Friday, December 20, 2019

Treasure Planet

Image credit: Disney Movies
So recently the inevitable happened and Disney+ was acquired within our household. So what was the first thing I watched? Funnily enough it wasn’t a classic from my childhood (I have all those on DVDs) and it wasn’t one of the new classics that I missed at the cinemas… It was Treasure Planet, a film that I missed as a kid and never got around to watching until now.

A retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island set against a science fiction background, Treasure Planet tells the story of young Jim Hawkins, a lost lad looking for some direction, who comes into possession of a map to the fabled treasure planet of Captain Flint. Along with a family friend, Jim sets sail to find the mysterious planet and prove to the world what he’s worth. But things take a terrible turn when their crew of cutthroats mutinies, led by the fearsome cyborg, Silver.

An interesting retelling of a timeless tale of adventure, Treasure Planet focuses more on the unlikely friendship between Silver and Jim, giving the film a more family-friendly edge by humanising the villain and making us, as well as Jim, care for him. This aspect of the film is very lovely.
The remainder is a pretty flimflam that looks great, but lacks anything deeper than the visual surface. Made around the time when movies were experimenting with computer-generated animation, Treasure Planet, a little like Pokémon 2000, suffers from this strange half-and-half blend of classic animation and shiny, substantial 3D animation and the two just do look too weird together. It doesn’t have the cute best-of-both-worlds like Mary Poppins or Bedknobs and Broomsticks, but more this janky and glaringly out of place look like Detective Pikachu (yes, I know this came first).
The script is pretty weak and the characters are nothing to write home about, indeed the most complete is Silver… and he’s a cyborg! Jim as the protagonist is just downright boring, as plain as an unsalted cracker, and he’s definitely not any sort of emotional anchor for the audience to hold on to.

Image credit: Beyond the Boxset
I might have liked this movie better as a child, when I didn’t know any better. Watching it for the first time as an adult, I definitely appreciated the idea behind it; the science fiction setting made for some visually stunning achievements in art design, but it’s certainly not the greatest adaptation of Stevenson’s classic that I’ve seen. To be fair, Muppet Treasure Island was my introduction to the tale, so I may be spoilt and biased. But Treasure Planet is certainly not a terrible film, it’s just one of the weaker ones in Disney animated arsenal.

Director: Ron Clements & John Musker (2002)

Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Roscoe Lee Browne, Tony Jay, Laurie Metcalf, David Hyde Pierce, Michael Wincott, Martin Short, & Emma Thompson

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