SPRINGFIELD, Ill. ? The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum opens today with a silicone Lincoln in the rotunda and media pundit Tim Russert introducing mock TV attack ads from the campaign of 1860.

In the Union Theater, an abolitionist roars: “Lincoln was no friend of the black man” as hologram cannons boom to signal the start of the Civil War. Strobe lights flash; the plush seats jerk and rumble like a ride at Universal Studios. When Atlanta burns, the air feels hot.

This is history, Hollywood style: A $90 million look at Honest Abe’s life and times — with special effects created by Stan Winston Studios, the wizards behind “Jurassic Park” and “Terminator 3.”

Some people call it the model of a 21st-century museum. Others call it schlock.

“Abraham Lincoln is treated like Paul Bunyan or Betty Crocker, like a commercial hoax, a do-good invention of the Springfield Tourism Bureau. They don’t need to shake your seat to scare you about the Civil War,” said John Y. Simon, a historian at Southern Illinois University.

“To attract today’s generation, glass boxes and yellow labels may not be enough,” countered Ronald Rietveld, a Lincoln scholar at California State University.

A bit more showy

The museum’s collection of artifacts includes so many treasures that a few glass display cases were inevitable. But the 50,000 square feet of gallery space is given over mostly to more showy exhibits.

Visitors walk through 12 life-size theatrical sets, some with soundtracks, that trace Lincoln’s life from the dim, cramped cabin of his boyhood to the splendor and sorrow of his White House years. Two multimedia shows explore the president’s legacy with a striking blend of historic photos, ghostly holograms and an actor. A four-minute animated graphic captures the Civil War’s shifting frontline — and mounting body count.

Richard Norton Smith, executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, sees today's museum opening as a kickoff to a decade of celebrations of the 16th president, including the 2009 bicentennial of his birth. Smith previously was director of the Dole Institute of Politics at Kansas University.

And in the “Illusion Corridor,” visitors walk past holograms of disembodied faces, each of them shouting an angry, often racist, opinion about slavery, Lincoln or the war. The historians who advised the museum’s designers were adamant that the language be full of fury, even at the risk of offending visitors. “We needed to put Lincoln in his own time,” Rietveld said.

An adjacent Presidential Library, which opened last year, houses 12 million papers relating to Lincoln — including a handwritten copy of the Gettysburg Address.

Honoring a president who has been dead 140 years gave exhibit designers a certain amount of freedom.

Museum mastermind Bob Rogers, chairman of BRC Imagination Arts in Burbank, Calif., said his goal was to “knock Lincoln off his pedestal” — to make visitors see him as a man, not a myth. So these exhibits acknowledge their hero’s flaws more directly than most presidential museums dare.

“When you walk through these galleries, you are Lincoln. You are seeing the world through his eyes,” Rogers said.

Although renowned the world over for his oratory, Lincoln remains silent throughout these galleries, as befits a “hero of the screen,” Rogers said. “Think of a great Clint Eastwood character.”

Placards and wall text explain Lincoln’s views on issues such as slavery and the limits of presidential power. But the stage sets are so riveting, it’s easy to overlook the words.

Even when the historical record is unambiguous, the museum sometimes improvises. John Wilkes Booth famously declared “sic semper tyrannis” (Latin for “thus always to tyrants”) after assassinating Lincoln. That sounded too arcane for modern ears. So in one of the multimedia presentations, the script writers have Booth muttering instead: “Vengeance shall be mine.”

The goal is to make Lincoln’s story accessible so both adults and children “feel the fascination of history down in their gut,” Rogers explained.

He doesn’t want the museum to teach all there is to know about the nation’s 16th president. He wants the $7.50 tour to spark visitors’ interest — and inspire them to browse the gift shop to learn more.

Missing the intellect?

That approach troubles some Lincoln experts, including historian Richard Norton Smith, who agreed in 2003 to serve as the museum’s director. He had rejected the job once, out of concern that then-Gov. George Ryan was not managing the project well. When a new governor took office, Smith reconsidered.

But he signed on too late to have much influence on the exhibit design.

“The intellectual drama of Lincoln’s story, I felt, may be missing,” he said.

To fill that void, Smith posted additional explanatory text in 20 spots throughout the museum. He also hired an actor to stand in the Cabinet room in period costume, answering questions about the administration.

Finally, Smith insisted the museum expand its temporary exhibit space, which will feature rotating displays of artifacts and “a huge amount of wall text,” he said. The opening show deals with Lincoln’s assassination and includes the bed on which the president died.

“You don’t ever want to underestimate your visitors,” Smith said. “Even in an age saturated with video, nothing compares with the real thing.”

Before taking the Lincoln museum job, Smith was director of the Dole Institute of Politics at Kansas University.