In 2002, Disney released Treasure Planet with the hopes of starting the next big adventure franchise, but it unfortunately proved to be more of a shipwreck. In fact, Treasure Planet wound up losing Disney over $30 million at the box office thanks to it achieving (and still holding to this day) the dubious honor of being the most expensive traditionally animated film ever made, and all hopes for Treasure Planet‘s planned sequel were lost.
In the decades since its release, however, Treasure Planet has proven to be a far better film than Disney’s then-CEO Michael Eisner believed it to be. Its juxtaposition of familiar but anachronistic technology with far-future aesthetics has found a loving community of fans – but perhaps more importantly, it can also still stand tall and proud as that rarest of cinematic creations: a genre-flipped adaptation of classic piece of literature that actually entertains and delights.
Disney’s Treasure Planet Is An Underrated Example Of A Brilliant Adaptation
Treasure Planet is a film with a lot going on: on the one hand, it’s a fairly direct adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, but on the other hand, it’s also a space adventure with freaky monsters, flying jet-powered skateboards, and Emma Thompson as a Sєxy cat lady. Yet for all a film like this should fall apart under its own weight, it instead combines all those disparate elements into a story that shimmers with mystery and wonder amidst the uncanny valley of familiarity.
In delightful contrast with Disney’s Treasure Planet, the 1996 Muppet Treasure Island takes the opposite approach – as Muppet movies often do – and instead uses the familiarity and absurdity of Muppets to play fast and loose with the original story.
By juxtaposing the wildly strange (i.e., slug people who communicate entirely by farts) with the anachronistic yet familiar (Age of Sail aesthetics), Treasure Planet is a successful synthesis of its source material with a more modern genre. In an era where adaptation is increasingly the name of the game, with streaming platforms and film studios constantly scrambling in search of the next big franchise to adapt, genuinely good adaptations are a rare breed. More often than not, adapted stories wind up falling flat as filmmakers either take too many liberties with the source material or, worse, take too few.
Treasure Planet Perfectly Uses Genre To Support Its Story, Not The Other Way Around
Adapting any medium to film is a complicated creative balancing act, as the nature of cinema innately forces films to exist in a form of third-person omniscient perspective, as the audience watches the action occur. Yet many media, particularly literature, utilize other forms of perspective in order to convey information to readers/viewers/listeners, and so the shift in perspective means that the information is either lost in the translation or must be changed to suit the new perspective.
In less abstract terms, that means that a perfect adaptation is as impossible as a perpetual motion machine – and that instead of focusing on how to do the impossible, good filmmakers should merely be concerned with making an adaptation that serves their own creative vision. Through this lens, Treasure Planet is an unabashed success, as it takes the essential bones of Treasure Island and not only rearranges them to better support the new film’s structure, but also fleshes them out just enough to create a fun and fantastical world that perfectly fits the nature of this adventure story.
Disney Learned The Wrong Lessons From Treasure Planet’s Failure
Michael Eisner’s Response To The Film’s Poor Box Office Performance Had Big “No, It’s The Children Who Are Wrong” Vibes
The film was technically a flop, only grossing $109 million on its $140 million budget. Yet instead of taking stock of the decisions made along the way that hampered Treasure Planet’s performance – namely, a release date that competed with both Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Die Another Day over Thanksgiving week, or marketing that made the film seem like a generic adventure with no emotional payoff – Disney decided that it was a sign that audiences were sick of traditional animation, despite Lilo & Sтιтch having been a smash success only five months before.
Hopefully, Treasure Planet can remain a shining example of genre-savvy storytelling for generations of filmmakers yet to come.
Despite plans for a franchise, including a sequel and TV show and a reskin of Disneyland’s perpetually underperforming Submarine Voyage, Treasure Planet was consigned to the dustbin of the Disney Vault. Thankfully, critics in more recent years have revisited it and helped cement its cult classic status; hopefully, Treasure Planet can remain a shining example of genre-savvy storytelling for generations of filmmakers yet to come, instead of having its legacy besmirched by yet another mediocre live-action Disney remake.
