Treasure Planet - The Comparison, Part 3

*Warning: Spoilers. You guys know the drill by now.*

Aaaand we're back, with part three of the comparison! It's been kind of a crazy few days since I last posted, but the good news is that my library request came in, I watched it, and now I'm ready to review Disney's 2002 sci-fi adaptation of Treasure Island.

So here we go.

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To start: Treasure Planet is one of Disney's early-2000's movies, and it isn't well known for a few reasons. For one thing, the premise is a little weird and doesn't appeal to everyone. (It's Treasure Island, but in a setting that's a cross between Pirates of the Caribbean and Star Wars. Like I said, weird, and that's coming from someone who really likes it.) Another reason is that it did terribly at the box office, meaning Disney didn't have much incentive to spend a lot on post-release merchandising or a sequel. 

All that said, it's a weird, mostly unknown, pretty underrated movie, but the writing is pretty solid and the visuals are gorgeous. 

First up for me to talk about is the writing, otherwise known as the plot. Treasure Planet is a movie, and not one of those crazy three-hour movies, so the screenwriters naturally had to compress the story somewhat. And, in my opinion, they did it well; overall, the story is tight, with a logical, emotional character arc, and with plenty of action. It doesn't drag at all. (Remember when I was complaining about the beginning of the book being too long? Yeah.)

The story is still presented from Jim's point of view, with a few deviations. (And by deviations, I mean scenes that are used to establish the villain and maintain tension.) Also, everything that happens to move the plot happens for a reason; there's a nice tension between characters making choices and movements for themselves, and characters being forced to move because of something the villain(s) did. 

The movie also remedied the lack of tension in the latter third of the story. (Remember that? Where there was pretty much no chance that the pirates were going to win?) In the movie, it looks like the pirates might just win, right up until they trigger the trap that starts destroying the treasure. 

Also, everything in the plot moves faster from a physical standpoint, because space travel. 

Moving on: Characters!

Treasure Planet maintains most of the main characters from the book, with the caveat that most of them are aliens or robots (or both). This is because of the setting. It's a little strange at first. Whether you get into it or not as the movie goes on is up to you. This is where the movie deviates from the book a good deal; I'll reserve my thoughts on that for the next and final installment in this series. For now, since you've heard my thoughts on most of the characters, I'll just talk about the original(ish) characters that the movie added/played around with. 

The most prominent original-ish character is Captain Amelia, who replaces Captain Smollett in the story. (Also, as a note, the ship's name in the movie is the Legacy, rather than the Hispaniola. Make of that what you will.) Amelia basically serves the same purpose as Smollett: she doesn't like the crew, she's an iron-willed leader who helps fight the mutineers, she gets wounded and sorta taken out of commission during one of the fights. The main things that make her distinct and original are a) she's an alien, b) she's involved in a romance (of which there was none in the book), and c) she's the only main female character in the story (this is related to point b). This is refreshing because in the book, the only female character was Jim's mother (who is also in the movie, and is a bit more fleshed out). I guess you could say that Amelia is proof that you can have female characters in your story without compromising the way you were planning to characterize them.

The other character that was pretty much just made up for the purposes of the movie is Scroop, a.k.a. the really unsympathetic guy you're supposed to hate because he's a terrible person. (Most movies have one of these. On one hand, I know it's often a necessary storytelling technique, but on the other hand, it just bugs me so much. No one in real life is that one-dimensional!)

Anyway, Scroop is a spider-like alien who, as far as I can tell, is a composite of several one-off, villainous pirates from the book. He largely exists to create extra conflict and to do the stuff that would make our sympathetic villain look bad. (Like killing people.) He also ends up dying, in a manner suspiciously similar to the way Israel Hands from the book died, which leads me to believe that that's his closest counterpart. But again, it's debatable, since Scroop is probably a combination of several. 

So that covers the semi-original movie characters. 

Finally, we have Setting, and this is the part where I'm really going to rave about the movie. (So if you really didn't like it or something, you can skip this part. I guess.)

Treasure Planet was made as Disney was beginning to experiment with 3-D animation, and it's revolutionary in its own way, in that it's one of the first movies where 2-D and 3-D animation were blended. You can still tell where the 3-D animation is, but for the most part the two styles mesh very well and don't distract from the story. And the designs--the designs for everything, but especially for sets and backgrounds, are breathtaking and gorgeously animated. From the busy spaceport of Montressor to the Legacy itself to the titular planet, everything is wonderfully designed and animated. What's most impressive to me is the design for Long John Silver, who's a cyborg in the movie. He's mostly animated in 2-D, but his cyborg parts--a leg, an eye, and an arm--are all 3-D, and they're seamlessly animated. Seriously, this is one of those movies that you could watch on mute just to look at how beautifully it was done. 

Additionally, the scope of the story is expanded in the movie, which is a normal thing in sci-fi. Rather than various geographic locations, the different settings are planets. I think this expansion was particularly well-handled in the case of Treasure Planet itself. The fact that it's an entire planet rather than--I don't know, a moon, or something--factors nicely into the plot.

As a final point, event though the movie has a sci-fi setting, it still has many of the trappings of the traditional 18th Century Piracy genre. The Legacy looks and acts like an 18th Century sailing ship, with modifications for space travel. (A warning: almost nothing in this movie is scientifically accurate.) It even has barnacles, cannons, and longboats. The stationary settings, like the Benbow Inn and Montressor spaceport, also look a lot like 1700's locales, but they're populated with aliens and have just enough futuristic tech to support the sci-fi image.

So that's the setting. In my opinion, Treasure Planet is high on the list of Disney's beautifully designed films, and the way both kinds of animation were used is truly impressive.

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That more or less concludes my review of Treasure Planet. You'll notice that it's shorter than my review of Treasure Island. This is because I'm saving a lot of my opinions for the straight-up comparison of the two, which will be in the next post. In the meantime, I highly recommend that you at least try watching Treasure Planet. (It's unfortunately no longer available to stream on Netflix, but it is available in DVD format. Also try your local library.) If you like Star Wars, there's a good chance you'll like it. And if you don't, you might also try muting it and enjoying the animation and design. 

So that's Treasure Planet. Tune in next time for the thrilling...ish... conclusion of the ridiculous and long comparison series. Adiós!

(To Be Concluded...)