Imagineers defend new Walt Disney robot
27 comments
·May 5, 2025Isamu
dehrmann
It also hints at what his reaction would be. It seems unfair for the family to criticize them doing to Walt what he did to Lincoln.
Retric
Dead for 10 years vs dead for 100 is a meaningful difference to me.
Namely how many people alive actually knew the person.
jelled
I agree that the number of years matter, but Walt Disney died in 1966.
havblue
So I guess the standard is: dead for 100 years is acceptable. Dead for 60 years is "too soon".
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Isamu
I think what would be unfair is putting words in the mouth of the animatronic, making Walt say something that he wouldn’t have agreed with. Same with any historical figure.
ryanhecht
Great exploration of this in Defunctland's latest piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjNca1L6CUk (There's a "part 2" on Disney's "Living Characters" coming this year!)
wongarsu
There is a time component to it. I don't think anybody would give a second thought to a Blackbeard animatronic. In the 60s Lincoln would have been dead about 100 years. His great-grandchildren were still alive. Today, Walt Disney has been dead 58 years. His daughter died a decade ago, his grandchildren are still alive
mmooss
> Exactly the same reaction happened when Disney developed the first Abraham Lincoln animatronic for the New York World’s Fair in the 1960’s.
Is there some story that you've read and might share?
tough
Funny how history likes to rhyme eh
aetherson
Surely if there is one person in history who we would be pretty sure would be thrilled to have a posthumous animatronic version of himself, it is Walt Disney.
krunck
Can't help thinking about the Kier Eagan animatronic statue in Severance.
nharada
Yeah the quote “the goal .. is to capture what it would have been like to be in Walt’s presence” sounds like it could be straight out of that show.
havblue
The problem I see with this is just the lack of originality. Disneyland originally focused on subjects like early America, the frontier or the future. This robot is about the guy who built a company that focused on that. It's very self referential. Couldn't they do something new like a Louis Armstrong robot that plays trumpet?
RajT88
I have seen this one before. The robot ends up trying to to eat Elian Gonzalez.
amiga386
So Robot Chicken wasn't lying to me!
schlauerfox
in the 80s AVG built a robotic Andy Warhol but he was enthused about it. Abraham lincoln is an American icon. Not sure someone who still has family in living memory is the same category despite being a sort of icon for a big corporation and a big emerging ethical concern of the 21st century seems to be bodily autonomy and consent. I see a lot of AI generated 'animated' photos, of the living and the dead. I tend to see a lot of people ignore someone's consent like they ignore media piracy, with a disinterested immoral hand-wave.
stickfigure
Walt Disney is unquestionably an American icon.
bombcar
There's some fuzzy line somewhere - building an animatronic person just after they passed against (what would have been) their will or that of close relatives seems wrong.
But at some point personalities and people themselves fade into history, and it becomes a historical figure (such as Lincoln).
givinguflac
I’m seriously blown away that you equated a person’s consent for their own autonomy and legacy to media piracy. What?
schlauerfox
I live in America so 'moral rights' aren't a thing, but in europe it appears to give artist/creators rights over how their work is portrayed. How our legacy is carried forward of our own likeness or our work is a moral question, and cultural, and defines our values.
ronsor
In America, the implementation of "moral rights" would unquestionably be a First Amendment violation.
lawlessone
It's cute now, but will people like it so much when it adopts Walt's uh... views on things...?
tetris11
he had other facets of his personality which they will try to capture, and lessen the others. I do agree that you can't pick and choose parts of a person, and claim it's still them, but here we are
>Yet soon a social media missive critical of the attraction from Walt's granddaughter would go viral. It raised anew ethical questions that often surround any project attempting to capture the dead via technology, be it holographic representations of performers or digitally re-created cinematic animations, namely debates surrounding the wishes of the deceased and whether such creations are exploitative.
Exactly the same reaction happened when Disney developed the first Abraham Lincoln animatronic for the New York World’s Fair in the 1960’s.