Muppet*Vision 3D Should Be a National Heritage Site
The only way to ensure that this gem of a Disney World theatrical experience is protected is straight-up government intervention.
The greatest moviegoing experience you can have in America isn’t in Imax. It’s not a lovingly restored film playing at a grand, historic movie palace. It’s not a drive-in, it’s not at one of those theaters where you can order a Caesar salad to your seat, and it’s certainly not streaming at home. It’s Muppet*Vision 3D.
Following the proud tradition of Muppet cinematic achievement established through the original trilogy of The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, and The Muppets Take Manhattan, Muppet*Vision 3D is a triumph of formal experimentation, a playfully subversive piece of studio satire, and a timeless piece of family entertainment. It plays as well today as it did when it opened in 1991 — better, in fact, considering it remains standing tall and proud in a crumbling media landscape. It’s a magical place, a feat of engineering and design, and the most fun you can have while sitting down for 17 minutes. That’s why, in conjunction with the new theme parks-focused episode of Land of the Giants: The Disney Dilemma, I am using my platform on Vulture to campaign for this Disney World attraction to be recognized as a heritage site of cultural significance on the National Register of Historic Places. Duh.
What is Muppet*Vision 3D?
Muppet*Vision 3D is an attraction at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, a Disney park that was originally themed around moviemaking but is now themed around “whatever IP we can fit in here I guess.” In keeping with the original theme, this classic attraction is a 3-D movie about movie-making — specifically, the Muppets developing new 3-D technology. Shenanigans and goof-ups ensue, like The Muppet Show’s backstage high jinks, adapted to fit a new format. There are in-theater animatronics, live elements, and special effects, and they play a lot with their own 3-D-ness, making fun of how it’s seen as something new and flashy via cheap effects, which only serves to affirm the Muppets’ own old-school, flesh-and-blood felt-and-fuzz superiority. It also takes some shots at Disney World itself, particularly in Sam Eagle’s “Salute to All Nations But Mostly America” segment, which plays like “It’s A Small World (After All)” gone horribly wrong … or, to that ride’s haters, horribly wronger than it already is. It’s a really delightful attraction, and it encapsulates what makes the Muppets, and theme parks, so special.
Sounds cute. But why is any of that historically significant?
For all its Muppety silliness and mirth, Muppet*Vision 3D is also a site of remembrance, and maybe even pilgrimage, because it was the final project Jim Henson directed before his death at age 53 in 1990. It was also one of his final performances as Kermit, as well as the Swedish Chef and Waldorf, the latter of which is rendered animatronically in the audience, roasting the show from his usual opera box. It’s already accepted practice for landmarks related to great artists and writers to be registered as official historic places, from Walden Pond to the Florida Keys’ Hemingway House to James Baldwin’s Upper West Side apartment building to, naturally, Walt Disney’s childhood home and the small garage that he used as his first makeshift animation studio.
Henson is a figure we as a nation can agree is one of the most culturally significant creators of the 20th century. His Muppets are as timeless as Disney’s own inventions, and Sesame Street plays an outsize role in the history of American education and broadcasting. He’s as worthy of a landmark as any of our great auteurs. With the Muppets, Henson invented an entirely new genre born out of centuries-old traditions of puppetry. Muppetry is a great American art form. Like jazz!
Also, working with Disney kinda sorta might have killed him, and his death shall not be in vain!
Wait, what?
Muppet*Vision 3D was just one of many Muppet attractions that Michael Eisner had planned for MGM Studios when it first opened in 1989. At the time, Henson was in negotiations with Disney for a $150 million acquisition of Jim Henson Productions, which would have also locked Henson into a 15-year creative contract with the company. As the new year began, Henson filmed the attraction, as well as a The Muppets at Walt Disney World TV special, all while continuing negotiations with Disney. Between media appearances, recording sessions, and negotiations, Henson fell ill but decided to push through it until he was hospitalized with breathing issues. He died on May 16, 1990, due to organ dysfunction from untreated strep throat. His close friend and longtime collaborator Frank Oz told the Guardian in 2021, “The Disney deal is probably what killed Jim. It made him sick.” According to Oz, “Eisner was trying to get Sesame Street, too, which Jim wouldn’t allow. But Jim was not a dealer, he was an artist, and it was destroying him, it really was.”
That’s so sad.
He was too pure for this cruel, capitalist world. While we’re on the subject, nothing will ruin your day quite like watching Henson’s memorial service.
Can a theme-park attraction even be a Historical Place?
Why, yes! The National Register of Historic Places boasts a number of theme park-ish entrants, including a number of fairgrounds, nearly 50 carousels, five roller coasters, a smattering of other various rides, pier and boardwalk attractions, and entire historic amusement parks Rye Playland and Kennywood. As would be the case in Disney, a few of these rides already exist within parks owned by large commercial entertainment enterprises such as Cedar Point and Six Flags.
I’d argue that the special ways a nation gets its jollies throughout history do more to define its unique character than, say, its battlegrounds and war monuments. Rides and themed amusements, though, are more likely to be treated as transient, disposable, unimportant, and not marked for posterity. It’s built into the terminology: They’re “sideshows,” “diversions,” and “pastimes.” These places need this kind of designation to be legitimized and preserved in the annals of history lest they be torn down like a common circus tent!
Disney is a giant, powerful corporation. Why would it even need this kind of official government designation?
Ahahahhahahahha DON’T YOU SEE? DON’T YOU GET IT? Muppet*Vision 3D existing within Disney World is exactly why we need an outside authority to protect it! The reason why I thought of this campaign in the first place is that I do not trust the Walt Disney Company as far as I can throw it. The only way to ensure that this precious gem of a theatrical experience is protected is straight-up government intervention.
Disney does not have a reassuring history of preserving some of its parks’ weirder, shaggier attractions, particularly those that Walt himself had no hand in. Because Walt was the earthly godhead of the parks, attractions close to his heart like the Disneyland Railroad and Carousel of Progress get treated within the company like historical sites and are generally left operating almost as memorials. Anything else, no matter how beloved or significant a piece of Imagineering, is subject to closure, tampering, and fuckery. Anything outside of the original Disneyland park is especially at risk, because the parks are sites of commercial synergy and not beholden to museumlike standards of preservation.
For example: On July 10, the WDW News Today Twitter account released footage of its new revamp of the Country Bears Jamboree, an iconic opening-day animatronic show in Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. Dating back to 1971, the Jamboree was in some ways a precursor to Muppet*Vision 3D, with goofball gags and an ever-so-slightly naughty (by Disney World standards) sense of humor. In the original, a cast of bumbling bears perform mildly inappropriate country songs with names like “Mama Don’t Whip Little Buford,” “Blood on the Saddle,” and “All the Guys That Turn Me on Turn Me Down.” The sensibility is not far off from Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles or, to be honest, The Muppet Show: controlled chaos in a Grand Ole Opry setting.
In its new iteration, the “Country Bears Musical Jamboree,” the Bears’ desecrated corpses have been reanimated, Frankenstein style, to blandly, sadly perform … normal Disney songs. (Trixie, who once sobbed into her booze singing “Tears Will Be the Chaser for Your Wine,” now mows through the feel-good “Try Everything” from Zootopia, and Swingin’ Teddi Barra has been slut-shamed into swapping out her Mae West routine for “A Whole New World.”) It’s overly literal, unimaginative, and without a point of view besides the one that sees opportunities for Disney+ synergy. It’s a sad confirmation that Disney World has become the thing that Disney World skeptics have always reduced it to: asinine little-kid shit.
Trixie and Bunny, Bubbles, and Beulah perform “Try Everything” from Zootopia pic.twitter.com/aTdgwT9Cki
— WDW News Today (@WDWNT) July 10, 2024
And like, yeah, this new version of the Country Bears will probably appeal more to the parks’ target demographic, which is families with little kids. But what was great about the original attraction is that it offered a glimpse into an earlier time — when the 1970s were all about recreating the 1890s — and many fans of the parks love them for the way that they still hold these touchstones in pop-culture history. As a kid, I felt about the Jamboree the same way I felt when I first watched The Muppet Show or even The Simpsons: I didn’t have all the context, but in a way, that’s what cracked my curiosity open. What happens when Disney decides that Muppet*Vision 3D is also too old and strange for iPad kids? Will they just bulldoze Henson’s last great project, or will they rightfully treat him the way they do Walt?
I kind of think we shouldn’t give them the choice. Disney acquired the Muppets in 2004 for $75 million (half of what it was offering when Henson was alive). Since then, it has had a very spotty track record of knowing what to do with them. Most attempts at Muppet revivals don’t hit the same, in part because Disney probably plays a bit too safe with them, and also because most of the characters have gone through a couple of performers at this point. In 2020, Hollywood Studios replaced its opening-day Great Movie Ride attraction with “Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway,” swapping out the former attraction’s large setpieces and animatronics with a lot of LED screens. The only thing that would ensure we protect this living palace of Muppet entertainment from a similar fate would be to register it as a government-recognized site of historical value.
How would this even work?
This is the tricky part. It will already be an uphill battle to convince the government that Muppet*Vision 3D is worth being marked for the National Register of Historic Places; generally, although not officially, a property should be at least 50 years old, and this one is 33. I do think Henson’s contributions to 20th-century education and entertainment qualify this property, which fuses his art and his legacy, as being worthy of exceptional status. A case could even be made that this nomination would bring the National Register of Historic Places positive press and public interest, since it would be such a high-profile and widely appealing entrant (versus yet another old church or schoolhouse).
The real challenge will be in convincing Disney that this would serve the company. The owners of a property don’t have to be the group that files its nomination with the register … but they do have ultimate veto power against a nomination. How can we convince Disney that this would be beneficial, even if it doesn’t directly translate into profits?
➼ Point out how this helps its “legacy” branding: Disney is a legacy media brand and loves to play into that. For example: its sepia-toned 100th-anniversary production logo of Steamboat Willie and the “Partners” statue in a number of its parks showing Walt and Mickey holding hands. As long as it can coast on legacy, or at least point back to it, it has some wiggle room to do things that are less creatively ambitious and more nakedly cynical in the present. The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco is another site where Disney reinforces its cultural legacy, despite not owning or operating it. It’s an example — like the National Register — of how an outside organization can symbiotically serve Disney’s reputation and brand identity.
➼ Appeal to its hunger for prestige: Disney has long chased prestige in nearly every sector in which it operates, from the lofty classical aspirations of Fantasia, to its courting of Julie Taymor in their theatrical division, to its numerous Oscar nominations over the years. This extends to its Parks and Resorts division, where, under Michael Eisner, it sought out acclaimed architects with distinct aesthetics to design its properties. To have an attraction recognized by the National Register of Historic Places would be to give one of its theme parks a true imprimatur of cultural significance in a sort of high-falutin’, self-flattering way.
➼ Convince Disney it’s a cheap park improvement: Disney’s Hollywood Studios park is in a bit of a tough position at the moment. Crowd dispersal is a huge issue, with new attractions like Toy Story Land and Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway not adequately eating up massive influxes of crowds, particularly when the malfunction-prone Rise of the Resistance is down. The Star Wars area, Galaxy’s Edge, is not fleshed out as lavishly as was planned, because so much of it was kept behind the Galactic Starcruiser paywall, which is now closed. The media cycle surrounding the registry of one of the park’s least-busy attractions as a site of National Historic significance would be an extremely cheap and cost-effective way for Disney to give the park a boost: Host an unveiling ceremony for the plaque; perhaps air a live ABC special surrounding it; launch new, nostalgic, ’90s-tinged merch to tie into it; and maybe introduce a “streetmosphere” Muppets show in the courtyard to eat up crowds. All for millions less than it would take to actually build a new attraction or overhaul an existing one.
It’s just a movie, though. If it ever closes, can’t it be preserved on streaming?
Muppet*Vision 3D is a very rare cinematic piece because it’s a site-specific installation. It plays with its environment almost like a live show. The theater is full of small design details that hearken to Muppet fans, and in the showroom, there are animatronics built into the theater that interact with the film as it plays, including a penguin orchestra, Statler and Waldorf and Bean Bunny in the balcony, and Swedish Chef “running” the projector in the back. Partway through the show, a live-action walkaround Muppet, Sweetums, “steps out” from onscreen into the actual theater, played by a live performer in a costume, swinging a flashlight around as he looks for a couple of escapees of the movie. The closest comparison I can find to this, besides Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), is Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, which has one sequence requiring a live person in front of the screen to interact with the movie. None of Muppet*Vision 3D can work outside of this venue engineered to act in sync with the film.
The Muppets also translate so much better to physical space than any other Disney-owned characters, with the exception of maybe some Star Wars droids that it occasionally trots out for events. Live-action, walkaround versions of cartoons do not look like themselves; Chip and Dale should not be six feet tall, the Incredibles should not be unblinking with frozen smiles on their faces, and Peter Pan should not look like a 20-year-old twink in a wig. There’s something creepy about them. Not so with Muppets, who, in their animatronic forms, look like you’re seeing a celebrity in real life. I think that’s a huge part of the magic of them. It’s why you can see a look of genuine joy on celebrities’ faces whenever they interact with Muppets in live televised settings, and it’s why there’s a real feeling that they’re actually there, on a 1:1 scale, their felt faces looking just the same as they do on TV and in the movies, at Muppet*Vision 3D. The fact that two of the animatronics in the room feature Henson’s voice adds an extra feeling that the actual characters, not some pale imitations, are really present.
I’m scared that the Muppets are currently in a hostage situation at Disney. I’m scared this very unique attraction, which has nothing quite like it in the whole of America, will get a cheap and easy reskin as an Encanto singalong show or an Inside Out 2 revue. With the Muppets, Henson created a cast of characters as central to American pop culture as those from Looney Tunes, Peanuts, or Disney, and Muppet*Vision 3D is like their Sistine Chapel. If anyone reading this works at Disney or knows who I should be writing letters to in the government to make this happen, that would be great. Maybe this is the bipartisan move Biden needs to bring the country together? Just a thought.
Okay bye!
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