Treasure Planet

 

I feel like the first movie I should be talking about specifically had to be Disney's Treasure Planet, which is my absolute favorite animated movie ever. For those who don't know, Treasure Planet is an adaption of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, now with a science fiction twist. The movie came out in theaters on November 27th, 2002 and as great of a movie it is, it did not earn as much in the box office or gain enough attention as expected.

Jim Hawkins is the main protagonist of the story and he goes on a voyage to Treasure Planet in search of said treasure. He encounters pirates, robots, a mutiny, and basically has the adventure of a lifetime the entire time. The film is a beautiful blend of sci-fi and an 18th century style. They sail through space on Spanish galleons, their roofs are metal-plated, and so on. It's just such a beautiful movie. Each character stands out on their own and has their own personalities, quirks, and flaws. The story, while it strays a little from the original book, has its own ground that moves you and is very compelling. Very entertaining as well. The visuals are (in my personal opinion) some of the best that Disney has ever done. 

Honestly, this is a movie I have seen more times than I could count. I know every scene by heart and can quote entire rounds of dialogue. The characters are what I love about it the most and they're probably why Treasure Planet has stayed such a top-tier film for me. You have Jim, a young teenager who doesn't know where his life is going and he has to find his way back on the right path. There's John Silver the pirate captain who goes through his own kind of journey and basically takes on the role as Jim's paternal figure. Captain Amelia, Doctor Doppler, Jim's mother Sarah, all great characters who are wonderfully animated, designed, and voiced. I could very truly talk about this movie for hours or pages on end. There is so much about this film that I can discuss from the plot points of the story to the research and work it took to create it, but I hope that my short little description did it enough justice. This could also be taken as a sign that if you haven't seen Treasure Planet before, I recommend you do so because it's a very fun and wonderful movie.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dreamworks, The Croods, and Animation Styles

Image
  Since I've been praising animation for all of my past posts, I thought it would be nice to switch it up a little and talk about some ... less amazing things. These are all my personal opinions, so keep that in mind.  Listen, I adored Dreamworks' animation style, specifically with their CG-animated ones. Whether it was Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, or Monsters Vs. Aliens , they all had this more gritty look to it. Not the oversaturated, big-eyed, kiddie vibe you get from other animation studios (not to put any of them down for it, every studio has its own style). I just like that Dreamworks had a more original look to their films. Emphasis on had. My example for this would be The Croods series, although you can definitely see this type of change in the How To Train Your Dragon trilogy and the more recent movies as well.  The first picture is from the first The Croods movie. Now for context, the Croods are a family of cavemen and the aesthetic of the first movie reflects that...
Read more

Stop-Motion Animation

Image
  We'll talk about something a little different here and that is stop-motion animation. You thought drawing each frame of animation is hard work? Try moving puppets around mere millimeters and taking a picture of it for each frame. Actually, both styles of animation are very hard work and take an incredible amount of practice and skill. Stop-motion is a lot more expensive though. Essentially that's what stop-motion animation is: taking a picture of something, moving it just a little bit, taking a picture again, and so on. It can get crazy complicated the more polished and detailed you want your animation to be. Some of the more well-known stop-motion animated movies consists of The Nightmare Before Christmas , Coraline , and the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special.  Each type of animation has its own kind of flair and magic to it, and stop-motion is no different. It has an aesthetic so unlike those of the hand-drawn or computer-animated variety. It's a different style...
Read more

The Beauty of Hand-Drawn Animation

 Even though the majority of animation studios have been using computer-generated and 3D to make their movies in recent years, I still love and honestly prefer the look of the traditional 2D hand-drawn animation style. There was something a lot more magical about it and the way an animator could draw a character to life. Computers and 3D models are great, don't get me wrong, but it just doesn't give the same type of feeling that traditional animation does.  For traditional animation, it's the artist drawing everything that gets me. If you've seen a video of a rough animation (no colors, no background, just the pencil sketches), you could see the beauty of it, as if the character is actually moving on a piece of paper. It's also really hard to get something moving naturally as if it were in a three-dimensional space on paper. Good animators have done it though, and they do it really well. The study and do research, and even add their own personal flair that makes wh...
Read more