Treasure Planet seems to be one of those Disney movies that everyone forgets about, and then when it comes up later they realize, "Wait...Disney made that?" And rightfully so. This film is one of the weirdest things to ever come out of Disney. Back then, in 2002, steampunk was really just starting out, and people thought it was quite odd. You wouldn't know that now, considering that steampunk is currently one of the most popular subcultures. But for some reason, Disney knew early on that it was going to be big, so they probably thought, "Hey, let's do Treasure Island in that type of weird steampunk theme; we'll start a trend." And maybe they did, or....did they?
Disney has built up a reputation of clever and endearing children's movies, which usually feature talking animals and goofy characters. So science-fiction stuff just isn't their strongpoint. I understand that they really made an effort in terms of special effects and production design, and that works well. But the weakest component to the story is basically the characters. In previous Disney movies, stories that require humans to interact with anthropomorphic creatures almost always works; perhaps this is due to how the characters are goofy and not taken too seriously. In this movie, however, the seriousness just makes everything come off as awkward. It's weird to see the characters interact with each other in a dignified manner despite being two different species.
"But wait, doesn't that mean that this is a world in which species interacting with each other positively is a metaphorical representation against real-life racism and isolationism?"
Yeah, I suppose, but such a concept has been done before. At least in similar movies where different species interact with each other, there's enough humor to poke fun at the situation in which you feel like the movie is saying, "Ha, get it? It's funny because animals aren't supposed to talk!" But when the movie fails to do such a thing, and promotes the idea so seriously that it feels like such interactions are supposed to be completely normal, then it just feels weird.
This movie is pretty dry. You would expect more humor from Disney at this point in their career, but that rarely happens when they do an "experimental" film such as this one. I guess that they may have also been trying to attract teenagers to come see their movies. However, being a teenager who is obsessed with Disney only recently became an item. Treasure Planet missed that boat, and lost its chance to become a memorable Disney film through a concept that was just too ambitious at the time.
Overall rating: 5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment