More exciting news of my beloved The Rock, whose relentlessly positive updates on #theburn #neverquitting #bringingit and #teamsweatalloverthecardiomachine will one day succeed in making all of social media a place of health and light.
In the meantime, though, the artist also known as Dwayne Johnson is to star in the second Disney movie franchise based on one of the Disneyland boat rides. (Don’t worry: not It’s A Small World.) The first of these was Pirates of the Caribbean: once the sort of tired, second-tier parkfiller you might have ridden while ingesting a three-gallon blue Slush Puppie and killing time before your Space Mountain slot: today, one of the absolute cornerstones of money-crapping modern Hollywood creativity.
And now, another lazy river is to make its circuitous way to the big screen. To wit: Jungle Cruise, a ride that dates all the way back to the opening of the California theme park in 1955, and welcomes visitors to a colonial outpost. Here you board a boat that takes you down the jungle rivers of the world, where you are variously besieged by wild animals and spear-wielding head-hunters, in an adventure that really puts you inside the action of Disney’s cultural attitudes.
It is as yet unclear whom The Rock will play – there are various eastern gods and whatnot along the route for which the studio might regard him as a perfect fit. Either way, let’s set our sights on adventure, and what promises to be at least four sequels’ worth of densely plotted tales somehow inspired by one injection-moulded boat’s heroic journey back to the warm American embrace of the food concessions area.
