Revisiting one of Disney’s biggest box-office bombs reveals a bold but flawed relic of the 2000s, in which the House of Mouse risked it all on something angsty, odd and experimental.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a plucky innkeeper’s son stumbles upon a treasure map and finds himself caught in the crossfire of various bloodthirsty pirates, on the hunt for buried treasure. Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1811 novel Treasure Island introduced peg-legged buccaneers, parrot companions and maps marked with ‘X’ into the cultural lexicon, defining the popular understanding of piracy and high seas adventure. Its mysterious characters and swashbuckling story have stood the test of time, inspiring numerous imitations and adaptations—most recently, the prequel series Black Sails (2014–2017). But the re-imagining I grew up with, and the one I keep returning to, is possibly the most doomed: Disney’s 2002 Treasure Planet, one of the biggest box office bombs in movie history. Action epics with a historical bent and modern sensibilities were performing well at the time: The Mummy (1999) and its sequel the The Mummy Returns (2001), along with Disney’s other pirate flick Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) were all commercial hits. Now, 20 years after its release, Treasure Planet remains a curious failure in the Disney canon. The story of its troubled production is as high-stakes as its source material—featuring fierce internal battles, risky innovations, and dauntless creative passion.
The pitch was about as high-concept as they come: Treasure Island in Space! Treasure Planet was first pitched in the 80s, by directors Ron Clement and John Musker alongside The Little Mermaid. At the time, 2D animation was a fading industry. It’s hard to believe now given Disney’s current stature, but the company was on the verge of being sold off. Acclaimed character designer Glen Keane states that, during this period, ‘all the animators moved out [of the main Disney offices]…into, I believe, a coffin factory.’ The studio eventually took a chance on Mermaid, which Clement and Musker re-imagined in the style of a Broadway musical—released in 1989, it proved to be a winning formula, ushering in a decade of high-performing fairy-tale musicals, with Musker and Clement going on to helm classics such as Aladdin (1992) and Hercules (1997). All the while, they continued to pitch their true passion project—Treasure Island in space!—only to be continually rebuffed by executives. After years of petty inter-factional battles and boardroom changes, Treasure Planet finally managed to set sail, with a staggering $140 million dollar budget to boot—it remains the most expensive traditionally animated film to date.
The story of its troubled production is as high-stakes as its source material—featuring fierce internal battles, risky innovations, and dauntless creative passion.
Revisiting the film, I’m struck by how simultaneously dated and bold it is, a flawed relic of the 2000s that represents a transient moment in time—a time when the House of Mouse eschewed formula, willing to risk it all on something angsty, odd and experimental. The broad strokes of Stevenson’s story remain the same: fatherless teenager Jim Hawkins comes into possession of a legendary treasure map, leading to his mother’s inn being burned down by a gang of pirates. With the help of a wealthy financier, he cobbles together a motley crew to find the treasure and save the inn. Unbeknownst to Jim, the crew’s cook is the fearsome pirate captain Long John Silver in disguise—the very pirate that burnt down his home. But, here, the tropical locales and Englishmen that populated Stevenson’s novel are transformed into a far-reaching galaxy where humans swab decks alongside animalistic aliens. Victorian buildings and sailboats are mixed in with a futuristic steampunk tech; John Newton Howard’s orchestral, Celtic-inspired score is threaded with shredding electric guitars.
Genre mash-ups were nothing new, with Treasure Planet itself taking strong cues from the beat-up, ‘used future’ aesthetic of the original Star Wars trilogy. What was novel was Treasure Planet’s blend of cel-shaded 2D with computer-generated (CG) animation, where traditionally animated characters interacted with 3D-animated nebulae, skywhales and cybernetic creatures. Looking back decades later, after dizzying advancements in 3D, many scenes in Treasure Planet have become uncanny: the film’s visual landscapes often look dull, jarring, even incomplete. Yet, its idiosyncrasies are what continues to set it apart. It’s rare to see a contemporary Disney film that isn’t wholly predictable, both visually and narratively—the studio has long had a reputation for revising films within an inch of their lives. The snowy vistas and crystal castles of Frozen may be pristine, but they lack the individuality of Treasure Planet’s grand ships, their impossibly tall sails rippling with solar power. The careening, immersive camerawork—which takes cues from Steven Spielberg and James Cameron—captures a thrilling sense of fluidity in scenes where Jim ‘skysurfs’ through abandoned factories and canyons, his movements modelled after pro skateboarders. These scenes have a texture and dimensionality that are now sorely missing from much CG-dominated Western animation. Disney’s current reliance on generic, saucer-eyed characters also stands in contrast with Treasure Planet’s memorably horny designs—Captain Smollet is re-imagined as a hypercompetent catgirl in knee-high boots (icily voiced by Emma Thompson), while Jim’s character design taps into the 2000s trend of troubled, curtain-banged delinquents, complete with a softboi single earring, baggy cargo pants and voice acting courtesy of heartthrob Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
On a story level, the film also features an intimate relationship between its hero and villain that escapes simple categorisation. The most complex and enduring quality of Treasure Island was the twisted father-son dynamic between Jim and the antagonist Long John Silver—a man who is both a duplicitous manipulator and boisterous mentor, teaching the boy the values of hard work and courage, while planning to double cross him. Treasure Planet turns the Daddy Issues dial all the way up: one musical montage features Jim’s memories of being abandoned by his father, intercut with Silver teaching him how to cook, tie knots and suction barnacles off the hull of their ship. Goo Goo Dolls frontman John Rzeznik underscores these moments with the indie rock ballad ‘I’m Still Here,’ singing lines such as ‘can you help me be a man?’ in his trademark anguished croon.
Disney’s current reliance on generic, saucer-eyed characters also stands in contrast with Treasure Planet’s memorably horny designs.
Although much of Treasure Planet’s plot is mired by uneven pacing and a chaotic fetch quest, the mature and intricate animation work on Jim and Silver gives the film a prickly but tender heart. Jim, unlike the idealistic young heroes that populated children’s entertainment at the time, is always slouching and avoiding eye contact, a wounded set to his shoulders. Silver has a decidedly villainous character design: a cyborg with imposing, bear-like characteristics, outfitted with a whirring metallic arm. And yet, gentleness defines their interactions. In one scene, Silver tells Jim that he’s destined for greatness, stating: ‘I hope I’m there, catching some of the light coming off you that day.’ In response, Jim silently drops his head onto Silver’s chest—it’s a surprisingly human gesture, more resonant than much of Disney-Pixar’s recent crop, in which every emotion is telegraphed, every moment calibrated for maximum tear-jerking. Neither character is cuddly or wholly good or evil; they embody a duality that seems richly observed from real life.
Before Treasure Planet’s release, the studio had its sights set on a franchise: there were plans for direct-to-video sequels, a television series, a nautical-themed park ride. I remember the scores of ugly tie-in Morph toys, tossed around at school lunches. The filmmakers clearly poured a lot of personal love into these characters, and Disney saw longevity in that love. But when the film failed spectacularly to break even, most of these plans were hastily scrapped. Its failure was blamed on a variety of factors: it was released at the same time as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, in a post-Shrek climate where ironic, self-referential humour was in, and earnestness was out. Treasure Island, like its fellow financial flop Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), remain solitary oddities in Disney’s canon—romantic tales of adventure, with eccentric designs, morally ambiguous characters, and fervent cult followings. It also has the distinction of being one of the studio’s last 2D-animated films, its failure contributing to the decline of a visually incomparable but comparatively costly film medium.
While it’s a good thing Treasure Planet escaped Disney’s endless, IP-driven storytelling machine, it’s also a shame that it marked the end of the studio’s willingness to experiment, rather than an imperfect beginning. Disney has since focused its energies on creating lifeless ‘live-action’ adaptations of its Mermaid-era animated hits, along with expressionless, photorealistic CG recreations iterations of animal-led musicals like The Jungle Book and The Lion King, a venture that seems to misunderstand the unique dynamism of their original medium. The Disney house style has also become heavily shaped by Pixar, a former competitor that it quickly acquired, known for their winning but now predictable gimmick of anthropomorphic critters that turn out to have vivid inner lives (cars that want to quit racing, sea monsters that long to be Italians, abstract emotions that have feelings of their own). Some newer films (Tangled, Ralph Breaks The Internet) have adopted the sardonic, wink-wink humour popularised by competing studio, Dreamworks, and have been incredibly lucrative—solidifying Disney’s comfort in its own creative stagnancy.
It’s wonderful returning to a film that brazenly wears its heart on its sleeve and remains beloved by the people who fought for it
2D and 3D hybridity in Western animation continues to live on: despite laying off the majority of their hand-drawn animation staff, Disney has dipped their toes into hybrid experiments in the short film Paperman (2012) and Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022). Outside of Disney, recent smash hits like Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (2018), and television series Arcane utilise CG rigging with 2D cel shading, preserving both the tactility of hand-drawn animation and scale of 3D. Gorgeous Spanish-American co-production Klaus (2019) gave its hand-drawn animation a hybrid look through innovations in volumetric lighting.
Looking at the lively, cutting-edge beauty of these titles, it’s hard not to feel wistful about the promise of Treasure Planet. Silver remains Glen Keane’s favourite design, above characters like Ariel, The Beast and Aladdin:
I knew somebody—my coach in football, this guy, Micky Ryan—who had the same speech that Silver gave to Jim Hawkins, ‘Someday I’m going to see the light shining off you’. I lived that. I put my heart and soul into creating that guy. And also just the connection of CG and hand-drawn blended into one character; I just felt like this is defining everything of who I am as an animator—the heart, the passion, the humor, the weight. Everything about him.
Watching the film feels akin to peering into a personal sketchbook—crammed with heartfelt musings, derivative fanboy impressions and blueprints for something greater. It’s wonderful returning to a film that brazenly wears its heart on its sleeve and remains beloved by the people who fought for it, and the generation that grew up with it.
