At this point, the canon of films made by Walt Disney Animation Studios is so dense (it contain 56 films as of this writing) that you’ve got all kinds of different types of movies in regards to how much success they had. You’ve got your out-and-out hits (Frozen, The Lion King, The Jungle Book), you’ve got your bombs that got reappraised as classics (Fantasia and Sleeping Beauty) and then you’ve got your features that bombed but developed a cult following over the years. Hercules and The Emperor’s New Groove most certainly belong in this category as does (to a far lesser degree) the subject of this Lovefest review, Treasure Planet.
In the works since the late 80’s, Treasure Planet became a massive money-loser for Disney upon its initial theatrical release in November 2002. Despite an Oscar nod for Best Animated Feature and solid reviews, Treasure Planet has achieved a small cult following over the last fifteen years, though it’s nothing compared to the fanbases the aforementioned Hercules and The Emperor’s New Groove have accumulated over the years. That’s a real shame, as Treasure Planet is one of the better features produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios during the first decade of this century, a tumultuous period for the studio that produced many noteworthy artistic duds like Chicken Little, Home On The Range and Dinosaur.
The premise of Treasure Planet, as the title would imply, applies the basic narrative of Treasure Island and a number of its characters to a science-fiction setting. Its plot, of course, provides plenty of its own tweaks and revisions, most notably in making Jim Hawkins an angsty teenager voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Hawkins comes into possession of a map to the legendary Treasure Planet, a place he is determined to set out and discover. Paired up with family friend Dr. Doppler (David Hyde Pierce), he is able to assemble a crew, commanded by Captain Amelia (Emma Thompson), who will help him get to his destination. Among the crew is John Silver (Brian Murray), a cook with cyborg parts whom Jim is at first suspicious of due to him being explicitly told a cyborg is out to reclaim the map for Treasure Planet for his own nefarious purposes.
John and Jim end up developing a father/son bond that gets tested by John’s ulterior motives and it’s their relationship that provides the best scenes of Treasure Planet. Jim may be a stock angsty teen in some respects (he does the science-fiction equivalent to skateboarding in his introductory sequence, which has some cool camerawork to it but does reek of trying to get on the turn of the century “XTreme Sportz” craze) but the interior wounds he carries due to his absent father are handled incredibly rare. Jim is far from the first (or last!) Disney protagonist to be missing a parental figure, but whereas most other lead characters lose their parents to disease or some other tragedy beyond their control, Jim’s source of parental loss strikes a more realistic chord, particularly during one scene that comes during the middle of the motion picture that really cements Treasure Planet’s status as something special.
In easily the highlight sequence of the entire movie, we get to see both flashbacks of Jim’s troubled childhood devoid of a father figure played against “present day” scenes of him connecting with Jim Silver as a father figure. No dialogue from the characters emerges from the animated characters in this tour-de-force sequence with an accompanying song called I’m Still Here by John Rzeznik instead conveying more than conventional dialogue could. In these flashbacks, we get to see how Jim’s biological father is always away from home on work and, even when he’s around, never pays attention to his own son. In the most gut-wrenching moment, we get to see a young Jim awaken to see his father leaving their home, with the sight of his mom crying at their dinner table cementing in his mind that this is a permanent leave of absence of his father’s part. The young boy runs to catch his dad, whose boarding a spaceship docked on a pier, but it’s too late; the ship has left and the young Jim stands there at the end of the pier, his hand stretched out for a father that will never come.
The hand-drawn animation (God, it’s so expressive) and the aforementioned song work wonders in conveying the internal sorrow Jim’s carried over his whole life over the absence of his dad, while the subsequent moment of Silver encouraging Jim to come along with him on a brief flight through the stars providing an equally resonant moment that pivots more towards the tonal quality of euphoria. It’s this kind of more low-key character stuff that makes Treasure Planet so enjoyable to watch and far more engaging than you’d expect. That scene may be the best moment in all of Treasure Planet but it’s far from the only part of the feature that feels emotionally resonant. The ending too, for instance, eschews a cozy tidy conclusion by having Jim and Silver be separated despite Silver urging Jim to join him in his acts. The implicit message here is clear; Jim’s character arc through the whole movie has been to define himself by his own actions rather than the father-figures that factor into his life, whether it’s more positive ones like Silver or more negative ones like the absentee father he’s never really known.
It’s a thoughtful message to close a supposedly “just-for-kids” movie on and it’s the kind of depth that makes Treasure Planet a real winner. You know what else makes it a winner? The production design, which hews to a process called “70/30”, that has the majority of the animation combining two elements and having one element have a 70% influence and the other having a 30% influence on the final product. That means, for instance, Silver is comprised of 30% CGI animation and 70% traditional hand-drawn animation. The various ships and buildings, too, merge a late 19th century aesthetic with a futuristic science-fiction aesthetic in a similar manner. It’s a fascinating and unique way to keep Treasure Planet grounded in the era in which its source material was conceived.and it’s a cool way to approach the world of science-fiction, a world that Treasure Planet fully embraces given how ubiquitous sci-fi gadgets, aliens and all kinds of other elements of traditional science-fiction storytelling are present throughout its runtime. Those thinking directors Ron Clements and John Musker are going to be skimping on the sci-fi elements, fear not, they dive headfirst into reinterpreting the world found in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 novel into a science-fiction wonderland, one with a distinct style of its own that heavily separates it from the other hand-drawn animation sci-fi movies of this era like Titan A.E. and Disney’s own Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
You’ve also got a top-notch voice cast assembled here too, with particular props needing to go towards Brian Murray who lends an incredible sense of realistic warmth as Silver. In his vocal performance, you can totally understand why Jim Hawkins would so easily become emotionally connected to him, though Murray can also bring an equally believable sense of intimidation in Silver’s more menacing moments. Emma Thompson is also a hoot as Captain Amelia, she totally comes across as convincing as a bad-ass leader (how come we haven’t given Emma Thompson a live-action action movie of her own to headline, come to think of it?), while David Hyde Pierce and Martin Short provide laughs in their comic relief roles.
I do wish the comic relief characters had more of an impact on the plot though, as the movie suffers a bit from something that could also be found (to varying degrees) in the movie's directors Ron Clements and John Musker did directly before and after Treasure Planet, Hercules and The Princess And The Frog respectively, in that there can be too many comedic supporting characters scattered across the plot. Here in Treasure Planet, it doesn’t drag down things too much, but it would have been nice if the likes of B.E.N. and Morph had more to do in the plot proper. It also must be said that Jim Hawkins take a little while to warm up to and some more dimensions to the writing of his personality in his first few scenes would have been nice since he does come off as not much more than a surly teenager in these early sequences. Oh, and while we’re talking about flaws, my lifelong aversion to fart jokes means you can probably guess my opinion on the one alien who communicates solely in flatulence.
Those flaws don’t hinder all of the many things that really do work like gangbusters in Treasure Planet. This is a movie with a unique vision of the future that always tingles the insides of my imagination that is brought to life heavily by some of the last hand-drawn animation ever produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. It’s got terrific vocal performances, cool character designs (there’s an alien scorpion baddie whose every movement is wonderfully realized) and a surprisingly unique take on how to live without key parental figures. A science-fiction tale that fully embraces the fact that it is a science-fiction tale (black holes and unstable cores make up key plot points of the story) that also manages to set its sights on intimately and thoughtfully realized character drama, Treasure Planet really does have a little bit of everything and it coalesces into something incredibly entertaining.
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