Minion Mania

Illumination Entertainment... It's only been two years since they've released their first film in theaters. The three films they've produced all cost much less than what most animated films cost these days, they do very well at the box office and they're backed by incredibly aggressive marketing that pushes cutesy and candy-coated visuals down your throat. Kids love them, big time. Adults and teenagers found joy in Despicable Me, but Hop was for kids and Dr. Seuss' The Lorax was no different than Despicable Me with its paint-by-numbers writing and again, zany antics and visuals. Despicable Me 2 comes out next summer. That will probably be no different as well. What's next?

A Despicable Me spin-off film about the minions...

Slated for release in 2014, this is yet again another safe bet for Illumination. With Despicable Me 2 locked to do extremely well overseas and domestically, it's obvious that the little yellow creatures will be another money pot for the studio. Sure, the minions are cute and they certainly made Despicable Me a lot of fun, but having a whole film about them? That probably won't work well, but Universal and Illumination don't care. The kids will eat it up. Illumination is clearly the candy factory of the feature animation world, pumping out cheap, silly entertainment that aims at children first unlike the Pixar, Disney and DreamWorks films. Even Blue Sky and Sony to some extent.

That said, this will do it's job. Illumination is the most business-oriented studio of all the big guns, and boy do they reel in the dough each time out. The fact that their upcoming films are based on things we grew up with (minus the adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's Pluto, who knows what they'll do with that) or pre-existing source material for children proves this. All three of their films are no different from each other, despite the fact that Despicable Me was at least fresh and fun when it first came out.

Anyways, are you looking forward to a Minions spin-off? Or do you think it's a pointless cash grab?

"Monsters, Inc." 3D Moved Up, "Peabody" Pushed Back

Disney has moved the 3D re-release of Pixar's Monsters, Inc. up a month. Originally slated to open on January 14, 2013, the re-release is now opening on December 19, 2012.

This move is certainly interesting. While it's nice to have the film re-released in time for the holidays, it'll also have to compete with Rise of the Guardians and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Perhaps it could've had more room to breathe in January, but I'm glad we're getting it sooner. It's also coincidental how the film first opened in late 2001, around the same time The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring came out. How time flies...

Yesterday, DreamWorks Animation moved the release date for Mr. Peabody & Sherman back a month. It is set to debut on Christmas Day 2013, which was an incredibly smart decision on DreamWorks' part. The previous date, November 8th, would've been a mistake. The film would be in a whirlpool with Thor: The Dark World, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Disney's Frozen. It would've had to put up a good fight, so with a Christmas Day release, it has more room to breathe plus it can do well.

What do you think of these release date changes?

Best Animated Short - 1983

In recent entries we have moved into the era where I've had infantile amnesia, and now we're all the way out to the years preceding my birth. That's why these introductions have been less my anecdotes and more an overview of what happened that year. Normally I can come up with a few items off the top of my head, but 1983 is such a non-descript year for me (other than the fact that a couple of my good friends were born this year) that I just can't think of anything. So it's off to Wikipedia I go. Hmm. Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie is arrested in South America. Bjorn Borg retires from tennis. The last episode of M*A*S*H airs to great ratings. The EPA evacuates Times Beach, MO for dioxin contamination. Nintendo's Famicom (short for Family Computer) launches in Japan. Those are interesting news items, I suppose.

Maybe I should stick with the things I know without having to look stuff up: baseball and the Oscars.

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First Look: "Me and My Shadow"

Looks nice, doesn't it?

Ever since DreamWorks announced this hand-drawn/computer animation hybrid in 2010, I was looking forward to seeing how it would be pulled off. The poster doesn't really show much, but it gives you a good idea of how the shadows will be animated. I'm getting a Paperman vibe from this already, though unlike that short film, it's not a combination of the two mediums. Still, the use of hand-drawn for the shadows will give it a surreal effect in this computer animated setting.

The film opens on March 14, 2014. The first trailer should show up sometime around summer or fall 2013. Out of all the upcoming DreamWorks films, I'm looking forward to this one the most, though the fact that scribes Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember (Failure to Launch, Get Smart) are writing this makes me worry, as I've said before. Having only written two comedy films (one that was a critical dud and one that got mixed reviews), should they've been picked for an animated film like this? They could turn out gold, but I remain skeptical at this point. A potentially bad screenplay could throw everything off.

In other news, DreamWorks acquired Classic Media yesterday for $155 million. Now we'll see what their upcoming slate will look like months from now.

Logo Plastering

When you watch a Disney film released between 1953 and 1984, you are most likely going to see something like this at the beginning of the film:

This would happen to be the logo that was created for Disney's self-distribution company, Buena Vista. It's common because a lot of the classic Disney animated features had this logo before the credits, live action favorites like Mary Poppins do as well. Most home video releases of the Disney films in the 1990s preserved these logos. Some, however, did not.

Before Buena Vista, who distributed Disney's feature-length films? That would be none other than RKO Radio Pictures, with the exception of Victory Through Air Power, which was released by United Artists. Walt Disney had a falling out with RKO over the documentary feature film, The Living Desert. With that, Disney basically started their own distribution company and that was it (though a handful of post-1953 films were distributed by RKO). All re-issues of the pre-Living Desert Disney films would replace the RKO card with the Buena Vista card. This is usually what you saw on the home video releases in the 1980s and 1990s, or you wouldn't see anything at all. In the 1990s, Disney did a good job at restoring most of the logos. When DVD came around, most of the pre-1953 Disney films had the RKO logo restored.

Now that we've moved onto Blu-ray disc, the Disney films have been restored quite well for the most part. There are some exceptions, mostly in the live action department, but most of the Blu-ray releases of the animated classics have been spectacular. However, there are some problems:

Bambi came to Blu-ray for the first time in March 2011 as the fourth "Diamond Edition", the successor to the Platinum Edition series. The restoration was beautiful, but the opening credits of the film were a disappointment. Of course, as Disney fans know, when Bambi was first released in 1942, it originally opened with this:

The original 1989 VHS, Betamax tape and LaserDisc didn't have the logo, just the opening fanfare playing over a black screen. The 1997 LaserDisc has the logo, but the VHS didn't have it, just the black screen with the music. The 2005 Platinum Edition DVD replaced it with a cut-short version of the Walt Disney Pictures castle logo with the theme playing over it. So you'd think the Blu-ray would open with this logo since Disney was restoring the RKO logos for their pre-1953 films since the mid 1990s. It didn't, instead, it opened with a short version of the 2006 Walt Disney Pictures logo in all its modern, CGI glory! How fitting!

Now why would something like this irritate me and several others? Well, as a Disney fanatic, I'd like to see the film presented as close to the original theatrical release version as possible. No, that doesn't mean I'm against digital correction to errors such as the disappearing raccoon (a production mistake for those of you who don't know), it's just that the crisp, clean and modern Disney logo does not mix well with the opening credits or the era the film was released. This is a 1942 film, having it open with this isn't right... Where was the RKO logo? They restored it for the 1997 LaserDisc, why did they leave it off the Blu-ray? Or better yet, the first DVD? No way it's lost. There's got to be a reason.

Aside from that big screw-up, Disney did keep the RKO logo for the Pinocchio Platinum Edition Blu-ray and DVD, the intermission card with the RKO logo for Fantasia, and the RKO logo for the final shot of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Dumbo's Blu-ray keeps the RKO logo as well, since the 2001 and 2006 DVDs had it. That raises a good question though: Will the Blu-ray release of Cinderella (coming October 2nd) restore the RKO logo? Like Bambi, the original LaserDisc and videocassette (VHS and Beta) lacked it. The 1995 LaserDisc had it, while the VHS had the Buena Vista logo instead (used on the film's 1957 theatrical re-issue and onwards). The 2005 DVD, like Bambi's 2005 DVD release, used the abridged Walt Disney Pictures logo instead. Will they use the 2006 Walt Disney Pictures castle for the Blu-ray release instead of the RKO logo? Probably, but we'll know when someone gets their hands on the disc.

However, these screws up aren't limited to the opening title cards on the older Disney films. The newer films have been losing their original logos, too...

When Toy Story and Toy Story 2 were re-released as a double feature in October 2009, both films opened with the current Walt Disney Pictures logo and not the CGI one used for Pixar films up until WALL-E. First of all, I miss the original music from the original logo. Also, the first Toy Story opens up with the Walt Disney Pictures logo fading into Andy's wallpaper. The Pixar logo fading into it just doesn't work. It is presented this way on all the Blu-ray and DVD versions released after this re-release. Will the 3D re-releases of Finding Nemo and Monsters, Inc. open this way? They can't replace the logos for Monsters, Inc. because not only does the film use cut-short versions of the Disney and Pixar logos, but the intro to the jazzy opening song plays over them.

Then came the restored version of Beauty and the Beast for the Diamond Edition Blu-ray in 2010. It opened with the current Walt Disney Pictures logo and the Walt Disney Animation Studios logo. The film originally opened with the 1990 Walt Disney Pictures logo, so why replace it?

Then came the 3D theatrical re-release of The Lion King in September 2011. It opened the same way. Now this was even more jarring, because the original version of The Lion King opened with the 1990 Walt Disney Pictures logo with the sounds of the African savanna used instead of the Walt Disney Pictures fanfare. We only hear a little bit of it for the current version that's on Blu-ray, then onto "Nants Ingonyama!" Seriously, I find that annoying. I loved how the original opened. All nice and quiet when we see the Disney logo, the Frank Wells tribute and "Walt Disney Pictures presents". Why shorten that?

Some other examples of this include Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. On Pocahontas, we heard the drumroll leading up to "Virginia Company", the film's opening song. On Hunchback, we heard the eerie cathedral-esque choir leading up to "The Bells of Notre Dame". Would Disney replace that on the restored versions when they hit Blu-ray? That would just ruin it. Other films like Tarzan have their own custom version of the logo, so they shouldn't replace those either.

Now with all this about logo plastering, let's consider what Walt Disney himself did once Buena Vista was set up. The RKO logo would be replaced with the Buena Vista logo, but they would at least keep the original opening credits music since the logo would only last for mere seconds like the RKO logo did. Now if he were alive today, what would he do about the opening credits? Would he modernize things with using a new logo in place of the Buena Vista/RKO logo? Or would he just leave the film as is?

I'd say leaving the film as is works best. These are timeless films, but I think using the original logos is the best way of presenting these films today on Blu-ray because using a new logo that clashes with the style of the opening credits and music just doesn't look right to me. A lot of folks would agree, too. This is an issue that's often nit-picked, and I myself will admit that Disney changing logos on their films does irk me. Does it irk you? Or do you think it's a non-issue?

That said, for those who are interested, a YouTuber who goes by 8to16to35 has uploaded nearly every RKO and Buena Vista title card, plus custom made variations and other things. They give you a good picture of what logos Disney used over time. These two videos do just that...





Wow, all those different versions of two logos...

Anyways, what do you think? Do you think that Disney should leave these films the way they are and not remove any logos or replace them? Or do you believe that it doesn't matter? I am all ears, this is something that's often talked about among Disney fans and aficionados. It may seem like something minor, but it's actually a big thing among some Disney fanatics.

Max Fleischer's Superman in HD.

Great news for all fans of classic animation! On October 9th, Vivendi is bringing out a the collection of Max Fleischer's classic Superman cartoons on Blu-ray. It'll be the first time these cartoons are presented at the highest quality possible in HD, after all shorts had already received a beautiful digital restoration, made available by Warner (who owns the original movie prints) in 2009 on their 2-disc 'Max Fleischer's Superman' DVD set.

The 17 Superman theatrical cartoons, created by the Fleischer studio were originally released between September 26, 1941 and July 30, 1943. Founded by the brothers Max and Dave Fleischer, their studio was famous for the animated 'Betty Boop' and 'Popeye' cartoons. At the time they started producing the Superman shorts, they had just released their first full length, full-color animated feature, the classic 'Gulliver's Travels'.

Above: the Fleischer studio in 1929 in New York, before the move to their new studio in Miami, that would eventually lead them into financial troubles. Max Fleischer (wearing glasses, hands in his pockets) is standing prominently in the front row. To his right (our left) is his son-in-law and animator Seymour Kneitel, who worked as a storyman on the series and also directed one episode ('Japoteurs'). For more on his life and work check out his daughter's blog.

The first short, titled 'The Mad Scientist' was nominated for an Academy Award in the category 'Best animated short film', along with 'The Night Before Christmas', and 'The Rookie Bear' from MGM, 'Hiawatha's Rabbit Run', and 'Rhapsody in Rivets' (two Merrie Melodies cartoons produced by Leon Schlesinger) and two Disney shorts, 'Truant Officer Donald' and the Pluto cartoon 'Lend a Paw', which won the award. During production of the series,the animated shorts turned Superman into a flying superhero, where he would merely jump from one building to the next in the first episodes and in the orginal comic books, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster for National Allied Publications (now DC Comics).

After producing nine shorts, while working on their second feature film 'Mr. Bug goes to town' (also known as 'Hoppity goes to town'), the studio got into financial trouble and depended on loans from their distributor Paramount. The unsuccesful release of 'Mr. Bug' on December 9, 1941, (two days before the attack on Pearl Harbor), gave Paramount the opportunity to acquire full ownership of  the Fleischer studio and reorganized it into the 'Famous Studios'.  Max and Dave, who were constantly fighting at that time, were both fired. The last eight Superman shorts were therefore produced under a new lable.

Check out the difference. The first titlecard is from 'The mad scientist', the first Superman short created, the second is from 'Japoteurs' the tenth short from September 16, 1942, created after Paramount had taken control and reorganized the studio under a new name, run by Seymour Kneitel, Izzy Sparber and Sam Buchwald.

Below: last year, Koch entertainment released a fully restored 'Gulliver's travels' in High definition  on Blu-ray (restoration done by Cartoon Crazys), while Disney and Studio Ghibli released 'Mr. Bug Goes to town' on DVD in Japan in 2010, check here for the official site.

The artists working on the Superman series were among the best of the golden age of animation. The team included: Steve Mufatti, Frank Endres, George Germanetti, Myron Waldman, Willard Bowsky, Reuben Grossman, Orestes Calpini, Graham Place, Tom Moore, Arnold Gillespie, Jim Davis, Nicholas Tafuri, William Henning, H.C. Elliston and of course Dave Tendlar and Otto Feuer.

The stories were written Seymour Kneitel and Izzy Sparber, Bill Turner and Ted Pierce, Carl Meyer and Dan Gordon, Jay Morton and Robert Little.

Below (click to enlage): Model sheets from January 1941 from the Fleisher studios. To create realistic body movements and keep all figures anatomically correct, the animators used rotoscoping, a process were live actors would be filmed, and their movements traced afterwards onto paper.

Below is some of the amazing artwork for different titlecards from the various episodes (taken from the restored edition DVD release from 2009, I'll update this asap when I've received the Blu-ray).

Buried Treasures

After the end of the Disney Renaissance, the then-troubled animation studio released two animated features that are similar in many ways: Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet...

Both films were a break away from the Disney formula that had dominated the films the studio released in the 1990s during the much-heralded "Renaissance". However, both of them didn't turn out to be as successful as the studio had hoped. Audiences were tired of the formula, yet one would think these kinds of films would introduce audiences to a different side of Disney, a different direction. The perception is that both of these films bombed at the box office. Critical reception on the other hand was different. Atlantis: The Lost Empire received mixed reviews, whereas Treasure Planet got more positive reception while still not getting unanimous praise. Ask your friends if they have seen them, chances are they’ll just say no or... They’ve never heard of them or don't remember...

There are plenty of Disney animated films that you could call overlooked or underrated. Some say the films released in the 1970s and early 1980s need more attention. Others point to post-Lion King films like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, given hogwash generalizations like "Disney hasn't made a great film since The Lion King..." Atlantis and Treasure Planet, however, are two films that show us the ambitious core of Disney, the story team and animators who wanted to make something that only the animation medium could do...

~

Atlantis: The Lost Empire is a film that’s riddled with story problems and it ultimately shows that the executives had their way with this, as they had had their way with the animated films prior to this. An excellent cast of characters keeps everything afloat, despite the muddled story. The lead is instantly likable, the passionate Milo J. Thatch, who is voiced perfectly by an exuberant Michael J. Fox. A worker in the Smithsonian’s boiler room, he dreams of finding the lost civilization of Atlantis, but everyone he knows writes it off as a myth. His boss, Fenton Q. Harcourt, tries to convince him not to throw away his job chasing silly dreams.

All of a sudden, he’s whisked into a team of explorers from around the world thanks to the eccentric millionaire, Preston B. Whitmore. Whitmore was close friends with Milo’s father Thaddeus, who was also searching for Atlantis. Whitmore gives Thatch the Shepherd’s Journal, the book which could help him. He gets to meet the explorers on the voyage to Atlantis, all of which is told very briskly without ever plodding. It gets off to an incredibly quick start, even the animation and the editing more than show that.

The different explorers accompanying Milo on the journey are all very unique and most of them are hilarious, such as the fast-talking Dr. Joshua Sweet and the absent-minded former wagon train chef, Jebidiah A. Farnsworth, whose nicknamed “Cookie”. There’s also the feisty Puerto Rican mechanic, Audrey Ramirez, who is one of the few that vocally doesn’t take a liking to Milo at first. One of the funniest characters in the group is explosives the Italian expert Vincenzo “Vinny” Santorini, but then there’s the French geologist, Gaeten “Mole” Moliere. He comes off as this very weird character who is obsessed with dirt and fears being clean. However, the writers restrict the character to toilet jokes and they don’t do much with him, thus he pops in and out like an annoying comic relief character. Commander Lyle T. Rourke leads the expedition alongside his second-in-command Helga Sinclair, who is the first of the crew which Milo meets early on in the film.

Their journey to find Atlantis pits them against several perils, the first of which is an encounter with a seemingly mechanic lobster-like monster called the Leviathan. Atlantis: The Lost Empire immediately begins to take off after we are quickly introduced to the characters, as the film doesn’t want to make audiences wait. Well-edited, exciting as all hell and loud, it’s proof that Disney animation can definitely pull off explosive spectacle and rival action-packed summer blockbusters. That’s the only big action set-piece we get until the film’s climactic battle, and once the team gets to the city, the story begins to fall apart.

With these great characters and a strong first act, you’d think the story would only get better. Once they get to Atlantis, we are introduced to the Atlanteans and Princess Kida. Unfortunately, the Atlanteans aren’t very interesting characters and there isn’t much chemistry between Milo and Kida, though the writers try with their might since this film isn’t attempting to be a love story. Then why have a relationship like this in the first place? All it does is waste time, and it never pays off at the end. In fact, the film doesn’t really tells us enough about the Atlantean’s culture and why their misuse of technology sealed their fate, only the first two minutes imply this. Also, why do the Atlanteans not know how to use the power crystals? They’ve been there for how long, and yet someone from above figures it out for all of them?

Some of the writing is very contrived in the second act of the film, which ultimately feels like a setup for the second and final action set-piece, the film’s climactic aerial battle inside a volcano. Rourke and Helga turn out to be mercenaries who are just after riches, and sadly enough, Rourke is not a very convincing antagonist. James Garner’s voice work is excellent, but the character is your typical greedy head honcho who is going for the gold no matter what. It was already unsuccessfully done in Pocahontas, so here it doesn’t work. The villain has undefined motivations, he’s just a greedy man. That’s all.

Give most of the flamboyant and rather generic villains from the 1990s films credit, they at least had some form of motivation. Rourke on the other hand, not so much. He’s a stock antagonist, just looking for riches. The final battle is certainly exciting and intense, but with all of the meatless bones of the second act that came before it, the action scene is ultimately half-hearted. We root for the crew, but the Atlanteans, they just seem like extra help but without any defined personalities. Fortunately, the action scene doesn’t pull any punches. The body count is high, there’s explosions everywhere and Rourke dies a pretty painful death, though we don't see what happens to Helga, we are only told that. Nice move, Disney. They're okay with clearly showing a crystallized man getting chopped up, but they can't show debris falling on someone? Come on...

Atlantis: The Lost Empire really can’t find a direction to go. Early on, its a character-driven film with an action-packed plot. Later on, it’s all about a culture that we don’t really get to know much of, along with a forced romance story. The third act is just pulse-pounding action and a conclusion that feels like an afterthought. The screenplay on the other hand is a bit better, holding everything together like glue as much as it can given the great characters. Early on in production, the film was going to be different. While the writers didn't have a third act before this story was retooled, executives balked at the lengthy project. The second act was loaded with monster battles, but the entire trip to Atlantis is condensed to a few montage scenes of the convoy and the campfire scene. Perhaps if the crew had more time to solve the problems, Atlantis could've had a much stronger story. Disney films had to be completed by a specific release date. If you missed that date, you were in trouble. (See Kingdom of the Sun)

What makes Atlantis: The Lost Empire stick out from most of the Disney films is not that it is an action film as opposed to being a fairy tale or love story, but it also looks much different. The animators and artists were heavily influenced by the artwork of Mike Mignola, and thus the film has a very comic book-like look to with its heavily stylized explosions, art direction and character designs. It certainly didn’t look like a Disney animated film at the time. At the same time, it doesn’t feel like a Disney, not because of the look or the feel. It’s because the film truly lacks heart, or some form of pull. There is some to be found in the film’s first act, particularly with Milo hoping to fulfill his dream. It’s all overshadowed by the second and third acts. When a film can’t decide on what it’s going to be, then you have a big problem.

That said, Atlantis: The Lost Empire is not a big mishap. To its credit, it is very risky. It is a lot more violent than most Disney animated films (it earned a PG), there’s some edgy humor in it that works for the most part, and the film does boast some pretty epic visuals. The characters are wonderful for the most part, but the very flimsy story takes everything into a nose-dive.

Ron Clements and John Musker's Treasure Planet, much like Altantis, is Disney attempting to do something more action-oriented. It has a sci-fi flavored story, lots of action, it aims for the PG rating and it has some incredible visuals. By contrast, it has a much more consistent and defined story, and a believable emotional core. Young Jim Hawkins, despite being a mopey delinquent, is a rather torn character who has daddy issues. Jim Hawkins bonds with John Silver, the rather sketchy cook of the ship that is going to find the much sought-after planet, the RLS Legacy (named after the author of Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson).

At the same time, John Silver is built up as the film’s antagonist, but he has his own battle as he really takes a liking to Jim. Jim is interested in getting to Treasure Planet because he ultimately wants to help his mother, finally trying to make things right by actually putting his life at risk. Joining him is Dr. Delbert Doppler, one of the film’s best characters and one that carefully weaves comic relief into the action epic with fun one liners. Captain Amelia serves as the sly, in control commander of the ship but she’s a rather distant character.

The rest of the cast just isn’t all that much to write home about. Some of John Silver’s baddies (with the exception of the creepy and menacing Scroop) are visually interesting, but there’s not much else to them. B.E.N. is introduced in the later half of the film, a rather loopy robot who is missing his memory piece. This sounds like a potentially interesting character, but everything’s wasted on forced comic relief, as if Doppler wasn’t enough to provide some. Again, the executives are making sure the film panders to children. Another comic relief character, the gelatinous Morph, is also shoe-horned into the story though his playfully mischievous personality does make for some interesting mix ups halfway through the film. Everyone else is just decoration, it’s really the two leads that shine here.

Treasure Planet’s dialogue is either well-written or annoying, with a lot of comic relief that backfires. Most of the time it's just downright awkward. Some of the more “adult” jokes are particularly funny, though there are moments where a simple dialogue scene is just pulled off in such a strange way. It’s a bit of a mess. Unlike Atlantis, there is heart to most of the story and screenplay. The “I’m Still Here” scene is close to being a tearjerker, as it does a fine job establishing why Jim is so angst-ridden.

With its fairly engaging story, Treasure Planet mostly succeeds in the visual department. The look of this film screams “creative”. Taking the story of Treasure Island and setting it in outer space may seem imaginative on paper, but in the film, it’s amazing. The designs of the different planets, the look of the creatures and how everything is done in a steampunk way is just fascinating. Visually, this is one of Disney’s best animated films. It takes an old world look and keeps true to the era Treasure Island was written while making it appear futuristic. It’s an appropriate mix, and one that is loaded with visual imagination at every pore. While some the use of computer animation doesn’t mesh well in some sequence (the floating space whales, for example), the film is still a feast for the eyes.

In the end, Treasure Planet is ultimately superior to Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Both films go against the 1990s Disney grain by trying on the action belt and ditching the musical/big epic story/romance routine. Treasure Planet tries on a much more emotional, character-driven story despite the fact that some of the characters may not be the strongest. Atlantis: The Lost Empire has great ideas early on, but it doesn’t know where to go once it reaches the title city, throwing us around with a bunch of ideas that never reaches a satisfying conclusion. Atlantis on the other hand doesn’t look like a Disney film all that much, whereas Treasure Planet sticks more to the classic Disney character route while taking liberties with it.

Both films proved that the folks at Walt Disney Feature Animation were willing to take risks, even if it meant trouble for the suits. Both films try their might to be fresh and new, with one partially succeeding while the other one is shackled with enormous setbacks. Box office grosses aside (why box office grosses spell bad reputations for a good film is beyond me), these two films shouldn't be forgotten. Sure they have problems and aren't anything near masterpiece-status, but they deserve more.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire - C+
Treasure Planet - B-