Epcot is my favorite Disney World park, so it's been a shame to see everything degrade over the years. I don't know why Iger/whoever is in charge of the decisions with the parks thinks it's a genius idea to add Guardians of the Galaxy rides that don't fit into the parks (Why are they building both a GOTG and Tron roller coaster? They're in different parks as Tron will be in Tomorrowland but it still seems redundant) they're in as a preclude to IP takeovers.
TRON is going to be a straight clone of the installation at Shanghai Disney and it's been a long time since WDW Tomorrowland got anything, so a TRON coaster will be a big draw for sure.
As for Guardians going into EPCOT, that has to do with the fact Universal actually has rights to Marvel properties for all parks east of the Mississippi, or so I think is the wording on the agreement from the 90s. So, Disney can't just drop in Marvel World like they're going to at DCA. Instead, apparently the coaster 'Cosmic Rewind' is going to be considered a 'Xandarian Outpost' in relation to Avengers Campus. As for why they're adding a coaster at all to Epcot, the fact is Epcot's original purpose as envisioned by Disney (loosely since he wanted a whole goddamn city which never happened) and its eventual, original implementation have long since been outdated thanks to the Internet. Or, essentially, they're trying to turn Epcot more into a standard park like Disneyland although at least they're trying to keep to the original ideals of it being 'educational' to a degree. I'm still kind of pissed of what they did with Test Track, which virtually was ruined by the same things that ruined Star Tours by becoming a personality-devoid 'modern' ride with a gimmick that's so-so at best. At the very least they haven't ruined Journey into Imagination further by making it some Inside Out nonsense but that still could happen unfortunately - by the same token, it's probably
why they haven't paid any attention to that ride in years, because they can't cram an IP into it properly.
Yeah, the one-off movies were a place to really let loose and do some exploration into some other genres within the setting. It could have been a lot of fun, and Edward's original idea to do a kind of gritty, on the ground war movie about the Rebels would have been a real treat I think. Some other ideas floated would have been a lot of fun as well, as long as the directors were kept within the confines of the setting but given that freedom to work within it. Unfortunately it seems like things are too dysfunctional to allow that kind of creativity.
I think that's one of the greatest ironies of why Disney keeps fucking up with Star Wars - they're so fixated on shoving big name characters in your face that they don't realize the setting naturally should lead to stories, not the other way around. Much like how Star Tours used to be basically space airline travel that had Star Wars elements but was free to do its own thing, since the company Star Tours had jack shit to do with the whole galactic war to the point at one point in the ride an X-Wing pilot flat out asks Rex what the hell a civilian transport is doing in a restricted war zone.
Now it's a Star Wars ride with elements of a space airline because according to what I can find in the ride summary off wikipedia, apparently Star Tours is closely affiliated with Rogue Squardron
from the beginning of its conception which is the whole reason the Empire shows up to capture the spy. And apparently, they
updated the ride so you can actually take part in events
out of chronological order, like having Kylo Ren try to get the spy out of the ship, which then takes off...and ends up in the middle of
The Battle of Hoth which took place
before Kylo Ren was even fucking born...then get contacted by Yoda confirming the spy is there (completely ignoring the time frame of this ride is supposed to be apparently between episodes 3 and 4, meaning Yoda is
in self-imposed exile on Dagobah and should not be doing any of this)...and then get into the
Battle of Naboo which took place when Vader was
still a child and R2D2, who is
plugged into your ship, should be on the Royal Naboo spaceship during that whole mess (as well as CP30 too, for that matter), before crash landing in the Naboo Starfighter hangar and CP30 remarks you're all part of the Resistance now even though he's somehow traveled back in time to before the the
predecessor to the Resistance even existed. Remember, Kylo Ren was at the start of this thing, so going through this
completely possible sequence of events I'm reading off wikipedia, apparently Starspeeders are traveling through time backwards and Yoda is helping an organization he canonically was never around for the existence of to begin with. But hey, look at how many recognizable things I just mentioned, just ignore the
complete and utter disrespect to the passage of time within the franchise.
