Disney in the ’80s was desperate for solid intellectual properties, since the company had more or less floundered creatively since Walt died in the ’60s. In 1984, Disney installed a pair of young buck executives named Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, to course correct the sinking ship. One of the things they did, realizing that they didn’t have any properties of their own that would make for suitable theme park experiences, was reach out to George Lucas. The collaboration yielded only a handful of projects (maybe the most bizarre of which, an immersive experience called the ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, is deserving of its own piece), but none was as zeitgeist capturing as "Captain EO." This was a film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who begrudgingly took the job to reestablish his Hollywood bona-fides after some notable commercial flops and starring Michael Jackson, who at the time was the biggest entertainer in the world. The 15-minute-long 3D movie, featuring technology that was genuinely ahead of its time, followed Jackson as "the infamous Captain Eo," a starship pilot who leads a band of misfits to liberate an oppressed planet ruled by an H.R. Giger-influenced queen (played by Anjelica Huston). Said liberation is obviously accompanied by lots and lots of dancing. The movie is pretty nonsensical, although it’s still a total hoot, and its reputation as a wildly over-budget vanity project has only intensified over the years. Recently comedian Doug Benson recorded a podcast recounting his experiences as an untrained extra who was paid $50 after the production went so over-budget that they couldn’t afford to pay actual dancers. When accusations of child abuse piled up against the performer, Disney removed the attraction from its parks, but following his death (and aided by a surge of glittery nostalgia), Disney put the show back in. Now it’s gone, probably for good. Here’s hoping for some kind of 3D Blu-ray release. Or something.
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