The Michael Jackson Attraction That Changed Disney Forever

Over the 70+ years since Disneyland opened, many names have contributed to the ever-growing Disney Parks empire. Rolly Crump, Marc Davis, Mary Blair, Tony Baxter, and…. Michael Jackson?

It’s true! In the mid-1980s, the King of Pop (along with a pair of legendary film directors) teamed up with Disney to create an attraction that transformed the company’s theme parks and continues to influence Disney’s attractions to this day! This is the tale of Captain EO.

The seeds for what would become Captain EO were planted in the mid-1980s, as Michael Eisner took the reins of the Walt Disney Company as its new CEO. One of Eisner’s major goals when he took over was to make the company’s theme parks more appealing to the youth culture of the time, allegedly after his then-teenage son, Breck, told him that Disneyland was “lame.” This led Eisner to reach out to Star Wars creator George Lucas, whom Eisner had previously worked with at Paramount Pictures, to work on some youth market attractions for the parks.

At the same time, avowed Disney theme park fan Michael Jackson — who was inarguably the biggest pop star on the planet at the time thanks to the gargantuan success of Thriller — began reaching out to the studio in the hopes of working on a project together. Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg convinced Jackson to star in a film attraction for the parks and brought Lucas into the creative mix.

After several concepts were considered — including one where Jackson would play a version of Peter Pan, and another where the singer stayed overnight in Disneyland and the park’s Animatronics came to life — the creative team settled on a Star Wars-like space opera concept since the film was going to be placed in Tomorrowland in both Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland, and EPCOT’s Future World. Lucas brought in his collaborator and legendary filmmaker in his own right, Francis Ford Coppola, to direct the film. The crew was padded out by writer Rusty Lemorande, choreographer Jeffrey Hornaday, composer James Horner, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, and the special effects team at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), while actress Anjelica Houston was brought into star opposite Michael.

The film, initially called Space Knights, was to be a 3-D film, which would then be shown in a specially built 4-D theater that integrates physical effects into the viewing experience. The film starred Jackson as Captain EO — named after Eos, the Greek God of the Dawn. According to Disney’s official synopsis, “Captain EO and his crew of mythical space creatures—Hooter, Fuzzball, the Geex, Major Domo, Minor Domo—discover a colorless planet where they are confronted by the Supreme Leader (Huston) and her forces of darkness. Using the power of music, dance, and light, EO and his crew can turn the black-and-white land into a magical world of color and happiness.”

So yeah, the sci-fi plot was a bit convoluted, but the major appeal — especially to younger guests at the time — was that the film featured performances of two original Jackson songs, “We Are Here to Change the World” and “Another Part of Me,” complete with the singer’s trademark choreography. Essentially, it would be like guests were inside a larger-than-life music video, which was a very appealing premise to the generation growing up on early MTV. Captain EO’s production was somewhat troubled and massively expensive, costing an estimated $30 million. That averaged out to $1.76 million per minute, making it the most expensive film ever produced on a per-minute basis at the time.

Suffice to say, between that massive budget and the fact that the film was a pet project of Eisner’s, who viewed it as a “proof-of-concept” piece for Disney attractions aimed at teens and young adults, there was a large amount of pressure for the film to prove successful. Due to this, Disney put on a PR blitz for the attraction, which they had never tried before. There was a syndicated making-of documentary, and a nationally televised grand opening ceremony that featured interviews with Eisner and Lucas, as well as musical performances. Notably absent from the festivities was Michael Jackson, though a widely reported urban legend claims he was there in disguise.

Whether it was due to that press blitz, the film’s quality and revolutionary mix of film and physical effects, or the star power of Jackson, Captain EO was a smash hit out of the gate. It opened at Disneyland on September 18th, 1986, and the park stayed open for 60 hours to accommodate the crowds. Openings at EPCOT and Tokyo Disneyland didn’t have quite that same fervor, but the film was a hit at each of those parks as well, where it opened on September 12th, 1986, and March 20th, 1987, respectively.  This mega-success led to a slew of merchandise for the attraction, including toys, comic books, and even glow-in-the-dark T-shirts modeled after Jackson’s costume from the film.

Eisner, feeling that he had been proven right, poured the same kind of youth-oriented marketing into further teen-focused attractions like Star Tours, as well as green-lighting numerous other teen and young adult-skewing attractions over the next several years, including Pleasure Island, Splash Mountain, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, and more.

While Captain EO changed the game in the 1980s, the film had begun to lose some of its luster by the 90s. Its visuals were seen as a bit dated, and changes in the public perception of Jackson’s persona and music eventually led Disney to close all 4 versions of the show (including the Disneyland Paris installation, which had opened with the park in 1992) by 1997. However, after Michael Jackson’s 2009 death, the company reinstalled the show as a “tribute” to him. It once again ran at Disneyland from February 2010 to June 2014, Tokyo Disneyland from July 2010 to June 30, 2014, EPCOT from July 2010 to December 2015, and Disneyland Paris from June 2010 to April 2015.

Even though all of the tribute versions have been closed for over a decade, Captain EO still has an enormous effect on Disney to this day. The film’s pioneering courting of young adults, use of then-current popular culture and celebrity, intellectual property, and massive advertising campaign and merchandising blitz has essentially been the playbook for all of the major attractions Disney has opened in the 40 years since Captain EO first danced through Tomorrowland. Stay tuned to AllEars for more deep dives into Disney history.

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Did you ever see either version of Captain EO? Let us know in the comments below.

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