It was the turn of the century and feature film animation found itself at a crossroads. With the success of CGI film studios like Pixar, Hollywood started to ponder a move away from traditional animation. Seeing its own classically animated films return less and less at the box office, Disney tried to regain its swagger by creating an epic feature that would use both hand drawn and computer generated images. The film was Atlantis, a $120 million dollar extravaganza that spared no expense in both production and promotion. Unfortunately Atlantis was met with mixed reviews and a modest box office return of $85 million dollars domestically (the film did recover its production budget with the world wide box office however). Adding insult to injury Dreamwork's Shrek and Pixar's Monsters Inc. would go on to be huge hits - both critically and financially - that same year. Looking back at it now, this was probably the tipping point where traditional animation lost its credibility as a feature film medium.With a premise like finding the lost city of Atlantis it should come as no surprise that I was very pumped for this film. I'm a longtime Disney fan and getting an animated feature with roots in science fiction seemed like a dream come true. Unfortunately the movie fell far short of my expectations and I found myself massively frustrated for the second time in just one year (the first frustration being with Fox's Titan AE).
The story of Atlantis centers around Milo Thatch, a linguistics expert working in the boiler room at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. Milo believes the key to finding Atlantis can be found in an ancient book called the Shepherds Journal and needs funding for an expedition to find it. Unfortunately for him the Institution's board believes that both the Journal and Atlantis are nothing more than myths and refuse Milo's proposal. This rejection is doubly painful because Milo's deceased grandfather - who raised him - was ridiculed for his own obsession with the fabled civilization. But Milo's luck takes a turn for the better when eccentric millionaire Preston Whitmore steps into the picture. Turns out Whitmore was a friend of Milo's late grandfather and he's already found the Shepherds Journal. In need of a linguist to decipher the Journal, Whitmore offers Milo a spot aboard his privately funded expedition to find Atlantis. Joining Milo is a band of eclectic experts including Demolition specialist Vinny Santorini, medical officer Dr. Sweet, geology expert "Mole" and tomboy mechanic Audrey Ramirez. Leading the expedition is Commander Rourke and his second-in-command Lt. Helga Sinclair. The last character worth mentioning is Kida, the 8,000 year old Atlantean princess who serves as Milo's love interest later in the story (Personally I would have been a little more apprehensive about hooking up with Kida if I were Milo. That girl has to have been around the block more than once in the last 8,000 years, I'm just saying). Sounds interesting enough right? Unfortunately the final product can't live up to the strength of its own premise and many animation fans left the film feeling unfulfilled.
Before I discuss the writing of Atlantis I want to offer the following warning. The next four paragraphs all contain minor story SPOILERS. Normally I try to avoid this but the movie is almost ten years old and most of the issues I had were very specific. If you don’t want to know any story details then skip the four paragraphs following this one.
If I had to describe the story of Atlantis in one word it would be “underdeveloped”. What I mean by this is the film doesn't provide enough detail or explanation for many of its plot points. Want to know why Atlantis sinks into the ocean? Because the king wanted a super weapon ... that's it, that's all you get. Or how is it the people of Atlantis can learn to speak English so quickly? Sure their language was the basis for many of today’s modern dialects, but that's not really good enough. Knowing some root elements of a language and speaking said language are two completely different things. After all English (or any language for that matter) has evolved and changed over the years; so how could a society isolated from the rest of civilization for over eight millennia learn it in just a few brief seconds? But while these plot points are unabashedly lazy they at least try and provide the viewer with an answer, Atlantean lifespan - on the other hand - doesn't even get that much. While recounting her younger years Kida implies that she witnessed the fall of Atlantis. Milo quickly realizes this would make her over 8,000 years old and subsequently points this out to Kida. Her response … “Yeah, so”. And there you have it, a bombshell revelation suggesting that much of Atlantis’s population is thousands of years old gets a “Yeah, so”. No explanation - not even a lazy one - just “Yeah, so”. To quote Eric Cartman … lame.
The flippant manner in which Atlantean lifespan is addressed isn't the real problem here though, the giant plot holes it creates are. For example, the citizens of Atlantis are no longer able to read their own language. This would make sense if hundreds of generations of Atlanteans had passed and the knowledge was gradually lost. But since Kida - and presumably others - were all around when Atlantis fell, how is it that none of them can read? Did everyone, including the adults forget how? Combine this with the fact that given 8,000 years just about anyone could decipher a language and you've got a nice big plot hole staring you right in the face. This same issue shows up again when Kida takes Milo to see a flying machine she has been unsuccessfully trying to start for ages. Being a linguistic expert (boy that's convenient), Milo quickly reads the vehicles instructions and reveals the simple three step ignition sequence ... put hand here, insert crystal and turn it one way then back the other. Wow Kida, 8,000 years and you weren't able to figure that out on your own using trial and error? Good God, you're supposed to be an advanced race, one that hasn't even seen a single generation pass, yet you can't deduce something that simple? My car is harder to start than that. It would have made much more sense for the Atlanteans to simply be descendants of the cataclysm survivors. Descendants whose culture is being lost and thus they need an outsider to help rediscover it. Personally I wonder if the original script for Atlantis included this long lifespan fiasco. Being that it's common practice for movie scripts to get "retooled", I could easily imagine the story of Atlantis receiving "enhanced" ideas, the kind that create large plot holes like the ones found here.
The characters comprising Atlantis are also frustrating, mostly because I couldn't bring myself to care about any of them. Commander Rourke and Lt. Sinclair are complete cyphers that have no backstory or motivation beyond clichéd greed. Mole is similarly barren and serves only as comedic relief. Even the secondary characters who do get a backstory like Dr. Sweet, Vinny and Audrey can't escape the two-dimensional characterization that plagues this film. Don't get me wrong, the crew is likable enough. Vinny and Dr. Sweet in particular made me laugh on numerous occasions. The problem is that I didn't care about anything the cast did or had done to them, even the expedition's obvious "betrayal" left me feeling underwhelmed. In the end only Milo is given any real depth, but while he has motivation (to prove his grandfathers theories on Atlantis are correct) it fails to deliver any real emotional impact. Compare this to Scar's betrayal in the Lion King, or the robots sacrifice at the end of the Iron Giant. Those scenes sent a chill up your spine, they made you care, not so much with Atlantis.
Even forces outside the movies control conspired to undermine it. Atlantis was released in the summer of 2001, about one year after Fox's animated flop Titan AE. Why does that matter? Well for those of us who watched Titan AE the previous year Atlantis reeked of deja vu. Lets run down the similarities:
- Eclectic crew trying to find a lost place(or)thing. Check
- Main character possessing unique abilities necessary for finding lost place(or)thing. Check.
- Betrayal by eclectic crews greedy leader and second-in-command. Check.
- Subsequent life or death battle between said leader and second-in-command. Check.
- True power of lost place(or)thing is unleashed causing the revitalization(or)rebirth of something. Check.
When it's all said and done the story of Atlantis just doesn't work in its final form. It's hard to tell if the movie was under or over developed, but it definitely feels incomplete. Ambitious to a fault, Atlantis suffers from an overly ambiguous mythology, two dimensional characters, horrible plot holes and formulaic storytelling. Though the film is completely watchable don't be surprised if you find yourself sensing something amiss. Kind of like you're waiting for the last couple pieces of a puzzle to fill in, sure you can tell what the picture is, but it still doesn't look finished.
Luckily the visuals from Atlantis do look very complete, not surprising being that it's a Disney animated feature. Animation is always smooth, movements are natural and characters stay on model. Backgrounds are similarly beautiful with great design work and a cool (mostly blue) color pallet. The only complaint I had was that a couple of scenes - specifically those early in the film - looked flat, like they forgot to add shading. Though it doesn't really hurt the film at all I still found these rare occurrences jarring enough to take notice. Fortunately Atlantis manages to effectively do something that other animated features of the time often couldn't, it convincingly blended CGI and cell animation. Unlike Titan AE and Sinbad, Atlantis really does a good job of making computer generated images look like they belong in the traditionally animated environments. Yes you can still tell the CGI from cell pretty easily, but the overall illusion holds together quite nicely and that's what really matters.
Character designs from Atlantis are a little different than your average Disney film, but in a good way. Mike Mignola (artist and creator of Hellboy) was a production artist on the movie and his influence is very noticeable, especially in the angular look of the people (as opposed to the rounded look found in many other Disney movies). Of course there's still a Disneyfied quality found in many of the films characters - Kida and Dr. Sweet for example - but other people like Lt. Sinclair and the faceless gas-mask soldiers have a great edge about them, much like a Mignola comic book. Overall I thought the design and execution of Atlantis's visuals were a win, had the film's story been able to deliver this could have been something special.
The voice acting and music of Atlantis is all very good. My favorite actors were probably Micheal J. Fox (Milo) and James Garner (Commander Rourke), but everyone turned in a solid performance. Being one of Disney's non-musical films Atlantis's music lacks the distinct sound found in many of their other animated movies, still the music does its job well and I had no complaints.
So there you have it, an animated film with superior craftsmanship including: great animation, excellent design, good voice acting and solid music. Too bad it's wasted on an underdeveloped story that - despite its promising origins - fails miserably. To be fair Atlantis never stood much of a chance for success. With the creatively sentimental story of Monsters Inc. and the humorous pop-culture writing of Shrek, audiences just weren't interested in another "safe" Disney film. I doubt that even a perfect take on the story of Atlantis could have succeeded in the face of those odds. Still I think that the opportunity to create something timeless was lost here and that's truly unfortunate. As for recommending the film I'll say that it's worth a watch, if only for the visuals. I wouldn't go out of my way though.
