3 Short Paragraphs: Treasure Planet

 2002, d. John Musker and Ron Clements - Disney+

Big ol' sailing ships in space?
Big ol'  no thank you.

Treasure Planet is one of the most notorious expensive budget turned box office disasters in cinema history...stacking up there with Cleopatra and Ishtar.  It's earned this reputation not because of its quality but because, of well, facts.  The numbers don't lie.  Plus, it was such a bomb, it was single-handedly responsible for Disney killing its hand-drawn animation department, its bread and butter for three quarters of a century, and killed the Disney renaissance period.  I remember it coming out at the time thinking, foremost "who cares about seeing "Treasure Island" but it space, like, at all" and secondly that it looked like it was trying too hard to get out of "Princess mode" and appeal to boys (if you look at what Disney was releasing beforehand - eg. Tarzan, Hercules, Emperor's New Groove, Atlantis) but it just couldn't shake appearances that it was young girl fodder. Clearly others thought as I did, particularly about not caring about yet another adaptation of Treasure Island.  I mean it would be another year before anyone would care about pirate tales again, and then Pirates of the Caribbean would be the only take, and they would run it into the ground. 

The insinuation of a box office bomb is that it's a bad movie, with a bad story, told badly.  And frankly, this is not that.  It's a beautifully animated movie with some real eye popping sequences, more than a few curious design delights, and it blends CGI and traditional hand drawn animation about as well as had ever been done at that point. The story itself is a somewhat straightforward take on Treasure Island with acceptable modifications made for the setting, so it's hard to mess up when you're working with a classic structure like that.  But therein lies the problem.  It feel old, dated, and the attempts at making it contemporary feel somewhat shoehorned or overblown (a "yahoo" surfing action sequence basically opening the film, a montage sequence of Jim bonding with Silver over the full song from Goo Goo Dolls).  Directors Musker and Clements had this on their wishlist for almost two decades, so they had time to work it through, and it's pretty tight, in terms of storytelling, and yet I really couldn't engage with it at all.

There's nothing ostensibly wrong with this movie, but it doesn't do anything daring.  I like some of the alien creature designs (and the addition of a shapeshifting ball of cuteness called Morph was just the right amount for a Disney movie) but the overall aesthetic of spaceships that look like traditional sailing ships of the 18th century and the wardrobe design also looking like space versions of 18th century costuming...well, it's just not to my taste.  I don't dig on that aesthetic, like, at. all.  I think the same tale that really steeped itself in a sci-fi aesthetic (clearly NOT what the directors wanted) would have appealed to me (and a broader 2002 audience) much more.  I did like that Silver and Jim developed a bond that wasn't really in the original story, and it made for the most interesting dynamic of the film, but it left Captain Amelia (a lively Emma Thompson) and family friend Dr. Doppler feeling completely ancillary to the story, and their "romance" very perfunctory.  But I was thinking instead Jim's mother should have joined them on the trip, there should be a romance between Jim's mother and Dr. Doppler and that Doppler should become Jim's mentor on their journey even though he's not as cool or tough as Silver who would be vying for Jim's affection but only to get the map.