'Jungle Cruise' Is Packed With Puns And Disney Parks Easter Eggs [Set Visit]
If you've never ridden the Jungle Cruise ride at a Disney theme park, the basic gist is that you board a replica steamboat captained by a trusty skipper who constantly makes puns and tells dad jokes as they narrate your voyage through the "dangerous" waters of the attraction. Now that Pirates of the Caribbean, The Country Bears, Tomorrowland, and The Haunted Mansion have been adapted into live-action feature films, here comes Jungle Cruise, which puts Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt on a riverboat adventure.
Disney purists out there will be happy about at least one aspect of this forthcoming film: according to what we learned on the movie's set, Johnson's skipper character keeps the spirit of the ride alive by constantly dropping puns and one-liners throughout this adaptation, taking inspiration from the very first skipper: Walt Disney himself.
Jungle Cruise Movie Puns Will Fly Fast and Furious
/Film's Hoai-Tran Bui visited the movie's set, where producer Hiram Garcia confirmed that there would be "a bunch of Easter eggs that we are going to spread out all throughout." But perhaps the most obvious connection will be the amount of puns uttered by Johnson's character. "We have such a fun time writing those," he said, "and Dwayne has really jumped into that and connected to tons of skippers that being a part of the Disney ride."
Producer Beau Flynn followed up, saying, "Everyone really is having fun with the puns. [Johnson] does entertain himself. He kind of makes fun, in a sweet way, of the passengers. And also Emily's character really doesn't really enjoy the one line puns. So he starts to do them on purpose because he's got thousands of them that he can use to push her buttons." Flynn said Johnson's character will be the one saying most of the puns in the movie ("Somehow he pulls it off"), so don't expect any other character to lean into the ride's history quite as much as Johnson's.
Garcia also confirmed that Johnson took cues directly from Walt Disney, who stepped aboard one of those riverboats when Disneyland first opened."The first skipper ever, essentially, was Walt Disney, and there's a great picture that we have in Dwayne's trailer that he uses for inspiration every day," Garcia pointed out. "So he really fed off of that, of who the first skipper was, wanting to make him proud."
Keep Your Eyes Peeled for Other Easter Eggs, Too
Flynn also explained that if you're a fan of the ride and know what to look for, you'll find lots of little nods to specific plot points or locations from the attraction. "If you do know the ride, you'll see there are a lot that you can see," he said. "The Backside of Water is a huge part of the ride. Remember, that's a very big moment, a big set piece for us in the movie. And it's very clever how we connect to that."
And while you're keeping watch for connections specific to that ride, don't be surprised if you spot other Easter eggs from that area of the Disney theme parks dropped in the background. "There's also Adventureland nods as well," Flynn says, and Garcia elaborated that "there's some very cool nods to the world of Disneyland and the bigger vision in subtle ways." Might we see the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, the fictional setting of the Indiana Jones Adventure attraction at Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea?
We'll have to see when Jungle Cruise opens in theaters and on Disney+ with Premier Access on July 30, 2021.