Yesterday, Disney unleashed a new trailer for their mystery adventure "Tomorrowland," one that seems to have (finally) gotten people excited, while also quietly launching an amazingly immersive new website that goes along with the film, TakeMeToTomorrowland.com. While it's impressive in any format, it's really special if you look at it on your phone, where you're encouraged to tour the sprawling futuristic utopia using the smart phone's motion sensors. (I was playing around with this on the train and really weirded out the woman behind me, since I had to physically turn around to get a glimpse of the gleaming city.) But giving the site a thorough exploration will yield unexplored treasures that we can exclusively reveal.



The site is full of interactive games, narration explaining the landscape and the ability to snap a selfie with a sci-fi backdrop (apparently selfies are still big in the future), but there are also bits of video, like the ones below. The first is a tour of the 1964 World's Fair, held in Queens, that has a particular connection to "Tomorrowland" -- that's where George Clooney's character, Frank Walker, is first transported to the otherworldly realm. (What's really great this too is that it's narrated by "Tomorrowland" director/co-writer Brad Bird!) The other two videos are even more intriguing, charting the history of the mysterious group known as Plus Ultra, a Randian supergroup formed by Jules Verne, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and other luminaries (it would later include people like Walt Disney), bent on the "cultivation of mankind's greatest resource: imagination." The second video shows the design and implementation of Tomorrowland, something they were going to unleash on the rest of the world... but of course that never happened.



In the two Plus Ultra shorts, the animation is slick and evocative and I can't help but wonder if Bird, who directed "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille," didn't call in a few favors from his friends at Pixar? Hmmm... Watch the videos below and be sure to check out the rest of TakeMeToTomorrowland.com. It's a trip.