Throwback Thursday: Toy Story 3 Review

It has big shoes to fill, but at least it tries.
by tommy (movies profile) Jul 24, 2010

Can you believe that Toy Story is now well over a decade old as a franchise? Logically, that means most people that were kids coming for the cute animated toys the first time are now adults.

Don't think, however that this aging has made people outgrow the series, because beneath the cuddly exterior of Toy Story is a dark atmosphere, one which leaves few philosophical questions about the ugly implications of a world where toys are alive untouched. The first film's conflict was derived from a toy's fears of being rejected by another toy, that other toy's slow, painful realization that he wasn't really the romantic hero he was meant to represent, and the horrors of a sociopathic, would be "mad scientist" who breaks and hybridizes toys for fun. The second explored the fears of toys' masters leaving them when they grow up, unaware that their toys are sentient beings with feeling. As everyone who knew and loved it hoped it would, this recurring theme of exploring the dark side of whimsy has returned--but maybe not with the freshness it once had.

Toy Story 3 is almost certainly the grimmest of the series, perhaps in part because it can safely be so while retaining the support of its original fans, now more matured. They aren't only ones; the film's conflict arc opens with Andy, the series' cheery-eyed, imaginative boy and owner of Woody and Buzz, about to head off to College, the fate of our plastic protagonists hanging in the balance. Through a quick string of unfortunate events and misunderstandings, the Toys end up at marooned at Sunnyside Daycare. The conflict then arises between Woody, who is hopelessly optimistic that Andy will come through and rescue the lot of them from a life of misery, and the rest of the toys, who are willing to embrace this new Utopia where toys are played with forever.

Unfortunately, they turn out to be wrong too when, like many attempted utopias, Sunnyside turns out to be horribly corrupt. Under the reign of a tyrannical Teddy bear (Goofy alliteration is fun; isn't it?!) named Lotso, they find that the new society has a gross dislike of humanity and forces rookies to suffer a hellish experience with underaged children in order to gain merit in the new society of vengeful toys. (Parents take note there; this film's opinion of babies seems less than liberal a lot of the time, one of many reasons you might consider leaving your youngest at home.) After harrowing experiences push the toys LITERALLY near to their breaking points, Woody hatches a plan to return to Sunnyside and free his friends.

It is here that the film settles into its own element, for better or for worse. Perhaps the biggest flaw with Toy Story 3 is that it just isn't as fresh as you hope; take our villain, for example. In many other cases, Lotso would have made one of the most effective antagonists in recent memory. A lot of publicity surrounded the character in pre-release media, even a hoaxed 1980s commercial released on Youtube, with the general attempt of endearing him to the public before they were floored with the revelation of him as actually being a zealous, vengeful brute. Unfortunately, he doesn't pack the emotional punch he should because he's also more than a little similar to last movie's villain, the tellingly named Stinky Pete. There's little about his dark secrets that are unpredictable to series veterans, so you're left with a lose-lose character who could simultaneously traumatize children and leave adults rather underwhelmed.

As to other new characters to this film, most of them underwhelm for a different reason--they're packed too tight, to the point that none of them individually get a chance to shine, merely an occasional line in edgewise, and it's a shame because many of them are rather cute. There is one big, pleasantly surprising exception, though, and more on that soon.

With all the negative things I've said about the new additions to the cast, you'd be forgiven for concluding I didn't like the film, but not correct--because while this film doesn't make as many new friends as it should (Or maybe it just makes TOO MANY at once), it sure keeps the old, and fanservice may be the film's strongest element. The opening is a brilliant tribute to the imaginary adventures featured in the past two films, both hilarious and epic, long-time butt monkey Mr. Potatohead gets his moment in the limelight at the middle of the film (still played for laughs, but nonetheless impressive), the series' most legendary meme, "The Claw" is back in a big way, and most interesting of all is the direction Barbie (yes, THAT Barbie) was taken in.

United with her canon love interest, Ken, the two become a very integral part of the plot, and delightfully deconstruct viewers' negative preconceptions of them through a number of action scenes and some intelligent socio-political commentary. It isn't going to come as much shock to those who followed this film's publicity that Ken, lovingly voiced by Michael Keaton, arguably steals much of the show, but even they will likely find some of his scenes interacting with Barbie and the rest of the gang both surprisingly serious at some times and "how did they get this past the censors" funny at others.

At the end of the day, this is Toy Story all over, for both better and worse. Longtime fans may find some of it too familiar, but they also get loads of amusing lines or even outright scenes written just for them. Parents of young newcomers may well find this more adult-oriented approach terrifying their infants, but it really seems appropriate to those of us who have grown up with the series without growing out of it, and in daring to make a film that may horrify modern infants and by extension, their parents, Pixar might just gain more respect among purely adult circles. As the third installment of what is constantly hailed as among the greatest animated film series ever, it has some big shoes to fill, but at least it tries.

Throwback Thursday: My Movie Review of Transformers 2

A rather klutzy amalgamation of worthier elements
by tommy (movies profile) Aug 4, 2009

Shortly upon leaving the theatre, I heard someone nearby saying, "That was more like a thrill ride than a movie." I disagree with this; indeed it's not much of a movie, but while I believe the first Transformers deserves the "thrill ride" honor, but this one does not. A good rollercoaster builds excitement up with all the suspense, foreshadowing, and creative turns that a good movie does, but "Revenge of the Fallen" seems like neither one nor the other--instead, it's a rather klutzy amalgamation of worthier elements.

The film begins with a flashback accompanied by an almost Lovecraftian revelation that humans have, in fact, shared the planet with transformers for a long time (well actually, it looks more like a scene from "10,000 BC," which many may read as an ill-omen), then throws the viewer into a present day narrative about the continuing war with the Decepticons, a rather colorful battle in Shanghai, and the coming-of-age subplot about the human protagonist as he heads off to college and tries to preserve the attention of his girlfriend.

Despite all these seemingly-important scenes being offered up front, however, the viewers will find themselves questioning the backstory of this movie, which is only explained in any detail by a new robot character introduced halfway through. Without that much-needed direction, it all feels like a gratuitous mess of scenes that would be more appealing had they only been more judicious. We get shots of robots fighting it out, shots of the protagonist's stupid mother bumbling around, shots of Megan Fox's physique, and shots of a few notable college personalities, and they seem so hammed up as to nearly insult viewers, as though the director sees no real reason to put any of them there, other than because he thinks we yearn for them and will love the movie for them, no matter how bad it is. To be fair, I don't think Bay was being so malicious; he seemed to be trying for something epic in scope with this movie, but he neglected the central narrative that must ultimately govern all good epics.

Nor are the individual scenes in this film always good on their own merit. By far the biggest disappointment in the whole film is that, although we have plethora of new robots to sample, seeing them fight just isn't what it could be in this film. Hand-to-hand combat between robots should not look nearly so fluid and organic, and frankly LIGHT, as it does here; there are points where they soar into what looks like kung fu, and in fact, stop just short of what might resemble ballet! Furthermore, the angles from which battles are often viewed were ill-advised; there are too many shots that zoom in so close and too many that view things from the rear, to the point that often one can barely distinguish which robot is clobbering the other. These worsened fight scenes are added to some recurring problems from the first film--the old transformers theme song again gets left out in favor of a Linkin Park ballad that doesn't fit, villainous spy-bots still look gross and weird rather than creepy and cool, and numerous elements thrown in to appeal to white-collar suburban Americans still abound to try and upstage the titular robots.

For all that I can say negative about so much of the film, though, fragments of a better movie are still visible, mostly in the film's humor. There is little that would be considered golden about the comic value of this film, or even innovative. It pulls countless gags out from all over the established humor book, with no less (possibly more) than three stupidly-neurotic characters (the mother, the roommate, and a shell-shocked veteran, the actor of whom seems to have trouble deciding whether he's supposed to be Italian or Jewish), an old robot who acts like a classic cantankerous old man, robotic twins who act a little like Abbot and Costello, and slapstick gimmicks ranging from slippling to tripping to ball-busting. Much of it could be appropriately-scored by "Yackety Sax" or ""That's All Folks," yet I still liked this film best when it seemingly realized that it wasn't worthy of being taken seriously, and so didn't even take itself as such. There's also a good deal of memorable acting here to liven things up; Fox serves mainly as eye-candy but in a few scenes channels the heroine archetype of the fast, tough Latina (Michelle Rodriguez might be proud or jealous; I can't rightly say which), the veteran proves to be the funniest of the "annoying" characters in the film, and Optimus Prime, even though he's just a voice, still compels viewers. Through even the worst lines he gets, the actor injects a voice that sounds deep, gruff, and booming, but never at the expense of also sounding kind and nurturing. The obnoxious jingoistic streak that Bay is infamous for is present here, of course, but ROTF also pokes fun at the US government through a thoroughly obnoxious bureaucrat who is elitist for no good reason, constantly pesters the military about how he wants them to approach a war, despite obviously being a pampered snob with no idea how to approach a war, and is brutally rude and snarky to Arabs. Politically-minded people will probably see more than a little satire of some recent politicians in this character, but all people will find it amusing to finally watch him get what's coming to him. Then, Optimus and the government also have a bit of a disagreement--subtle, but I wasn't expecting it in this film.

All of the above elements helped make TROTF a more watchable film, but the question of whether they made it worth watching in the first place is troublesome. The first film was a shallow-but-enjoyable ride that, though far from perfect, made me expect better from the series in the following titles, but this new film has drained my glass quite a bit. It simply plays out like long a roll of clips primarily useful to put together trailers as part of the film's overblown hype-machine. Since massive ad-campaigns, and not a more artistic, masterful touch--such as punctuates actual good action films like Terminator and The Matrix--seem to have become the strategy of Michael Bay's transformers series, I say he ought to be retired from duty in favor of new blood. Otherwise, our favorite robot heroes might as well be left around rusting.

Life Imitates Pranks: The Strange Case of Jaden Smith in a Dress

Back in March, I decided I would take full advantage of writing for a well-trafficked media website to play an April Fools joke on people.  I actually had several gag articles in mind, but ultimately, only one got written--both because I found myself short on time, and also because a few I had planned were too scandalous.  Ultimately, I just went with a joke article about Jaden Smith playing as Pollyanna in a new remake.  Few if any have accused my sense of humor of being subtle, and here, I wrote in an intentionally silly way that should have tipped everyone off that that this was a joke--as if the date didn't.  Yet the reaction the article got was, above all else, strange.  It got shared multiple times; almost certainly by bots in some cases, and it registered on IMDB.  Yet nobody commented on the article, or remarked on it being a joke.  Then, things got stranger.

I had always wondered how my supervisors would take this, and there were times I considered asking them, ahead of time, if it was okay to do it.  I abstained from asking just because I felt the more people I could pull the joke on, the better.  The very next day, I got exactly one mention of my work as part of a general email from my supervisors:

Glad to see my work being read!

So, I figured either we had one long piss-take that the world had taken at my joke instead of chuckling or calling it out, or they just didn't read it.  Only recently did I learn of a third, more paranormal possibility; that somehow, unbeknownst to myself up until recently, I am clairvoyant on the matter of men in drag, and the reason my joke didn't get treated as such was that, in fact, it wasn't such.  As it turns out, Jaden has been seen in a dress. 

A rather Lolita dress at that.

 That was recently, but apparently he's been interested in such clothes for quite some time.  From the way that article is worded, it sounds almost like he's a young, black, male Lady Gaga. 

Yet what if there's more to it?  Could it really be that I psychically concluded a hidden truth, and this young, audacious actor really is going to star in a remake of Pollyanna?  I don't know.  It sounds crazy.  Still, if in fact, I do have the power to predict such things, I'm just going to say, Joss Whedon as Princess Peach in a new Mario movie.  Make it happen; forces that be.

My Un-Marvelous Experience of The Marvel Experience

Featuring all of your favorite heroes...and The Vision

Pretentiousness is a bitch.  Far more times than we've been able to keep count, we've been hit by promises of creative games and toys wherein the only limit is our imagination, films and books that take us on journeys and adventures instead of just informing us of them, candies and drinks that take us on hallucinogenic drug trips, and similar bold-faced lies, and we eventually get numb to it there.  Yet once in a while, something unfamiliar, presented as a novelty belonging to a bold new era of culture, regains the ability to pull people in only to underwhelm them.  In this era, where Marvel fandom is no longer the exclusive domain of stereotypical nerds, The Marvel Experience is just such a thing, and its general banality is only made worse in comparison to its over-the-top presentation.

For a particular poignant point on pretense, see this ad for the event's showing in my area:

This is blatant false advertising; at no point in the event did I get to become Captain America, or even an average schmuck holding his shield.  More on that later.  As to saving the world...oi; I know nobody even buys that, so I'll move on.  Here's a more descriptive, but still inflated ad for what the event actually is:

Here's the truth.  The Marvel Experience is essentially a technologically powered revival of the circus, with a Marvel paint job, except worse.  That's a loaded statement; I understand.  Circuses have a seedy reputation, of being bad for their animal performers, not even very good for their human performers, forcing a life of cramped quarters and restlessness, pawning suckers out of money at side attractions, scaring more children than they entertain with their clowns.  They've been losing ground to television, and now the Internet, and for many it's good riddance to bad rubbish.  Still, the kid in me loves his memories of when the Carson and Barnes Circus came to my crummy little podunk (that I lived in then) and made it a little less crummy.  The moment felt particularly unreal because the circus set up right on our Elementary School's soccer field, which meant that in Physical Education class, we jogged our usual laps around the unusual big top, then relished going back to our campus at night for the big show.

The Marvel Experience briefly revived those experiences with the over-the-top way it stoked our fandom at the gates, but when we got into its modernized version of the big top (it's a bunch of white dome structures), it soon dawned how empty it felt.  Ultimately, it was a collection of quaint-but-cheesy sets, serviceable-but-short films, really terrible video games and live actors, and a mediocre 3-D film and motion simulator ride.

Through the thick of it all is an increasingly transparent message of "You're special!"  From the moment you get through the front gates, you'll be constantly hearing about how S.H.I.E.L.D. has recruited you all to help Marvel's named superheroes save the world from a new, dire threat.  An early attraction right out there takes the form of photo booths where you can enter information and have a photo taken for your own personal ID badge.

Hrehehehehe!

A brief anecdote about those illustrations: This was held at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, and we were presented fliers for an upcoming horse show at the toll booth.  I had the amusing idea to hold the flier up to the camera in the ID station, as I thought it would be funny to make myself a S.H.I.E.L.D. badge with a horse portrait on it.  Sadly, I will never know how funny it actually is, because at the end of the event, I was disappointed to learn I needed to pay over ten dollars for the badge, and I had no intention of doing that.

A particularly odious thing about this attraction's pretense is that it mandated crowds be delayed from entering at a normal pace, so more pep talks could be delivered, either by employees (who were, in my judgement, more likely to have been locally contracted proles than a troupe traveling with the show) or characters in videos.  This kept us stopping where we were, first outside, and then in a lobby where we watched some videos...and then in another lobby where we watched some more videos.

The two lobbies are marked in the lower-right quadrant of the map.

The first video we watched was by Captain America, the second by Iron Man (with Pepper Potts coming in to snark it up), the third a collaboration between a generic female reporter, a thinly veiled expy of Stan Lee played by Stan Lee, and J. Jonah Jameson, and the fourth by the whole Avengers team, plus a feminine robot hostess who may or may not be original to this event, and who was, but-for no visible nipples or camel toe, essentially naked.

The "Recruit Staging Area" was beautifully-lit by color-changing spotlights, for absolutely no reason.

Captain America talks up the weaklings.

Is "Megan Fox the New York Reporter" the new TMNT film's main contribution to pop-culture?

"Hi there; Virginerds!  I'm hear to make you not regret spending your money on this!  (No promises.)"

The "Shield Mobile Command Center" was full of glowing machines that didn't do anything.

A bit more about these videos.  They weren't bad; in fact, we chuckled a lot in the right places, but what's weird is that they chose to go with a cartoony CGI approach.  In an event that promoted itself as immersive, wherein Marvel characters came to life and interacted with real people, that seems like a bizarre choice.  Anyway, we "learned" via these videos that the world was under threat by "Super Adaptoids", evil robots that could replicate the abilities of Marvel heroes, and that's why they needed us to come train with the heroes and defeat the Adaptoid menace.  With that briefing out of the way, we stepped into the most visually impressive part of the exhibit, to begin our "training".

Well, this is neat, but what the Hell is it?!

The "Recruit Training Center" (Yes; I'm putting all of the official location names in quotes) was a visual spectacle that looked like some bizarre cross between a casino, a video arcade, and a museum, and it actually did give a surreal sense of immersion.  I really love colorful, practical set design, something I think some action films have lost sight of in the CGI era, and it felt cool to be stepping inside one such set.  The centerpiece was a defeated Super Adaptoid encased in glass, with mirrors beneath the container creating the impression of a larger void.

Is that sky?  Is this supposed to be the Helicarrier we're on?

Unfortunately for me, the immersion ended abruptly, because I needed to pee since getting into the front gates, and so rushed for the restrooms as soon as I saw a sign, only to be greatly disappointed by them being anarchronistic peripheral.  You will note on the map pictured above that the restrooms were not included in the main dome, but down what appears to be a hall, but it was even worse; there was no hall.  All there was was a Marvel-themed sign, pointing out a door to restrooms outside of the event.

Cute?

Lame.

There were both outhouses and a trailer of regular, flush toilets, like this one here.

Back in the "Recruit Training Center", I dove into the various attractions, many of which were informational.  There were touch-screens we could touch to play videos about various superheroes, diagrams of Super Adaptoids and their abilities, and one exhibit that was literally just a collection of book covers.

I actually own a book collecting these.  "Blablabla transistors bla!"

Cox made an interactive exhibit of sifting virtual Adaptoid parts out of virtual dirt and reassembling them.  Weird.

There was one bit of the informational side of the event that I thought was pretty cool, and that was its collection of iconic Marvel props in display cases.  Iconic weapons and armor are cool to see treated like serious museum subjects, with informational plaques and all!  The closer one got, the faker they obviously looked, but I still have a soft spot for such prop design.

Hey; I think I've seen these at Toys 'R Us!

Sometime between last Thor movie and now, I guess they developed walls that could hold up Mjolnir.

Pictured: Not vibranium.

Marvel villains are a metrosexual lot.

Nick Fury's nerf gun.

The more interactive bits of the event were generally not good.  One exception was "Avengers Encounter", which let people stand in a televised spot and strike a pose, which would cause members of the Avengers to join them onscreen.  Much as in the other videos, they didn't look terribly realistic, but it was still cool to see, and easily my favorite part of the event.  I took a lot of pictures of it, some of which I am in.

 

That picture was taken while I stood in line for the Iron Man "Mark 47 Flight Training".  That brings us back to the bit about Captain America mentioned earlier; at no point does this event simulate you being Cap, but if these simulations were anything to go by, it may be a blessing in disguise, because they were abysmal.  You would think that a "game" simulating an Iron Man suit would at least let you lie on your stomach in the pose Iron Man usually flies forward in, but no; it's a bad Kinect-style affair where you just stand in front of a screen, leaning right and left to steer and raising your hand to shoot--and I do mean bad!  Perhaps because there was a huge variation in size of the people who played the booth, the camera didn't seem to work well at capturing leaning motions, and the shooting, though better, was delayed.  It hardly mattered, though, as all you had to do was shoot pieces of junk that came and hovered in front of you.

If you're disappointed you can't see any gameplay, don't be.  It sucked.

There was another bad simulation video game like that, which let people "be" the Hulk, meaning they could stand in a spot and punch oncoming objects.  This was more amusing, as I decided to put actual power into my punches as my workout for that day, but the docents didn't explain it well, so I never figured out how to punch lower targets.

I don't have a picture of that one, but speaking of somewhat physically exerting tasks, there was also a booth where you could wall-climb like Spider-Man...except not really.  It was two standard rock-climbing conveyor belts, plus one that had a ladder instead, and a screen up above showing a video of Spider-Man monitoring your progress--maybe.  I did it, and it was fun enough, but that's not really how Spider-Man does it, at all--he doesn't need to grab outcroppings; he just sticks to things.

One other "video game" was available to play in the "Recruit Training Center"; this was a lightgun game in a theater where people all got a gun and shot at Super Adaptoids on a screen.  I put "video game" in quotes there, because save for the numeric designations of our guns appearing on the screen when we aimed and fired, I don't think there was any actual effect on the outcome, although they did tally up scores afterward, somehow.

After that, I actually stood in line for the Avengers Encounter segment I had photographed a lot while standing in line for other things, which means I finally got photos with myself in the action.

Black Widow kicks me in the face.

Now Hulk punches me in the face.  This was the highlight of my evening here.

On the subject of attractions involving Black Widow, on that map is marked a "Black Widow Agility Maze", but I didn't see it here, so I don't know what happened.  Also, some may recognize that as a Marvel-themed shirt I'm wearing.  I've had it a long time, and don't tend to wear it much these days because it's got some holes that need fixing, but here it felt only right.

Having done all of the things in the central dome, I went into what was supposed to be a Quinnjet, but they did a terrible job at it.  The thing had no floors of its own; merely walls separating its interior from the rest of the dome.  In this was one more really bad video game, entitled "Villain Tracking", where you watched videos describing villains, after which you touched an interactive world map with "threats" displayed, and after clicking them, you'd decide how much of a force you would need to dispatch to take care of them, and then read the results.  That's it; that was the whole game.

Are you sure this thing is aerodynamic?

These stills are from a video with Maria Hill describing Red Skull.  By the way, Nazis are never mentioned.

The "cockpit" was just a picture behind a window.

The door on the other side of the "Quinnjet" led to the "Transfer Dome", where we were given kitchy little bracelets that most of us couldn't fasten on properly without each other's help. (Remember that.)  After some time there, we entered perhaps the most bizarre portion of the event; the "Simularium".  This was one of those dome-shaped theaters with screens surrounding people, such as exist in some museums, plus 3-D glasses.  Such venues do well for science documentaries, displaying long shots of such things as forests and the stars, but for this sort of video, it just was strange.  The movie involved superheroes attacking a Super Adaptoid base, and because of the perspective, they looked like giants, or maybe viewers just felt small.  The 3-D also was not very good, but it seemed to put a focus on making characters' butts stick out; including those of all the Super Adaptoids when they were shown.  So if your fantasy about meeting Marvel characters involved you shrinking and looking up at their asses...you know; I'm just assuming it didn't.  Anyway, the movie concluded with the revelation that Red Skull, Madame Hydra and MODOK were behind the Super Adaptoid invasion, and we then departed for the "Transport Cooridor".  Here, we watched a video by Spider-Man, explaining proper motion simulator etiquette, at one point hacked into by Red Skull.

The video ended with Skull's goons shooting at what was supposed to be the place we were, and jamming the door out, after which Hulk leapt into action onscreen to yank it open, and we then saw a cute practical effect of his big green hand receding into a curtained nook besides the door.  Through that door was the "Transport Hangar", ostensibly a sort of mini-helicarrier embedded in the domes, in reality a mediocre motion simulator ride.  The ride's footage was supposed to depict the event itself, as seen from the outside, but there was one problem; the surroundings of the event simply didn't match.  Ahead to the right in the video were a bunch of generic tall buildings, which simply don't exist in Del Mar; also the region seemed to be a desert, while Del Mar consists of many flood plains; hence the name.  A bunch of stuff flies across the screen, and then the villains board a massive mech and attack.  After the heroes swarm over it, they request people's help, asking them to hold up their hands wearing the bracelets received in the "Transfer Dome", which supposedly caused a bunch of laser beams to hit the big mech on screen, and blew it apart.

There.  That was the whole "We help save the world" bit the whole event was building towards.  Wow.

After that was the "S.H.I.E.L.D. Shop", with a generic inspirational Stan Lee plaque, a quite limited selection of merchandise, a spot for people who actually wanted to to buy their own S.H.I.E.L.D. IDs, and very unconvincing fake incarceration pods for Red Skull, Madame Hyrdra and MODOK.

"Well then; onto the next endorsement!"

Final thoughts?  In case it isn't clear already, The Marvel Experience is not good.  It is outright bad at many parts, in other places its simply not good enough given the alternatives, and the few truly good parts of it, like the set design (in some places) feel wasted on something like this.  I've heard the defense that "It's meant for kids, and the people who are young at heart" multiple times, but that badly underrates both groups and their tastes.  A slightly more apt description might be "n00bs"; those newcomers to the Marvel mythos who want a lively primer, but even there, so many better alternatives exist.  There are far better Marvel video games people can play, far better Marvel movies people can watch, actual Marvel books people can read instead of just little blurbs, and for people who like summaries that let them absorb many characters' histories in a shorter time than it would take to read the books, there's www.comicvine.com, which is free.  The Marvel Experience is to these things what a Magnadoodle is to paper, pencil, and crayons; a trumped up technological amalgamation whose ostentation distracts but fleetingly from the fact that it can't do its job as well as the cheaper, simpler alternatives.

It's sad, because the idea itself isn't without merit.  If they were more interested in noting their competition and finding out the sort of themed attractions that actually appeal to people, they could've made an experience as good as its concept, but here they just got too ambitious, and tried to do too much for too many in too little space and too little time with too little money, to do any of it right.  It's my hope that since Disney now owns Marvel, eventually we will get something better, preferably a sedentary Marvel theme park that's bigger, better, and broader (in its demographics).  For now, though, The Marvel Experience is a waste of time and money.  In fact, whatever the Marvel experience really is, it's not this.