Treasure Planet (fan vision)

Treasure Planet is a 2002 American animated science fiction film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, and released by Walt Disney Pictures on December 22, 2002. It is the 43rd animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. The film is a science fiction adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure novel Treasure Island and was the first film to be released simultaneously in regular and IMAX theaters.[2 ] [3 ] The film employs a novel technique of hand-drawn 2D traditional animation set atop 3D computer animation.

The film was co-written, co-produced and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, who had pitched the concept for the film at the same time that they pitched The Little Mermaid. Treasure Planet features the voices of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brian Murray, David Hyde Pierce, Martin Short, Roscoe Lee Browne, Emma Thompson, Laurie Metcalf, and Patrick McGoohan (in his final film role). The musical score was composed by James Newton Howard, while the songs were written and performed by John Rzeznik.

The film performed sucessfully at the box office, grossing $183 million in North America and $444 million worldwide. The film also earned positive critical reception. It was nominated for the 2002 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. This was also the last sucessful Disney animated film before the Disney slump in 2004.

Plot
The film's prologue depicts Jim Hawkins as a five-year-old (voiced by Austin Majors) reading a storybook in bed. Jim is enchanted by stories of the legendary pirate Captain Flint and his ability to appear from nowhere, raid passing ships, and disappear in order to hide the loot on the mysterious "Treasure Planet". Twelve years later, Jim (now voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has grown into an aloof and alienated teenager. He is shown begrudgingly helping his mother Sarah (Laurie Metcalf) run an inn and deriving amusement from "solar surfing" (a hybrid of skysurfing and windsurfing atop a board attached to a solar-powered rocket), a pastime that frequently gets him in trouble.

One day, a spaceship crashes near the inn. The dying pilot, Billy Bones (Patrick McGoohan), gives Jim a sphere and tells him to "beware the cyborg". Shortly thereafter, a gang of pirates raid and burn the inn. Jim, his mother, and their dog-like friend Dr. Delbert Doppler (David Hyde Pierce) barely escape. The sphere turns out to be a holographic projector, showing a map that Jim realizes leads to Treasure Planet.

Doppler commissions a ship called RLS Legacy, on a mission to find Treasure Planet. The ship is commanded by the cat-like, sharp-witted Captain Amelia (Emma Thompson) along with her stony-skinned and disciplined First Mate, Mr. Arrow (Roscoe Lee Browne). The crew is a motley bunch, secretly led by cook John Silver (Brian Murray), whom Jim suspects is the cyborg of whom he was warned. Jim is sent down to work in the galley, where he is supervised by Silver and his shape-shifting pet, Morph (Dane A. Davis). Despite Jim's mistrust of Silver, they soon form a tenuous father-son relationship (a montage featuring the song "I'm Still Here" shows Jim and the cyborg bonding over various sailing chores, interspersed with flashbacks from Jim's childhood, during which his father appears indifferent to him and finally leaves without warning when Jim is a pre-teen). During an encounter with a supernova, Silver falls overboard but is saved by Jim. The supernova then devolves into a black hole, where Arrow drifts overboard and is lost, for which Jim blames himself for failing to secure the lifelines, while in fact Arrow's line was cut by a ruthless insectoid crew member named Scroop (Michael Wincott).

As the ship reaches Treasure Planet, mutiny erupts, led by Silver. Jim, Doppler, Amelia, and Morph abandon the ship, accidentally leaving the map behind. Silver, who believes that Jim has the map, has a chance to kill Jim, but refuses to do so because of his attachment to the boy. The fugitives are shot down by a mutineer during their escape, causing injury to Amelia.

While exploring Treasure Planet's forests, the fugitives meet B.E.N. (Martin Short), an abandoned, whimsical robot who claims to have lost most of his memory and invites them to his house to care for the wounded Amelia. The pirates corner the group here; using a back-door, Jim, B.E.N., and Morph return to the ship in an attempt to recover the map. Scroop, aboard the ship as lookout, stalks and fights Jim. B.E.N., working to sabotage the ship's artillery, accidentally turns off the artificial gravity, whereupon Jim and Scroop threaten to float off into space. Jim grabs the mast while Scroop becomes entangled in the flag and cuts himself free while Scroop floats away, presumably to his death. Jim and B.E.N. obtain the map. Upon their return, they are captured by Silver, who has already captured, bound, and gagged Doppler and Amelia.

When Jim is forced to use the map, the group finds their way to a portal that can be opened to any place in the universe; this being the means by which Flint conducted his raids. The treasure is at the center of the planet, accessible only via the portal. Treasure Planet is revealed to be a large space station built by unknown architects and commandeered by Flint. In the stash of treasure, Jim comes across the skeletal remains of Flint himself, holding a missing part of B.E.N's cognitive computer. Jim replaces this piece, causing B.E.N. to remember that the planet is set to explode upon the treasure's discovery. In the ensuing catastrophe, in which two of the pirates fall down into the lava and the others escape Silver finds himself torn between holding onto a literal boat-load of gold and saving Jim, who hangs from a precipice after a fall. Silver saves Jim, and the group escapes to the Legacy, which is damaged and lacks the motive power required to leave the planet in time to escape. Jim attaches a rocket to a narrow plate of metal and rides it toward the portal to open it to a new location while Doppler pilots the ship behind him. Jim manages to open the portal to his home world's spaceport, through which all escape the destruction of Treasure Planet.

After the escape, Amelia has the surviving pirates imprisoned aboard the ship and offers to recommend Jim to the Interstellar Academy for his heroic actions. Silver sneaks below deck, where Jim finds him preparing his escape. Jim lets him go, and Silver asks Jim to keep Morph. Silver predicts that Jim will "rattle the stars", then tosses him a handful of jewels and gold he had taken from Treasure Planet to pay for rebuilding the inn. The film ends with a party at the rebuilt inn, showing Doppler and Amelia now married with children, and Jim a military cadet. He looks to the skies and sees an image of Silver in the clouds.

Development
Treasure Planet took roughly four and a half years to create, but the concept for Treasure Planet (which was called "Treasure Island in Space" at the time) was originally pitched by Ron Clements in 1985 during the meeting wherein he and John Musker also pitched The Little Mermaid.[4 ] [5 ] Clements stated that Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was the chief of Walt Disney Studios at the time, "just wasn't interested" in the idea.[6 ] Since Musker and Clements wanted to be able to move "the camera around a lot like Steven Spielberg or James Cameron," the delay in production was beneficial since "the technology had time to develop in terms of really moving the camera."[7 ] Principal animation for the film began in 2000 with roughly 350 crew members working on it.[8 ] In 2002, Roy Conli estimated that there were around 1,027 crew members listed in the screen credits with "about four hundred artists and computer artists, about a hundred and fifty musicians and another two hundred technologists".[4 ]

According to Conli, Clements wanted to create a space world that was "warm and had more life to it than you would normally think of in a science fiction film", as opposed to the "stainless steel, blue, smoke coming from the bowels of heavily pipe laden" treatment of science fiction.[4 ] In order to make the film "fun" by creating more exciting action sequences and because they believed that having the characters wear space suits and helmets "would take all the romance out of it",[9 ] the crew created the concept of the "Etherium," an "outer space filled with atmosphere".[5 ] [10 ]

Several changes were made late in the production to the film. The prologue of the film originally featured an adult Jim Hawkins narrating the story of Captain Flint in first person,[5 ] [11 ] but the crew considered this to be too "dark" and felt that it lacked character involvement.[5 ] The crew also intended for the film to include a sequence showing Jim working on his solar surfer and interacting with an alien child, which was intended to show Jim's more sensitive side and as homage to The Catcher in the Rye.[12 ] Because of the intention to begin the film with a scene of Jim solar surfing, the sequence had to be cut.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-jimethan_12-1">[12 ]

Writing
Writer Rob Edwards stated that "it was extremely challenging" to take a classic novel and set it in outer space, and that they did away with some of the science fiction elements ("things like the metal space ships and the coldness") early on. Edwards goes on to say that they "did a lot of things to make the film more modern" and that the idea behind setting the film in outer space was to "make the story as exciting for kids now as the book was for kids then".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-edwards_13-0">[13 ]

With regard to adapting the characters from the book to film, Ron Clements mentioned that the Jim Hawkins in the book is a "a very smart, very capable kid", but they wanted to make Jim start out as "a little troubled kid" who "doesn't really know who he is" while retaining the aforementioned characteristics from the original character. The "mentor figures" for Jim Hawkins in the novel were Squire Trelawney and Dr. Livesey, whom John Musker described as "one is more comic and the other's very straight"; these two characters were fused into Dr. Doppler. Clements also mentions that though the father-son relationship between Jim Hawkins and John Silver was present "to some degree" in the book, they wanted to emphasize it more in the film.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-white_14-0">[14 ]

Casting
Casting director Ruth Lambert held a series of casting auditions for the film in New York, Los Angeles and London, but the crew already had some actors in mind for two of the major characters.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-p9conli_15-0">[15 ] The character of Dr. Doppler was written with David Hyde Pierce in mind,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-scenefilm_4-3">[4 ] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-white_14-1">[14 ] and Pierce was given a copy of the Treasure Planet script along with preliminary sketches of the character and the film's scenic elements while he was working on A Bug's Life. He stated that "the script was fantastic, the look was so compelling" that he accepted the role.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-joblo_16-0">[16 ] Likewise, the character of Captain Amelia was developed with the idea that Emma Thompson would be providing her voice.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-hollyJesus_17-0">[17 ] "We offered it to her and she was really excited," Clements said. Musker said, "This is the first action adventure character that Emma has ever played and she was pregnant during several of the sessions. She was happy that she could do all this action and not have to train for the part"<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-hollyJesus_17-1">[17 ] There were no actors initially in mind for the characters of John Silver and Jim Hawkins; Brian Murray (John Silver) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Jim Hawkins) were signed after months of auditions.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-scenefilm_4-4">[4 ] Gordon-Levitt stated that he was attracted to the role because "it's a Disney animated movie and Disney animated movies are in a class by themselves," and that "to be part of that tradition is unbelievable to me".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-gordon-levitt_18-0">[18 ] Musker mentioned that Gordon-Levitt "combined enough vulnerability and intelligence and a combination of youthfulness but incompleteness" and that they liked his approach.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-white_14-2">[14 ]