“This doesn’t feel like Star Wars!” has been a common complaint about the franchise ever since George Lucas released The Phantom Menace in 1999. There have subsequently been a slew of films and animated series based on the property (Disney now owns it all). Each new piece of media has had varying reactions as to how much they “feel” like Star Wars. Most recently, the new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland and Walt Disney World have come under fan fire for not “feeling” enough like the Star Wars they know from the films (especially the better known original trilogy).
So what is that Star Wars “feeling” and how can it be replicated in a theme park setting? Well, there is an attraction at Disneyland has been doing it successfully since 1987. Star Tours thrusts guests right into the middle of a Star Wars film, and does so with humor, heart, action, and that familiar Star Wars feeling.
The purpose of this editorial is to point out that Star Tours makes better use of Star Wars source material than the newer Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run. Both attractions “feel” like Star Wars in one way or another, but one of them does it impeccably.
Once More, With Feeling
Star Wars is a grand, operatic adventure. A mixture of sci-fi and fantasy. An optimistic, sensational tone set with thrilling heroic action and periodically goofy humor.
George Lucas described Star Wars themes like this:
“Star Wars is made up of many themes. It’s not just one little simple parable. One is our relationship to machines, which are fearful, but also benign. Then there is the lesson of friendship and symbiotic relationships, of your obligations to your fellow man, to other people that are around you. This is a world where evil has run amuck. But you have control over your destiny, you have many paths to walk down, and you can choose which destiny is going to be yours.”
Star Wars has a lot of themes, including the balance between light and dark (and the necessity of both), destiny vs choice, the weight of lineage, and how one person can make a difference even against all odds.
When it comes to tone and mood, Star Wars has a very distinct serious tone mixed with lighthearted adventure. There are moments of mysticism, optimism/hope, and momentous events.
Common motifs include the old, lived-in universe with life brimming everywhere, events that affect a large scale of people, and the “everyman” becoming a hero.
These are the common foundations of what Star Wars “feels” like. With that baseline, let’s return to Disneyland.
Star Tours vs. Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run
Star Tours takes the mundane activity of public transportation, and makes it exciting by taking guests out of the expected and pulling them into an action-packed story filled with characters and places they’ve seen in the movies. By contrast, Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run starts off with the exciting prospect of flying a famous ship, but then places guests into a fairly linear video game robbery that does not reflect many places and characters they know.
The themes of Star Tours include things like “the bad guys just hijacked my vacation,” being a tourist in the galaxy, and how one person can make a difference in the grand scheme of things (even if they didn’t realize it). Comparatively, Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run’s themes are much more shallow, including “I flew the Millennium Falcon,” smuggling to enrich yourself, and targeting guests for ridicule.
It’s tough to come up with a “main idea” for Smuggler’s Run beyond the set-up for the video game heist which is about to come. There is little to no resolution or development of any story beyond the pre-show. Alternatively, Star Tours more closely matches the familiar themes of the Star Wars saga, and does so with a different combination of elements on each ride with random beginnings, middle, and endings.
Star Tours’ mood and tone vary per scene, but it’s often serious, mixed with lighthearted adventure, humor, and optimism. Star Tours maintains its excitement level ride after ride due to its varied destinations and the potential to become the Rebel Spy. It may get scary at times, but will always uplift and allow you to be successful in the end. By contrast, Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run takes itself much more seriously, with humor coming only from the sarcasm and contempt from your “employer” Hondo. But, once assigned to a crew role, you become a cog in the machine. No matter how hard you try or well you play, you will be criticized by the ride system, and possibly even by other guests in the cockpit of the Falcon itself. Millennium Falcon was designed to make you feel disappointed in your abilities and will loudly proclaim you a loser at the end of the ride.
Because Falcon is interactive, there is an element of the mood that can’t be controlled by the designers: your fellow guests in the crew. In a narrative sense, having an exhausting experience due to a poor crew isn’t very Star Wars at all. And due to each guest playing only half a role (half a pilot, half a gunner, half an engineer), you are nearly ensured a disappointing performance every single time. Moreover, unless you are half of a pilot, you will spend more time trying to push buttons to your side than you will looking at the action on the screen in front of you, so you’ll miss most of what little story there is on the ride itself.
Mood and tone are ultimately where Smuggler’s Run fails as a Star Wars attraction, while Star Tours manages to match the optimistic tone that the franchise is known for.
George Lucas sums it up best:
[Star Wars is] a film for 12-year-olds. This is what we stand for. You’re about to enter the real world. You’re moving away from your parents. You’re probably scared, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Here’s what you should pay attention to: Friendships, honesty, trust, doing the right thing. Living on the light side, avoiding the dark side.
Star Tours has a few reoccurring motifs like the “everyman” becomes the spy, references to the travel agency, recreating iconic scenes/locations from Star Wars films, and that the bad guys affect simple things like taking a vacation (which in the context of the rider being on vacation themselves creates a very relevant motif). At the same time, Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run continues to be much shallower, boiling down to things like “press the flashing button!” “Get after that cargo!” and “the more you work together, the more you earn!” But at the end of the ride, you won’t have visited any of the Star Wars locations you grew up watching, and you’ll only see one character you are already likely to know. Whether or not you enjoy the game, it may not come across as a truly Star Wars experience to you.
Location, Location, Location!
The setting is important when we’re talking about these attractions because they play a big role in the tone.
Here are the potential planets you can visit in Star Tours:
- Hoth
- Tatooine
- Kashyyyk
- Jakku
- Coruscant
- Naboo
- Geonosis
- Crait
- (and an upcoming destination from The Rise of Skywalker)
On Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run you’ll see only:
Besides Batuu, each of the locations has appeared in a Star Wars film at one point or another, though what you see in the ride will not remind you of anything you’ve seen in the movies. Yes, on Smuggler’s Run you fly to Corellia, the home planet of Han Solo, and the setting of the introduction to Solo: A Star Wars Story. The Corellia scenes in Solo are entirely forgettable besides the few bits of exposition. Corellia is a bleak manufacturing planet, a planet that from the air might be one of the least visually striking places you could visit.
The biggest difference between the settings of each ride is that Star Tours feels more alive. Hoth has a big battle with AT-ATs, tauntauns, and speeders. Tatooine you enter a pod race. Coruscant is literally one big moving city. For one reason or another, there’s not a lot going on during Smuggler’s Run other than shooting at TIE fighters and a train. There’s no other air traffic, no people or aliens operating the docking bay you’re in; really, there’s no character interaction at all besides Hondo and Chewie.
Missing the Point
A contributing factor to the failure of Falcon is that the tone feels less like The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, but closer to Solo: A Star Wars Story, with its washed-out colors and dirty, bleak style.
Smuggler’s Run’s depiction of Batuu and Corellia has none of the details you would expect from the sequel trilogy era. With its endless hallways of grey and metal textures, it’s about as empty and hollow feeling as Solo was. To this end, Smuggler’s Run does depict a version of Star Wars, but not the cinematic version of Star Wars that fans fantasize about.
I wanted to avoid claims like “Star Tours is just better because George Lucas made it” or “it’s better because it uses classic settings and characters.” Star Wars isn’t Star Wars because of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, or Tatooine, it’s a combination of a lot of things. Just because you’re on the Millennium Falcon in Smuggler’s Run doesn’t mean that narratively it feels like Star Wars.
The prequel trilogy was universally panned during its initial release, but it’s the base of what makes Star Tours so great. There have been arguments against the use of the prequel trilogy in Star Tours, but I disagree with them. Why? Tours doesn’t forget to slow down and remind you that Star Wars is fun.
On Star Tours, you’re a tourist, but by the end of the ride, you’ve felt as though you’ve contributed to helping something bigger than yourself. Alternatively, Smuggler’s Run continually reminds you that Hondo doesn’t need a good crew, he just needs disposable bodies. The Resistance will get their fuel, but that’s not your motivation. You’re here to do a job and to make money! It’s as if the designers completely forgot that most riders are on vacation. Star Wars fans don’t care about credits, they care about making a difference in the galaxy.
Finally, let’s take a look at one of the major differences between the attractions, their philosophies on music.
John Williams Moves You
The maestro, John Williams plays a pivotal part in the feeling of Star Wars. I’ll let George Lucas explain:
“John Williams is extremely important. The films are done as silent movies and the music and soundtrack is a very, very important part of the whole experience. So, he is the secret to the whole thing. I do nothing. I just make something visual for him to put into music to.”
Williams’ scores have set the right mood for over 40 years now. Star Tours uses his scores throughout the entire experience, from the queue to the attraction, to the triumphant music enveloping you as you exit the Starspeeder. The music alone does most of the heavy lifting. You did it, you were successful.
The sheer lack of background music in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is a big complaint of ours across the entire new land, but it feels especially absent on Smuggler’s Run. The queue has no music to get you excited (besides the occasional DJ-R3X broadcast). It’s only when you get in the cockpit of the Falcon and take flight that you start to hear some of Williams’ brilliant Galaxy’s Edge score, but it’s entirely subdued and indistinguishable from the sound effects and loud instructions from Hondo. The Smuggler’s Run musical experience is indistinguishable from the background noise that overwhelms it. Williams’ score comes back again at the end of the mission, but the moment you re-enter the cargo bay, bright and cheery is replaced with nothing but sounds of a mangled starship as you exit the Falcon. It robs you of that “job well done” feeling. Announcements that you owe Hondo money for the damage you did to his ship, cement that you are nothing but a failure.
Galaxy’s Edge designers would tell you the lack of music is for the purposes of realism. But it should be plain to everyone that if there’s one thing that makes Star Wars, well, Star Wars, it’s the John Williams music. Which is why the most successful things in Galaxy’s Edge are Oga’s Cantina and Savi’s Workshop, both of which use Star Wars music to the benefit of storytelling and guest enjoyment.
Conclusion
“We go back to ancient myths and morals in these stories. Our need to be reminded of the best and the worst in all of us is very strong. That had always been my purpose: to get people back in touch with what makes us so valuable as a human race. We seemed to be drifting as a society–losing touch with the basic concepts of right and wrong. This is an adventure, but it’s more than that, and I think people not only sensed that, they NEEDED that.”
-George Lucas on why Star Wars is so important to people
Star Tours does a better job of bringing the elements of Star Wars to Disneyland than Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run. George Lucas definitely hit the “feel” right. They’ve even done a great job since with the updated Star Tours destinations to coincide with The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. Crait remains one of the most exciting destinations, at least for myself, it has a sort of classic Star Tours and Star Wars tone, maybe even more so than the scene from the actual film.
Every time I step onto Star Tours, I’m reminded of why I love it so much. The varied locations, exciting battles, and the warm feeling of saving the day make it one of the best theme park attractions regardless of its age. Sometimes all you need is that little spark of hope.
It’s Disney Vacation Time!
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Let’s Hear From You
Lilliana is a true Star Wars and Disney Parks fan. This editorial was her opinion, but what do you think? Does Star Tours feel more like Star Wars to you? Other than the look, does Smuggler’s Run feel like a Star Wars adventure to you? Would Galaxy’s Edge feel more like a true Star Wars space if it used more of the Star Wars music that sets the tone for the movies? Let’s hear your thoughts.
And don’t forget that new Star Tours destinations launch tomorrow, December 20th! Check back on MiceChat tomorrow for details.
Star Wars Day
It’s Star Wars day here on MiceChat. The Saga may be ending, but the adventures continue at Disneyland. Here’s a little teaser video we put together for you:
Check back throughout the day on MiceChat.com for more Star Wars and Rise of Skywalker news, info, and fun. And again tomorrow for more Disneyland and Disney World updates including the launch of new destinations for Star Tours!
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