Ok… take a deep breath… it’s not that bad… it’ll be over soon… Atlantis: The Lost Empire was… a not so great Disney movie. It suffered from using too much 3D animation and would have benefited from the use of more 2D. The 3D looked too strange and was immersion breaking, creating a cacophony of animation styles that, when done wrong, do not mix well, and it was done wrong in the original. the original also suffered from poor character development, poor pacing and lackluster storytelling that didn’t quite seem to know what it wanted to do or be. It was dry and forgettable with almost no humor with wasted talent from the likes of Michael J. Fox and Leonard Nimoy.
The sequel, Atlantis: Milo’s Return suffers from just about the same issues… but those issues are much worse here than in the original. The animation is atrocious, the story is a compilation of very loosely tied together ‘mini-stories,’ which would be better categorized as ‘episodes,’ and the humor is just about nonexistent. So where to start…
The animation… Overall, I would say that the animation here is almost as, if not just as, bad as The Hunchback of Notre Dame II. Some of the characters don’t even look the same; the most different of them being Audrey who appears to have had her face widened a considerable amount. It is very easy to see that in some shots the characters that aren’t talking are entirely still, and similarly when they are at a distance. It is extremely easy to notice that there is a very significant lack of frames of animation, and it is very very easy to tell if a character is static - not moving at all. There’s also a lack of detail in each of the characters and they look very bland, as if everything is of the very same color scheme, everything being close to a similar ‘tanish’ color.
Their movements are choppy and sometimes hard to look at; they appear stilted and very unrealistic, unnatural… awkward… They did reprise the use of the 3D animation in the beginning, as Kida flies about Atlantis spewing a plot-synopsis of the original (which I have a few words to say about later) but that is the only instance that I could actually tell they used 3D animation. It lasted for a few minutes, and my guess the could only afford that much because 3D animation combined with 2D animation is quite costly. During a few ‘chase’ sequences there is a Flintstone-esque repeating background behind the characters that is very apparent. And, just like Tarzan and Jane, there is an extreme lack of color gradient and shading, meaning the characters appear very flat and the backgrounds appear very staticy instead of feeling vibrant, natural, or even authentic.
The music was very generic and had no memorable score or theme throughout. It was very reminiscent of what you’d expect from a Saturday morning Disney TV show.
Ok… the story… I’ll start with the opening narration. It begins with forced expositional backstory told by Kida, because apparently the writers thought that telling the audience the plot of the original was necessary while in every other Disney sequel I’ve sat through so far has not. It is much better to just jump your viewer into the action instead of having this sort of television titlecard expositional opening because that was what the entire first movie was for, to give the plot and development of the characters; the sequel should just jump forward with that. Even if the expositional narration lasts for a few seconds, those few seconds could be spent furthering the plot of the movie instead of dawdling in the past. There are a few major questions about the nature of the narration itself. Who is she talking to? How does this make sense? Of course we know she is talking to us, but in the realm of the movie, why is she talking? Did someone ask her a question? There are ways to make this make sense in the movie’s world: have her teaching a class to young children explaining all there is to know, or even to a tour group, but here she is just flying around as her voice is narrating the backstory.
Then the story follows a similar format of Tarzan and Jane, which I already had major gripes with. Splitting the story of a (nearly) feature length film into three ‘episodes’ is quite a petty excuse to make a film. If anything it could have been a holiday special for the TV show, and not a movie that deserved to have it’s own place in the Disney canon. Structurally, they fixed the main problem with Tarzan and Jane and, by doing so, had a better flow between each ‘episode.’ The main problem with this one, however, (and it is quite bad) is that each of the ‘episodes’ is so loosely connected that I had a very hard time understanding what each of them had to do with Atlantis. Throughout the whole film, only the beginning and the end has them actually in Atlantis. The only thing that truly ties the movie to its name are the characters and that they reference Atlantis every now and then.
The first ‘episode’ deals with Whitmore thinking that a Kraken was an Atlantian monster and thus it was their responsibility to deal with it. Well, that seems like a very big jump. The characters believe him and so set out to get rid of the monster. It turns out that it wasn’t Atlantian and was some other kind of monstrosity. So… what was the connection again? Just that Whitmore thought it was of Atlantian design? To me, that sounds like the writers were short of ideas and someone shouted out, “Kraken!” and then they worked to connect it to the story. To be fair, this one actually makes the most sense out of the two other ‘episodes,’ sadly to say. This one at least (mostly) takes place in the ocean. There are some weird mystical sections like how the Kraken has mind control abilities and allows people to live for a very long time… for some reason… without any explanation… but ok, the original explained everything away with a magical healing crystal so I guess anything is possible.
The second ‘episode’ deals with finding an Atlantian artifact in an American desert… It was here that I could not believe it. This one makes absolutely no sense. It seems like the writers, being very short on ideas, thought, “why not put them in a desert?” and then they tried to figure a way to make it tangible. I asked myself, “why would they investigate what happened to a man just because he had an Atlantian artifact like a Scooby-Doo episode?” The whole ‘episode’ is very reminiscent of Scooby-Doo and probably would have been much more entertaining if it had been. Just because they found an Atlantian artifact there doesn’t mean that they have to go investigate a ‘mystery’ behind it. It’s hard to put into words the unbelievability of it, but if you, dear reader, would succumb and allow yourself to endure the torture that is this movie, you too would understand the confuddling and face-palming stupidity of these ‘episodes.’
The third, and final (Thank God!) ‘episode’ deals with a crazed colleague of Whitmore’s who, for some reason, believes he is Odin and he steals a spear from Whitmore’s mansion while they were away. This one is the most connected to the Atlantis characters and actually feels somewhat natural compared to the others… but when they start it off by showing a man declaring that he is Odin, the norse God, breaking into Whitmore’s mansion, I lost it. My notes at that point were, “that is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen… I literally have no words for how stupid that is.” They later explained it away as a madman who believed he was Odin, which is a lot more believable, but then he tries to bring about Ragnarok, which… I guess would make sense if you were trying to be Odin? I don’t know. They have a fight and get the spear back and use it for good back at Atlantis.
Overall, this film was utterly stupid, hard to watch, and boring. I have no more words for it. I think it is worse than The Hunchback of Notre Dame II… and that one was absolute garbage. This movie should be shattered and then burned and then have its ashes buried in various locations. Do not watch this. If you do not believe a word I have said about, or you are curious about how bad it really is, go ahead and try to endure it but you have your warning. Do not watch this movie. Do not approach this ‘movie’ with a ten-foot pole. Stay as far away from it as you possibly can.
