A cyborg and a troubled teen find friendship and family sailing among the stars.

I wanted to do something a bit different with the next few weeks reviews. I, of course, am a big fan of animated films, and I feel that there are several films which are just fantastic that for one reason or another, did not get a fair shake while in the theaters and really deserve taking a second look at. This week, we are looking at Disney’s Treasure Planet.

Now I gotta start off by giving you guys a bit of the history of this film cause its more jucy than a good soap opera. Treasure Planet was a film 17 years in the making. The film was tossed around for a while, many different directions were considered, but eventually the film was axed by John Katzenberg only to be later revieved by Roy E. Disney. Apparently a big blow up over whether this film should be made or not occured within the Disney company in 1994 and may have had lead to Katzenbergs leaving Disney and starting Dreaworks with Speilberg and David Geffen.

This film is also rumored to be the beginning of the end for Eisner. I have heard that Eisner, who has long had a very public fued with Roy E. Disney, and being in charge of the marketing dollars, tried not only to sell it as something it was not, but also did not put as many marketing dollars toward the film as famously reported. It is well known that Eisner hated the idea of this film from the beginning. And he was quick to report (only days after its lack-luster opening night) that Treasure Planet was a failure. A move which certainly did not help bring the audiance to the theater.

The film itself is most notated for being Disneys biggest failure ever. It was the most expensive film Disney had ever made and it ended up loosing 125 million dollars when it was all said and done. Many critics point to this film as the catalyst for the eventual downfall of the Disney Animation Studio.

So does this film deserve its reputation? The answer, of course, is absolutely not. But, before we get into that, a brief synopsis:

In the film, a troubled teen named Jim Hawkins finds a map that reveals the location of Treasure Planet. The planet is said to be made up entirely of the looted plunder of the legendary pirate known as Captain Flint.

The map prompts Jim and his dog-like alien caretaker named Doppler to commison a ship to search for Treasure Planet. Jim’s mother is, ofcourse, hesitant to let her son go. She loves her son dearly, and she needs help around the Bed and Breakfast which she has been forced to run by herself since Jim’s father abandoned them when Jim was only a child. Doppler is able to convince Jim’s mother to let him go however, ensuring that the adventure would be good for Jim and that perhaps Jim would learn responsibilty.

As Jim begins his adventure, he befriends the ships cook, a cyborg named Silver who shares more in common with Jim than either first realize. The boy may have lost his father, but in Silver, Jim finds everything that he was missing after his own father left him.

Unfortunately, Neither Jim nor Silver, expected to find such a friendship when they both set off in search of Treasure Planet and carefully laid plans would put their relationship to the ultimate test when they eventually find the long lost treasure of Captain Flint.

When I first watched this film, the first thing that hit me was just how amazing the design was. The spaceships are not the big tin cans with large blazing engines that is so often seen in most Sci-fi fare. These ships have far more in common with the beautiful sailing vessels of the 1700′s. The ships of Treasure Planet are elegant wooden vessels which sail the either with their large solar sails unfurled and the wind blowing through the hair of crew as they stand on the deck watching a pod of space-whales as the fly alongside the ship.

Surprisingly, it was this decision to meld modern science fiction with the classic story of Treasure Island in such a visual way that turns off many of the critcs who reviewed this film. “How do they breath in space?” is the question so often asked. The answer, of course, is: Who cares.

I mean, its explained away early in the film as being the either that they are sailing in and perhaps the either is breathable, but these critics are getting caught up in the fact that real science tells us that this would be impossible. Well, guess what, talking animals are a scientific impossibility as well, but I never hear anyone giving the Lion King a bad review because talking animals aren’t realistic.

I shouldn’t let this get to me, but giving a film a bad review largely because of this small detail is not really doing the film justice and to be quite honest, I found the stylistic choices in this film to be quite beautiful and inspirational and I feel that the design only helps to eleveate the story above what we would expect to see from a science fiction film made by Disney.

Technically, this film is an amazing achivement. The cyborg character is made up of both 2-D hand drawn elements and 3-D elements as well. And suprisingly, you really don’t notice anything is odd. This is one of the first films I had seen that was able to achive such a seamless effect.

The story itself is a classic one. And it retains all of the esential elements of original story. What it adds (or enhances) is the father-son relationship between Jim and Silver. There is subtle (Ok, not that subtle, but pretty subtle for an animated feature) commentary weaved throughout the film that points to the imporatant role that a father plays in his sons life. And conversely, the importance that the role of a son has in a fathers life.

Many, if not all animated films have a moral and usually this morality feels tacked on or worse, forced upon the film. However, In Treasure Planet the lesson the film teaches becomes reason for the film. The development of the characters are dependent on the films moral. It works so well that when Jim and Silver are forced to say their last goodbyes, you hope that Silver changes his mind about leaving Jim, yet you realize that Jim, finally has made his peace about his broken childhood and that he will Be Ok without Silver there to help guide him. It’s a suprisingly adult ending that, I feel, used to be a staple of Disney animation but sadly in recent years has been missing.

This film is not without its problems however, There is this horrible little clockwork robot that the crew stumbles upon when they land on Treasure Planet. This guy is the comic relief of the film. (every animated film these days needs that daffy character to lighten the mood.) He is annoying, he is out of place, and he does not belong in the third act of this film.

There is also a super cheesy moment at the end that is just dripping with sap. I am big on ending a movie strong, so this, for me is a glaring flaw to an otherwise solid film.

I could go on further, but I think this review is probibly running long already so I will just end things with a thought that Roy E. Disney had when being interviewed about the film. Roy said something along the lines of “I feel that this is a film in line with the classic films that Walt had produced, and I think that Walt would be very proud of this film.”

And I agree.

-Matt