Treasure Planet (2002)

Ok, so Disney's R+D department one day came up with the perfect formula for their new movie. It would have swashbuckling, high seas adventure and scurvy scallawag characters for all to enjoy. The movie was destined to make millions upon millions of dollars. Here's how the final meeting went in the creation of this movie:

Disney suit 1: So we're doing Treasure Island, it'll be great, it's got everything we need. We have strong characters, established plot, great potential for character design and such.
Disney suit 2: So who's gonna be the sidekick?
Disney suit 1: What?
Disney suit 2: You know, the cute obnoxious side character that everyone laughs at like Iago the Parrot from Aladdin or the Chris Rock Dragon from Mulan? Or the raccoon from Pocahontas? You know, the lousy crappy character type we invented after we stopped making good movies?
Disney suit 1: Well, I guess Long John Silver's parrot would do. He could say stuff like "AWK! Polly wanna git down AWK"
Disney suit 2: Naw, we need like 3 annoying characters at this point. And Robin Williams isn't available so not all of them can talk.
Disney suit 1: Um, I can't think of anything.
Disney suit 2: Damn, well we might have to do an entertaining pirate movie without really annoying side characters.
Disney suit 3: How about we just take this good idea for a movie and instead of in the past put it in the future in outer space and have an annoying blob creature and a fiendishly irritating psychotic robot and a genius professor who's also a dog?
Disney suit 1: Aren't you the guy who came up with the idea for Hercules?
Disney suit 3: Yeah.
Disney suit 1: Your ideas suck.
Disney suit 2: Who cares, it follows the formula so let's do it.
Disney suit 3: Yeah! Go me, it's my birthday...
Disney suit 1: How the fuck do I get out of this Mickey Mouse operation?

So that's how this movie got made.



Instead of Jim Hawkins, son of a tavernkeeper, we get Jim Hawkins, sullen and troubled kid with a jet surfboard. After finding a super-high tech treasure map ball thing, he goes on an expedition with his dog-professor friend (voiced by Frasier's gay brother) onto a sailing ship that can inexplicably fly through space and is captained by a cat-girl and is full of pirates who are cyborgs and spider-creatures.


I want to talk a little bit about these sailing space-ships. I don't care who thought they'd be a cool idea, they're stupid. Solar sails are a somewhat feasible concept for sending space probes through the solar system, not a reason to take a wooden ship and strap warp engines onto it just because they call them "sails." Also, I don't care if they use the "artificial gravity" concept to explain why they don't float away when they're flying through space. What I really want is them to explain how you can pilot an open-topped wooden space vehicle in a vacuum. At one point they "sail" near an exploding star and the cat-captain orders everyone to wear life-lines to prevent them from getting sucked into the resulting black hole. These lifelines, by the way, are made out of rope. The first mate gets sucked in because one of the spider-pirates decides to kill him, and then they blame it on Hawkins who gets all sullen. "I tied those lifelines myself!" he insists. Yeah, but you used primitive 18th century Earth rope. dingus. Tie him to the space-mast and give him 20 lashes with the lazer whip.


So we have a dog-professor doing the "It's your birthday" dance, doing the "I'm a professor, not a Doctor! Well, it's not that kind of doctor! Etc" thing, falling in love with and eventually boning the cat-captain and having dog/cat children. And he's got the voice of Niles. I don't wanna talk about the dog-professor.


Also the psychotic robot named B.E.N., I can't tell if this guy's based on an actual character from Treasure Island but all I know is that the last thing this already-suffering movie needed was a psychotic, loud and irritating robot man voiced by Martin Short. Eventually you have this giant group of characters that exist to try to chew the scenery as much as they can until you don't know what the hell's going on.


In the end, they escape an exploding Treasure Planet full of space-gold when Jim uses a photon torpedo cannon as a surfboard (flying through outer space without a care, no less) and high-fiving cyborg Long John Silver. That's pretty much all you need to know about Treasure Planet, why it was Disney's biggest bomb of all time, and why you can now watch the whole thing on YouTube, as I did.

Have fun, me hearties.