Blog – The Game Changer
There once was a man who started out with a mouse and left behind a company so big it has bought an entire galaxy far far away. It also bought Marvel. Oh… and recently, it decided it wanted a big part of 21st Century Fox.
Impressive stuff. But personally, I’m not that interested in the magnitude of the corporate success Walt Disney has generated. I tend to be more baffled by two stunts he managed to pull off during his life at a creative level. The main thing these two stunts have in common is that they both involve noticing not all the potential is realized in an existing form of art. Walter then realized that hidden potential and changed how we look at that form of entertainment from then on.
The first artform Walter changed was animation. Of course Walter already managed to be successful in the cartoon business with his famous short cartoons where Mickey or Donald would give the audience a quick boost of entertainment and few good chuckles. But that was it. And that was what cartoons were supposed to do, to generate a quick giggle… or so everybody thought.
But Walter saw more potential in animation and wanted to create a feature length film. And above that: Walter wanted to move the audience. Which was considered something cartoons weren’t supposed to do, or maybe even able to do. Walter knew he succeeded in his project when he saw people cry in the theatre when the dwarfs were crying over the corpse of Snow White that turned out not to be so corpsy after all (sorry if spoiled the plot twist).
The second artform Walter managed to see more potential in is regarding theme parks. Well… they were more boosts of entertainment than an artform. Theme parks were often dangerous places containing simple (thrill) rides and the occasional bearded lady… but barely containing any theme. Walter sometimes went to these kind of places with his kids and then got bored out of his mind over there. But still this gave him an idea. He saw a potential storytelling experience for the whole family.
Walter already managed to tell rich and immersive stories through animation on a screen. But now he thought it would be cool people could experience stories in real life, and in 1955 ‘Disneyland’ was the result: not just shots of adrenaline and giggles, but fully fledged storytelling experiences. Honorable mentions go to the ‘Efteling’ too by the way. A Dutch theme park that started building real-life fairytales in the 50’s. So Walt might not be totally unique in this area, but his impact on this new way of telling stories is by far the biggest nevertheless.
Sometimes I wonder what Walt could have meant for virtual reality. To the masses VR still has this gimmicky image it just doesn’t seem to be able to shake off yet, even though there is some top notch content on the market right now. Maybe Walt would have been able to pull off a third stunt bringing VR to the masses and show everybody what an amazing storytelling experience VR can be. But for now I’m waiting for a new marketing/creative genius to pull that off.