Animation Defenestration: The one that DID kill Disney

 

Title: Treasure Planet

What Year?: 2006

Classification: Mashup/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

As I write this, I’m back from a break, partly caused by my equipment not working. As it happens, I have one thing on deck I’ve been meaning to get to for quite a while. It’s a film that has become the epitome of a modern-day cult movie, an infamous failure in theaters that has become one of the most praised movies of its medium. I present Treasure Planet, the movie that probably killed Disney’s cell animation department, and yeah, it’s really, really good.

Our story begins with a boy named Jim Hawkins reading the tale of Captain Flint, a storied pirate in a universe where sailing ships travel through interstellar space (which would actually kind of work, if you can afford a sail the size of Alaska and 100,000 years to get to anywhere important). Of course, the tale ends with the pirate disappearing with his treasure to an unknown planet. Fast forward, and Jim has grown into a young man longing for adventure. He gets more than he bargained for when a dying alien stumbles into his mother’s space tavern with an artifact that projects a map. An academically minded patron believes it’s nothing less than the map to Flint’s treasure, which is enough to bring together a ship with a ragtag crew including a foxy felinoid captain, a lovable rogue cyborg named Silver and an assortment of villainous extraterrestrials. As they sail through the perils of space, shifting alliances form among the crew, while Silver befriends young Jim. But when discontent becomes open mutiny, it’s up to Jim to stay alive on the treacherous planet, and Silver must choose between loyalty and loot!

Treasure Planet was a 2006 science fantasy film by Disney, based loosely on the novel Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and its 1950 live-action Disney adaptation. The story and concepts were reportedly first proposed in 1985, alongside The Little Mermaid. The film was made using traditional/ two-dimensional animation, combined with extensive CGI, on an unprecedented budget of $140 million. The voice cast was led by Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Jim Hawkins and Brian Murray as Silver, with David Hyde Pierce (see A Bug’s Life) as Dr. Doppler and Emma Thompson as Captain Smollet. Other cast included typecast villain Michael Wincott as the arthropod Scroop, Martin Short as the robot BEN, and Patrick McGoohan in his final appearance as the original owner of the map. Though the film received favorable reviews and a reasonable $110M box office, it was widely described as a “bomb” based on its much higher budget. In objective terms, it was almost certainly the costliest failure of all non-CGI Disney animated films in absolute numbers, and probably behind only The Black Cauldron in proportionate losses. It became one of the last 2D-animated Disney films, only 3 years before The Princess And The Frog in 2009. It has remained popular on home video, and is currently available for streaming on multiple platforms.

For my experiences, I must admit that I can’t recall being aware of this film when it came out, which in further hindsight makes me suspect that the Disney machine was never that interested in making it a success. Beyond that, almost everything I can say falls under my standing rants about Disney (see Chicken Little while you’re at it). Throughout its entire existence, Disney has been making films that were financial failures, not just because it can afford losses but because it has consistently taken real risks. Even more importantly, the main reason so many of these “failures” have gone on to become undisputed classics is that Disney has been willing to play the long game with old material, especially since the emergence of home video. Given that context, the present film is one that got a raw but not uncommon deal. And, again, it happens to have the benefit of being among the very best of the “modern” or any other era.

Moving forward, I have to say that most of the things I would usually comment on as a science fiction reviewer are the “cons”. The real question is what standard to measure it by, from the outright space fantasy of Flash Gordon to the general realism of Star Trek (see also The Black Hole), and that is where this one can feel neither fish nor fowl. The absolutely gorgeous sailing spaceships are obviously not meant to be “realistic” spacecraft, yet they answer to enough basic physics that a little more realism would have done far more good than harm. Put the crew in some kind of spacesuits, like the steampunk exoskeleton we see Doppler actually wearing or the streamlined leather suits of the Marx space guys. Show materials more advance than wood and rope, or at least arm-wave a backstory about super-science star plants (perhaps Larry Niven’s stage trees???) that would have a reason to withstand the conditions of interstellar space. For that matter, put some extra sails on the bottom of the damn things, which is always doing next to nothing when people model spacecraft on naval vessels. Again, none of these issues harm the story, but this just confirms that there was no harm in addressing them.

After the nitpicking, the one caveat left is that there were definitely reasons this movie didn’t fly with the usual Disney audience. This is a very dark story with a genuine body count, set in a universe of beauty and terror in equal measure.  The action isn’t just slapstick pratfalls and a melodramatic swan dive, but treacherous ambushes and brutal brawls where characters we really like can get hurt or worse. The alien crew are seedy and mean, all the more so when they have enough anthropomorphic qualities to assess their personalities and emotions. What balances things out are the main characters, all with complex and nuanced arcs that give some real surprises. It’s easy enough to see that Silver will come around when Jim is in danger, but there’s still depth and weight to what unfolds. Then the real standout is the doctor, who goes from academic to hero as soon as he gets a ray gun. I could even put in a good word for the comic-relief bot, who really acts as he does because of incredible trauma that actually gets fixed.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I had to go with what I find to be the most fascinating and flatly villainous character in the movie, the crustacean creature known as Scroop. As Jim and the bot sneak back onto the ship, they split up. When Jim and a pet blob creature make their way back to the stairs, he finds himself face to face with Scroop, a character I absolutely consider the villain of the whole movie. This single image is enough to make my point; there’s none of the conflicted emotions of Silver’s anti-hero in the inhuman face, just all too comprehensible low-grade hate for a nuisance he would long since have disposed of if left to his own devices. He merely says, “Cabin boy,” then the chase begins. Jim runs for it, aided fairly effectively by the blob. Finally, Jim turns a corner just ahead of the creature, which buys just enough time to draw his pistol. There’s a priceless glimpse of Scroop’s face as he finds his would-be victim has the upper hand, certainly unsettled, perhaps fearful, yet still clearly unrepentant. Then the lights go out, and when they come back on… the villain is gone. As usual, there’s more that follows. As I keep saying, however, it’s the buildup of small details that make the rest.

In closing, what I come back to is the selective memory applied to Disney movies. As I have freely admitted, I had no awareness of this movie when it came out. On further consideration, that can’t just be something I forgot, because I certainly remember taking notice when The Wild came out the same year. And that surely says something about the truths and “myths” of Disney. On one hand, a by-the-numbers cash grab produced a mindboggling abomination that didn’t even stay in the collective memory long enough to be reviled. (I know, Disney didn’t technically, actually make The Wild, but if they get credit for The Brave LittleToaster, I will absolutely hold them accountable for it.) On the other hand, a risky project that in hindsight should have been axed on the drawing board took a beating financially yet went on to become one of their most admired films. This is why I am willing to defend Disney’s “failures” the vast majority of the time. You can complain about Frozen, or Lightyear (which I am absolutely getting to because it is great), or whatever culture they have appropriated this quarter, but the real bottom line is that such things are the cost of being an actual innovator and industry leader. The alternative is the safe, the derivative, the “family friendly” fare neither kids nor parents actually like, and that is where the only answer is “nuke from orbit”. With that, I can rest for a while.