Every major studio has among its titles films that were disasters at the box office, only to find new life years later. Disney has its share.PinocchioandFantasiaboth lost money before becoming timeless classics. Prior to being a cult film of the 90s and a successful stage musical,Newsieswas a bomb. And it’s perhaps inevitable that the studio most associated with animation holds the record for the most expensive traditionally animated cartoon feature – and one of the biggest flops in movie history.
Treasure Planetearned just $37 million on its initial release against a $140 million budget (plus millions more in marketing), a performance so bad that it affected the value of Disney’s stock. Yet even during its inauspicious theatrical run, the film picked up respectable reviews and a slew of award nominations. Home video spread the good word ofTreasure Planet, as it did for so many initially unsuccessful films, and it currently enjoys an enthusiastic cult following despite Disney’s determined lack of interest in doing anything with it.
TheTreasure Planetcult is one I wish I could join. The idea of setting the classic swashbuckling adventure among the stars was a long-nursed passion project for writer/directorsRon ClementsandJohn Musker, and the passion is evident on the screen. For world-building, the film is faultless. The science-fiction element could so easily have resulted in a cold and tech-heavy environment we’ve all seen a million times, but a 70/30 ratio for traditional vs. CG animation carried over into the balance betweenTreasure Island’s 18th-century setting and any futuristic tune-ups. Outer space has rarely looked as rich, warm, or antique as it does here. Putting humans, cyborgs, and aliens side-by-side is more standard fare for sci-fi, but the pirates are a delightfully grim collection of intergalactic ne’er-do-wells. The music is wonderful, the staging of the RLSLegacy’svoyages and the action set-pieces is first-rate, andTreasure Planetis one of the finest blends of 2D and 3D animation to this day.
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And yet – it doesn’t work, as a film or as an adaptation ofRobert Louis Stevenson’s novel. The change in scenery has nothing to do with that. What adjustments were needed to the plot to allow for the marriage of desert island romance and interstellar adventure are expertly made, and I’d say the treasure of the title is even more impressive when made the loot of a thousand worlds instead of roughly £700,000. It’s the changes unrelated to the setting that make the difference.
Martin Short’s B.E.N.-J.A.M.I.N. is among Disney’s less successful efforts at casting a comedian as a sidekick. The dog and cat romance between Dr. Doppler and Captain Amelia has always seemed too pat, there only for the sake of having a love story. The transformation of Jim Hawkins from a quiet lad who finds wits and courage on the voyage into a surly teenager indulging in adolescent clichés from the early 2000s works against the whole idea of a young boy’s adventure, and it was a change writerTerry Rossiolater judged to be the film’sfatal mistake.
But the most consequential change for me, the one that costsTreasure Planetthe most, is what it does to that legendary buccaneer Long John Silver. Recast from one-legged man to an alien cyborg, he’s the most colorful character in the film just as he is in the novel.Glen Keanegave one of his many masterpieces in character animation with Silver, enhanced to remarkable effect by the CGI cybernetics.Brian Murraygave everything in his vocal performance. His Silver is boisterous, charismatic, and always the most prominent voice in the room. His size, his vaguely ursine features, and his avuncular personality all make him easy to love.
Except for the robot bits, that’s all true of Silver inTreasure Islandtoo. Jim, Squire Trelawney, and the reader are all taken in by his charm (and, for the characters within the book, his good cooking). Jim in particular bonds with Silver, who does act as a strong mentor to him. It’s why the revelation that Silver is a pirate, leader of a plan to seize the treasure and murder all the crew, cuts so deep. This is one of the key conflicts of the novel: the dichotomy between Silver’s genuine charm, intelligence, and charisma with the reality of who he is. And who he is, is a villain,thevillain of the book.
Silver may have more sense and tact than his fellow pirates, he may keep a wife and well-managed financial assets, he may be easy to like and have a genuine soft spot for Jim Hawkins, but he is a ruthless opportunist at heart and a very serious danger to Jim and the rest of the crew of theHispaniola. Realizing the truth about Silver is pivotal to Jim’s coming of age inTreasure Island, and while he retains enough sympathy for the rogue to wish him some material comfort in memory, he doesn’t forget Silver’s wicked nature.
Treasure Planetdoes away with almost all of this. Its Silver is still a pirate, still the leader of an intended mutiny, but he’s soft-pedaled almost from the beginning. He’s made such a lovable figure – and the rest of the pirates are so grisly in comparison, particularly the original character Scroop to whom some of Silver’s worst deeds are outsourced – that it’s hard to believe he could be their ringleader. It was a struggle for Stevenson’s Silver to keep the pirates in line, to be sure, but there was no doubt he had sufficient violence and remorselessness to challenge them.
Worse is the shift in Silver’s relationship to Hawkins.Treasure Planet’sJim suffers from abandonment issues, and the friendship between him and Silver from the novel is made into a father-son type of bond in the film. Silver is full of nautically themed speeches to inspire Jim to strive for greatness as he shows him the ropes of sailing. It’s the influence of Silver more than anything else that makes a responsible man out of Jim. Silver redeems himself when he abandons the treasure to save Jim’s life and even gives up the small bit of loot he managed to collect to him.
This take on Jim and Silver’s relationship has its fans, and I won’t deny that it makes for a very safe and warm heart in the film. But I’m afraid that’s what’s wrong with it. For one thing, it’s so safe because it’s so predictable; from their first scene together, you can guess what all the major beats of Jim and Silver’s relationship will be and when in the movie they’ll happen. As endearing as their scenes together at the beginning and end of the film can be, the degree to which Silver influences Jim also hurts the film’s notion of its teenaged take on Jim Hawkins learning to chart his own course. Silver’s lessons, and his own personal assistance, are such a necessary component of Jim’s actions that their period of estrangement in the middle of the story feels more like an obnoxious detour of misunderstanding in their relationship than the consequence of a serious betrayal.
But the larger issue is what this relationship costsTreasure Planetin the journey from book to film. The chief source of threat and ambiguity from the novel is rendered the movie’s chief source of sentimentality without any additional changes to address the loss of the former element. There’s never any real sense of danger inTreasure Planetwhere Jim is concerned because he and Silver are so bonded. Past adaptations ofTreasure Island, includingWalt Disney’s own 1950 production, featured a movie-exclusive moment of Silver threatening to kill Jim and being unable to do so – but it came at the end of the story, after Jim weathered all the trials thrown his way by Silver’s treachery and deceit, and it wasn’t coupled with a redemption arc that does away with Jim’s ultimate ambivalence toward his mentor and enemy.
Adventures can be sentimental, of course. I love quite a few of the kind. AndTreasure Planetis hardly the first adaptation of a book to radically alter themes and relationships. The question is whether the change is of comparable quality, and I’ve never been able to see that inTreasure Planet’sSilver. The dichotomy of Stevenson’s pirate is one ofTreasure Island’smost appealing aspects to readers. It’s a greater challenge, especially to kids, to deal with a figure who can be so charming and yet so deadly, and it’s a greater challenge to have Jim be left with mixed feelings about Silver and his adventure.Treasure Planet’sSilver is cuddly and comforting, but there’s no challenge, no ambiguity about him or about the impact of the voyage on Jim to pose to an audience.
That may or may not have had an impact on the movie’s performance at the box office; one never knows exactly what elements make or break a picture. But it does impact onTreasure Planet’sability as a story to meet the potential of its concept.
