Treasure Planet

I've been holding off on this review for a little while... It was actually supposed to be reviewed right after Halo: Legends, but it had to be pushed back... If only so that it didn't look like I was going to start a trend of walking out on movies.


      Treasure Planet was created by Disney in the early 2000's, actually before Lilo And Stitch. The film was an attempt to blend 3D rendered images with 2D animation seamlessly. It works on an art level, as everything looks amazing (if you can stand the color. Real is brown indeed...). But on a story level, Treasure Planet falls flat. It is very predictable, with very weak characterization stacked on top of a poor plot.


     There are times where there is no real way to improve a movie... No big changes, nothing odd like turning all the characters into snakes to give it a different feel... It just comes down to this: Disney shouldn't have made Treasure Planet. They should have made Treasure Island, the book it was based on.
      I have not read Treasure Island personally, but I do know about the laws of genres. In a science fiction movie like Treasure Planet, you must explain how things work. You need to tell us why they are using wooden ships with sails when they could make UFO's. You need to explain why they can breathe on something that by definition is open to the vacuum of space. You also need to explain why the rope doesn't burn up on entry to a planet, how the deck of the ship can get dirty in a place that lacks dirt (they have the main character mop the ship. This only makes sense on a boat-like ship. You don't see any guys mopping the floors of the enterprise), and why on earth do we have dog-men and cat-women alongside alien blobs of gelatinous mass and mini rock-biters in formal regalia, and not talk about humans met and allied with them?! The cat people I understand, as they are fairly human-like, but we are terrified of Cthulhu and beings like him, yet we will ally with the blobs from Jimmy Neutron? None of these questions would come up, if they had simply made Treasure Island. 
     In pirate stories, we do not need to question anything. You can tell us they are going to fight the Loch Ness Monster, and we would believe that without any explanation needed. This is because we understand the background... It takes place in our world, with our laws of physics. Everything Treasure Planet wants us to accept, we'd accept without explanation if it took place on earth.
     Now, I can't account for the characters in Treasure Island, but I am willing to bet the characters are better in it, if only because there is no real form of law enforcement to get in trouble with in a pirate setting, meaning the main character could do some bad things but not be a delinquent.




This was a brief Fixer Sue. You may now resume looking at videos of cats doing cute things.