when he began to synthesize the story for “Tomorrowland,”he looked for what Tomorrowland meant and how it could berepresented in a story line. “I really wanted to recapture thatearlier optimism,” comments Lindelof. The story of “Tomorrowland” started with a box labeled “1952,”supposedly discovered by accident in the Disney Studios archive. The mystery box contained all sorts of fascinating models and blueprints, photographs and letters related to the inception of

Tomorrowland and the 1964 World’s Fair. Lindelof was excited by the find and recalls, “I began to imagine that the contents of the box werea guide to a secret story that nobody knew. But if so, what would that story be? And the most obvious answer to me was that there really was a place called Tomorrowland that was not a theme park but existed somewhere in the real world.”

Lindelof began to develop the story by researching the history of

Disney and its originator, which led to research on the company’s involvement in the 1964 World’s Fair. “Walt Disney was a futurist in that real mid-century modernist sense,” says Lindelof. “He was very optimistic. He believed that technology held the key to building a better world. He also believed in technology as a means of creating great entertainment. For the 1964 World’s Fair, the Walt Disney Company created three rides, the It’s a Small World ride being the one we remember most. Though quaint by today’s standards, back in 1964, Carousel of Progress and Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln were revolutionary in how they used robotics and ride technology to create a thematically rich experience.” Lindelof adds, “And there was also an underlying radical optimism. This was 1964, the world had just flirted with thermonuclear catastrophe as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the song ‘It’s a Small World’ was written in response to a world that had walked right up to the brink of nuclear war but had pulled back and was now

pining to recognize that we don’t have to destroy ourselves. The lyrics—“It’s a world of hopes and a world of fears”—touched on that anxiety. Given how it just seems so cute and sentimental today, I found it fascinating that the ride was encoded with that real-world angst. There was a radical political message in there and a very idealistic one, too.”