Monday, January 29, 2018

Happily Never After- Atlantis II: Milo's Return


Do us a favor and go back to the ocean floor.
While the early to mid-2000s is commonly considered a low point in Disney history (and not without good reason), it wasn’t without a few cases of diamonds in the rough.

Even though generations of children, animation fans, film enthusiasts, and middle American families will preach the gospel of the Golden Age and Renaissance eras, I personally identify as having a greater fondness for the more experimental ages of the Disney Animated Cannon.

The movies may have provided some of the harshest critical and commercial misses for the studio but the ambition put into a production aiming to feel as intentionally different from their legacy’s claims to fame as possible at the very least results in a crop of movies that were bold enough to swing for the fences and fail big and memorably even if the world wasn’t quite ready to give them their due.


Case in point, “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” 



Released in the summer of 2001, “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” was met by a lukewarm critical and box office reception.

Linguist and Cartographer Milo Thatch and his journey to prove his lifelong belief in the existence of the mythical lost city of Atlantis was a high adventure fantasy blockbuster that just so happened to be an animated feature, something that distinguished itself substantially from the fairy tale/folk tale approach of simplistic plots more often than not providing applicable parables to reality in storytelling that Disney had built their empire on.

A lot of its problems are emblematic of a rather tumultuous development process, including multiple script revisions applied to reinterpret and streamline a product whose initial cut stretched into a nearly 3 hour runtime.

That effort to strip down to prevent overstuffing is at the heart of the film’s many flaws. It’s characters are well depicted and hint at a rich history but are ultimately thin where their roles in the actual story come into play. The tragedy and mythos of Atlantis implies a long reaching arc of cultural hubris feeding into more extensive action and mystery but ultimately boils down to stopping soldiers of fortune playing with larger than life powers that addresses little of the actual themes of their downfall. Kida is one of the more unique concepts of a Disney Princess that comes into play way too late into the second act to leave enough impression on the story itself as a character.

While the list goes on, the movie has gone on to gather a bit of a cult following in recent years and much of that is derived from a sincere response to the film’s reception based on reacting to that the film wasn’t more than what it actually was.

The premise of the movie would have felt more at home with mainstream audiences were it produced in live action despite ironically proving itself to be a far better fit in the medium that it was produced in.

“Atlantis’” art direction, inspired by the art style of graphic novel artist Mike Mignola of “Hellboy” fame, creates a stylized world that stood visually apart from animated competition of the time that was simultaneously perfectly suited to a more adult style of storytelling filled with tension, atmosphere, and subtlety while still suitable for an audience of children viewers.

Its financial failure was unfortunate but resurgence in popularity amongst millennials is perhaps a key factor in Disney Animation’s resurgence in creativity in the last couple of years and by its wrap, is chock full of sequel and franchise potential.

How was it followed up?



Not so well.

Following the similar tragedies of “Cinderella II” and “Belle’s Magical World,” “Atlantis II: Milo’s Return” is the cobbled together scraps of an aborted cartoon spinoff of the film that would have taken it properly to franchise status.

Showrun by Greg Weisman of “Gargoyles” and “The Spectacular Spider-Man” fame, the series, titled “Team Atlantis,” would have featured protagonists Milo and Kida being called back to the surface world by their friends to investigate various occurrences of supernatural happenings that may involve lost Atlantean technology, teaching them just how wide spread the impact of Atlantis and their culture had reached before sinking to the ocean below.

With the box office returns prematurely killing of any grander franchise plans for “The Lost Empire,” the series was scrapped and what production was done, salvaged into a direct to video movie following through on the premise with a firmer ending to the narrative despite having an almost nonexistent plot composed of 3 entirely disconnected episode plots involving the legend of the Kraken appearing in a European town, a Native American Spirit walker protecting the lost ruins of his people and an insane business man using Atlantean technology to instigate Ragnarok, the Norse end of days.

The clash of unrelated plot threads mixed with a pitiful television animation production budget results in a feature that is about as underwhelming as it sounds.

It was just about the only way things really could have ended given the abandonment suffered by the original film but the most tragic thing about “Milo’s Return” is that it dredges up all of the possibilities of what could have been and how great this franchise could be as a franchise.

How many world mythologies were tied directly to Atlantis’s advanced culture? How many were real and operated independently of it, providing potential for crossover in a more contemporary setting (or as contemporary as the 1910s can get). Greg Weisman is on record stating he developed details of the show with his own continuity for “Gargoyles” in mind so how could that crossover have played out?

The end of the movie returns Atlantis to the surface world. Xenophobia against a lost advanced race toxically uniting people together or the foundation laying of Utopia in which everyone has the tools to satisfy themselves and can thus afford to help others?


The possibilities are endless and the thought that this franchise could be left in the dust of history can be too painful to think about.

I honestly don't know which is worse? imagining what could have been here, or knowing my final visit to The Pride Lands may be more of a let down.

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