But how many Mickey Mouse rides are there in that resort, let alone the one park? And, frankly, I don’t think there’s as big a visual difference between “new Mickey” and “classic Mickey as people want to believe there is.
Potter and Star Wars are all “one world, one aesthetic.” The timeline for Potter is a little inconsistent, but timelines are easily fudge. Mickey is, definitively, “one world, slightly different aesthetic.” And besides, there’s only one Mickey ride.
Paper Mario would be “two worlds, two aesthetics.” There’s a lot argument and belief that the Paper Mario series is not canon with the platformers (like it matters). But the platformers are the mainline story that the Mario Karts, Parties, and — most importantly— SNW are a part of. It would actually be like Disney building a Tom Holland Spider-Man attraction in the same land as a Tobey Maguire attraction.
This is very, VERY fair, and I completely respect these points,
A few things, though:
The Mickey in “Fantasmic!” is not characteristically like the Mickey in “M&MRR”, in my opinion. Mickey in the ride/the short film that plays in the next-door theatre packs Pluto into The trunk of a car unwittingly. Mickey in the show handily battles the personification of evil. And I’d say Fantasmic is an
attraction that might as well count as a ride, considering the hype and the impact it makes on vacation plans.
There’s something to me that is decidedly in a different level of immersion and seriousness in Star Tours and Jedi Training (ESPECIALLY Jedi Training, which is almost an AU if it wasn’t carefully placed into cannon in the way that some episodes of early Clone Wars feel like fanfiction), but let’s say that there is no seam, because technically there is not.
If we are going to go into this “canon” for Mario in any serious way, let’s talk about the forced marriage of Princess Peach in many of the Nintendo games, especially in Odyssey (and the implications of that), and how Mario murders Bowser multiple times to save her. While this is no different in many ways to the storyline of “Sleeping Beauty”, Phillip, Aurora, and Maleficent never played board games together nor went out go-karting.
The idea that “Paper Mario” cannot exist because the story is too different seems to me a little bit silly, considering the inconsistency of the relationship/friendships of the characters in the first place. Presumably, in the parks, the gang will be in “friendly competition”, perhaps with Bowser being a little more bitter than the rest to create some story texture and to nod to the fact that he can be an actual awful monster, but that, I don’t think, precludes the aesthetic of “Paper Mario”, in which the story changes completely with each game, and with Bowser especially shown in a much more positive light than usual (more in line with a theme park spin, IMHO.)
I see what you mean with the Spider-Man analogy, and it’s a really fair point. But I think it’s a little flawed, as Nintendo has made and put it’s seal of approval on all of the Mario games, in a way that Disney has not had control of every version of Spider-Man.
What this really makes me think of is Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin, though. Based on an animated TV show in a world where Buzz Lightyear can indeed fly and is really a space ranger. We enter this “alternate universe”. Go to Hollywood Studios and Buzz is a toy, where the entire arc of his first film was that, indeed, he is not a space ranger. In other parks around the world, both versions of Buzz exist in the same park, as he passes by on a parade float made of toys.
Now, I don’t see a full “Paper Mario” attraction coming any time soon - Nintendo and Universal ought to have bigger fish to fry, and people won’t clamor for it - but I don’t see why in any meaningful DESIGN way that a gateway to the paper world can’t exist. Or even a section of a store that has somehow become two-dimensional and angular.