The Mission Breakout movie...that isn't a Marvel film

 Since my last post here was about Tower of Terror (1997), and a response to that post by @shaydystheshadowqueen led to the subject of this one, I figured I’d take the time to editorialize a bit more about movies here.  Surprisingly, it may be actually relevant to the Tower of Terror rides--well, at least one of them.  You can judge for yourself by the end.

Picture if you will, a new crop of filmmakers having to tackle the same challenge Tower of Terror (1997)’s filmmakers did: make a film about an IP ride, but it cannot use the IP in question.

And, make it a Mission Breakout movie.

Now, obviously, such a situation would never really exist.  A main drive of the Mission Breakout changeover was for the lucrative Guardians of the Galaxy IP, after all.  But let’s continue this thought experiment for a moment.  What are you left with?

An ominous figure who obsessively collects things, including monstrous sentient beings.

The collector is intent on adding at least one of the heroes to his collection. 

Both those monstrous beings and our heroes need to break out of their containment.

Extremely distinct celestial industrial futurist fantasy art deco (?) architecture.  And I mean REALLY distinct architecture.  I have no idea if this actually describes a real style of it, but you know it if you see it.  And I’ve seen it in two places now.

Because this theoretical movie?  It actually kind of exists.

Note: All screencaps are from movie-screencaps.com

Thir13en Ghosts (2001) (henceforth Thirteen Ghosts so grammar check stops underlining everything) obviously pre-dates Mission Breakout by many, many years.  It even pre-dates California Adventure’s Tower of Terror, which opened in 2004!  Somehow, though, it has one of the most bizarre, unique, and stunning examples of a haunted house ever put to cinema, and that house manages to have the architecture of Mission Breakout.  

 

The glass monster cages look especially familiar:

 

This distinct design language even carries over into the DVD menus if you buy a physical copy!

In fact, watching this film for the first time, I finally understood what the Mission Breakout designers were attempting to do.  The house in the film is genuinely stunning; if not classically beautiful, then at least extremely visually interesting.  You really don’t see other haunted mansions like it, and as a result it’s one of my favorite haunted building designs.  This might seem surprising, given how often I rag on Mission Breakout’s ugliness.  The difference here is clearly budget (or at least the ability to purpose-build the structure you want) and kinetic energy.  Mission Breakout, being a quick and cheap overlay, doesn’t have the benefit of being custom made to showcase this style, and therefore looks like the Temu knockoff of it.  Breakout generally lacks visual kinetic energy, with lots of parts feeling "pasted on."  The Thirteen Ghosts house is constantly in motion—gears are turning, glass walls are shifting, metal rings spin, and panels on the walls shift around to open and close.  Really, you should go watch the movie to see it, because screencaps aren’t doing it justice, and some examples I could post would be spoilers.  

 

This massive central machine that powers the house feels especially MCU.

I think Breakout’s designers actually intended a more visually kinetic appearance, based on an early press release—which I distinctly remember, but frustratingly can no longer find archived online—that promised projections constantly animating the façade.  Sadly, I presume the budget absolutely hobbled the vision and limited the projections to only Monsters After Dark.

And yes, the plot of Thirteen Ghosts involves a morally questionable collector who keeps his collection of twelve (so far…) monstrous ghosts locked in ever-shifting glass boxes custom-made to keep them contained.  Of course, they escape containment.  Our human protagonists are also locked in the haunted mansion and must escape, with the collector intent on adding at least one of them to the collection instead.  It’s Monsters After Dark and Mission Breakout rolled into one!  Well, okay, there’s much less classic rock going on, and far fewer attempts at comedy.  I won’t spoil the plot because I found this a really enjoyable watch, and the movie is fairly accessible (here it is on Tubi for free, or the DVD is $5 on Amazon).   I think it’s a really underrated haunted mansion movie.  I blame the fact that the poster/DVD cover art doesn’t even indicate it’s a haunted house film for its lack of ability to find an audience these days.

 

This feels so generic.  I probably wouldn't have watched it if I hadn't been recommended it and told it was a haunted mansion movie.  I'm not even sure which of the characters the screaming face is supposed to be.

Heck, the shelves upon shelves of various collectibles and antiques in the mansion even seem to exist in parallel in Thirteen Ghosts and the Collector’s office in Mission Breakout!  It's never officially stated, but it's clear through design details that our mansion owner collects all things, and not just ghosts.

 

Yes, Tony Shaloub is in this.

Matthew Lillard is in it too.

After all the screencaps I’ve posted, here’s some photos of Mission Breakout for comparison: 

 

Note: I took these Mission Breakout photos during Monsters After Dark 2024, and thus they reflect the lighting and set dressing in that version of the ride.

 

Once again, much like watching the movie conveys more than screenshots, actually going on the ride gives a way better sense of the it than this sampling of photos.

You may have noticed that I refer to Thirteen Ghosts as a haunted mansion movie, rather than just a haunted house movie.  That's because it is a Haunted Mansion movie, as in THE Haunted Mansion.  Thirteen Ghosts is officially (in legal terms) but also only sort-of (in plot terms) a remake of the 1960 movie 13 Ghosts.  

 

Back when Walt Disney was brainstorming ideas for a haunted house for Disneyland, he actually took Imagineers to a screening of a specific ghost movie for inspiration.  That movie?  Yeah, it’s 13 Ghosts, cheesy gimmick B-movie extraordinaire.  Apparently Rolly Crump even stated that this movie, and not The Haunting (1963) was the Walt-approved inspiration for the ride.  (He did not rule out that other Imagineers were inspired by The Haunting, just that Walt did not officially direct them to watch it.)

Mansion fans will recognize a lot in 13 Ghosts, but especially the cheesy horror-comedy tone, the wide variety of vaguely comedic spirits, the séance, and the numerically ordered ghosts with “room for one more.”

Anyone else get Mystic Manor vibes from this version of the mansion exterior?

 

I feel like the lion and lion tamer ghosts are iconic to fans familiar with classic Haunted Mansion concept art.  Also note the red-blue "Illusion-O" color tinting.

The seance

 

The family maid/psychic medium is played by Margaret Hamilton!  Yes, the Wicked Witch of the West!

This movie is a very different experience from its "remake" and also worth at least one watch. 13 Ghosts seems to currently be in a bit of a home media limbo, with official physical copies out of print, but there are a few digital copies floating around on streaming.  Plex has the black and white 4x3 VHS version, Tubi has the black and white widescreen (dvd?) version, and Internet Archive has a version that preserves the red/blue tinted Illusion-O effects, so you can experience the original intent at home if you have your own red/blue 3D glasses.

So, if 13 Ghosts has an official Disney ride connection, what of Thirteen Ghosts?  As soon as the movie was over, I was searching up the art and visual development departments in the credits to see if any of them had any Disney or Marvel connection.

I started by IMDB-searching names from the credits, and found a striking number of them went on to work on Disney’s Tomorrowland (2015), of all things. Okay, that was a Disney Parks connection, but a really tenuous one that didn't provide many answers.   Plus, Tomorrowland doesn't look much like Mission Breakout or Thirteen Ghosts.  

Likewise, I looked back at The Collector’s Fortress as depicted in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) for more clues, only to have more questions.  Those glass cages look the same but otherwise the architecture is strikingly un-Breakout.  So, that left the initial Marvel end a mystery as well.

 

Those glass cages are the same, but the Collector's base in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) is much more open and warehouse-like.

 But then, I found a lead in an unlikely place.  I usually don't put stock in random "list-icle" sites but this Ranker post had a potential bombshell: the production designer for Thirteen Ghosts had gone on to work on MCU films, and James Gunn had worked, albeit uncredited, on Thirteen Ghosts.

Thus, I went about verifying those claims.  Sure enough, based on his IMDB page, Sean Hargreaves served as production designer on Thirteen Ghosts, and then went on to be a senior concept designer on multiple MCU films.  Most importantly for this post, he worked on Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 and Thor Ragnarok: the two films that canonically connect to Mission Breakout.

James Gunn, of course, is the writer and director of the Guardians of the Galaxy portion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  He also worked on Mission Breakout, directing the screen-based portions. The claim about him working on Thirteen Ghosts was a bit harder to verify, as the tweet where he confirmed it had been deleted.  I did, however, find an archive of it thanks to the magic of the Wayback Machine:

 

Both he and the person he replied to seemed to have a rather negative view of the film.  Indeed this film has a seemingly disproportionate negative reputation that I can't explain.  Also he uses the title of the original film when obviously he would've worked on the remake instead.

Yeah, Gunn seems to have just done some uncredited rewrites... but he DID work on it.  And, honestly, it feels like it has his signature "vibe" even beyond it looking like a ride he would eventually make.  I think you'll get it if you watch the film.

 

So, it's a tenuous connection... but it IS a connection.  It's not exactly proof that Mission Breakout was inspired by the architecture of Thirteen Ghosts, but it's at least interesting that creatives involved with the latter would go on to create the former.

 

Or, I wondered, could both Breakout and the film be drawing from some even earlier source? 

Some of the architecture in Thor Ragnarok (2017) has this same style, and of course that movie is also canonically part of Mission Breakout, particularly for Monsters After Dark.

 

 

Thor Ragnarok's design was based on the art of Jack Kirby.  Given the numerous comics references that show up in Thirteen Ghosts too, I wonder if that could be the missing link or the inspiration behind it all.

So, there you have it folks.  There's a Mission Breakout movie that's not Marvel or Disney affiliated, and debuted 15 years before the ride.  I can't definitively prove a link, or the origin of this very unique architectural style, but they aren't entirely unrelated.  It'd be especially amusing if there was a connection, because Disney definitely already created an unofficial 13 Ghosts ride with The Haunted Mansion.  I never expected to be diving into Breakout's origins the way I usually do Tower's, but here we are!

Also, in case it wasn't clear already, I recommend you go watch Thirteen Ghosts and 13 Ghosts.  Let me know if you spot any other similarities!