The Cosmos. A universe of good and evil where a small group struggles to bring freedom to the countless worlds of dispair. A rag tag band led by the infamous Captain EO.

Oh Lord.

I didn’t move to Florida until the late eighties and (somehow) I completely dodged the Disney theme park attraction bullet called “Captain EO.”  It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that Joey Snackpants and I found ourselves walking around EPCOT in Orlando that I finally had the chance to see it first hand.

For those of you that have no clue about what I’m talking about, Captain EO is a 3-D movie experience created in 1986 for the Disneyland theme park and is the product of pure distilled eighties.  How eighties is it?  Disney scored the top talents in that era to make it.  Check it out:

  • The Executive Producer was none other than George Lucas.
  • The film was directed by Francis Ford Coppolla only AFTER Steven Spielberg had to turn it down due to a scheduling conflict.  Mr. Coppolla co-wrote the screenplay with his pal George.
  • The movie’s musical score was written by James Horner.
  • Rick Baker designed the special makeup effect for the film.
  • Bruno ‘Pop N’ Taco’ Falcon, Timothy ‘Poppin’ Pete’ Solomon and Ben Lokey all appear as dancers in it.  Don’t recognize the names?  All three of them are from the eighties “classic” Breakin’
  • And (of course) it stars Michael Jackson.

The special effects draw from “hi tech” trick in the eighties book: claymation, blue screen, miniatures (a la Star Wars,) and even muppet technology.  It’s so “awesome” it almost hurts.

Walking out, all couldn’t shake the feeling that that film was making fun of my childhood somehow.  The reality of it, though, was that it WAS something from my childhood that i missed entirely.  If you feel brave enough, check it out:

PART 1

PART 2

ADDED NOTE: For all you Star Trek fans out there – I think it’s pretty easy to see where the TNG team got their “Borg” character design ideas from (including the Borg Queen from the movie.)