I’m not sure how 2002’s Treasure Planet started creeping onto my radar over the past year or so. I was only vaguely aware of it during its theatrical run, and that was only because of how much money it lost. And though I am a fan of animation, I don’t usually seek out Disney’s works, especially those since the studio’s first golden age. Heck, I have never even seen The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King, nor do I feel the slightest urge to do so in the near future.
To the best I can recall, I started to see it referenced in on-line articles where it was said to be experiencing a reappraisal. I guess between the legend of its failure and its potential as a lost masterpiece, my curiosity was finally piqued enough to check it out.
I now regret this.
To be honest, I did not come into this with an open mind. Obviously, the plot is that of the literary staple Treasure Island, except set in space. I think that is fundamentally a brilliant concept—if it had been done using means of interplanetary travel that appear to be functional.
Instead, the interstellar vehicles here are tall-masted ships of the kinds that would have been the primary means of crossing the oceans prior to the 20th century. If purpose dictates form, why use for space travel a vessel designed for floating in water?
There are some feeble attempts to justify this design, if only for the sails. These are revealed to be solar sails. Even if we accept that idea, is putting the sails on masts on one side of the vessel the optimal arrangement? That’s not even considering how these would be of use in deep space.
Admittedly, the juxtaposition is jaw-dropping at first, if only for the audacity. Then all kinds of questions started nagging at me. While the ships use artificial gravity, how is there an atmosphere? The ship crews would need not just air, but also atmospheric pressure, to keep their eyeballs from exploding and the blood from boiling in their veins. Now there’s a Disney movie I want to see!
Something which might have helped sell this concept is if it was animated in a different style. This might (might) have worked if a less realistic style had been employed. This could have been a beautiful work if done in the style of mid-century animation.
Alas, the hand-drawn characters typical of that era of Disney are set inside photo-realistic worlds. CGI was used extensively to accomplish this, which results in even more offenses. I’m going to attempt to side-step the usual CGI bashing to point out specifically why it doesn’t work here.
First, those hand-drawn characters often seem to be occupying a different space than the backgrounds. One character, the duplicitous John Silver, is a composite of cel and computer animation, with his missing body parts replaced with robotic components. That’s an interesting idea in theory, except I swear those elements don’t fully mesh together at times.
Secondly, cel animation tends to be timeless because, although it is a technology, it is primarily an art. I’m not one of the luddites who believes there isn’t an art to CGI, because there is. However, that is a technology first and foremost. Since that technology seems to be improving at an exponential rate, few things date a film worse than the extent of computer animation used in it.
That is especially true of the extent to which the CGI strives for photo-realism. Similar to my earlier comment regarding the realism of the cel animation, CGI works best the more abstract it is. I know many, many people think Tron is ridiculous, especially in the quality of its computer visuals. Myself, I think the low-polygon look of it is so unrealistic that it achieves a curious sort of timelessness. Treasure Planet suffers from the exact opposite effect.
Even more annoying to me than the space “ships” is the visual aesthetic of the entire picture. Why does everything have the appearance of 18th century British sea ports? There’s a book that is essentially just another screen except it has pages that can be turned. There’s a device that looks like a pocket watch but which shows holograms. So, why would the various worlds we see here all adopt this style while also having aliens, robots and spaceships? This sticks in my craw in the same way most steampunk stuff annoys me, and I suspect for similar reasons.
And I haven’t even discussed the characters yet (at least, not their personalities). Oh lord, these are largely annoying.
Our hero is a petulant teenage boy who appears to believe he is the only person in the world whose father abandoned him. The movie opens with him as a younger boy full of boundless energy and enthusiasm. As soon as we’re shown the “12 years later” caption, I knew we were in trouble. It doesn’t help that text is over footage of him doing stunts on a hoverboard in a way that reminded me of snowboarding from Mountain Dew commercials of the time.
I mentioned John Silver before, and he is probably the stronger character here. Unfortunately, his buddy is an endlessly morphing, comic-relief alien named “Morph”. The mimicries of this little pest wore on me fast.
But not as quickly as the antics of a robot voiced by Martin Short. Fortunately, he isn’t in the movie until near the end of the second act, but that was more than enough time to spend with him. He’s a bit like Bender from Futurama, if that robot had been unceasingly chatty and self-deprecating. I kinda wish Bender would have shown up and pounded this robot into a tiny metal cube.
There are some characters I wish we had spent more time with. Emma Thompson is second-billed, but the cat-like, captain she plays never seems to have much to do. David Hyde Pierce plays the dog-human hybrid thingy named Dr. Doppler, who is the kind of bumbling genius Disney typically employs to good effect in their fare. Here, he has a few moments before being relegated to the background. The pairing of Thompson’s and Pierce’s characters at the end felt both inevitable and unnecessary, as if the movie didn’t know what to do with them and eventually just shrugged and went, “Maybe if these two hooked up…?”
Oh, and there’s an alien of a species that communicates only through farting noises produced by the assorted tubes hanging off its body like limp penises. Oh goody, there’s the opportunity for endless fart jokes (commence eye roll). I found it odd Dr. Doppler can communicate with the alien by making similar sounds, largely by using his armpits. He explains to our hero that is fluent in “Flatueese”. Strange, but why does it seem offensive to me that those who are not of that species have labelled its language as being like our unintended gaseous discharges. If this movie had been more successful, maybe there would be a porn parody with female aliens who must be communicated with in “Queefeese”.
Despite my earlier digs at both types of animation employed here, I must say some of the conceptual pieces here are quite stunning. Best of all is the titular destination, a world encircled by two rings set at right angles from each other, forming an X around the planet. I thought it was neat how, even in space, X marks the spot.
One of the first things we see upon setting down on that planet are impossible trees. The tops are large and look heavy even if they seemingly float in the air like clouds. Long, thin trunks, like strings, seem to do little more than tether those tops to the ground. Seeing these, it occurred to me how odd that there hasn’t been an animated film styled on the works of Roger Dean, that guy who did all those great album covers for Yes in the 70’s. I’m going to dub this planet Rogerdeanicus.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t turn my mind off long enough to ignore how inane so much of this seems. I’m glad I was watching this at home with only my wife, as I dropped quite a few loud WTFs during its runtime. Why are there barnacles on the underside of the ship? Where did they come from? Why would something in space even have an underside? What the hell are these space whales? What do they eat and how do they breathe? They spout water, so where did that water come from?
My better half, on the other hand, kept making wisecracks throughout Treasure Planet, all of which were references to The Goonies. So, what do we find in the treasure room on the planet when it is discovered? Why, it’s the remains of a pirate ship, where the skeleton of its captain still sits on his throne. Her priceless comment: “I thought it would be One-eyed Willie, but it’s Six-eyed Willie.”
Dir: Ron Clements and John Musker
Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brian Murray, Emma Thompson
Watched on Disney blu-ray