Allow me to take you a time when Disney did not, in fact, redo the same stuff they did thirty years ago but uglier and weirder. Allow me to regale you of when there was in fact innovation in mainstream western animation, of which they were leaders. This was when we had actual variation and experimentation in writhing and technology—from CGI to actually surprisingly intense takes on internalized racism with Hunchback of Notre Dame. No, this was well before another Lion King all about taxidermied computer abominations, or the most idiotic take on Pinocchio ever conceived. There is something to be said about rose-tinted glasses, but you can’t help but notice that any embers left of their renaissance vanished in the mire of a less than brave new rebooted world.
Of course, at the end of the day, it’s all business, and business will reward innovation only if there’s returns. And for a time, there was, but that slumped around the turn of the millennium—with this entry, rightfully or wrongly, being the beginning of the end. Let’s see why with Gary Trousdale’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
Inspired heavily by Jules Verne (and, according to some, certain anime entries—I’ll admit you can draw comparisons with Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky)—this one also went through some redrafts and alterations, heavily cut down from the original vision. It’s not incoherent or anything, but you can definitely feel a rushed pace as we go into our setting of 1914, involving Michael J Fox in one of his typically awkward nerdy roles as a linguist determined to find the titular lost empire.
Let’s get one thing out of the way—for me, by far the best element is the art style, heavily overseen by one Mike Mignola, one of my favorite graphic novel artists. Mignola is all sharp faces, distinct character silhouettes, and good use of contrast—for whatever other flaws it has, the look of this film remains unique among is contemporaries, and that goes for the overall design sensibility here. We have an Atlantis inspired by combining South East Asia with the Middle East than the usual Greek cliches, and and is all the more memorable for it. There’s actual mood, there’s detailed environments that are fleeting yet unique—for pure animation, there’s lots to admire.
Furthermore, this one actually pushed harder on the more intense entries Disney did, like Hunchback—we have an actually very harrowing sequence involving a submarine and mile-long mocha-lobster, where the filmmakers do not shy away from the casualties going on, nor that people are very much dying. We have stakes, we have action that doesn’t condescend to a young audience with what’s actually happening—for that, I also respect the envelope pushing in that regard.
Now, when we get to the middle act is when the curtailed writing kicks in. We have of course our romance between our lead and our obligatory Disney princess as voiced by Cree Summer (how does Kida rank up? I’m not sure) where it turns out that everyone in Atlantis has forgotten to read, despite some of them being thousands of years old, and of course Fox has to help them out. It could’ve been explained with only certain ones being so immortal, but it isn’t, so we brush through that fast. In general, this bit does lean into the old 19th-early 20 century pulps of old, though never mind the implications people would talk about that now, the explanations get breezed through fast.
Still, the ending ramps up at least, even if again character motivations change very quickly. James Garner is our bad guy, as the grizzled but wise military commander who turns out to be a bastard—something perhaps not as done as it was now, but I say it actually holds up. An indifferent self-described ‘adventure capitalist’ willing to trash a whole environment for quick profit? And one who remains oh so cheerful about it? You’d get all kinds of pundits huffing and puffing over this apparently besmirching their favorite feudal overlords.
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Flawed it is, but Atlantis ends up something still feeling unique for its time that honestly could’ve been so much more if given more time to breathe and expand, and we have glimpses of that in animatics and the like. It was one of several animated films trying to push age gaps at that time, some of which suffered honestly thanks to poor marketing and executives turning to computer animation as the hot new thing. Of course, this and others were far from perfect, but at least there was effort made to try something new—and in a world now of yet another Toy Story with an increasingly hoarse Tom Hanks, that’s something I appreciate all the more.
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