Bio/ Background (intro)
- Directors: Ron Clements and John Musker
- Intro (below)
Topic 1 Introduction
To my surprise, a number of people have never seen or heard of the movie “Treasure Planet.” In this classic retelling of “Treasure Island” by Robert Louis Stevenson, the narrative was turned into an intergalactic adventure complete with cyborgs, space travel, and, of course, treasure. Disney’s “Treasure Planet” was one of two experimental movies in the year 2002. “Treasure Planet,” however, is notorious for its box office failure. The other experimental film, from a different in-house studio was “Lilo and Stitch,” which got way more attention and was well received by audiences. Now, this podcast is not a compare and contrast of the two experimental films of 2002, but I can’t help but take into consideration the alleged reasons why “Lilo and Stitch” swam but “Treasure Planet” sank. Both movies included obvious CGI, a wide variety of alien species, action-packed space travel, and family problems. I say this because a noticeable amount of articles claim the reason “Treasure Planet” bombed at the box office was because of the “high tech” CGI scenes. Amazingly after being scorned six feet into the grave of Disney’s backyard, 20 years later it gets dug up like a prized fossil.
Treasure Planet is based on the legendary novel “Treasure Island,” written by Robert Louis Stevenson. Instead of taking place in the Caribbean, it is set in outer space. The story begins with Jim Hawkins receiving a treasure map from a wounded alien by the name of Billy Bones in his mother’s inn. Rebellious Hawkins and passionate Dr. Delbert Doppler join a crew to find this elusive treasure hidden by the notorious pirate, Captain Nathaniel Flint. The crew of this ship seems to be of questionable authenticity as Hawkins meets the cook, Mr. Silver. Silver’s cyborg body with a robot arm reminds Hawkins of Billy Bones' warning about a cyborg. Eventually, the crew reveal themselves as pirates and launch a mutiny with Silver as their leader. The film carries multiple layers of character arcs journeys as the characters set out for Treasure Planet. This retelling of “Treasure Island” was, of course, given a sprinkle of “Disney magic” complete with striking animation, and memorable characters with flamboyant personalities.
Topic 2 Who Made the Film?
The striking film was directed by Ron Clements and John Musker. These guys directed “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” and “Hercules.” According to the reflections on the Walt Disney Family Museum Website, Ron Clements was born and raised in Indiana. He was inspired to learn animation at the age of 9 after seeing “Pinocchio.” He worked his way from the scraping bottom of Disney to the director’s chair. John Musker was also an animator, storyboard artist, writer, director, and producer for 40 years for Disney Animation Studios. He studied under icons like Elmer Plummer and Bill Moore at CalArts in the 1970s. “He also studied alongside classmates who would become distinguished directors such as Brad Bird, Chris Buck, Tim Burton, John Lasseter, and Henry Selick.” His partnered credits with Clements are as follows, “The Great Mouse Detective” (1986), “The Little Mermaid” (1989), “Aladdin” (1992), “Hercules” (1997), “Treasure Planet” (2002), “The Princess and the Frog” (2009), and lastly, “Moana” (2016).
Gladstein writes in “The Bizarre Story of How Treasure Planet Got Made” that the two directors pitched “Treasure Planet” the same time as “The Little Mermaid” in Disney’s Renaissance Era (1989-1999). The studio was extremely reluctant to green light “Treasure Planet” until the dynamic duo, Clements and Musker, shoveled out genius big time money makers like “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin.” Gladstein notes that the studio was so impressed with the consistency of success from these dudes that they finally said yes to “Treasure Planet.” As an observer, I’m reading that basically “The Little Mermaid” and other MAJORLY lucrative films were just incredible proofs of concept to convince the big guys of letting “Treasure Planet” fly.
According to Jocelyn Buhlman on The Official Disney Fan Club Website, this was Clements and Musker's first sci-fi film, despite their love for science fiction. Buhlman quotes Clements explaining, “John and I are both sci-fi fans. The idea of making our pirate and taking his eye patch and turning it into a cyborg eye and taking his peg leg and making it mechanical—not only was it a science fiction thing, but it was an animation thing.” Buhlman also mentions how the two directors utilized the 3D technology used in “Tarzan” to create a camera effect on the action scenes and moving parts, “Beyond the wonders of Deep Canvas, Clements and Musker achieved the dynamic directorial style they desired by creating a whole new technology—virtual sets. A scene in “Tarzan” that most viewers can recognize that used a mix of hand drawn and computer animation is when Tarzan “slides” down mossy trees to get around in the jungle like sliding on wood floors with socks. The hand drawn element was added to Tarzan’s body as he moved around and the passing trees and jungle was the computer animation portion.
Buhlman speaks on how Clements explains the logistics of making “Treasure Planet’s” backgrounds, “‘They were actually dimensional sets made to look like 2-D backgrounds, but in truth they were 3-D, and we could move the camera around.’” This was a huge deal for animation. Let’s take another well known “classic” Disney hand drawn film for an example: “The Little Mermaid.” As previously mentioned, this enormously successful animated film was also directed by Clements and Musker. In this film, everything was hand drawn. And I do mean everything. Before understanding how and why animators turned to computer animation, we have to dive into the meaning of hand drawn animation and how much a labor of love it was.
Hand drawn animation is formally known as cel animation. This process of animation and film making is labor intensive and requires massive numbers of animators to complete an ambitious film such as “The Little Mermaid.” Just like any other film, animation requires storyboarding, pitches, screenwriting, actors, directors, etc. The only difference is instead of using a camera to capture the movement of the story, artists have to draw it frame by frame. A frame is a single drawing. An animation is a collection of frames in a row that, ideally, “move” when viewed quickly. Ever heard of a flipbook? It’s the same concept: a stack of drawings just tiny changes from each other to make a seamless movement before the eye. According to Adobe, “Cel animation is one of the most traditional forms of animation and involves objects - usually characters - being hand-drawn on clear celluloid sheets and placed over painted backgrounds. These are known as animated cels or animation cels.”
These celluloid sheets are drawn and painted on for all of the characters that moved in a scene. That is why the backgrounds in cel animated films seem set in place, because they quite literally are. This style of animation was completely hands on and traditional with paint, pencils, and more. These artists would create a pencil test (an animation drawn roughly in pencil) to test how the character moves and interacts with the other characters. Disney was known for using live, moving models in the studio to help artists understand the realistic movement of the body. Animators would take a day to grab a paper pad, some pencils, and an easel to complete quick drawings of the model called gesture drawings. They would do this to understand how anatomy works and better their animation skills. If you’re interested in seeing records of these, Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” and “Alice and Wonderland” have great films of the animators figure drawing in action. In “The Little Mermaid,” they also used models to understand how the main character, Ariel’s, hair moved underwater. According to Untitled Art Gallery, “The effect of Ariel's hair underwater was based on footage of Sally Ride when she was in space; and scenes of Sherri Lynn Stoner in a swimming pool were used in animating Ariel's swimming.” After the pencil tests were completed, they polished the frames by using clean line work.
You might be wondering, “How did they color the drawn animations?” They had a whole team dedicated to painting, yes, painting each and every single frame. This was also why hand drawn animation’s characters appeared less rendered. Rendering takes time, and time was something these studios certainly were scarce of. Untitled Art Gallery also made an excellent point on the difficulties of backgrounds in cel animation: “A challenge in animating Ariel were the colors required to show her in various changing environments, both under the sea and on land. By the end of the film, the animators required a total of 32-color models; not including costume changes. The sea-green color of her fin was a hue specially mixed by the Disney paint lab, and the color was named "Ariel" after the character.” In hand drawn animation, every single scene you see that moves or has a number of moving parts is drawn and painted by hand, unlike computer animation. This was why the use of computer graphics was a huge leg up for animation. When Musker and Clements mentioned how monumental computer animation was to making “Treasure Planet’s” moving backgrounds, they meant it. Computer graphics in a hand drawn appearance saved months of work for these animators. Buhlman claims that Clements and Musker were successful and known for mixing 2D and 3D animation techniques.
The process of mixing 2D (hand drawn) and 3D (computer animated) techniques was very tricky to pull off. As I mentioned before, the characters from “Treasure Planet” were either hand drawn, hand drawn and computer mixed, or entirely computer (which was rare). Jim Hawkins was completely hand drawn, unlike Silver. Most of Silver’s body was hand drawn. The parts of him that were computer animated were his cyborg parts like his eye and arm. Both his eye and arm have mechanical shape-shifting movements that would be near impossible to animate by hand as smoothly. B. E. N., the robot, was entirely computer animated. The animators had to create Silver’s body by hand, and then match up computer animated cyborg parts to make his design cohesive. This took time and lots of money. Musker and Clement’s budget for this film was $140 million USD, so they must have known the beast of a project they were taking on.
Clements and Musker also created an extremely diverse set of characters for “Treasure Planet.” Every character in this film had multiple design studies and framework done, so considering there were over 50 characters to animate, they were ambitious. This animation was set on no single characters, but they did have stars in their cast. Martin Short was cast as Ben, the robot that worked for the late pirate Captain Nathaniel Flint. Martin Short was known for his roles in “The Three Amigos” and multiple other shows and films. Tony Jay was the compelling narrator. He voiced multiple iconic characters such as Frollo in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” and The Magic Mirror in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”
Topic 3 Why Did the Film Bomb?
Let’s talk about another movie that faltered just before “Treasure Planet” did, in 2001. “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” was a Disney film that was created by the people that designed the very successful “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale. Drew Taylor, a Collider article author, writes about how their visions of this movie were similar to Musker and Clements. Taylor mentions how they meant for the movie to be an adventurous and action packed change of pace from the Broadway musical style they’d previously directed. They also planned the movie to be a live action film. Some critics today claim it did in fact, age like that forgotten bottle in the back of a dusty cabinet, others say it aged like milk. Just like “Treasure Planet,” “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” is packed with a thrilling quest, diverse characters, and stunning visuals. Also like “Treasure Planet,” Wise and Trousdale used computer animation mixed with hand drawn animation. They used computer animation on pieces like the submarine and the leviathan monster. When pitching the idea to multiple Disney animators and designers like John Sanford, according to Taylor, “As production got underway, they added a key member of the team: John Sanford, who served as the artistic supervisor for story. He was finishing work on Mulan at Disney’s Orlando satellite studio. Uninspired by the projects that he knew were in the pipeline, he called Trousdale and asked what he was working on. When Trousdale explained the project, Sanford knew he had to be a part of it. ‘It was unlike anything I’d ever heard of,’ Sanford said.” According to The Janitorium, “People just weren’t ready for a serious Disney film. Somehow it didn’t have the charm or the feeling of a Disney film – therefore it failed. While modern superhero films can be pushing the boundaries of PG-13 and still appeal to young kids, Atlantis was considered too edgy. And while Indiana Jones is still a lauded classic, Atlantis is panned for being just as simple and formulaic. I just can’t understand it. Sure, maybe the film wasn’t properly marketed, but neither was Hunchback – and that film still has its vocal fans and is arguably even darker of a Disney film.” Just like “Treasure Planet,” “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” started in excitement and promise, took sweat and tears to make, released into the wild theaters, and crashed at the box office.
The building suspension and hard work made by Clements and Musker went right into the gravel, but why? According to Bobby Berstein on the Nerdmuch website, this cosmic ship should have soared, not sank, “Despite having a talented team of animators and voice actors, the film was a commercial and critical failure, grossing only $38 million domestically against a budget of $140 million.” Unfortunately, the movie sent Disney into debt. Bernstein claims that the reasons the film utterly failed was because of competing films in the theater like “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” as well as “Die Another Day,” a lack of marketing, an unclear target audience, drastic swings away from the “traditional” Disney style, a lack of emotional connection, and negative reviews. “While some reviewers praised the film’s visuals and action sequences, others criticized its pacing, lack of emotional depth, and departure from traditional Disney storytelling.”
In “Why Treasure Planet Became One of Disney’s Most Expensive Failures Ever,” Courtney Mason explains how the movie was so expensive to make. The blend of 2D and 3D animation techniques cost a pretty penny. Long John Silver’s character required both hand drawn animation and computer animation to bring his cyborg parts to life, as mentioned previously. Now, imagine the number of animators in a number of departments working on the hand drawn animation alone plus the cost of computer animators and advanced programs. This movie was a fusion between computer animation and hand drawn animation, and with fusions come problem solving and expenses. Most of the backgrounds and special effects were computer animated as well as characters like B.E.N. and parts of Silver. Everything else, including main and background characters, were hand drawn. The directors wanted to make this film majestic, adventurous, and grand like a Steven Spielburg movie. Mason notes that because of the advances in computer animation in Pixar films and the decline of hand drawn animation with its demand of countless workers and longer development cycles, “Treasure Planet” was outdated the day it was released.
The wholesome and epic story was ahead of its time according to Cameron Gorman on Collider, “Sarah Hawkins (Laurie Metcalf), a put-upon inn owner, is reading a bedtime story to her son Jim. This ordinary scene of domesticity — something that would feel at home in its source material — is suddenly elevated when we see Jim's book. It's more of a hologram show than a traditional novel, the images moving and turning in their own little spaces.” The mix between old fashioned and technology is extremely creative and unique compared to previous Disney animated films, but failed epically in the box office. Gorman also conducts another reason why this film didn’t reach an audience: the main character was too old. If that’s so, I’d say that is completely unfair considering Cinderella was supposedly 19 years old, four years older than Jim Hawkins. Maybe if Disney put a crown on Jim and made him a ‘space prince’ with a love interest, it would’ve received more attention considering the audience at the time was conditioned to consume love stories and happy endings from Disney’s buffet.
Topic 4 A Cinema Wrestling Match in Theaters
You might be wondering, “Okay, so what if ‘Treasure Planet’ isn’t a traditional Disney film? So what if these points are valid, how did the film fall so hard then? It couldn’t have been that bad, right?” Yes, the technology was quickly evolving in animation studios, and yes, this film was not your average sing-song Disney delight. However, animators like John Musker and Ron Clements had to face what every filmmaker dreads: the theater competitions. Each film is fighting fist to fist, tooth and nail to earn that ticket. All movies stare each other down in the face across from each other in the filthy, carpeted halls of the movie theaters. Each poster is trying to persuade the consumer, screaming at them, to win over their interest for the sake of a good rating, excellent box office numbers, and maybe even another ticket.
So Musker and Clement’s studio has shined up and polished off their beautiful creation and sent it off to the gritty audience. Mind you, “Treasure Planet” was released in 2002. Allow me to expand on the competition in 2002 theaters: “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” “Spider-Man,” “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” “Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones,” “Die Another Day,” “Men in Black II,” “Lilo and Stitch,” - must I go on? In the realm of movie lovers all over the world, these films I just mentioned were iconic when they came out. It seems as if almost anyone who dared to challenge these theater titans, were doomed to fail.
Topic 5 Why Does it Have an Audience Today?
Like a zombie crawling out of a grave, “Treasure Planet” received the audience it deserves 20 years after it was released. The craftsmanship of the hand drawn mixed with computer animation is now seen as legendary. “Silver's cyborg animation, too, remains impressive,” Courtney Mason writes, “ The mechanics of his arm are quite hypnotizing and fascinating to watch. Morph stands out as Disney's signature cute sidekick, and does a wonderful job of being funny and adorable. The script ebbs and flows, with humor being provided by the only entirely CG character in the film, B.E.N. Superior to all, though, is the relationship between Jim and Silver.”
The New York Times wrote in December, 2022 that the film was grossly underappreciated with its striking visuals and relatable character traumas. The New York Times also mentioned how video games, other films, and a negative impression of the rebellious teenage main character could have contributed to the cold shoulder from the public. They expressed how monumental and unique it was to have Jim’s character to be the way it was, “Outside of its irreplicable conception, “Treasure Planet” also tapped into adolescent woes that powerfully spoke to many teens because it treated the flood of emotions young people grapple with as legitimate. The hero here was rough around the edges. For their intergalactic coming-of-age tale, the directors turned Hawkins into a rebellious 15-year-old with a braided rat tail who surfs the skies on a solar-powered board. His father left when he was a child and his loving but worried mother can’t seem to get through to him. To find himself and mature, this brooding heartthrob must leave on an epic quest.” The New York Times acknowledged how much of a relatable role model Jim Hawkins was instead of the trouble-making boy parents and critics saw. “Treasure Planet” also had a very complex and well-crafted relationship between two important characters, Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver. Silver filled that fatherly role that Hawkins was in desperate need of since his father left him at a young age. Silver saw Hawkins as a son and someone to take under his wing, to see the universe with. It was a beautiful complex relationship because Jim Hawkins was the hero, and Long John Silver was soon to be revealed as the leader of the pirates who would hijack the ship. The New York Times recognized this, “Though not a musical, “Treasure Planet” features a touching montage to the tune of the singer’s John Rzeznik’s “I’m Still Here,” a song written for the film, that bridges Hawkins’s abandonment trauma and his burgeoning relationship with Silver, a figure filling that paternal void.” Laura Kelly from Inkverse said something similar about the two character’s relationship, “The central relationship is the father-son bond that develops between John Silver and Jim, who finds encouragement from the pirate that he never received from his distant father. Throughout the story, become more responsible and confident, while Silver gains the capacity to care about another person. That aching search for validation — the need for a flawed role model to tell you how proud they are of you — comes across with a deep emotional maturity in Musker and Clements’s passion project, written with Rob Edwards.” Kelly also mentions how Disney was not a stranger to parental abandonment in story-telling, but the character showing resentment towards the parent is rare. Musker and Clements’ masterpiece was just ahead of its time. Their animated film “Treasure Planet” has managed to find its audience after twenty years like a relic that was forgotten, buried in the ground, and dug up decades later to be discovered as treasure.
References
- Gorman, Cameron. (2023, February 5). Why ‘Treasure Planet’ Was Such a Spectacular Sci-Fi Flop. Collider. https://collider.com/treasure-planet-failed/#:~:text=An%20Older%20Protagonist%20and%20Poor,Led%20to%20Treasure%20Planet's%20Failure&text=Despite%20its%20hard%20journey%20to,one%20of%20Disney's%20worst%20failures.
- Mason, Courtney. (2022, July 23). Why Treasure Planet Became One of Disney’s Most Expensive Failures Ever. Screenrant. https://screenrant.com/treasure-planet-2002-disney-box-office-bomb-cost-reason/
- Bernstein, Bobby. (2023, March 9). Why Disney’s ‘Treasure Planet’ Failed Miserably. Nerd much?. https://www.nerdmuch.com/movies/treasure-planet-failed/
- Kelly, Laura. (2022, November 27). Treasure Planet Was a Box Office Failure, but 20 Years Later, it Found its Audience. Inverse. https://www.inverse.com/culture/treasure-planet-20-year-anniversary
- Aguilar, Carlos. (2022, December 28). ‘Treasure Planet’ at 20: Disney’s Failed Space Odyssey Deserved to Soar. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/movies/treasure-planet-disney.html
- Gladstein, Scott. (2017, March 21). The Bizarre Story of How Treasure Planet Got Made. Medium. https://medium.com/@scottgladstein/the-bizzare-story-of-how-treasure-planet-got-made-bfa184acdd18
- Buhlman, Jocelyn. (2017, November 27). D23 Celebrates 15 Years of ‘Treasure Planet’ with DirectorsRon Clements and John Musker. D23: The Official Disney Fan Club. https://d23.com/d23-celebrates-15-years-treasure-planet-directors-ron-clements-john-musker/
- (2022). Nine Old Mentors: Ron Clements and John Musker’s Reflections. The Walt Disney Family Museum. https://www.waltdisney.org/education/talks/nine-old-mentors-ron-clements-and-john-muskers-reflections
- (2019). The Little Mermaid, 1989. Untitled Art Gallery. https://www.untitledartgallery.com/the-little-mermaid#:~:text=%22The%20Little%20Mermaid%2C%22%201989%20was%20the%20final%20Disney%20film,villain%20a%20much%20bigger%20role.
- (2024). Animation: Hand Drawn. Into Film. https://www.intofilm.org/films/filmlist/91
- (2024). Cel (Or Traditional) Animation Explained: Definition, Types, and Methods. Adobe. https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/animation/discover/cel-animation.html
- Hall, Cameron Roy. (2023, January 21). Treasure Planet’s Animation Was Even More 3D Than it Seems. Slash Film. https://www.slashfilm.com/1168766/treasure-planets-animation-was-even-more-3d-than-it-seems/
- https://collider.com/disney-atlantis-the-lost-empire-history-explained/
- https://thejanitorium.home.blog/portfolio/dissecting-the-hate-against-atlantis-the-lost-empire/#:~:text=People%20just%20weren't%20ready,Atlantis%20was%20considered%20too%20edgy.
