Captain EO - Michael Jackson In 3-D
The King of Pop Starred in the Most Expensive Short Film Ever Made
Jun 27, 2009
When movie executives Michael Eisner and Frank Wells became CEO and president, respectively, of the Disney Company in 1984, they wanted to shock new life into the theme parks as well as the film slate. Among their first ideas was an extended 3-D music video starring Michael Jackson, whose record-smashing album Thriller was still on the charts after two years. MJ, a huge Disney fan who went on to build his own private Disneyland Ranch, was sold on the concept when his idol, Star Wars creator George Lucas, climbed aboard as executive producer of the fantasy mini-film Captain EO.
MJ wasn't entirely new to mugging for the camera. Even before making videos of his major Thriller hits, he had co-starred with Diana Ross, Nipsey Russell and Richard Pryor in Sidney Lumet's Oscar-nominated 1978 movie musical The Wiz. For Captain EO, Lucas called on the Oscar-winning director of The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola, who co-wrote the script with Lucas and producer Rusty Lemorande. MJ himself wrote the two songs for the film, one of which, "Another Part of Me," eventually landed on his best-selling album Bad.
Michael Makes A 3-D Movie with Puppets and Fireworks
Jackson played the title character, the skipper of a junky spaceship who was determined to salvage his reputation by delivering a "gift" to the wicked queen of a forbidding planet. EO was saddled with a misfit alien crew (played by puppets and actors in suits) including two-headed pilot Idee/Odee, security robots Major and Minor Domo, elephantoid Hooter, and flying sidekick Fuzzball. They zoomed across space (and through Death Star-like trenches) to the music of James Horner, who would go on to score such hits as Braveheart and Titanic. Thanks to the involvement of Lucas and his techno-wizards, the spaceship sequence felt like it belonged in the Star Wars universe (or at least the Star Wars Holiday Special universe).
However, upon crash-landing, EO and company found the queen, The Supreme Leader, in a setting that bore more resemblance to HR Giger's designs for the film Alien. So it was no surprise when the reptilian queen (played by Oscar winner Anjelica Huston) ordered EO tortured and his crew turned into trash cans. But then the good captain presented Supreme Leader with her gift: a song that could draw out the beauty hidden within.
The 17-minute Captain EO premiered at EPCOT's Journey Into Imagination pavilion in Orlando on September 12, 1986. To enhance the audience's experience of the 3-D film, lasers, star fields and smoke effects were installed in the four theaters (at the Florida, California, Japan and France parks), bringing the total cost of the production to an estimated $30 million and making it the most expensive (per minute) film ever made.
The Film's Reception, Fate and Possible Future
Some critics took issue with the overcomplicated plot or were disappointed with the product turned out by so distinguished a group of artists. But most viewers had a positive experience. MTV's Elisabeth Rappe, who was eight years old when she saw Captain EO, felt "Jackson had tapped into some magical vision of the future."
Still, the novelty wore off, MJ's star tarnished, and the succeeding years saw attendance decline markedly. By mid-1998, EPCOT and Disneyland had replaced the Jackson film with the 3-D comedy Honey, I Shrunk The Audience. On August 17 of the same year, Disneyland Paris became the last park to draw the curtains on Captain EO.
In the years since, devoted fans have called for the movie's release to DVD, and the chances of such a move likely improved with MJ's untimely death at age 50 on June 25, 2009. It would be a special way to remember the days when, as Rappe put it, "Michael Jackson was a man of pure magic, a man who could convince you that rainbows and sequins were cool."
