Alright folks, Harry here with the top story filed today... This one from AICN superspy, JOHN ROBIE. He's usually on the prowl for all manners of trim, but on this day he's left the cathouse explorations for the time being and decided to be our agent on the inside of this screening. To read more of Robie's past reviews, type "Robie" into the Keyword Search and check em out. This review has quite a few spoilers in it, and should be avoided by all save those that have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and you folks at Disney... who already know all this and just want to read his take on things. Here it is....
Disney’s Atlantis is right now in a very, very rough state of completion. About 35% of the animation is actually finished, the rest of the movie a mix of pencil sketches and story boards and temp tracks. Is it fair to talk about the thing when the skin is still off? Yeah, it is, because right now you can see down to the bones, and the bones are the story, and some of these bones are broken.
It’s 1914 and Milo (voiced very well by Michael J. Fox) is a bookish man-boy/wannabe-explorer whose been searching for Atlantis his whole life. Milo’s dead, super-adventurer grandfather passed the quest down to him, and so far Milo thinks himself a failure…until Preston Whitmore (Fraiser’s John Mahoney, also good), an old explorer who knew grandpa, gives the boy a legendary book that details how to get to Atlantis. Milo is the only one that can read the book, and Whitmore sets him up with an incredible sub, an incredible team, incredible funds and tells him, “Go on boy, find Atlantis.” So Milo hitches up with the crew, they get on the sub and, lots of action (some great) and comic relief (amazingly good) later, they find Atlantis. Commander Rourke (James Garner, good but…) steals the secret of Atlantis, and it’s up to the intrepid explorers and Milo to stop him and get that secret back to Atlantis before the whole great lost city is destroyed.
The finished animation looked stunning, and the design work from Hellboy’s Mike Mignola…goddamn man. From the looks of it he had his hand in the design of the vehicles, the bad-guy-storm-troopers-in-gas-masks that follow around Commander Rourke and the absolutely, jaw-on-the-floor-this is Disney?-holy-holy-SHIT-holy-cool mechanical scorpion/lobster/dinosaur beast monsters. I really showed my true cools with that one, didn’t I? There’s an early action sequence that pits one of these monsters against the wickedly cool sub. Amazing. Amazing amazing amazing, amazing like you wish the perfect Jules Verne screen adaptation would be amazing. It’s just a stunning piece of work. If only the whole movie had been as strong as that sequence. If only the film had built logically from that sequence…but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Most all the voices here are dead on great. Don Novello might be doing his Father Guido Sarduci from Saturday Night Live but the character he’s playing here—explosives expert Vinny—is world’s apart from the priest. Novello is fucking tremendous. It’s nice to see the guy back. The bane of many a Disney movie is the annoying as hell comic relief character. Two characters in Atlantis come close to being just that. Cookie the cook (get it?) as voiced by Jim Varney (RIP) is your basic Walter Brenan riff. Doesn’t matter: he’s funny and too small a part to grate. Moliere the digger (nickname mole…get it?) is the guy that’s going to be the action figure with lots of cool extendo-parts and mechanical instruments poking out of his backpack, and he hits a nine on the annoyance meter a few times. Then he slips back to just being funny and all is right with the world…
…until we get to the goddamn story. I’ll try to do this point by point, and I apologize in advance for both the tedium and for the fact that some of this makes little sense to those who know nothing of the movie.
Here goes.
If you’ve been searching for the lost city of Atlantis for your entire life, if it had been the dream of your grandfather and been passed down to you, if the search is the one thing that gives meaning to your pathetic existence…you’d be pretty jazzed to finally see some evidence of Atlantis, right? You’d cry, you’d jump with joy, maybe there’d be a little understated awe, right? Of course, man. You’re a human being. When Milo finds evidence of Atlantis, you know what he does? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You know what Milo does when the sub gets to the first set of Atlantian ruins? Nothing. Not a thing. You know what he does when he gets to a huge, glowing orb suspended from the ceiling of a cavern big enough to hold the Astrodome, the Los Angeles Coliseum, the Statue of Liberty and Harry all at once? He doesn’t do a damn thing. He saves all his awe and wonderment for a scene with a chick he just met.
If only romances in real life were as easy as the ones in Disney movies…
If we’re shown a glimpse of the awesome power of Atlantis early on—the giant mechanical sea creature—we’re going to expect that Atlantis itself is a pretty amazing place, right? That it’s going to look like something out of our wildest dreams, that the early promise of an “ancient, supremely advanced society” is going to pan out, right? Well it doesn’t, at least not in this very, very rough version of the film. The guys get to Atlantis and it looks like Mayan temples. The only difference is that there are bright blue crystals all over the place.
Now a lot of the shots of Atlantis weren’t done, were mere pencil sketches. The very first shot of the full city was hardly detailed. But what was shown, what was finished, was pretty lackluster. It looked like stuff we’ve seen before. Big columns, big temples, lots of stone…this is how most people picture Atlantis. You know what? We shouldn’t see how most people picture Atlantis. We should be utterly blown away and totally surprised by a new Atlantis, by a crazy wonderful Atlantis. Not the Mexico temple from Epcot.
Why does it matter that Rourke steals the secret of Atlantis, a life-crystal? This crystal’s power has kept the Atlantians alive for thousands of years and now it’s being taken away. It’s Lost Horizon, sure, but just go with this. Do we see these Atlantians withering up and dying, their desiccated bodies curled up on the ground? Do we see any sense of fear or worry? Is there any feeling that losing the one thing that keeps them alive might put the Atlantians in a bad mood? No. We see the Atlantians waving goodbye and smiling. There isn’t a trace of fear on their faces. They look like they’re getting ready to go out on picnic.
Speaking of the Atlantians and speaking of how much they should be shown to love and need this crystal…say there’s this one thing in your life that keeps you alive. Literally. It’s what fuels you, what makes you and your family and your friends walk and talk and smile and laugh and live. What are you going to do to protect this thing, this object? Would you be willing to give your life for it? You sure would. What do the Atlantians do when Rourke and Co. grab the life crystal? Nothing. They just sit there, smile, and look like they’re getting ready to go out on picnic.
Then there’s Rourke himself. The best Disney villains are the ones that desire some strange object or pursue some mad goal. They’re crazed and scary and believable because they care about what they want so much that they’re willing to be just plain evil to get it. To walk on land on human legs, to kill the little bitch that the prince loves, a coat made of puppies…those are the desires of madmen. Money is not. In Atlantis Rourke is just going after the money. He just wants to sell the life-crystal to a museum. That’s his push and damn it, that’ s weak.
There’s a big action sequence that starts out the film. It’s very rough now. It’ll be great when finished. That sequence should be lopped off the beginning and dropped into the middle of the movie. Plenty of people are going to say this. Plenty of people are right. It’ll liven up the story where the story needs livening most.
If you see an amazing giant metal scorpion fish monster you’re going to want to know what it’s all about, right? You’re going to want to know where the thing came from, who made it, why it’s so angry, why it’s hell bent on killing the good guys, right? Too bad. There’s absolutely no explanation here. None. Nothing. Just seems that there’s a giant mechanical crab monster with a bad temper living deep down at the bottom of the sea.
The big finale, with a giant volcano exploding and threatening to destroy lovely Atlantis, is going to look spectacular when finished. There’re huge explosions of magma and falling buildings and a savior in the sky and giant stone robots that create a big blue force field. Wonderful stuff. But know what? They’re stopping lava. Lava is the big bad guy that’s gonna do everyone in. Lava that isn’t built up, lava that isn’t really talked about and lava that doesn’t carry any sort of menace. Do you need the bad guy threatening to blow the city up with a bomb and, hope against hope, maybe our hero can stop him? No, of course not. Do you want a scarier, more menacing, more fleshed out and meaner foil that hot magma? Yeah, you do. Hot magma gives you movies like Volcano.
I don’t expect Disney to be blazing any trails of originality. I don’t expect them to come up with a new take on an old tale, and I don’t look forward to them blowing me away with wizz-bang action and the kind of characters that make me weep with both joy and sorrow. That’s just not the way the gears at Disney grind these days, and it’s really a shame. And as tired as it may be to lob attacks at the place for its suits-on-top, innovators-on-bottom approach, well…it’s true. And it’s held them back. And it’s holding Atlantis back.
You know why it’s valid to get angry? You know why it’s fine to criticize a movie that’s not even done? Why frustration sets in even though there are no songs here and even though people die here and even though there are spots of brilliance here? Because the guys making the decisions about story on Atlantis seem to have gotten lazy, because they don’t seem to have any idea about cohesion or dramatic push and hell, don’t seem to understand good plain common sense. What they do seem to know all about is having the three big action sequences and the toy tie-ins. It all looks fine, the technical wizardry is unbridled, the images are beautiful, so why complain?
Why? Because you’re not making movies from your heart. You’re making them from your adrenal gland. Adrenal glands don’t beat…and they don’t break. They’re good for a few spurts of action followed by long doldrums.
And right now, that’s what Atlantis is.
Let’s hope that the cracks are mended.
John Robie
