Treasure Planet: review

2002, PG on Disney+, G on IMdB

Here’s a movie to charm kids and adults alike. It deserves sincere appreciation for its beautiful adaptation of the 1883 book Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, famous for “buccaneers and buried gold.” 

Perhaps Treasure Planet charmed me most because I had read the book as a kid. The close plot and character connections brought back the pleasures of the book with the film’s active characters and entirely new, imaginative scenery, including fantastical space vistas (i.e. not just black background with white dots).

The protagonist is Jim, a teen who defies death for sport and lets his rebellious streak and craving for adventure take him places. This satisfies any restless kid or adult’s fantasy that their readiness to seize the day be matched by the right adventure at their doorstep. The other characters are named as per the book and voiced by a fantastic cast: Emma Thompson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Roscoe Lee Browne, etc. Martin Short voicing the robot, B.E.N., predates Robin William’s very similar-looking and sometimes similar-sounding robot character in 2005’s Robots.

The great script with voices that match personalities, attitudes, and physiques so well makes every bit of dialogue an adventure. Notice the character contrasts: serious vs humorous, big vs tiny, human vs alien/mechanical, etc. What adds to the overall charm is that seemingly needless activities (mother blowing a raspberry on her toddler’s tummy, a friend’s failed attempt to defend Jim from monotone police bots, etc.) solicits viewers’ buy-in and sweetens the connections with characters.  

Treasure Planet picks up on multiple sci-fi tropes. For example, the music is sometimes reminiscent of John Williams’ Star Wars scores. The cyborg features in the place of a pirate (Stevenson’s “beware the one-legged seafaring man” becomes “beware the cyborg”), which makes one wonder what one-legged, treasure-hungry, vengeful pirates have to say about being human. And there’s the ever-popular trope of a mysterious sphere, a recent iteration appearing in Ashoka.  

My favourite lines are delivered by Dr. Doppler, the astronomer, in a medical crisis: “Dang it, Jim. I’m an astronomer, not a doctor! I mean, I am a doctor, but I’m not that kind of doctor. I have a doctorate, it’s not the same thing. You can’t help people with a doctorate. You just sit there and you’re useless!”

Favourite sweet line many of us crave to hear: “Look atcha, Jim … you’re gonna rattle the stars, you are.” 

Treasure Planet review written by: Jazmine Lawrence, Captain (Retired, RCAF), BSc Honours Physics, MA (Theology) student, future sci-fi author