What movies should we watch with our teen to prep for Epic? With the other parks, it was pretty easy to make a list. E.T., Jurassic Park (all), MIB (all), maybe something else. We’d already had Harry Potter covered. Probably didn’t need to watch the entire series of everything, but I have a Thing about completion. We really enjoyed our prep work.
For Epic, it is a bit fuzzier. We watched the first TV series on How To Train Your Dragon when it was new, and read the audiobook series (totally awesome). So, that land is probably covered. It was a long time ago, though.
Maybe that recent Mario movie?
For the monsters, not sure.
Bride of Frankenstein? All I can think of is the Max Brooks Frankenstein.
I think Mario is more about the games than the movie…although if they aren’t familiar with the games so much, perhaps the movie would help. (Full disclosure, I haven’t seen the Mario movie yet, but my kids have and keep telling us we should see it…which we will probably do before we go to Epic in February.)
I think I’ve seen all of the related monster movies when I was like 10 years old! I also read Frankenstein in college for a class. But you raise a good point about seeing the movies involving Wolf Man, Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. (I’ve also seen vlogs where there is the Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein.)
The only connection to BttF is that Stardust racers have flux capacitors on the backs of them as an easter egg. But otherwise, there is no connection to BttF in the parks.
Isle of Berk - The new live action How To Train Your Dragon would be a good one, if you’ve already got some experience with the world. I did need a some things explained to me because I hadn’t seen the second and third animated movies?
For HP Land - if you’re already well familiar with the regular HP films, you need to watch the Fantastic Beasts films (specifically The Crimes of Grindelwald)
For Dark Universe - any/all of the Universal Monsters… Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Mummy, The Invisible Man…plus Creature from the Black Lagoon, Werewolf of London, and The Phantom of the Opera are good bonus options. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man is another option! You won’t be missing out on anything by not seeing them, maybe just some easter eggs. The Abbott and Costello meet series of films are also fun!
MarioLand - definitely more about the games than any of the movies. But, you could watch the new one. You could also get crazy and watch the 1993 Super Mario Bros. It is terrible, but in a fun way.
I just had this horrifying thought. While I consider the BTTF movies classics, and I’ve watched them over and over again…the first one is 40 years old!!! How did that happen?!?
We just recently watched the 1931 Frankenstein with Boris Karloff. It was pretty good! Nice and short. Not too scary. It gives context for the fiery windmill.
I’d had that reaction to ET. As homeschoolers, we are always on the alert for knowledge gaps and at first I felt like a failure that DD had no idea who ET was. Then I realized how old the movie was. So, I somewhat considered the movie watching to be cultural literacy.
I remember now! It was because I didn’t understand why the baby dragons (Night Lights) had white on them. So that was explained to me.
I feel like the Night Lights aren’t working great and haven’t been appearing in the land much.
so I suppose there is Hidden World sprinkled in with the roaming characters!