Treasure Planet is one of those animated films that really deserved better. It was a passion project for John Musker and Ron Clements, who kept pitching an adaptation of Treasure Island IIIIIIIIIIIIN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE multiple times over the years (it wasn't until Roy E. Disney backed them up that Michael Eisner agreed to let them do the movie - right after Hercules was completed). They compiled a crew of very talented animators and actors. New technology was created for it - they took the "Deep Canvas" thing used for Tarzan and used it to create a process called "Virtual Sets", which allowed them to create entire 360-degree sets before they began staging the scenes. There were tie-ins with McDonald's, Pepsi-Cola, Kellogg's, and even Dreyer's - just like Finding Nemo after it, Treasure Planet had its own ice cream flavors!
And what happened? Despite the positive reviews from critics, the film was a box office bomb, making just $109.6 million on a $140 million budget, and promptly became a footnote in Disney history. WHY? Why didn't this film do better? Most people claimed it was because it was hand-drawn and not CGI like Shrek or Ice Age (the same explanation given as to why Atlantis, Brother Bear, and Home on the Range underperformed*). But y'know what OTHER animated film Disney released that year that was hand-drawn? Lilo and Stitch. And THAT made a ton of money. Another excuse given was "maybe the film just wasn't that good". But if being a crappy movie was all it took to be a box office bomb, why do so many of Disney's live action remakes make billions?
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| "Meega just made a billion dollars! Get ready for a live action remake of Encanto, suckers!" |
So why did Treasure Planet actually underperform? Well, for one thing, Disney released it in November 2002, around the same time as The Santa Clause 2 and the second Harry Potter movie. If you release your movie around the same time as a Harry Potter film, no duh it's not going to make much money (and yet Disney did THE EXACT SAME THING in 2011!). Apparently, the marketing wasn't great either - this video suggests that Disney might've actually sabotaged the film so they'd have an excuse to abandon hand-drawn animation.
John Musker suggested in an interview that a preview screening very close to 9/11 might've damaged the film: it's a film where "armed people take over a vessel", after all. He and Terry Rossio, who worked on the film's story, also offered the theory that maybe the film's turning Jim Hawkins into a moody teenager might've turned people off as well. As Terry put it, "Treasure Island, the book, is a boy's adventure, about a young cabin boy who matches wits with a crew of bloodthirsty pirates. All of the key scenes are made more dramatic by the fact that it's a young kid who is in danger, it's a kid who single-handedly steals the pirate ship and sails around the island, it's a kid who faces difficult choices and impossible tasks and somehow wins the day... imagine the trailer for Treasure Planet with an actual kid in that central role. A little kid fighting off alien pirates, a little kid going off into space, a little kid outwitting a cyborg named Silver. There's a kick there, an interest that you don't get with the sullen teen extreme sports guy."
I'm sorry that I didn't see Treasure Planet in theaters. I was very little, I didn't make the decisions on which animated films my family went to see in theaters (we DID see Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron and The Wild Thornberrys Movie in theaters that same year, so don't say we didn't do our part for hand-drawn animation!). In fact, for some reason, I never actually watched this film until... 2020 or 2021, I think? And I liked it. And now I'm going to watch it again, because I had a poll on DeviantArt for which movie my 200th review should be of and Treasure Planet got the most votes. This is Treasure Planet.
The movie starts off with narrator Tony Jay telling us that on the clearest of nights, when "the winds of the Etherium" were calm and peaceful, merchant ships carrying solar crystals were pursued by pirates. And the most feared of all these pirates - by which I mean "yo ho yo ho a pirate's life for me, shiver me timbers, hook for a hand" pirates, not "I'm going to steal music off the internet" pirates - was the notorious Captain Flint. And no wonder, just LOOK at the guy!
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| "Hello, kids! I'll be seeing you all in your nightmares tonight!" |
It's then revealed that this is all part of a storybook that young Jim Hawkins is reading. His mother, Sarah Hawkins (voiced by Laurie Metcalf), comes in and points out that he's supposed to be asleep, but she's no match for Jim's adorableness.
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| You probably noticed that there's a Stitch doll in Jim's bedroom. Considering that this movie was made around the same time, the filmmakers probably didn't know how much money Disney would make off of Stitch merchandise yet. Kind of funny when you think about it. |
The book claims that after stealing all the loot from the merchant ships, Flint and his ship vanished without a trace. Legend has it that his treasure, "the riches of a thousand worlds", is hidden somewhere at the farthest reaches of the galaxy, on a planet known as... drum roll, please... Treasure Planet. Honestly, if Flint didn't want other people going after his treasure, maybe he shouldn't have hidden it on a planet with the word "TREASURE" in its name. He must be pretty stupid.
So after this cute moment of Jim Hawkins as a tyke, we cut to him as the aforementioned moody teenager, now voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He's flying around with his earring and his ponytail and his presumably leather jacket (these things don't make him "cool", they just make him look like a tool), doing something called "solar surfing" - basically parasailing but you're doing it in the air and apparently it could get you arrested.
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| "All this for a loaf of bread?" |
We then cut to the Benbow Inn, owned and run by Mrs. Hawkins. It's here that we meet one of the film's most divisive characters (not THE most divisive, we'll get to him at some point in the third act) - the doglike Dr. Delbert Doppler, voiced by David Hyde Pierce. I've seen some folks online dub him annoying, but I personally don't have a problem with him. That design does take some getting used to, though...
I think Dr. Doppler is supposed to be this film's equivalent of Dr. Livesey from the original novel. I assume they renamed him because "Doppler" is a funnier word than "Livesey" is.
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| I wonder if he's the evolved form of a... whatever Goofy is. |
The door to the inn swings open, revealing Jim and those two police robots, who tell Mrs. Hawkins that he was "operating a solar vehicle in a restricted area" - a violation of his probation. His solar surfer has been impounded and if he gets into any more mischief, he's getting a one-way ticket to Juvenile Hall.
When the police bots leave, Jim acts all emo and Mrs. Hawkins complains about all the run-ins with the law he's been having. She gives us some exposition about how Jim's been like this ever since his father left. Yep, the dad just... left. No explanation is given as to why. As Jim is being all angsty, he suddenly sees some sort of strange spacecraft land. When he approaches it, out pops this charming fellow:
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| "Heeeeeeeeeeee's a-comin'." "Who? Long John Silver?" "Worse. Bob Iger! As soon as Eisner gets kicked out, they're puttin' HIM in charge of Disney! We're gonna get a ton of live action remakes and crappy replacements for beloved Disney World attractions!" |
This is Billy Bones (Patrick McGoohan), who rambles to Jim about how there's a fiendish cyborg after his treasure chest. Jim helps him into the inn, where he opens his chest and pulls out a strange round object wrapped in cloth.
"Beware the cybooooooooooorg..." he hisses just before he dies. And then ANOTHER ship approaches the Inn. Presumably, the folks on that ship aren't just there for a good meal...
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| "I hope this place has vegan options." |
Jim, his mother, and Doppler make a run for it as the shadowy figures who emerged from the ship barge in and start ransacking the place, which leads to it being set on fire. Fortunately, they manage to get away. When Jim unwraps the strange round object wrapped in cloth, he discovers that it's some sort of spheric Rubix Cube - does ANYBODY know how to solve one of those things? I'VE certainly never been able to. Anyhow, he starts fiddling around with it and this happens...
Doppler identifies this strange light show as a map. He also identifies the planet that they're on, Montressor, on the map, as well as the Magellanic Cloud, the Coral Galaxy, the Cygnus Cross, the Kerian Abyss - and, of course, Treasure Planet. It's not just a legend after all! It exists!
"Mom, this is it! This is the answer to all our problems!" Jim exclaims. With that treasure, they could rebuild the inn! Mrs. Hawkins thinks this is all ridiculous, but Dr. Doppler's on board. He'll use his savings to finance the expedition, commission a ship, and hire a captain and crew. "All my life, I've been waiting for an opportunity like this!" he says. "And here it is, screaming, 'Go Delbert! Go Delbert!'"
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| I think this line was ad-libbed by David Hyde Pierce. |
Mrs. Hawkins, of course, still thinks that this idea is insane, but Jim insists that this is his chance to make it up to her. And then Doppler goes all Calvin's Dad and says that a few months in space would build character.
The next day, Jim and Doppler head to the spaceport, which appears to be a model reused from one of those Star Wars video games. Their ship, the R.L.S. Legacy (tell me, what does "R.L.S." stand for?), is waiting for them, and upon boarding they encounter an alien who communicates... in fart noises. Yeah, I can't defend this scene. It's pretty cringe-worthy.
The crew is already assembled, too. This film's version of Mr. Arrow (voiced by Roscoe Lee Browne) is a rock monster (kind of like the Thing from the Fantastic Four), and instead of Captain Smollett, we have Captain Amelia, a literal catwoman voiced by Emma Thompson.
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| Can you believe that they rejected her audition for Cats? |
Amelia tells Doppler that she'd like to have a word with him in her stateroom. Specifically, she wants to tell him not to mention the treasure map in front of the crew he hired, all of whom look and act like thugs... or, as she describes them, "a ludicrous parcel of driveling galoots". Doppler really should've known better than to listen to the little man who lives in his finger when he was hiring the crew. Hey, I had to make a Muppet Treasure Island joke at SOME point...
So, yeah. Amelia and Doppler aren't getting along. I guess you could say they're fighting like cats and dogs. Ba-dum-ksssh. Amelia says that Jim will be working with the ship's cook - Long John Silver, voiced by Brian Murray... who turns out to be a cyborg. The cool thing about this is that it's a 2D character with CGI limbs, something that I don't think has been done before. To test whether or not this would work, Glen Keane and the other animators took a pencil test of Captain Hook from Peter Pan and composited a CGI robotic arm onto it:
Neat, huh? Even though Jim is suspicious, Silver seems like a jovial sort, and anyone who pals around with a cute little pink blob of goo can't be all bad. Ah, yes, I should mention Morph (Dane A. Davis). Not to be confused with the Aardman character, Morph is one of the characters from the film who always stuck out the most to me. Actually, I think one of the kids in my preschool had a toy of him...
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| It took me until now to realize this, but... pirates usually have parrots as pets, right? And parrots are known for mimicking people, right? And Morph's shtick is that he can shapeshift into other characters and mimic them, right? Ergo, Morph is kind of like a parrot. |
"See to it the new cabin boy's kept busy," Mr. Arrow tells Silver. After he and Doppler leave, Jim starts interrogating Silver about how he met Billy Bones and how he warned him to "beware the cyborg", but Silver claims that it must have been a different cyborg. But for those of you who haven't read Treasure Island or seen any of the other movie adaptations, spoiler alert: Silver's a villain. Morph, on the other hand, doesn't have a bad bone in his body. Or ANY bones, it would seem.
The ship takes off... or should that be "sets sail"? Well, anyhow, it's off, flying through space among the dated CGI space whales...
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| Flying CGI whales? When did this turn into Fantasia 2000? |
Silver puts Jim to work swabbing the deck, and the other members of the crew start menacing him. It seems that the leader of these rascals, scoundrels, villains, and knaves - and Silver's second-in-command - is Scroop (Michael Wincott), a scary spider-esque alien who, much like Captain Flint at the beginning, likely worked his way into children's nightmares after they saw this film.
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| Where's a can of Raid when you need it? |
Fortunately, Mr. Arrow and Silver show up and get the others to knock it off. After Silver tells Morph to keep an eye on Jim, he heads down below to meet with the other crew members, revealing to the audience that he's their leader and they're planning a mutiny. "You just stick to the plan, you bug-brained twit!" he tells Scroop. "As for the boy, I'll run him so ragged he won't have time to think..."
We get a montage of Silver teaching Jim how to peel barnacles off the ship, tie knots, stuff like that, interspliced with flashbacks to Jim's youth, accompanied by a John Rzeznik song. It's clear that they're starting to warm up to each other, which is going to make Silver's mutiny plan difficult. And y'know what else is gonna make it difficult? A random supernova!
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| "Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state..." |
Everyone ties themselves down as the ship tries to get away, but eventually the star devolves into a black hole (insert reference to Disney's 1980s flop The Black Hole here) and starts sucking them in. Mr. Arrow even winds up falling off the ship, no thanks to Scroop cutting his rope. Alas, poor Mr. Arrow. I didn't even get to make an "IT'S CLOBBERING TIME!" joke.
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| Sorry, Mr. Arrow. You're only allowed to survive if you're being played by Sam the Eagle. |
The ship gets sucked in... and then Disney Plus decided to throw a bunch of ads at me. Great timing, guys... and the ship escapes, riding the next cosmic wave or whatever to safety. Downside: Scroop claims that Mr. Arrow fell off because "his lifeline was not secure", and Jim blames himself because he checked them all. "I screwed up!" he whines. "I mean, for two seconds, I thought that maybe I could do something right, but... AUGH! I just... just forget it. Forget it." "Now you listen to me, James Hawkins," Silver says. "You got the makings of greatness in ya, but you've gotta take the helm and chart your own course. Stick to it, no matter the squalls... and when the time comes you get the chance to really test the cut of your sails, and show what you're made of... well, I hope I'm there... catchin' some of the light comin' off ya that day."
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| I keep forgetting that his arm is CGI. That's quite an accomplishment, seeing how dated most of the CGI in this film looks... |
The next morning, we get that scene where Jim is in the barrel and overhears Silver and the crew talking about their mutiny. Silver calls out Scroop for disobeying his orders and killing Mr. Arrow, but Scroop knows how to push Silver's buttons. All he has to do is say that Silver's got a soft spot for Jim and Silver snaps, "Now, mark me, the lot of ya... I care about one thing and one thing only - Flint's trove! You think I'd risk it all for the sake of some nose-wiping little whelp?! I cozied up to that kid to keep him off our scent!"
...OUCH. Just... OUCH.
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| "Boy, I hope that kid isn't within earshot of us. Wouldn't it be troubling if he overheard you talking about how you were just playing him like a fiddle? I mean..." "SHUT YOUR TRAP! That only happens in movies!" |
Suddenly, the alien in the crow's nest (Onus, voiced by Corey Burton) declares that Treasure Planet is in sight. When Silver heads back down to get his spyglass, he encounters Jim, who sticks a knife in his mechanical pegleg. Dang, I don't recall Jim Hawkins doing that in the original book. Then again, it's been years since I've read it...
"Change in plans, lads! We move NOW!" Silver shouts. The pirates all get mutiny-ing, but Jim has told Amelia and Doppler about Silver's plan, so they're ready for them. Amelia tells Jim to protect the map, and they make a run for the longboats. Unfortunately, Morph decides to be Mr. Mischevious and steal the map for himself. This leads to a scene where he gets caught in the middle between Jim and Silver, both of whom are begging him to give him the map. It's played for laughs, but it actually provides some insight for Morph's character. Who knew one of the most complex characters in the movie would be a floating pink blob?
Long story short, Morph hides with the map in a barrel. Jim reaches in and grabs it, then runs off. Silver lifts his gun at him, but can't bring himself to shoot. They get away in a longboat, but a laser ball from a cannon fired by one of the pirates knocks them off-course and they land in a forest of what appears to be floating mushrooms. Amelia is injured. On the bright side, they have the map... or DO they?
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| "Psych!" |
It was Morph the whole time! Apparently, he hid the actual map back on the ship. Amelia has Jim search for a more defensible position before the pirates show up, leaving Doppler to tend to her injuries. So Jim and Morph head into the bowels of Dagobah, unaware that they're being watched. After a jumpscare, we are introduced to B.E.N. (which stands for "Bio-Electronic Navigator"). He's a robot who was once under the employment of Captain Flint. After he helped Flint bury his treasure, he took out B.E.N.'s primary memory circuit so he wouldn't remember where the treasure was - ensuing that NOBODY other than him knew where it was.
Y'know how I said Doppler was one of the film's most divisive characters? Well, B.E.N. is THE most divisive. I often see people who otherwise liked the film badmouthing him. As for me, I think he can be a bit much, but I stomach him fine for the most part. I'm probably just biased because he's voiced by Martin Short, an actor who I really like. The main problem with B.E.N., I find, is that Martin Short was seemingly directed to shout a good chunk of his lines. Shouting is not automatically funny. But to be fair, if you were stranded on a deserted planet for who knows how long, you'd probably be a bit off your rockers too.
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| "Bite my shiny metal [CENSORED]!" |
Jim and Morph take pity on B.E.N. and allow him to tag along with them - which works out quite well for them, because B.E.N.'s house is exactly the great hiding place that they need! Once they're safe inside, Doppler notices that the markings on the walls are identical to the ones on the map. "I suspect these are the hylogriphic remnants of an ancient culture," he muses. Alas, B.E.N. winds up giving away their hiding spot to the pirates... in his defense, he didn't know they were the guys they were supposed to be hiding from.
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| "Hide me! There are a bunch of Disney executives coming our way! They want me to play Jack Frost in their crappy third Santa Clause movie!" |
Silver arrives, tells the other pirates to stop blasting, and waves a white flag. Amelia guesses that Silver wants to bargain for the map... which means that he thinks they still have it. When Jim emerges, Silver tells him that he didn't mean any of that "I don't care about the boy, I'm just trying to throw him off our trail, honest" stuff. "If we play our cards right, we can both walk away from this rich as kings," he claims. "You get me that map, and an even portion of the treasure is yours." Jim still doesn't trust him, though, and declares that he's gonna make sure Silver doesn't see even one piece of that treasure.
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| "And then I'm gonna listen to Linkin Park and complain about how much I hate the world on the internet! And other things that moody teenagers do!" |
"Oh, you still don't know how to pick your fights, do you, boy?" Silver snarls. "Now, mark me... either I get that map by dawn tomorrow, or so help me, I'll use the ship's cannons to BLAST YOU ALL TO KINGDOM COME!" As for Morph, he's so frightened by Silver's outburst that he decides to stick with Jim.
As for Amelia, Doppler hasn't been much help. He's an astronomer, not a doctor... well, he's not THAT kind of doctor, he has a doctorate, it's not the same thing. He and Jim mope about how they're pretty much trapped, but then B.E.N. reveals that there's a back door that serves as an entryway to the miles and miles of machinery that run through the entire course of the inside of Treasure Planet. Advantage: good guys.
Jim's plan is to sneak back to the ship, disable the laser cannons, and bring back the map. After stealing the pirates' longboat, they sneak aboard the ship, and B.E.N. races off to disable the cannons... which is going to be hard since there are so many wires in the ship's control panel to choose from.
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| Word of advice, B.E.N. - it's usually the red wire. Or maybe it's the green one? |
Jim and Morph get the map, but B.E.N. accidentally sets off an alarm, resulting in them getting caught by Scroop. The film basically turns into Alien...
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| I've never actually seen Alien, so I'm not sure what joke to make here... |
And then B.E.N. disables the ship's artificial gravity, sending Jim flying up to the crow's nest. He manages to grab the ship's flag, Scroop crawling up behind him, but thanks to some quick climbing-down skills on Jim's part, it's SCROOP who winds up flying off into outer space. Sayanora, Scroop.
B.E.N. turns the gravity back on and disables the laser cannons, then he, Jim, and Morph return to B.E.N.'s house where Amelia and Doppler are waiting. But guess who's there waiting for them? Silver and the pirates!
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| Dun dun dun! |
Silver finds himself unable to open the map (like I said before, it's like a Rubik's Cube - NOBODY knows how to solve one!), so he has Jim do it for him or else he'll shoot Doppler and Amelia. The map shows them the way to the treasure... or rather, to absolutely nothing. Or maybe the treasure is just invisible? Or somebody already found it and claimed it? Or maybe the real treasure was actually friendship all along?
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| Or maybe the treasure is actually that magnificent view. |
As the pirates start throwing a fit over the lack of treasure, Jim finds a small divot in the ground where he's supposed to place the map, resulting in the creation of a holographic globe, which is promptly followed by a tear in the fabric of space and time! Makes sense to ME, I don't know why YOU'RE confused...
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| "Would anyone else like to enter the Fly of Despair?" |
Actually, Jim says that it's a portal to the Lagoon Nebula, which is halfway across the galaxy. If he keeps pressing buttons on the globe, it shows him other locations, including his home planet's spaceport. "So THAT'S how Flint did it!" he comments. "He used this portal to roam the universe, stealing treasure." But where is the treasure now? Jim theorizes that it's the center of the mechanism - and by "mechanism", he means the planet. I feel like the whole "you have to dig for it" answer was pretty obvious, I mean, it's called buried treasure for a reason.
Problem is, the planet's surface is as hard as a rock. You can't get to the center by digging, you have to use the portal. So they do that and find the treasure. Huzzah. Time to channel Scrooge McDuck.
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| "DuckTales, woo-hoo!" |
While the pirates bask in their riches, Jim spots Captain Flint's ship and tells B.E.N. that they're getting out of there and they're not leaving empty-handed. Climbing aboard the ship, they find Captain Flint's skeleton (I'll spare you the screencap), still clutching B.E.N.'s primary memory circuit. Jim puts it back in B.E.N.'s head, resulting in B.E.N. getting his memory back... and then remembering that there's a booby trap. To make absolutely sure that nobody would get their hands on his treasure even if they found it, Flint rigged it so that if anyone found it, the whole planet would blow sky-high.
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| Well, I guess it's easier than just putting a giant lock on the place... |
Some sort of laser beam starts cutting the entire room in half, creating a giant chasm that the treasure - and a few pirates - falls into. Jim starts hotwiring the ship's controls, telling B.E.N. to go back and help Amelia and Doppler. Speaking of them, Doppler's wrists manage to slip out of the ropes binding them, and he manages to outwit the pirate guarding them. Go, Delbert! Go, Delbert!
Meanwhile, Silver finds himself in a situation where he needs to choose between rescuing Jim and saving the treasure. He chooses Jim, of course. "Just a lifelong obsession, Jim. I'll get over it," he claims. B.E.N., Amelia, and Doppler show up with the ship, having defeated the remaining pirates, and Jim, Silver, and Morph climb aboard. The day is saved, right?
Well, no... the mizzen sail is destroyed, and the thrusters are only working at thirty-percent of capacity. That means they'll never clear the planet's explosion in time! "We've gotta turn around," Jim says. "There's a portal back there! It can get us out of here!" With Silver's help, he manages to build a makeshift hoverboard and flies off to change the portal's destination from a fiery inferno to... I don't know, the Bahamas? I hear it's lovely this time of year...
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| "Extreme sports skillz, don't fail me now!" |
Of course, Jim pulls it off and they manage to escape. Oh, and by the way, Amelia and Doppler have the hots for each other now. Yes, it IS possible for a dog to fall in love with a cat.
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| "Do you believe in interspecies dating?" "Well, I've dated some DOGS before, if that's what you mean..." |
Amelia says that she'd be proud to recommend Jim to the Interstellar Academy. As for Silver, he and Morph are currently trying to steal a lifeboat before they get back to the spaceport and he gets, y'know, put on trial and thrown in the slammer. "You never know when to quit, do you?" Jim asks. But, of course, he decides to look the other way. Silver offers him the chance to join them, but he says he's gonna chart his own course. "You're somethin' special, Jim," Silver tells him. "You're gonna rattle the stars someday." Before he heads off, he tells Morph he can stay with Jim and gives him the treasure he managed to salvage so he and his mom can rebuild the inn.
Jim and his friends return home, and the inn is indeed rebuilt. B.E.N. works there now. Jim is now part of the Interstellar Academy. And Doppler and Amelia have had four kids. There was apparently a line here that revealed Doppler gave birth to them, but it was cut. Probably for the best, there's some things about his biology that I don't need to know.
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| If anyone else out there has the book Disney 365 Bedtime Stories (the 2004 edition), it actually features a story about the kids. |
So all's well that ends well. Everybody dances (B.E.N.'s got some slick moves!) and Jim looks up into the night sky and sees a cloud that looks like Silver's head. The end.
What's the Verdict?
So that's Treasure Planet, and while I wouldn't say it's John Musker and Ron Clements' BEST movie (it's got some heavy competition, after all), it's a pretty good movie. The animation is great - well, the hand-drawn stuff, anyway, most of the CGI is pretty dated. I like the characters, with the exception of that alien that spoke in fart noises, who I could've done without. The passion that the filmmakers had for this idea really shines through, there's a genuine heart to it that a lot of recent movies, Disney or otherwise, lack.
What's my biggest problem with the movie? Well, I think Terry Rossio and John Musker are on to something with the film's portrayal of Jim Hawkins being a turn-off for audiences. I dunno, I didn't find moody teenage rebel Jim Hawkins that engaging, especially since he's surrounded by far more colorful side characters. Was this solely why the film underperformed? No. I still think it was a combination of the lousy release date, the films it was up against (even then, I'm still not sure why people chose to see The Santa Clause 2 instead), and the clumsy marketing. If it had been fully CGI or even live action, it still would've underperformed.
But, until we invent time travel and we can go back to 2002 and ensue that the film does at least a LITTLE better at the box office (enough to be considered profitable, it doesn't need to be an Ice Age-level hit), the best we can do for Treasure Planet is raise awareness of it so folks who've never seen the film before will seek it out. You can find it on Disney Plus, after all.
* I have a book about the animation studio Disney opened in Florida that claims the "people don't like hand-drawn animation anymore" mindset actually got started in 1995, because Pocahontas didn't make as much money as Toy Story. Make of that what you will.
