Disney plans to overcome challenges of marketing Avatar land
an you name a Na’vi? Or quote a line of dialogue between those blue aliens or the humans invading their planet?
No? It’s OK. You’ll still enjoy the new land based on “Avatar” opening at Walt Disney World in May, says one of the creative executives behind the project.
“We’ve been really quite scrupulous about the fact you don’t need to know a thing in order to experience and enter the land,” Disney Imagineer Joe Rohde said. “It is … meant to be understood emotionally, reacted to, navigated through and appreciated by a person who has absolutely no access to the pre-existing story.”
When Pandora: The World of Avatar opens May 27 at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, it will have been almost eight years since the movie first came out. And long-awaited sequels are a long way from theaters. The first one won’t come out in theaters in 2018 as had been expected, director James Cameron told the Toronto Star last week.
So some skepticism remains among industry watchers and die-hard Disney fans about the decision to invest hundreds of millions of dollars on banshees and blue creatures that many people barely remember.
It’s not just the amount of time that has passed since the film’s theatrical release, said Scott Smith, assistant hospitality professor at the University of South Carolina. He is among the critics who say the film lacks compelling characters.
“It’s surprising that Disney would pick a story with such little depth and build an entire land around it,” he said.
What “Avatar” might have lacked in substance it made up for in style. The blockbuster dazzled audiences with sophisticated 3-D computer animation.
Videos that Disney has released show a 12-acre area that is visually stunning, with otherworldly features including glowing plants and floating mountains with cascading waterfalls.
Imagineers have created the Valley of Mo’ara on the mythical moon of Pandora. It will have two signature rides — one giving visitors the illusion of soaring on the back of a winged banshee and another taking them on a leisurely reed-boat ride down the Na’vi River.
Disney hasn’t recently revealed the project’s cost. But in 2011 when it first announced the venture, Disney said it would cost up to half a billion dollars.
A marketing campaign has included an ad during the Oscars. Last week, ABC — owned by The Walt Disney Co. — featured Pandora on “The View,” “Nightline,” “Good Morning America” and “The Chew” all in one day.
Disney also has a visitpandora.com website, a sort of online travel brochure.
“I think that’s a clever way to do it,” said Deb Wills, editor of the AllEars.net website. “I think tying it to Cameron and the movies, I don’t know that’s a good idea. With all the delays that have been going on, you have to wonder if there’s ever going to be a sequel.”
Jessica Fraser of Houston has never seen “Avatar.” But Fraser, a 30-year-old mother of four and a frequent Disney visitor, said she’s still eagerly anticipating the attraction.
“This is a completely make-believe world they’re bringing to life, which is what Disney does best,” she said, while visiting Animal Kingdom this week.
Karen Gibson, a Disney passholder from Plant City, is less enthusiastic. She hadn’t really paid attention to the land’s construction, she said.
“I’m not an Avatar fan,” said Gibson, 54. “I never even watched the movie.”
Rohde hopes people like Gibson will be inspired to see the film once they visit Pandora.
The land is designed to make people feel a strong connection to the planet and its otherworldly inhabitants, he said. “It’s very deliberately emotionally crafted. It is a very emotional place.”
For example, take the 156-foot floating mountains. They are “very consciously crafted to soar overhead,” he said. “You have these spectacular … objects all around you that, if you think for a moment, are just spectacular tour de forces and deliberately made to evoke emotion, to make you feel awe.”
The setting is meant to be a generation after the original movie took place, Rohde said. There are animals and items that people haven’t seen on the screen.
Disney first announced the Avatar project in 2011 — the year after the Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened at Universal Orlando.
“I think Disney was struggling a bit with exactly how to respond to that and especially something that fit into the Animal Kingdom,” said Bob Boyd, a leisure analyst with Pacific Asset Management.
“Avatar,” which has a strong environmental message, was a natural fit with Animal Kingdom’s themes of conservation, Rohde said. For example, the queue for the Flight of Passage has references to restoring the banshee population, and how the birdlike animals are dependent on plants, clean water and other animal species.
In general, Rohde said, Pandora — while beautiful — “is a place that has been damaged by irresponsible misuse, harvesting natural resources. It is in a state of recovery.”
For instance, he said, there are some tree stumps where there used to be trees, and remnants of equipment scattered throughout the landscape.
The overlapping themes of the movie and the land make “Avatar a really, really interesting choice to be in … Animal Kingdom, because the underlying myth is a conservation myth,” Rohde said. “It is myth about nature and our place in the world and the actions we choose to take on behalf of nature.”