8 Overlooked Animated Disney Films That Are Better Than You Think
2. Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Even though they failed so spectacularly at doing something different with The Black Cauldron, twenty years later Disney felt it should try again. The result was Atlantis: The Lost Empire, a visually resplendent film that came out just a little too late to be loved, as by its 2001 release the studios reputation was in decline. If it had surfaced a few years earlier when audiences were a lot more susceptible Disneys charms, reactions may have been a lot more positive (although some of the computer-enhanced designs wouldn't have been as impressive).
Reflecting the shift in mainstream cinema by becoming Disneys first sci-fi, Atlantis was half mythology-constructing epic, half period-adventure team-up. So its Stargate meets Indiana Jones? That's probably not a bad way of putting it, although that makes it sounds more derivative than it is.
Much of the praise has to go to the design: 1914 is authentically recreated with a steampunk-ish twist, while the world of Atlantis is a novel mash of different ancient civilisations shot through with a blue-luminescence. The design was worked on by Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy, so really that it excelled shouldn't be much of surprise.
The plot is a weaker element, with the silliness of the team who set out to discover the lost city (in both their varied designs and general interplay) clashing with the grand designs, but once the film actually gets to Atlantis and the films narrative ace is played (the people of the city have forgotten their own culture) things pick up. As a Disney film where laughs take a back seat for action, Atlantis is a strange concept, but if treated with an open-mind becomes a real treat.