#26 – Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
Best Character: Milo James Thatch
Worst Character: The Atlantians minus Kida and her father
Okay, so this film might be a little high. I concede. It’s not very well executed at times and the characters lack development. But it’s a fun, action-packed film that I’ve always enjoyed watching. Plot holes aside, it has a fantastic setting and the characters are interesting. The action sequences are animated and designed well, and I love the look they gave Atlantis. In fact I just love Atlantis. I’ve always been interested in the myth so a film focusing on it intrigued me from the start.
Alright, let’s get rid of the bad quickly so I can move on and justify why I like it so much. For starters, the pacing is a little off. For example, after Milo joins the team they immediately fight against the Leviathan, and then it goes back to being really slow in the cave when they’re all getting to know each other. It’s kind of like it never really happened. The characters are also a slight problem I had with the film, as though they’re all fascinating for the most part (scowlface aside), they don’t get any kind of development at all. Perhaps there were simply too many good characters to develop, but other Disney films have done so in the past so that’s not a good excuse. Disney probably placed more of an emphasis on action in this film, which is too bad because the characters had so much potential. These are really just minor complaints… the major complaints follow:
Major problem I have with the movie #1: how does an entire culture forget how to read their own language? It’s not like it was lost with new generations since everybody lives to be super old. Not to mention they all forgot how to use their weaponry… did everyone just decide not to fly around on their machines for years until they forgot how to drive them? #2: Did the Atlantians put up any kind of fight to Rourk and his thugs? There were like 20 guys with guns vs. all of Atlantis and they just let them take away the life source. Not to mention Milo already revealed what they had to do to get their weapons working again. This is why the Atlantians are the worst characters. They just laid over and gave up when they had (or should have had) the technology to easily stop them.
Huh. That was a lot of bad. Psh, whatever. I still like this film a lot. The characters are a lot of fun. Milo is awesome, and I’m planning to give him a better run in the next SMDC contest so be prepared. Even the side characters are fun personalities. Sweet, Vinny, and even Kida and Audrey I enjoyed. Mole was annoying, but hey, those characters usually are. They could have used some more focus, but I enjoyed them for what they were. I mentioned it briefly above, but I also really enjoyed the animation for the film. It had a wonderful setting to work with, and I think their vision of Atlantis was a good interpretation. Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy, worked on the film and helped create the look I enjoyed so much with Atlantis.
Anyways I want to like this movie more for its potential, but it falls short too many times to rank any higher. In hindsight I probably should have placed it lower, but I do enjoy watching it a lot so I probably wouldn’t change its placement even if I were to do it over again. I wish more people felt the same way! Maybe then more people would have gone to see it in theaters and Disney wouldn’t have been convinced to cancel an upcoming underwater attraction at Disneyland. That could have been amazing!
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