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Monday, July 9, 2012

BD impressions: Treasure Planet

11:38 AM / BD Impressions / 2 Comments

The film: Probably Disney's highest profile animated misfire after THE BLACK CAULDRON, TREASURE PLANET was in development for years (it was originally pitched in the 80s alongside THE LITTLE MERMAID), cost upwards of $140 million and bombed at the box office. I'd like to say it was an overlooked masterpiece, but in reality it's yet another wildly uneven post-renaissance effort that seems to be going in all directions at once, with an overarching concept - a mash-up of sci-fi and 18th/19th century swashbuckling - that doesn't work.

First, though, the good. The central relationship - that of young Jim Hawkins and the enigmatic Long John Silver - may be the most mature storytelling Disney has ever attempted. Silver is unique in the Disney canon, doubling up as both a mentor/father figure to Jim and the main villain - a villain who, flying in the face of every convention established by the studio, actually grows and is partially redeemed by the end. True, it's not handled with a great deal of subtlety, but Silver is a million miles removed from the moustache-twirling Captain Hook or the grotesque Ursula. The score by James Newton Howard is also great stuff, and there's plenty of wonderfully skilled character animation to be enjoyed. Sergio Pablos's Dr. Doppler is a particular standout - a complex, detailed construction that feels entirely three dimensional and looks consistent regardless of the angle from which you're looking at him...

...unlike Jim, a bafflingly poor piece of character design that seems to be (badly) aping anime with its triangular chin and floating eyes, eyebrows and nose. The character looks completely different in profile and front-on views, and any attempt to turn his head involves a cheat of some sort as the animators attempt to bridge the two different looks. There's no real sense of dimensionality to him, and when your protagonist's animation is outshone by every secondary character, something's seriously wrong. The character is also completely unlikeable for the bulk of the film's running time, and while I get that the filmmakers were trying to capture teenage angst in an animated form, a lot of the time he just comes off as obnoxious for no apparent reason. He butts shoulders with a bunch of characters who all look like they were designed by different people and belong in different movies, from the gelatinous Silver (a bear-like creature with computer-generated cyborg appendages and an uncharacteristically messy bit of design from the normally excellent Glen Keane) to the infuriating BEN, a flamboyant homosexual (at least that's what I'm inferring) robot voiced by Martin Short who is a perfect illustration of the fact that "he's MEANT to be annoying" is not a valid defence. The heavy use of CG for the backgrounds and props jars too - some of it almost looks like pre-viz work, while shots where the viewpoint weaves around the 3D sets invariably lead to the 2D characters wobbling and stobing as the animators try valiantly to "keep up" with the camera.

It all feels like a case of "too many cooks in the kitchen", with teen angst, fart jokes (this was back when SHREK was considered the bee's knees) and a cute little pink blob called Morph all butting heads. It doesn't know what it wants to be and as a result doesn't end up really feeling like anything. Its 2002 stable-mate, the lower budget, less ambitious but infinitely more focused LILO & STITCH, outclasses it on every level. 5/10

Image quality: TREASURE PLANET is the only film I've seen projected in IMAX and, aside from giving me a headache, it also showed up the limitations of the source material, with the low resolution nature of certain elements being lade bare for all to see. These are less noticeable on the BD, but numerous 3D elements appear blocky and aliased (e.g. Jim's solar surfer in Example 3, making them jar even more with the pristine hand-drawn elements. These shortcomings aside, it's a strong presentation and I really can't fault the disc at all... except for one area: compression. While for the most part it looks fine, there are a handful of moments that completely choke the encoder. One of these is when Jim unlocks the star map for the first time; another is this - yikes! There's also some occasional TARZAN-style blotchy noise (see Silver's stomach in Example 22) and some banding (Silver's stomach again in Example 14). The latter was far more severe on the DVD, and was even apparent in the 35mm version I saw at the cinema back in 2003 (I can't remember whether the IMAX version was affected, but I'd be inclined to suspect that it was). When all said and done, it looks very good, but inferior to the likes of THE LION KING. 9/10

Treasure Planet
label: Buena Vista; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 1.66:1

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