Review: Atlantis The Lost Empire

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My good friend, Chauncey, bless his soul, requested that the first review on this blog focus on a little early 2000’s film called Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Naturally, this fascinated the hell out of me, because I certainly had thoughts about Disney I was holding on the table for later, and now would be a good chance to kick things off, no?

Without any further ado, let’s get started on the beast that is Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and god almighty, is it an intimidating beast. Disney has always tried to appeal towards the seemingly inhospitable market that is teenage boys, but for some reason, they decided to go completely overboard with Atlantis. It’s a mixture of a lot of things I’ve seen before – I picked up on traces of The Black Cauldron, Stargate, Blade Runner, and Indiana Jones as I watched and rewatched the movie. You’d be a liar to say that all of these elements coming together isn’t fascinating, and worth checking out to see if the ingredients all come together in one epic, sci-fi dish. But do they?

The instigator for all of this stuff begins with the life of Milo Thatch, a stereotypically nerdy linguist whose motivation is to find the lost city of Atlantis, which his grandfather had previously tried to find but to no avail. Milo thinks he’s onto something but the intellectual minds of early 1900’s Washington D.C. aren’t having any of it, and Milo returns home humiliated once again. However, the time of setbacks is almost over, as Milo is soon taken to the mansion of Mr. Preston Whitmore, who apparently knew Milo’s grandfather quite well. He has, in fact, found something called the Shepherd’s Journal, which pinpoints the location of Atlantis; since Milo is one of the only people who can thoroughly understand written Atlantean, language only he can decipher what the journal means. Whitmore and Milo waste no time in trying to search for the underwater kingdom, slapping together a crew of mercenaries and putting them all aboard a futuristic submarine. They all dick around for a while before managing to find Atlantis, a civilization endangered by the threat of a faltering power source. The Atlantean Princess, Kida, asks for Milo’s assistance in figuring out what’s wrong, and eventually the mercenary crew turns on Milo to steal and illegally sell the power source (because having a trustworthy mercenary crew is apparently an oxymoron). Angst, shenanigans, and grotesque violence ensue, and the day is saved. Woo-hoo.

Augh, Christ. Part of the problem with Atlantis’s plot is how unfocused and straight-up flimsy it is. It can range from incoherent to one-note to unnecessarily dark, all at completely random intervals. This is a problem – rather than having a complex yet lucid and well-defined story that juggles mythology with character drama and themes about morality and greed, Atlantis decides to use these elements whenever it damn well pleases, praying to God they work. It is the literal definition of throwing crap on a canvas and hoping something succeeds. Occasionally, it does succeed; the culture of Atlantis is honestly fascinating as hell, but the film never expounds on something interesting. How do the civilians feel about being separated from the rest of the world, about their decaying city, about these strange foreigners who apparently know quite a bit about them? The film never explains; these aspects would have been far more interesting than the film’s overhauled third act. The film doesn’t really expound on how its main protagonists, Milo and Kida (i.e. the only ones we should care about) feel about the circumstances either, which makes the entire story feel very contrived.

And yes, the characters are absolutely atrocious as well. I am willing to give Milo and Kida a pass; their character designs mark them out as very distinct personalities, the former shy yet bold and daring, the latter bright-eyed and wise yet uncertain, and they have very strong performances from their voice actors. Everyone else, however, are either incredibly one-note, inconsistent, or plain uninteresting. The mercenary crew in particular is a ragtag assembly of impressively racist and sexist stereotypes; you’ve got the dumb black guy, the creepy short guy, the spunky mechanic, the crabby old bitch, et cetera ad nauseum. Films, as a whole, don’t have a ton of free time to fully flesh out characters, but if the writers were aware of this, why have so many characters to begin with? We’re also supposed to believe this mercenary crew are an ensemble, judged as secondary protagonists whom we should care about. There’s absolutely nothing to care about. What is the character resolution going to be? Why should we care? Likable and distinctive as Milo and Kida are, they aren’t strong enough to support an entire film, and the villains of the story are incredibly weak and undefined as well, so the need for strong secondary characters is all the more present. The plot doesn’t handle these characters very well, either. Only Milo and Kida’s motivations (and at one point, the villain’s, but it’s such a cliché, out-of-left-field motivation) are clear. Everyone else? They’re just there because the story dictated so.

In addition, as interesting as the whole dramatic European steampunk flair is, nothing in the film ever clicks. Atlantis is full of little bits of wonderful creativity and imagination that never ever come together in a coherent, intelligent way. Combining futuristic technology with an outdated world is something that has been done many times before, and it has been done better. Blade Runner did a great job with this idea; the combination of the rough, poor streets of Japan and the sleek, futuristic world of tech noir mythology was incredibly natural and well-suited to the film’s environment. In Atlantis, it feels like it’s there because it looks cool. We have nothing else to go with beyond that. Did the seven writers of the film ever once stop to ask themselves: “Why? Why this? Why that? Why?” Even the comic book-esque character design screams “poser”; while an interesting direction for the Disney animators to take, the characters look really hideous at certain intervals, almost inhuman; they’re composed of perpetually tight, sharp lines and straight angles and they look absolutely miserable.

The animation isn't even particularly smooth. There are parts when it looks good, but other parts where the characters and environment are full of stiff, unnatural movements. I primarily blame that on the poor character design, however; after all, Disney are professionals.

So, the ultimate question is: “What went wrong?” Atlantis is very grim, anarchic in its storytelling, featuring little to no interesting characters, an undefined world, topped off with some of the most atrocious and inconsistent character design I’ve ever seen in a Disney film; it was not a financial nor critical hit, and I can easily see why. I believe the answer to the question above is simple: Atlantis is a beautiful case of trying too hard. It wants so badly to appeal to everyone, especially its target audience of teenage boys and young men, so it decides it will have everything. Explosions, weird culture, romance, supernatural stuff, all kinds of things would be great if they all worked together, and they straight up don’t. Perhaps I need to rewatch it again and try to follow exactly where the plot goes and find any additional merits, but as it stands this is my least favorite Disney film ever.

What can I say? It's a masterpiece! 10/10!

(3/10.)