TREASURE PLANET (2002)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

I never got round to watching TREASURE PLANET even on DVD. The film, an expensive combination of computer-made and hand-drawn animation, flopped at the box office, but that wouldn't have kept me from watching it. More likely, I just didn't think the idea of "Treasure Island in Space" sounded very promising.

Some cinematic flops come about because the movie in question is hugely out of touch with what the audience wants to see. But other, more mediocre flicks have enjoyed all levels of success, based on having some gimmick that catches the public fancy. PLANET turns out to be a competent film, but it lacks such a gimmick, and plays as nothing more than ordinary, with all its pirate-tropes turned into those of "space-pirates," and with many book-characters turned into various alien entities, few of which prove memorable.

The story of TREASURE ISLAND is so well known that I probably don't even need to provide a link to my writeup of the novel, though I will anyway. In lieu of a summary, I'll cover just the major points of similarity and difference. 

In the novel juvenile protagonist Jim Hawkins lives at the Benbow Inn with his sketchily described parents, and the father dies early in the story, though with very little ceremony. In PLANET the father has deserted Jim and his mother. Planet-Jim (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is more of a daredevil, trying to make up for his lack of a male role model by racing futuristic vehicles and getting in trouble with the law. But Jim and his mother need money in both stories, and when the opportunity to find a lost treasure-trove presents itself, that's all the excuse Jim needs to go adventuring.

In place of the unmemorable book-adults who enlist the ship that goes looking for treasure, Planet-Jim journeys into space in the company of a comedy-relief adult, a doggy-humanoid named Doctor Doppler (David Hyde Pierce). The spaceship of course looks like an old-timey frigate, and in contrast to the novel's almost total absence of female characters, the movie's version of the ship is commanded by one Captain Amelia (Emma Thompson), an anthropomorphic cat-alien. While this injection of femininity into a "boys' adventure" could be done badly, and often has been, Amelia is the most interesting variation in the movie, with her spit-and-polish officer played off the bumbling insecurities of Doppler.

The book does a far better job of setting up one of the story's main twists: that the treasure-seeking ship has been crewed almost completely by ruthless pirates, and they're all under the command of the oleaginous ship's cook, John Silver (Brian Murray). In place of Long John's missing leg, this Silver is a cyborg with a missing eye and arm, replaced by cybernetic units. He talks up Jim, ostensibly to keep the boy from suspecting anything, though in contrast to the book Silver does become much more paternally bonded to the fatherless young man. Thus it's merely predictable when the climax includes a scene in which Silver chooses against his selfish interests to save Jim, in strong contrast to the novel, where Silver is never more than a charming rapscallion.

Various bits of original business are more enjoyable than the main plot, with its ticks on the castaway Ben Gunn (a robot named B.E.N.) and a crewman who takes an intense dislike to the innocent Jim (here, the bad crewman is a crab-alien named Skroob). The interplay of Doppler and Amelia is the film's main asset, though there's also a nice moment when Jim has to defeat Skroob aboard the space-frigate by causing the nasty crab to "fall up" into outer space. But despite the changes in Planet-Jim's template, he's still bland, and his encounter with adventure certainly doesn't yield any of the horrific experiences found in the original's exploits. 

Wikipedia claims that over time the film has found some vindication as a "cult movie." But if so, I think it's probably a very small cult for a pleasant but unexceptional formula-flick.