Hey folks, Harry here with Gregor Samsa metamorphically challenged look at ATLANTIS. Like I said on the other two reviews... the print they saw tonight was EXTREMELY EARLY and will inevitably be quite different from the final print or the final story. There will be massive changes. The review you read now... is of a very different film from the one you will see later. This is to document and comment on the film as it is right now in the latter part of June 2000.... and the film is due a year from now. Beware of spoilers... Here's the roach...
Hi Harry, just got back from ATLANTIS. I am going to keep this pretty short and to the point, and this is basically addressed to Disney….
First off, let me say that this is a very very early print made up of about 60-65% storyboards and black and white sketches. The other 35-40% is your standard Disney crisp clean nice-to-look-at colorful animation. And this is all taken into consideration herein.
Ok, a little synopsis..INCLUDING SPOILERS…Milo Thatch (Michael J. Fox) is a geeky linguist who works in the basement of a museum tending to the boiler. His Grandfather was a great explorer who raised him and has recently died. Thatch’s life long dream is to continue his grandfather’s work and find Atlantis. He is afforded this opportunity by a rich eccentric old man, Mr. Harcourt, who funds a team of adventurers, led by Commander Rourke (James Garner), to explore the ocean with all the best equipment they could offer in 1914.
There are a bunch of cool scenes showing off the underwater excavation equipment. Thatch is then introduced to his team. The clichés are abound here (Just imagine who would be going along). One thing leads to another and they find themselves in Atlantis, which happens to be inhabited by people (or something, they are 5000 years old, so I don’t know if they are actually people). Thatch then finds a girl to have fun with, Princess Kida. Then he finds out his team is really just a bunch of money hungry mercenaries who plan on killing the whole lot of Atantians for their life giving Crystal. Get that? The Atlantians can’t live without this really big crystal. And the evil mercenaries want to steal it. That’s the plot.
Soooo….On the whole, I had fun. But this thing was far from perfect. The movie opens with some badass scenes of these giant scorpion/crab monsters raining down terror on Atlantis. Ok, fine. But this scene could be put to much better use later in the film. We don’t need a big action sequence to start this film. Later in the movie when the King of Atlantis is explaining things a bit, about how the city came to ruin, cut this scene in and explain what the hell is going on. What are these big monsters? Why are they attacking? Where did they come from?
Now I don’t think there is anything wrong with starting the movie off with the Milo Thatch’s little performance for the board of trustees. This brings us to the coolest scene of the movie much quicker. When the submarine finds it way to the entrance of Atlantis one of the previously mentioned crab monsters, which Thatch calls a Leviathan, begins to attack. Now this is the coolest scene of the movie. It’s packed with action and cool things are happening all over the place. But here’s my problem…what the hell is this thing and why is it guarding the entrance to Atlantis. You just CAN’T have this badass creature here and NOT explain its origin or its purpose. And what the hell is Thatch’s big discovery “It’s a machine!” about?
Later on in the film the evil mercenaries calmly take the Crystal, which is the sole source of life for the Atlantians, and drive away with it down a tunnel. Huh? The Atlantians are just going to let this thing go? No fight? Why, because the bad guys have guns? Come on! There are maybe thirty bad guys against a whole civilization! Please add a big fight scene or something here. Why should the audience care about this thing if the Atlantians are just going to let it them walk away with it?
And my last little problem is the rich millionaire, Mr. Harcourt, who funds the operation. We are introduced to him as he is doing yoga and being quite jovial and funny. He apparently was an old friend of Thatch’s Grandfather. We again see him joking at the end of the film about the outcome of things and wishing Milo well. But didn’t he hire these ruthless money grubbing mercenaries in the first place? What were his intentions? And why is he still a good guy if he actually was funding the whole operation which would have killed off a whole civilization. Maybe you’d say that the mercenaries were acting of there own will and he didn’t really know what was going on. Well he WAS in cahoots with Commander Rourke. Here is why….
There is a book found by Milo’s granddad, written in an unreadable language, which shows the way to Atlantis. Mr. Harcourt was entrusted with it until Milo was ready to read and decipher it with his linguistic skill. Once he felt Milo was ready he gives it to Milo and the adventure begins. Now here is the problem….Milo finds out a page is missing from the middle of the book. Later in the movie we find out that this page shows exactly where the Crystal is. Guess who has the page? Rourke. How could he have it? Only if Mr. Harcourt had given it to him. Now that is why Harcourt is in cahoots. Here is why THAT doesn’t even makes sense….If the book can only be read by Milo, how could anybody know which page to rip out?
Now you might be thinking that I am too harsh. I am not. I had a fun time with this movie. But this is Disney. They have no excuse for these kinds of huge plot holes. If old Mr. Harcourt is a bad guy…MAKE him a bad guy! And you just cannot have such a cool looking creature like the Leviathan just swimming around with no point. Oh yeah, and the visualization of Atlantis really blew. Giant heads and stone fish carvings? So it’s like the Easter Islands? I mean I was really excited and waiting for some really awesome design of Atlantis because up until then everything is so cool….the Leviathan, the submarine and the character and vehicle design, they’re all great. But Atlantis as a city falls real flat. It’s really nothing to get excited about. I hope they retool the things I talked about here because this could be a really fun and cool movie to see when it comes out. I’ll definitely see it whenever it is released in its final version.
Samsa Out.
