Atlantis: The Lost Empire

It's frustrating to see Disney ripping off several perfectly good animated films to create a Frankenstein's monster of a plot

Plot spoilers

Human expression does not exist in a vacuum. Whether a painting, a sculpture, a poem, a movie, a computer program or a song, every creative work is composed of, and rests upon the foundations of, all the other creative works in human history. This is as it should be—even if it were truly possible for an artist to create ex nihilo, forging a unique experience rooted in no previous artistic or cultural tradition, what kind of "art" would result and how could the audience of such "art" ever hope to comprehend it? Our response to creative work is based on our understanding of it, and our understanding is based on the aspects of the creation that are common to the human experience. Without sympathy, there is no comprehension; art becomes artifact, a meaningless puzzle. No successful work is completely original.

On the other hand, when an artist borrows a large amount of material—particularly from a single source—he runs the risk of creating a purely derivative work. While there are plenty of fans of William Wegman and his bizarre Weimaraner photos, or "Weird Al" Yankovic and his hilarious parody songs—and while both Wegman and Yankovic are creative talents in their own right—few people would class their highly derivative creations as art, at least not in the same sense as a Michelangelo sculpture or a Van Gogh painting. This might come off sounding snobby, but it's not my intent; I love Weird Al! I'm just trying to illustrate the sometimes very fine line between original and derivative work.

I've been thinking about this after another viewing of Disney's animated film, Atlantis: The Lost Empire. While this film definitely goes in an unusual direction for Disney's strictly-G-rated animation department, it is also a clearly derivative work. Long-time Disney animation fans will see multiple references to previous Disney films. Milo Thatch, the lerpy protagonist, bears a strong resemblance to Roger Radcliff of 101 Dalmatians; Helga Sinclair, the tough femme fatale, has to be Jessica Rabbit's second cousin; Commander Lyle Tiberius Rourke (note the name, derived from a certain famous Gene Roddenberry character) has the same lantern jaw as Clayton, the hunter in Tarzan; and the headlong flight out of the caldera of an active volcano comes straight from Aladdin's insane carpet ride through the Cave of Wonders. But while it shows a lack of creativity, it is perfectly acceptable to make derivations from your own previous work, or from work in the public domain. Apparently, however, Disney wasn't content to borrow from acceptable sources.

If you've seen this film, consider the following list:

• Our plucky hero, orphaned as a child, obsessed with discovering a lost civilization that everyone else (including his boss) believes is a fairy tale.
• A mysterious girl, a member of the lost civilization's royal family, with a blue crystal pendant that, among other things, controls much of the ancient technology and allows her to levitate.
• A gang of bad guys—pirates, really—with basically good hearts, who are rewarded with tons of filthy lucre in the end.
• A powerful villain with a hidden agenda, who meets with the fate he so richly deserves.
• The discovery of the decaying civilization, some of it underwater, all controlled and supported by a giant floating crystal.
• The realization that the civilization was "destroyed" because of its hubris and its attempt to use its tremendous strength as a weapon against its enemies.
• A group of giant robots designed to protect and defend the civilization.
• Huge rock structures etched with blue energy lines.
• Fantastic flying machines.
• Subtitles.

Sound familiar? Yes, all these points show up in Atlantis: The Lost Empire, but they also all show up fifteen years earlier, in the Japanese animated film Tenku no shiro Rapyuta (Laputa, the Castle in the Sky) by master animator Hayao Miyazaki. In this previous film, the orphan boy (Pazu) discovers a girl floating down from the sky (Sheeta), and they attempt to evade pirates, the army and a mysterious villain who are all bent on finding the legendary floating city of Laputa.

Disney is more than just "aware of" this previous work on which Atlantis is so obviously based. If you've seen the Buena Vista Home Video release of Kiki's Delivery Service, you'll notice that the last of the coming attractions is the English-language release of Castle in the Sky, the original Miyazaki film dubbed with the voices of James Van Der Beek and Anna Paquin. This fully completed dub was scheduled for a Christmas 1999 release by Buena Vista or some other Disney subsidiary company, but for some reason it was placed on the back burner indefinitely. After having seen Atlantis, I finally understand why: Disney simply couldn't afford to release Miyazaki's film to market before its own, or it would be obvious to everyone just how much Disney had cribbed from the previous film.

Aside from credible questions of intellectual property theft, Atlantis is riddled with inconsistencies of plot and logic. Preston Whitmore, the eccentric millionaire who funds the whole expedition, is understood to be a well-meaning and kindly old gentleman (if a bit loony), but his hired crew is a band of no-holds-barred thieves and mercenaries—surely he is aware of this? The submersible craft, based on Jules Verne's Nautilus, contains technology we don't have a handle on even now—and the story takes place in 1914? Atlanteans speak every modern language of mankind, despite having been sealed away from the outside world for thousands of years, because "all languages are based in Atlantean," yet the Atlanteans themselves can no longer decipher their own written language? Why can they not read it now, when they are primarily the same generation that existed before the flood that sank the city? If Milo's specialty is linguistics, so much so that he can master a dead language with no verbal examples, why can't he manage to wrap his tongue around the name Kidagakash? If Rourke doesn't speak or read a word of Atlantean, how does he know to rip out one particularly critical page from the Shepherd's Journal? Ordinarily I wouldn't hammer away at these faults in an animated film, but Disney is clearly trying to create a movie targeted at teens and adults. Sorry, folks, but if you wanna make a movie for the big kids, you're gonna be held to higher standards.

I can't fault the voice acting—Michael J. Fox as Milo Thatch is one of the best things about this movie, and James Garner brings a rich, believable quality to Rourke, a character who would be a cardboard cutout in less competent hands. Claudia Christian creates a fantastic slinky blonde bombshell, soft on the outside and hard as nails within. However, the animation, although stylish—all edges and angles, right down to the triangular fingernails of the characters—isn't really up to Disney's usual high standards. It's smooth enough and the computer animation looks pretty good, but the quality is more along the lines of what one would expect from a direct-to-video release.

Speaking of video releases, in addition to seeing this film in theaters in 2001, we watched the DVD release last night. Much like the film experience, it's also a mixed bag. The film is meant to be presented in its original anamorphic widescreen ratio, but it didn't display correctly on our DVD player (an Apex AD-600A). Although the image was letterboxed, the frame ratio was off, creating characters with slightly elongated heads and bodies. Color dithering was kept to a minimum, but there was a strange and noticeable artifact in the transfer where some back-to-back scenes would appear crystal-clear, with sharp, well-defined lines, and others would appear fuzzy and blurry. The DVD also offers a separate audio commentary track, a deleted scene (this one is an alternate opening, with Vikings squabbling over the Shepherd's Journal), virtual tours of the CG models used to create the submersible and the Leviathan, a series of "fun facts" about Atlantis and other lost civilizations, and a funny little feature, "How to Speak Atlantean," with a series of helpful Atlantean phrases including the ever-necessary "Where is the toilet, please?" Overall, the DVD is worth a look, but probably not worth purchasing. Rent it for an evening if you're curious.

I don't know what's going on at the Disney animation studios, but I suspect the "renaissance" of Disney animation that began with The Little Mermaid and reached its zenith in Beauty and the Beast has gone into a tailspin. Considering the faltering economic climate, I'm not sure whether Disney will have the money or time to correct its errors. Although the good folks at Pixar are doing some quality work, the main studio seems to have forsaken, much to its detriment, what it does best: adaptations of classic fairy tales. I hope the bigwigs at Disney can pull it out of the bag soon.

All material displayed on this website is © 2001-2009 by S. B. Houghton, writing under the alias "The Pirate King." All rights reserved.
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