So you like
cartoons right? Of course you do, you’re
friends with me. Remember when the
medium almost died? Twas the mid 2000s,
you probably don’t remember it that way but it’s sort of obvious in retrospect
if you’re a freak like I am who does nothing but read TV Tropes and Homestuck, giggle to himself, and write treatments
for fantasy stories labeled “porn” so nobody suspects that you like
fantasy. Anyways, there was a severe
lack of traditionally animated material in theaters at the time. You might attribute that trend to the rise of
Pixar, which had just begun its long, almost untarnished streak of
success. Yes, you think, after that
Disney started making mostly CG films until The
Princess and the Frog, years later.
And after the success of Shrek,
Dreamworks has made nothing but CG
films. But a new medium does not simply
replace an old one, unless people begin to think of it as inherently
superior. People still read books even
though Kindles exist for example, because the print medium has many advantages
over virtual reading (it’s not stupid, for example).
So what’s
the reason for the decline in traditional animation? Disney was just coming off an entire decade
of critical successes, like they’d just rolled all the best numbers on their
collectible bloodstone D20s. All of
them. Every movie they’d made between The Little Mermaid and Tarzan was an epic win. But quick!
Tell me what movie comes after Tarzan in the Disney Animated Canon? You can’t can you? You pitiful child: #38 Fantasia 2000, #39 Dinosaur,
#40 The Emperor’s New Groove, #41 Atlantis: The Lost Empire, #42 Lilo and Stitch, and #43 Treasure Planet. Now, there’s nothing wrong with any of those
movies, I certainly like them, but damn it’s like they were made by a
completely different company. Can you
really fit New Groove into the same
canon as Beauty and the Beast? If, in some alternate universe they had in
fact been made by two distinct companies, and you wrote a fanfiction crossover
about those characters, people would accuse you of smoking Toasty, the crazy
alternate universe version of crack, or something. It’s no wonder you don’t remember them quite
as well as The Lion King or some
such.
You see,
those six movies were released within three years of each other. When Disney essentially saved animation with
the advent of The Little Mermaid in
’89, they released one film a year until 1999, when they released both Tarzan and Fantasia 2000, and then they released two films a year until
‘03. The reason that Tarzan is considered the last film of
the Renaissance of animation is because Jane was smokin’ hot I mean because the next few films were radical
departures in style or quality, the later at least in terms of ticket
sales. Disney had the same thoughts that
you just did, that traditional animation was simply losing out to CG, despite
the critical failure of Dinosaur. Like, they rolled all ones on their
collectible fluorite D8s, and one of them broke in half. So, Disney decided to risk it all on one last
attempt at their classic style, in the traditional animation method. They pulled out their lucky collectible
lignum vitae D12 that they’d had blessed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, had
Jane blow on it sensually, closed their eyes, and made a saving throw. Now name the next three movies after Treasure Planet. Let me guess; something, something, and Chicken Little. The die had somehow manifested a thirteenth
side, bearing a 0. That was beyond a
critical failure. That was taking more
damage than if you’d opted not to cast the die at all. So it was that Disney renounced traditional
animation.
But why did
Treasure Planet do so badly? It’s a good
movie I swear! And so may some of
you. Let me tell you why—but first let
me tell you about Don Bluth. He may well
be the least fortunate man in movies, seeing as his work is consistently mistaken for Disney. To be fair, he got his start working on Sleeping Beauty and quit Disney during Pete’s Magic Dragon to start his own
studio (thank you TV Tropes). He made
about a dozen films, most of which are classics. The
Secret of NIMH. An American Tail. The Land Before Time. Anastasia (well I liked it!). All
Dogs Go To Heaven. Though it’s
alright to mistake that last one for a Disney movie seeing as the little girl
basically IS Snow White. But I
digress. In the later parts of his
career, Bluth’s movies started becoming increasingly less successful, in my
opinion due to lesser writing and poorly incorporated CG. The last full length movie he ever made was
called Titan A.E. I remember seeing a trailer for it in a movie
theater. Once. The movie was a space opera concerning the
destruction of the planet Earth and the human race’s quest to find a new home,
during which they come to be regarded as the homeless of the universe and
treated with as much respect.
This movie
came out at about the same time as Treasure
Planet. It’s ironic (or not??) that
they’re both space movies because what happened reminds me of this picture of
two galaxies that got too close and started cannibalizing each other. The production of both films was plagued by
the existence of the other film, and pressure to be the better of the two, and
much cloak and dagger spying bullshit went on, whereby both films ended up
copying each other’s plot points and characterizations. They’re both very different movies, and
yet—TV Tropes says it best:
“Fatherless
boy tries to solve his daddy issues by going on a space voyage in search
of a long-lost treasure, hidden on a Big Dumb Object, with a less-than-stellar crew of galactic Petting Zoo People, one of whom is a Parental Substitute, but proves to be The Mole, using a starmap only he can read. The villain redeems himself in a Take My Hand moment while trying to
activate/deactivate the forgotten Doomsday Device. Both films were deliberately
marketed to single-parent Gen-X kids, with an uplifting Grunge soundtrack. One is about Pirates in a Steam Punk Alternate Universe, based on a classic novel. The other is about Space Pirates After the End, inspired by Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica. Both films got an Earth-Shattering Kaboom.”
Don’t click any of
that. Mind you, the goals of the two movies
are wildly disparate. Treasure Planet is of course about
finding a planet full of treasure. Titan is about a ragtag bunch of misfits
trying to find a lost spaceship named the
Titan which is supposedly the last hope for humanity after the destruction
of Earth. Its purpose is to actually
build an entirely new planet in an incredible scene where it absorbs all of the
surrounding material, a magnificent planetary ring of ice!
Now, to the
part of the essay that you slogged through several pages for: the penis
jokes. By which I mean the actual
analysis, as opposed to useless background information. I bet you know who my favorite troll is!
Let’s talk
first about the setting. I’m going to
say right off the bat that of the two movies, Treasure Planet has the better setting. The quote up there says “steam punk”, but I’m
sure that it’s for lack of a better term.
There’s nothing really like what Treasure
Planet’s setting is, at least of all the things I’ve seen. Maybe something out of a JRPG has come close,
but there’s not really a word for that either due to the game industry’s
equating gameplay with genre. But that’s
a tangent. What I mean is that there’s
nothing that really looks like its steam powered in the movie, except perhaps
the Montressor police robots. What’s
more, everything’s based on Enlightenment era aesthetics and science, rather
than Victorian era. People wear colorful
tail coats, tricorne hats, and ruffled cuffs. The guns look like old flintlock pistols, but
they have a cylinder like a revolver that carries laser charges instead of
bullets. The spaceships are actual
ships, proud old galleons and pirate ships, which sail on “luminiferous
aether”, based on a late 18th century idea that light required a
medium to travel through, explaining why the spaceships are exposed to empty
space: it’s not empty. Essentially, the
setting is a seamless mishmash of classical aesthetics and culture with
futuristic technology that really just makes your eyes pop. Even the most vocal critics of the movie all
agree that it looks fantastic.
Titan A.E. had a good setting too
though. It really tried to convey the
whole “used future” aesthetic started with Star
Wars. There is definitely something
of Star Wars in the look of the
movie; it looks like a world in which people actually lived. That said, it’s just not as iconic. In a really good space opera, you always
remember what the ship looks like. The
X-Wing, The Millennium Falcon, The
Enterprise, Serenity, the galleys from Treasure
Planet. With this movie, I can
remember what the ship was called, The Valkyrie, but it just looks so
generic that I don’t even have a general idea of what it looks like. Boxy?
Maybe. They had some really
creative designs in other areas though.
Planet Sesharrim is a beautiful red world covered in water, with huge
“hydrogen trees” that look like organic hot air balloons. It’s inhabited by my favorite part of the
movie, the Gaoul, the parasitic aliens from Stargate SG1—I mean a race of
flying humanoids. They’re dark red and
scary looking amalgamations of bat, pterosaur, and vulture, they communicate in
grunts and gestures, and they’re totally friendly and badass. They’re only in the movie for a little bit
though, which is a shame. The next best
looking scene in the film is when Cale, our protagonist, is allowed to fly the Valkyrie through a big beautiful
nebula while huge flying aliens called angels bask in the ship’s wake. It’s just damn beautiful, but I think it went
on too long. All the same, A.E. loses because of the poorly
integrated CG. As cool as the design of
that planet was, the execution failed.
Speaking of
the aliens, I’d say A.E. had the more
creative designs while TP had the
better looking ones. The aliens in A.E. felt more, well, alien, they looked weird and had all these strange
fleshy bits, they ate strange foods that the humans couldn’t quite stomach, but
a lot of them were just ugly and sort of forgettable, except for the crewmen
and the Gaoul. The creatures in TP were largely animal folk; our captain
was a cat lady, the doctor was a dog, Silver was a cougar (?), etc. They had human names and human mannerisms,
and the only ones that didn’t were basically side characters, with the
exception of the monstrous crewman that terrorizes Jim throughout the
voyage. This has led me to believe that
the main characters aren’t really aliens but new species created by
biotechnology experiments, but it’s not really relevant. In contrast, the alieness of the aliens in A.E. is played up to really drive home
the homelessness of the human population.
There is an amazing scene, written by Joss Whedon no less, where the
crew tries to rescue one of their members from an alien jail by disguising
themselves as alien slavers, but the guard pokes all kinds of holes in the
charade about their posture and mannerisms, concluding that they’re up to no
good, and the crew has to resort to violence.
But the ones in TP looked
good, so nyeh. A thought occurs: there is an alien in TP that communicates in
farts. No matter how good or deep a
movie is, if it’s marketed to children, there will be a single flatulence joke
that will be the only part the kids remember.
I still recall the chorus of my nieces and nephews proclaiming their butts
to contain machine guns after Astro Boy,
but that’s another tale.
Holy shit
we’re almost on the fifth page now. Most
of you have gotten bored and wandered off by now so let’s take a break (loosens
tie). What’d you do this Christmas? Tradition at my house says we have a big
potluck and exchange gifts at midnight.
I stayed up until two to watch my Rankin/Bass Christmas DVDs, my present
to myself. I woke up real late on
Christmas day and started reading Game of
Thrones, which had been languishing in a shopping bag for over a year. Fuck, what am I even talking about?
I suppose
we should get on with the characters.
Both films, as has been made obvious, feature the dynamic between a
mechanically inclined fatherless punk with a heart of gold and a gruff crewman. We’ll start with the mechanically inclined punks,
our protagonists. Jim Hawkins is the
main dude in TP. He’s a sullen little
shit with a bad haircut that learns to open up around other people by the end
of the movie. He certainly acts more
disillusioned that Cale, the protagonist of A.E., who is a snarky jerk. Of course, Cale is about twenty, and has had
to deal with disparaging aliens his whole life, and had to develop a quick wit
to survive, while Jim is in his early teens and lives in a comfortable home
with his mother and can therefore afford to be antisocial. That said, I think I like Jim just a bit more
than the other kid. He seems more
sincere and therefore a bit more likable, but I wouldn’t say that there’s
anything very special about either of them, except that Cale is totally a
blonde version of Dmitri from Anastasia,
on whom my sister has a crush. Tangents!
Now for the
fatherly mentor crewman! Silver, the
obese cyborg cook, serves this role for Jim, while Korso, captain of the Valkyrie, is this for Cale. Once again, TP wins out. I try to be
impartial when I do these jiggers, but Treasure
Planet is clearly the superior film.
Not that A.E. is bad at all,
except for those visuals I keep mentioning.
Let’s get back to what I was saying though. It’s clear from the beginning that Silver is
going to betray the crew, TP being an
adaptation of Treasure Island and
therefore everyone should know the damn story by now, so Silver’s friendship
and mentoring of Jim is reluctant, but the two of them clearly need each
other. Since his motivation is to steal
the treasure when they finally find it, he’s very much not there to make
friends. Korso’s friendship seems more
genuine at first since we don’t know
that he’s planning to betray Cale, but it becomes quite obvious after the somewhat
tacked on seeming scene where he loudly declares his intentions to sell out
Cale to his superiors in a private
conversation. By the way, his
superiors are the aliens that blew up earth, so fuck this guy. The essential difference between the two
characters is that Silver is basically a good man (cat?) with badness in him
while Korso is a bad man with goodness in him.
I think Korso’s betrayal is more painful because it was completely
unexpected (at least by me), and his return at the end of the film to the side
of good was more emotionally fulfilling, because he actually had to make a
moral choice, humanity or himself.
Silver chose Jim over the treasure at the climax, but that was because
he legitimately valued their friendship, and the also the planet was
exploding. All that said, Silver is just
the better character.
I suppose
it’s to the credit of the film-makers that the casts of characters don’t line
up that perfectly, so I’ll just briefly go over the supporting characters,
although their places in the film don’t exactly correspond. Let’s see…Preed! He’s a jackass alien pervert and part of the
crew of the Valkyrie. At the end of the film, he actually betrays
Korso so he can get a bigger cut. The
Korso snaps his neck like it’s not even a thing. Badass.
It’s established throughout the film that Preed’s a bloodthirsty monster
with delusions of eloquence, and probably even the dumbest of viewers guessed
that he’d be the one to betray the crew—making it all the more surprising that
he and Korso are in cahoots. Anyways, he
kinda sorta looks like an evil version of—
Dr. Delbert
Doppler! The good doctor is a kind soul
with a somewhat funny voice. He’s
technically the leader of the expedition to find Treasure Planet, since it was
his idea and he funded the thing, but he does very little leading. He’s also a crack shot with a flintlaser as I
suddenly decided to call them. Best
scene: he shoots his gun and it looks like it missed, but it actually hit some
loose junk, causing it to fall on the pursuing pirates, knocking them into
space! Captain Amelia asks if he was
actually aiming for it and he assures us that he was. Crack.
Shot. That said, he also speaks
the fart language (he’s not very good at it though), losing him about twenty
cool points. He’s not really as
important to the plot as Preed was, though he’s definitely more likable. And he hooks up with the captain later, so
that’s a plus. Speaking of badass female
crewmen:
Akima! Cale’s love interest and fellow human. I’ma just go ahead and say that she is a very
attractive Asian woman. She’s also much
more optimistic than Cale despite having been worse off before joining the crew
(mind you, no human had it easy without the Earth, there are just degrees of
suckiness), and is just as proficient with machinery as he is, and a better
fighter. Seriously I don’t think Cale
even picks up a weapon the whole movie, despite what the trailers may
show. The two have a sort of
slap-slap-kiss relationship, though Cale
is the tsundere. Fuck, the people who
don’t read lots of TV Tropes and manga didn’t understand that at all. Best scene: Cale takes her to a healer after
she’s injured by Korso, and the lady tells someone to bring her some
whiskey. Cale asks if it’s for the wound
and she says it’s for him; he looks like it’s about to pass out! D’aww, they really do like each other.
Captain
Amelia! She’s more of a badass than
Akima. She’s the captain of her own
ship! Which she parkours all over using
her badass cat-lady powers! And her crew
is composed of horrible monsters! You
just know that the only reason they had the gall to mutiny against Amelia is
because they were being led by an even bigger badass: Silver. I suppose all this makes her a better role
model for the little girls than Akima too, but I don’t actually care about
those sorts of things. That said, I
think Akima is actually the better character of the two; she just does more
things by the end of the film. Amelia
also does not get a shower scene, so ha.
Oh yeah,
Amelia also has babies with Doppler.
Which is weird, considering he’s a dog and she’s a cat.
Fuck, it’s
almost the end of the article and I still haven’t established a running
gag! I think the previous one didn’t
have a running gag either. Shit. Maybe I’ll just use my meta-running gag of
mentioning something and describing it, then simply concluding with “I liked
that one”. Nah, I want a proper running
gag. Let’s see. Um, I did make a bunch of dice metaphors
earlier, but I think I used them all too early for it to count. Oh I know!
You know Jane from Tarzan? She’s hot.
Two birds, one stone. Actually,
now I think of it, I did point out a lot of the times I went off on a
tangent…um, of which this is one? Shit
just got meta yo.
Oh wait,
damn it, I’m getting ready to finish and there’s still the matter of the
“bigger bad” as TV Tropes would have you say; the villain behind the
villain. The whole plot of Titan is set
off by the Drej, a race of energy beings.
They felt threatened by humanity’s development, because Humanity Is
Special and Most Writers Are Human, so they blew up the Earth. Now, they hunt the surviving humans, but more
importantly they hunt the Titan,
because they actually know what it can do.
They’re actually a pretty cool concept, with their eerie blue spaceships
and their insectoid, blue energy bodies, but unfortunately they are completely
made up of that poorly executed CG in nearly every shot. The creators of the film have said that this
was done intentionally to make them look more wrong and out of place, as if
they came from some other dimension, but I’m not buying it, guy, you’re just
trying to make up for subpar effects.
Anyway, they do finally find the Titan thanks to Korso’s betrayal, but
Cale and Akima rig the thing to absorb their energy to power the planet
building scene of awesomeness! That’s
pretty badass, and it destroyed the—one Drej ship? Was…that all of them? ‘Cause, if not, the rest of them probably
know where planet Bob is (dammit Cale), and unless only that specific ship was
armed with the planet smashing weapon, then you’re out of a planet again bud!
Captain
Flint, the legendary pirate whose treasure is up for grabs in TP, is not quite
really in the same category, but he is the cause
of the story, and is really badass to boot, so I’ll mention him here. He built (or found apparently, according to
the official art book of all things) some very advanced technology, such as a
portal generator, which allowed him to strike anywhere in the galaxy at any
time, making him the most powerful and wealthy pirate ever. It also led to an artificial goddamned planet just to store all of his bling! Dude was a pimp. He also rigged the thing to melt down and
explode in a spectacular fashion in case anyone ever found it, destroying the
wealth of entire civilizations with it, presumably as a final fuck you to the
universe that did not allow such a badass to live forever. He’s basically the opposite of Gold Roger
from One Piece if you think about it.
I don’t
think I do conclusions any more. I guess
this is the really meta episode? Also
the one where I say “meta” most often, meta.
Anyways, watch both of these movies, but you’ll prefer Treasure
Planet. Maybe if you do, Don Bluth will make
things again? We can only hope….
I’m gonna break the mold and not have this article end on a
stinger. Oh wait….
I FAR prefer Titan A.E., but largely because I saw the big cardboard standee of it and HAD to go see it in theaters when it came out on my twelfth birthday, but didn't see Trasur Planet until years later. That said, looking back, TP clearly had the better aesthetic. I think one of the things that appealed to me about A.E. in particular is that it was marketed to a SLIGHTLY older age group than TP, and I felt that it treated me a bit more like an adult, which I enjoyed.
ReplyDeleteAn aside: you'd wondered whether the Drej ship represented all Drej. If I'm remembering the novelization correctly, it did not—their ship was one of many; it's just that its mistress, Queen Susquehanna, was the only one of their leaders personally invested in exterminating the humans.
Anyway, it didn't even occur to me to think the two movies were similar when I first saw TP circa 2004, but re-watching it again today, I started keeping a running catalog in my head (which I was able to do because I watched A.E. literally EVERY DAY one summer and can quote the whole movie). The exploding hydrogen stalks on Sessharim were very similar to the mushroom stalks on treasure planet, which were both flown through by the heroes on their skiffs, the stalk where Cale puts his ring and the indentation where Jim put the orb are uncannily similar, etc etc. You and TV Tropes have already covered the pertinent ones. You raise some good points re: TP's superiority, but now I think I need to go rewatch A.E. to make myself feel better about all the parts of TP that were ALMOST, but NOT QUITE what I remembered and loved in my childhood.
(P.S. I'm not sure when this article was written or whether you still like Homestuck, but I myself have just gotten into it and am writing a liveblog through the lens of a TV Tropes fanatic that you may enjoy: Nora-reads-Homestuck on Tumblr.)
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