Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

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Q99
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Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

Post by Q99 »

I have seen Disney's Atlantis!


Now I both get why some people love it and call it a forgotten gem, and why it didn't do so well.


On the plus side, it's a really fun pulp action story of the type we don't get a lot- it's somewhat what I wanted Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow to be, dieselpunk tech vs weird science.

The cast? Is great and memorable, all the crew have fantastic designs and personality.

The dialog is witty and has some real gems.

Milo's likable, Kida's cool, and they have real chemistry.


On the flipside, plotwise, wow, is this different than a normal Disney animated movie. It's downright brutal with the bodycount, and the plot is pretty straightforward 'group goes to find natives and exploit them, main character switches sides and saves them.' Tonewise, it feels closer to a Bluth movie than a Disney one in how dark it is, or one of the other rivals, and kinda on the dark side of *that* (3/4ths the sympathetic characters are mercenaries!). If Anastasia is the most Disney non-Disney animated movie, Atlantis is the least. And, well, I've seen that kind of plot a fair amount, it's basically the Avatar plot before Avatar. Though with more cool retrotech and such so this has a leg up there at least.


Minuses... ok, Kida's cool and all, but once they found the Heart of Atlantis she literally spent the main action part of the movie in a box. She entered the movie fairly late too so screen-time wise she was pretty thin on face time compared to other disney princesses. Action-wise she was capable, but only got to fight a few guys and swim for a bit. I desired more!


Aaand it has that problem a lot of movies do when they visit a lost tribe or such. Namely, there's 2-3 actual characters in the group (Kida and her dad and kinda-sorta her mom), and the rest of the Atlanteans are just 'Atlantean #4," and such. It'd have benefited if they had some characters that compared to the crew in design and dialog.

Helga I felt was kinda underutilized, she was Rouke's right hand but she didn't get to do that much, aside from the intro and her key role in the final fight.

It felt shorter to me than it was too- possibly because they spent a lot of time simply traveling. They likely could've cut some of that stuff and instead added more to Atlantis, maybe have the crew make some proper developed friends among the Atlanteans, which would also add to their turn.


It's a good movie and it definitely scratches itches not many movies do, one of the cooler pulp films I've seen, but between it being so non-disney and the huge body count, and some parts of it IMO just needing, well, more, I also get why it's a somewhat overlooked gem.

If it had made a TV series and had that take off ala Gargoyles or the Aladdin show, with more Kida time, I'd have loved that, and then I feel like I'd be saying, "the movie was a nice start, but I really loved the development they did with the show!".


Anyway, that's my thoughts.
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Re: Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

Post by The Romulan Republic »

My knowledge of this film comes almost entirely from the SF Debris review of it, but it honestly occurred to me "You know, this could make a good live action reboot".

As to Gargoyles, its funny you mention that, because I seem to recall that if it had taken off/gotten a TV sequel, it was supposed to cross over with Gargoyles at some point.
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Re: Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

Post by Q99 »

Yea, crossing them over might've worked.

I feel that a number of things have gone for that dieseltech pulp / weird science vibe, but nothing's quite stuck the landing- see also Sky Captain.
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Re: Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

Post by The Romulan Republic »

You know, considering how many myths and legends they threw into Gargoyles, I'm a bit surprised that I don't recall them mentioning Atlantis anywhere, now that I think about it.

You'd think Xanatos or Demona would have gone looking for it, or even Goliath might have stumbled on it during his travels.
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Re: Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

Post by Q99 »

I think Avalon pretty much took it's place. It's not like it needed *more* hidden stuff around!
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Re: Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

Post by Iroscato »

You know, I somehow missed this when it came out - probably because it was a lot more obscure than the standard Disney fare of the time. I may have to check it out soon, I've always heard good things...
Yeah, I've always taken the subtext of the Birther movement to be, "The rules don't count here! This is different! HE'S BLACK! BLACK, I SAY! ARE YOU ALL BLIND!?

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Re: Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

Post by Elheru Aran »

Iroscato wrote:You know, I somehow missed this when it came out - probably because it was a lot more obscure than the standard Disney fare of the time. I may have to check it out soon, I've always heard good things...
It's got a very similar visual style to Treasure Planet, which was another late-90s Disney flop. It's not -quite- as good as Atlantis... but it's surprisingly decent.
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Re: Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

Post by Iroscato »

Seems like Disney went through quite an experimental phase around the new millenium - I hope they can get back to it now that they have ALL THE MONEY IN THE UNIVERSE and fund some smaller, interesting projects. End of the day, nobody makes a film quite like Disney, despite them being evil incarnate etc.
Yeah, I've always taken the subtext of the Birther movement to be, "The rules don't count here! This is different! HE'S BLACK! BLACK, I SAY! ARE YOU ALL BLIND!?

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Re: Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

Post by Elheru Aran »

Iroscato wrote:Seems like Disney went through quite an experimental phase around the new millenium - I hope they can get back to it now that they have ALL THE MONEY IN THE UNIVERSE and fund some smaller, interesting projects. End of the day, nobody makes a film quite like Disney, despite them being evil incarnate etc.
Everybody had an experimental phase around the turn of the century, man :P

But yeah. There's a lot of interesting factors at play there. Disney was riding high off the early-to-mid 90s successes of Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Lion King etc. They had a bunch of fairly successful TV shows.

Then Warner Brothers came out with B:TAS and grimdarked things up a bit. Anime started hitting the big-time in the US with Miyazaki movies and such. Hair got frosted and spiked, jeans got big (or small and low, depending on gender). So for a short period there, Disney and a few other companies started trying out edgy, with various successes.

In this case, they tried out steampunk about a decade or so before it really became a thing. Ahead of the curve there, but perhaps a little -too- far ahead.
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Re: Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

Post by TheFeniX »

Didn't Atlantis also have a ridiculous budget due to some of their CGI and Disney being one of the last to jump ship to it? It also opened up against some stiff competition IIRC and was really hard to market. I mean, Little Mermaid: Princesses, Under the Sea, etc. Atlantis.... um... I got nothing.

Still, in the vein of animation toward the end of it's life: much bigger fan of Titan AE, even though I did enjoy Atlantis.
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Re: Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

Post by Q99 »

Lesse, the same year was Shrek, Monsters Inc., and Spirited Away. Yea, that is rough competition!

Also looking at the movie poster... it was just an 'A'. Yeesh.
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Re: Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

Post by Marko Dash »

i would have liked Sky Captain a lot more if it had been 'Crimson Skies' the movie
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Re: Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

Post by Tribble »

Elheru Aran wrote:
Iroscato wrote:You know, I somehow missed this when it came out - probably because it was a lot more obscure than the standard Disney fare of the time. I may have to check it out soon, I've always heard good things...
It's got a very similar visual style to Treasure Planet, which was another late-90s Disney flop. It's not -quite- as good as Atlantis... but it's surprisingly decent.
Omg you're bringing back some horror days; the kid's department in one place I worked at looped Treasure Planet endlessly as it was the only movie they had. On VHS of course. Try hearing it / seeing it out of the corner of your eye for a year, it'll drive you nuts :P
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Re: Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

Post by Batman »

Seeing any movie for that long would probably drive you nuts.
'Atlantis' and 'Treasure Planet' were movies well worth watching, if not necessarily in theatre. They're not typical Disney Princess flick fare but I think that is what makes them interesting.
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Re: Watched Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the first time

Post by Q99 »

Marko Dash wrote:i would have liked Sky Captain a lot more if it had been 'Crimson Skies' the movie
Quite. I wanted Angelina Jolie's character to be the main one!

Honestly I think one of the big mistakes a movie of that type can do is go for the 'two-fisted square jawed action' type guy as the lead. Like, they're fun, but not necessarily the ones you want to follow the whole movie. Have 'em around, but a wormy guy like Milo, or any of the women in the films, tend to be better choices.
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