Blank Check with Griffin & David - Treasure Planet with Emma Stefansky

Episode Date: March 7, 2021

This is the BOUNCE BABY!!! This week, the gang heads to 2002’s Treasure Planet. But what would the Phil Collins bump have done for this movie? Can a CGI character have a wig, when everyone’s hair is fake? Should this movie have been called “Poochie Planet”?  They are joined by guest Emma “BOOKS” Stefansky (@stefabsky, entertainment staff writer @thrillist). Also, stick around until the end to hear what Ben thinks of all the Harry Potter movies, especially Dobby.  Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

Look at you glowing like a solar fire. You're something special, Jim. You're gonna podcast the stars you are. Now, Griff, this is just in your wheelhouse. You're back where you feel comfortable, I feel. After weeks of singing, you know, sometimes... Biting off more than I could chew. Right, sometimes like trying to take on a lot,

you know, but a salty, a salty pirate, space pirate? Excuse me, a salty old cyborg? A salty old space dog? Literally. I mean, he's literally, he's like a dog alien, right? He's like a cyborg dog alien.

It's unclear. Was actually trying to figure that out. Yes. What is he supposed to be? I think he's sort of supposed to be the same species as doppler because if you look it's the design is so weird it's hard to tell but he's got little like dog ears poking out from under his bandana he does and his nose kind of has a little little brownishness at the tip it looks a little like a dog nose. Yeah, he could be like a Doberman, right? You know, like

sort of a big droopy dog or something. I don't know. But it's tough because he's also very fat. He's a big boy. And he's a cyborg. And those become the two defining characteristics in a way. He's got robot bits.

He's got ro-bits's got row bits literally some of his bits are row yeah now listen to me blank check you got the makings of greatness in you but you got to take the helm and chart your own course i i agree john six years in we still it's just the makings of greatness the makings of greatness wait what about it's such a bizarre casting choice too brian murray as john silver yeah you got brian murray who's like a south african theater actor who has like five movie credits total like barely worked on camera worked very little on tv got a number of t Tony nominations in his lifetime. And they're just like, you're the linchpin of this entire movie.

Yeah, he's great. It's a great performance. He's very good. That must be why, right? Like he must have just come in and knocked their socks off or something. But he's got two video games to his credit, though. Treasure Planet. Mm hmm.

And I just looked this up. The other one's called like Treasure Planet race to halcyon or something battle it broken whatever that is it's got skirmishes epic 3d ship battles right it's five years later when jim is an admiral and it's a fucking ship battle game sounds pretty good yeah uh folks this is a podcast about filmographies directors who have massive success early on in their career and give a series of blank checks make whatever crazy passion projects they want sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby and of course the podcast is called blank check with griffin and david i'm griffin i'm david you you you went from a different angle, but that's okay. You went

through a portal or something. It wasn't deliberate. It was an accidental temporal pincer movement. Right. You just got so excited to explain the premise of our show. I did. Also, my brain is perpetually in a turnstile these days. Doing great, doing great. But this is a miniseries on the films of Musker and Clements, the Disney directors. Their career works as a pretty good microcosm of the rise and fall and rise again of the Disney renaissance. And this is the reason why they have a narrative

that felt like it could fit into this podcast. Not the other Disney directors do. As much as all the Disney guys at this time period were kind of company men, and it's hard to totally separate what their individual styles are, this was such a passion project, such a blank check movie,

and such a bounce. And then they get to sort of redeem themselves twice after this. It gave it such a nice shape as a miniseries. This is the valley, and it's a good valley. Yeah. And, you know, we've mentioned Trousdale and Wise, right? Because they have Atlantis, which I guess.

But they only have three movies. They have Beauty and Beast, Hunchback and Atlantis. So it's a little less of an arc. Yeah. This has a real arc and they're retired now. So it seems like the arc is completed. But of course, it's a miniseries called the arc is uh completed uh but of course it's a mini series called the puddle mercast of course it is i will say today on reddit i saw people guessing

what the mini series title was going to be and for the first time i saw the puddle mercast typed out not great well i i typed it out because i sent it to Pat. Pat Reynolds. For the art. Great Pat Reynolds. And yeah, when I typed it out, I was like, yeah, you know, I don't know. This doesn't, it kind of looks like, you know, Pottle looks like mottled. You know what I mean? So that's sort of what I was getting. I kind of liked it, actually. Pottle Murkass sounds like the name of like a crewman in this movie movie it sounds like the name of an alien pirate

ah you know i they call me puddle murcast emma do you like the name what do you think because this thing we always have guests on before they even know what it's you know it's before it's even started uh yeah this is this is my first time hearing it i i'm imagining it spelled out right now like in front of my eyes um i like it it's weird it's weird it's weird like um what's his name fuck jughead jughead's the one who's weird right yeah he's weird he's a weirdo it's weird like jughead you know how jughead he has a monologue where he's like i'm weird like he like has a definitive like basically like Tumblr just emerges from his mouth. He just explains that he is different.

And I think about it all the time. Do you watch Riverdale, David, or do you just know this through osmosis meme culture? I watched the pilot and I was like, I get it. It's like Archie plus twin peaks. And I watched the second episode and I was like,

I'm sick of this. I don't like it. And that was that. I think we're like six seasons in now. How long has that show been running? I think it's five. Five? No, only four.

Wow. God, it feels longer. I guess the fifth season's about to premiere. That's where we're at. I don't know. It's weird. I wonder if there's a reason why the last four years in particular have felt much longer than they actually were. That specific span of time. last four years in particular have felt much longer than they actually were that specific

span of time you tell me a show premiered in the fall of 2016 and it feels like it's been on twice as long as it has i'm giving you a big smile today we're talking about treasure planet bounce baby wait this movie bounced guys huh oh it bounced all over the fucking universe i i didn't look up the weekend numbers but i saw the final domestic total and i truly did not think in my mind that it had bounced this hard disney movies they're not allowed to make that little money yeah that's just not allowed i imagine if you adjusted for inflation there is is no Disney animated film, like a proper main studio animated film that came close to bombing this heart. Right. I mean, how much did Atlantis make? I feel like Atlantis made like 60 or 70.

It made, yeah, 84. Much better. Still not great, but yeah. That was seen as a flop. And then Treasure Planet said, hold my mead and came in. Hold my rum. I don't know. What a fucking space pirates drink. What about Brother Bear, though? Brother Bear? Brother Bear made like 80 or 90 or something.

Had the Phil Collins bump. It did get that Collins bump. It made 85. Yeah, that's the thing. This is the era where like Emperor's New Groove is seen as a disappointment um it made 85 yeah that's the thing this is the era where like emperor's new groove is seen as a disappointment because it made like 90 you know atlantis and brother bear end up in the 80s like they're like those are bombs and then this just redefines what the basement is i'll tell you what the one that and it didn't do as bad as treasure planet but close

was home on the range home on the range topped out at out at 50. That's the last one. That's a fart. That's them just going like, we're legally obligated to release this movie. Imagine releasing a film with Roseanne as the star in 2004. That sort of like summed up where Disney was in 2004, where they're like, Roseanne's still cool, right? And everyone's like, who?

What? Roseanne is not cool. Roseanne is not a person we need. That's like the absolute nadir of Roseanne. Yes, that's one of those movies where it had like an incredibly tortured Emperor's New Groove style birthing process where it started out as an entirely different movie and then barely resembled the original idea. But it was originally supposed to be a film called, I believe,

Sweat and Bullets about talking sentient bullets. That's correct. Right. And then like the whole cast remained the same, but it somehow became a ranch movie. Yeah. It was going to be a bullet musical, a Western musical. And it came up with it right after Pocahontas. K.D. Lang was going to do the whole score.

It was and Roseanne's in it. It was like the mid 90s, baby. And then they were likeontas, K.D. Lang was going to do the whole score. And Roseanne's in it. It was like the mid-90s, baby. And then they were like, oh, God. Oh, shit, it's 2004. You guys are still interested in our, oh, no, you don't want it? Oh, no. Okay. But it was Roseanne and Cuba Gooding Jr. in like 1995.

And they were like, we got the two biggest stars signed up. And the movie comes out a decade later. And everyone's like, just pretend it doesn't exist. And even that outgrows Treasure Planet. What about Meet the Robinsons? That did bad, right? No, that did like a hundred million. Yeah, I felt like that movie was pretty popular.

This is rough. It's so mean to Treasure Planet. Once they pivot to CGI, all of them start doing better. That's the thing. Like, even if they were expensive. Right. They just sort of automatically, right. Right.

Like, Chicken Little did like 140. Meet the Robinsons did 100. Bolt did 130 or something. Chicken Little had the Braff bun. It had the Braff bun. Do you think? No. You know what?

I'm not going to make a joke about Zach Braff. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to be a bigger man in 2021. I'm above a Braff joke. Our guests today should know that they do have permission to make a Braff joke if they want. And it's no pressure. They don't have to. They don't have to fill the void left by David's lack of a Braff joke. It's a free society. I really I don't have one in me. i didn't i didn't prepare anything about about braff i mean i was just thinking look no i don't want to make it i don't want to make the braff joke i don't want to do it i think i think you do i just well because he's in chicken little right he's the he is the titular little chicken chicken little and florence pew his partner I assume they're still together yes was born in

1996 and Chicken Little came out when 2006 2004 I believe so she was 8 years old it's 4 or 5 when it came out so I'm just wondering if she like first was exposed to Zach Braff when he was playing a cartoon chicken I was just thinking about it probably

probably and I wanted to make a joke about it but you know what I'm I wanted to make a joke about it, but you know what? I'm sure they're happy together in their nice house with their big kitchen. I think the way that Sexy Fox Robin Hood was a real eye-opening film for a lot of young children, I think Florence Pugh had her sexual awakening watching Chicken Little as an eight-year-old. See, this is the kind of joke I didn't want to make and i i brought it on this podcast it's been made now it's been made now ford's pew became a woman when she saw chicken no no all right okay cut it all out keep it in and double it gary marshall is the second lady plays buck cluck, it's a weird fucking movie. Patrick Stewart's the villain.

Do you know what the plot of the Chicken Little movie is? The sky is falling. Okay, right. So we all know, Chicken Little, the sky is falling. Emma, did you see this movie? I feel like I did. Isn't it like Aliens? Yes.

Thank you, Emma. The premise of the movie, the hook to the movie is Chicken Little says the sky is falling. Everyone says he's a liar and he's wrong. He doesn't understand. It turns out, in fact, classic Chicken Little situation. Right. It turns out, in fact, there are aliens who have created like a weird video screen in the sky to make it look like they're not about to invade the planet.

And one of the tiles of that video screen is what fell out and hit Chicken Little in the head. And so he's the only person trying to warn people about an oncoming alien invasion. There you go. That sounds like a good movie. The logical modern retelling of the Chicken Little story. Right, right. It's like War of the Worlds combined with the Truman Show starring a chicken.

I'm just trying to imagine Bob Iger, you know, at Show West being like, so we thought, what's the 21st century chicken little story right and then he like advances a slide or something you know like you know like that's what that's just how it sounds to me but you also have to remember that's one of the ones that he kind of like inherited they were like so you guys are making i didn't mean to to shiv eiger i was just sort of thinking any disney ceo insert disney ceo here they also just so badly wanted to make movies that did not feel like treasure planet and did not feel like pocahontas like they didn't want to make princess musicals and they didn't

want to make this kind of earnest adventure world you know. Right. Everything had to be sort of Shrek-y, post-modern, you know, kids' adventures and fun. Yeah. I don't think I like this movie as much as our guest. Have we introduced our guest? We have to do that. I don't know how you feel about Treasure Planet Griffin, but it doesn't do anything that's annoying

about modern animation, basically. Or it avoids so much of the shit that I don't like. And I just have to give it props for that alone. And we'll talk about all the other, but you know what I mean? There's no fucking bullshit. Right. And one could argue it was punished for that at the American box office.

Exactly. They were like, where's all the bullshit? This thing needs to have more bullshit. Yeah. And not only was it like such a calamitous failure, this is the movie that that kind of put the final nail in the coffin for a hand drawn animation, I would say, because it's like after this, they go like stop every movie that isn't far enough, too far along to cancel.

Right. Right. So it's like the brother bear and home in the range they're just they're right they make it out it was too late to to fucking cut your losses on those two but everything grinds to a halt after the release of this movie tangled which would have been i think next up hand-drawn originally and then uh it went through many titles would be so much better if it was the movie that ended up being frozen was in development at this point it was the ice princess or the snow queen or went through

8 000 different titles but doing some variation on a snow queen movie uh this this just ends everything and also ends even other studios attempting to make anything like this again it scares everyone off of all of this no bullshit kind of classical animation and our guest loves it she's the queen of the bugs what an intro you know her by her nickname her nickname of course or not even nickname. Let me say her famous catchphrase. Bugs. Bugs. Mm hmm. I say that all the time.

She's the queen of the bugs. But her catchphrase on this podcast is bugs. Wait, is that from Miss Peregrine? I don't even remember. Oh, I think I remember saying that once. Yeah, I was trying to start a sentence and I didn't couldn't finish it i think i was setting you up saying emma you you love books right and you went yeah that's the kind of energy we need in 2021 is we're gonna tackle all this country's problems uh emma stefanski hi folks thrillist she's Thrillist. She's at Thrillist.com. I am at Thrillist.com.

And actually, I come with a fact. I come with many facts today, but I do come with an answer to your question from the beginning of this podcast, which was, what is John Silver's alien race? He is an alien. He's something called an Ursid, which is like a man bear which you don't really yeah that's why he sort of looks a little bit animally yeah i thought he was dog-like but but i see it yeah it's subtle hints of animal his hands have that they're the one hand has like the little claw fingernails the other hands are robot hand just yeah honest

with you yeah i don't know if i don't know if you caught that i know you've seen this film multiple times but there's a very subtle detail in this movie which is that he's got a robot arm you know finally i finally caught that this time watching it but i'm glad that you reminded me yeah a robot hole half of his body eagle-eyed viewers my catch we should we should make a list you should submit this to Thrillist Emma for to time out with when this episode comes out like 30 treasure planet easter eggs you might have missed that's a really good idea I'll give you a couple of them quickly uh the treasure is in a planet true uh silver is part rub it uh-huh sure yep okay uh the the uh ship is a spaceship but it's also like a

a sea ship it's got sails it's like a right it's like a space uh sea ship uh jim hawkins is a surfer wait don't write that down yet i didn't't finish. He's a solar surfer. Hell yeah. He's tubular. He's radical. That's the most bullshit adjacent this movie gets is opening with like, this guy does extreme sports in space. Oh yeah.

He grinds. He grinds like the cosmos. It's cool. But I'm just saying that's like the number one thing that almost feels like a studio note where it's just like. That and the Goo Goo Dolls song are the two things where you're like well this isn't right but those are the two things I love about the movie of course no I but this is the thing I don't even think either of those things are bad I just think in 2002 people were like no you can't fool me Disney I know you guys are a bunch of cheesy clowns i you know i don't think you're

cool just because you have a a guy with a ponytail on a surfboard thing like you're not gonna fool me it's funny i was just thinking about like this titan ae and atlantis kind of function as a trilogy right this attempt to shift the perception of hand-drawn animation to like, wait, what if hand-drawn animated films are actually sci-fi action movies? And I think it's a response to Pixar. Yes, sure, sure. But they're all sort of

a little steampunky, which is sort of cool at the time. And they're all like... Still cool. You know, so cool. And they're all like hand-drawn animation with lots of 3d elements so it can seem like dazzling and modern right and and floppy haired boy characters they all have the hair that does this they all do that even the guy um in anastasia dimitri he has that hair too dimititri, the weirdest of all of them.

It's like the Brendan Fraser hairdo where you got the hair curtains or as I sometimes like to call it, the boy Rachel. There's something about Dimitri and we will talk about Anastasia one day because we'll do Bluth. At some point. And we'll talk about Titan A.A.

That's also Bluth, that's right. That's also Bluth. That's also Bluth. I thought you'd like that about dimitri he looks too much like john cusack they give him like full cheeks or something just to like make him look a little more grown up and it makes him look like a creep to me his chin is really distracting when you get the chin like on the profile i remember watching the movie as a kid and being like, this man, he looks like an old man. He's like, this is not a young guy. Too grown up.

Here, wait, I'm going to do it. I'm going to make it my background. I now want everyone to weigh in. See, I think he looks exactly like Billy Zane in Titanic. He does. Yes. Yeah, he's got a little of that. Sure.

Right. Yeah. Was that what they were going for? I don know because it was before titanic right or the same year but it's weird like his hair looks like a wig like billy zane and titanic even though it's an animated movie everyone's hair is fake somehow his hair looks particularly fake right i'm like is this guy have a rug? What's up with Dimitri? What's going on with this guy?

Wait, this one's even weirder. Like what? Yes, this. What's up with this? He's weird. I'm not turned on by this guy. I don't want to run away with him. That weird sort of crevice only on one side of his mouth.

Yeah, right. I think it's something about how Bluth animates. Yeah. Slightly more realistic. The Titan AE guy is the same. He sort of has that same like face shape. Now Titan AE guy is Damon. Is it Matt Damon?

Yeah, yeah. Matt Damon, Michael J. Fox, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are the three heroes of these three animated action films. The trifecta. The gang. I'm going to give you.

And this is a, you know what? I knew this was Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I remember it from the time. And this is like. Yep, there he is. It's almost the exact same face. It's weird. I'll say this too.

Jim Hawkins is like the exact same haircut as this, where it's like the Rachel, but then with the undercut in the back and the sides. But then Jim Hawkins adds the Padawan braid. He's got the braided ponytail coming just out of the back of the neck, the nape of the neck, but there's no other hair around that. Everything else around the braided ponytail is shaved.

It's like the cool, like, 90s boy hairstyle that wasn't, like, frosted tips. Jonathan Taylor Thomas adjacent, I would say. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, Joseph Gordon-Levitt doesn't really sound like your impression of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in this movie until there's a few moments at the end

when he's getting more serious, that he gets a little more, like, loaded dye. of joseph gordon levitt in this movie until there's a few moments at the end that you can't when he's getting more serious that he gets a little more like loaded die yeah i i think this i was trying to sort of like carbon date this and joseph gordon levitt really did a sort of a soft gosling of just deciding like i don't want to be seen as a child star anymore i've decided this is how i'm gonna talk right like he sort of did a complete vocal change. Agreed. Because I think he was such, like, he wasn't like a child superstar, but he was a very visible child star.

He was in a lot of stuff. He was on fucking primetime television for the better part of a decade. He was like known and he was very squeaky voiced, which is how he sounds in this. Like, he sounded more like me where he's just like come on silver right you know like he's there's almost like a michael j fox kind of thing there and this movie because animation takes so long and especially at this point in time i feel like disney would often try to like guess who would maybe be a star three or four years in the future like they were like oh jose oh, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Third Rock's ending, is he gonna become

a leading man? But this coincides with Jogo soft retiring. He had this period where he was like, I kinda got burnt out on acting after I left Third Rock from the sun. I've been doing it since I was a kid. I didn't know if I wanted to do it anymore. And I, like, left, and I sort of went on my, like, soul-searching journey.

And then I came back to acting with, like, a renewed passion, started doing all these Sundance movies right yeah that's you know mysterious skin and brick and havoc you know that's where it's like oh wow like jay chose the gordon levitt's all grown up this is this is coming out one year after third rock from the sun goes off the air this this movie treasure planet right that's the thing so i remember him doing press for this movie but also sort of being like i may be kind of walking away from all of this shit when i say press for this movie i remember him doing like a fucking movie surfers episode or whatever but seeming uncomfortable that he had to even promote this movie and uh yeah then he comes back in a couple years and he has like mysterious skin and brick at sundance and then

he's like done the octave shift down where now he's he's he's right. He's he's got the like the soft Keanu thing going on, you know, but it feels like he made a conscious decision. I mean, I know he's playing younger than he is in this movie, so perhaps he was trying to play up the youthful elements. play up the youthful elements but this watching this just reminds you how fundamentally his different his voice used to be which also underlines why i am so fascinated with the way he talks now because it does feel like a 40 year old man still trying to prove to people i am a grown-up i am not a child star this is how an adult man talks oh boy, boy. Treasure Planet. So, Griffin. Yes. Ron Clements and John Musker's

Passion Project. We're here to talk about it. They pitched it 1985. This film was almost 20 years in development. You knew this, Emma, right? Yeah, they kept telling him no. Yeah, they kept saying no.

We talked about how Disney, Eisner, and Katzenberg kept on Lucy Van Pelting this movie as the football to Musgrave and Clemens Charlie Brown. But the thing I just – I found while digging back into this movie in particular is that it was after Aladdin, when that was so big, that – and they were just like, sorry, we just don't like this pitch, they went up to Roy Disney, we promise we will take Treasure Planet seriously after that. But it was like contingent on doing another movie first. And I think they hoped that maybe somehow they would slip out of actually having to take Treasure Planet to the finish line. But they did. They did finally do it. They did.

I mean, Katzenberg was gone at that point. Yes. Yeah, he didn't have to oversee this. That's a good point. Right. Katzenberg's gone at that point. Yes. Yeah, he didn't have to oversee this. That's a good point. Right. Katzenberg's gone at that point. But yeah, no. And also, well, we'll talk about it. But like by the time they're actually making it, the technology is there for them to make this sort of dramatic looking movie that maybe they couldn't have made in 1985. Absolutely. Now. Yeah, well, that's what they did is they waited a little bit. They waited. Emma, you love this movie. You're a big fan. I'm a huge fan, yeah.

You've seen it a number of times. I can recite the whole thing. That's what David said, and I didn't know if he was exaggerating or not, but you really think you can recite the entire movie. On the clearest of nights, the winds of the Ethereum were calm and peaceful. Great merchant ships with their cargos of Arcturian solar crystals felt safe and secure secure little did they suspect that they were pursued by pirates

not not an easy start arcturian like what like there's a bunch of words getting thrown at you right away yeah i mean you absolutely called my bluff there, Emma. Did not. Yeah, so, Emma, this film came out Thanksgiving time, 2002. Now, I was 16 years old. I did not see this film. I thought this film looked stupid. I probably would have said something to that effect because I was a cool teenager and I was like, what's this shit?

Treasure Planet. Disney's out of ideas. Get out of here. effect because i was a cool teenager and i was like what's this shit treasure planet disney's out of ideas get out of here yeah no you a famously cool teenager you definitely said something to that effect to your friends on the oscar watch message boards roast me um absolutely that's the thing yes i was not cool at all but i was sort of like oh i'm not seeing that now griffin in 2002 you would have been what 13 ish i was 13 i i i mean i remember vividly that all of my friends thought this looked stupid no one would have been caught dead in the theater seeing this my mulligan was that i had a much younger sister sister so right so so romilly was I was 13. Romilly would have been four when this movie came out. So I like right at the age when all of my friends no longer wanted to see animated movies, I used the get out of jail card of like, oh, I'm just taking my sister to them. But I wanted to see every animated movie. I would have been having a crisis figuring out how to go see these movies without letting anyone know had i not had a little sister romilly honestly too young for this did you really take

rom yeah absolutely i my mom and romley and i went to see this and i i just remember even as a four-year-old the kind of active disinterest romley clearly had the entire running time she she wasn't even scared or bored it was there was just like an absence of a movie happening in front of her but so but did you what was your opinion of treasure planet i'm going around the room here uh at the time i you know i was still a big animation nerd but sort of trying to hide it from my friends to a degree. And I knew somewhat about the legacy for this movie. And I also think I wanted this shift to work. I liked the idea of, oh my God, what if Disney,

what if hand-drawn animation can reclassify itself as fucking sci-fi action movies? Then will they be cool to see again? Do I not have to give up on this? And the first two had not really worked, right? Right, Titan A and the other two had not really worked right right titani and uh the other one we were just talking about yep atlantis yeah yeah uh which i mean actually ends up being the most successful of the the three of these movies but treasure planet had this like amazing teaser trailer it had a teaser trailer where it used john williams score

from far and away and it has like almost no dialogue in it and it's just kind of the best money shots of the ships and the surfing and all that sort of shit and it felt really epic and i was like oh they might pull this off like they might actually make this movie seem cool to teenagers and then by the time it came out, you had like a trailer with fucking floppy dog-eared David Hyde Pierce alien. I was like, I am never convincing any friend of mine to go see this. It is done. But I think, I guess at least it will probably be a hit with families. And then I just remember going to see it with Romney, my mother, Thanksgiving weekend, probably. We saw it at the um second avenue and 12th street theater

which uh for those of you who don't know don't live in new york city it's this uh independent uh multiplex that has one incredible like old movie palace screen it looks like a synagogue it's this beautiful giant temple yes uh you can uh look it up city cinemas uh second avenue and 12th street and see pictures of it it looks like an opera hall and any movie seen at that screen opening weekend tended to feel even more epic and i just remember going to see it and there being three other people in the theater and being like this movie is so radically uncool and i kind of liked it. I didn't love it. I would have loved to have loved it. I respected it a lot. And for the last 20 years, I've sort of I've never revisited, but I've always gone like if I watch that today, what I think this is a secret masterpiece.

It's one of the reasons I so badly wanted to do Musker and Clements. And I feel pretty much exactly the same as i did in theaters you liked it but didn't leave sure okay okay now ben i'm assuming you did not see the film in theaters despite it having ben energy no i did not um i was 17 years old this was the furthest from my mind possibly i mean you were here right as we talking off mic, just a lot of Ben things in this movie. Oh, absolutely. So many things. Yeah.

I mean, I just saw this for the first time a few mere hours ago, and I'm excited to get into all the details because there's some really fucking fun space dog pirate ass shady characters. It's a little shady. little shady yeah Emma's pumping her fists Arsenio Hall audience style yep I did have the thought watching this movie like 30 minutes in if this exact same script was done in 2002 as like a live-action movie directed by Stephen Summers it would have been a hit I was was literally going to say not exactly that same thing, but like this is could be translated easily to live action.

This is that kind of thing. Yeah. And I think it would have worked. I think it like Ben would have absolutely have gone to see this in theaters if it were live action. Right. If this movie had the same visual aesthetic, but was done with 2002 era CGI. Definitely.

You would have gone like, oh, that looks cool. It's fucking space pirates. And the fact that it was like a Disney movie, just it killed both audiences at the same time. Like anyone who liked Disney was like, this doesn't look like what I like about Disney. And anyone who wanted to see a fucking salty space pirate movie was like,

why are they all adorable? Right. All right. Now, okay. So Emma, you're the star here in terms of seeing Treasure Planet. But did you see it in theaters in 2002? I did. I did.

I went to see it with a friend of mine. You would have been, I'm guessing, around 10? I was still nine at that point. That was the year I turned 10, but I was still nine. Right. You're a December birthday. I went with a friend. We both saw it. We both loved it. We both had the same reaction we're like this movie rules and i didn't know for probably years that it was like not a popular like that it was a huge flop i had no idea

i showed this to my friends at like sleepovers and everyone was like oh yeah this rules and we were just in this blissful bubble not aware that you know you know this like tanked drawn animation around the world essentially yeah right it was it was an art form killer i guess not around the world because japan and so on still happily hand draw things. We still get hand drawn. But in America, yes. In Hollywood, at least. Yes.

Yeah, I did not know that. So you just loved it. You converted friends to it and you kept the torch aflame all these many years. I was drawing a lot back then. I still do. And my art style was very obviously influenced by this movie i was drawing a lot of like creatures i drew a lot of ships like this type of ship uh yeah this was it was way deep into my head never coming out i mean this was a big thought i had watching this film. Like just, I kept on just thinking like, Oh, what an odd duck

this is. Right. Like just what an obviously like everything I like about it is, is directly tied to why it could not find an audience in 2002, why it just landed with a thud. But the movie, this most reminds me of is Jupiter asciter ascending yeah jupiter ascending i and i think it's why i've always said that movie like hit people the wrong way is that like people were like oh it's a fucking cool ass wachowski space movie and they were like no it's like secretly a disney movie like we're making a disney movie with fucking animal aliens and like bobbly gold spaceships and shit and this movie feels like the same kind of thing that's very true about jupiter ascending right it's the it's the flip

side of the young incongruity because you're always like oh jupiter ascending right like that thing is a fucking phantasmagorian it's like no it's about this special girl who has a golden telescope who looks into the stars and like wishes she was good, you know, and she's a janitor. And then she turns out she's a princess, you know, like she's an alien princess. It's got that sort of like goofy fairy tale sincerity, which I think this movie has as well. And I mean, I think this film is better than Titan AE, but Titan AE sucks. Yeah, no, I agree. I know. I know. I know you agree. I'm just so annoyed because I rewatched it, I don't know, in the last couple of years. And I was like, come on, surely this is good.

And it's such a stinker. And I don't even know why. I'll say whenever we do Don Bluth and whenever we do Titan AE, Ben Edlund has one of the three screenwriting credits on that movie. And I want to have him on the episode to talk about whatever the weird process of that movie was. Cause I think he's alluded to it at times to me. And it sounds like it was a very weird development. That movie is not good. But my point I was going to say is that the movie, that movie does a better job of affecting a sort of hollow badass attitude right like really trying to go like this is not for kids it's pg-13 uh i forget who does the song for that movie but there's a similar kind of like goo goo dolls adjacent song song oh oh it's it's it's a fucking i'm in over my head lit my friend it's lit it's lit right and then atlantis has like the

mike mignola thing it's an original story it's structured a little bit more like an action film and the comic relief characters in it aren't like goofy animals and shit they're like like funny like they're like jerry bruckheimer comic relief characters you know and you you dig atlantis right emma that's another oh my god it's like maybe maybe second behind this one it's so cool i love it right but but there's just nothing badass about this movie which is what's so refreshing about watching it but it was just fucking doomed if you just think about like not just the pixar movement but shrek is the year before this right yeah so shrek has just fucking folded the entire disney kingdom like laundry like whatever chance there was of a teenage boy still being talked into

seeing a disney movie shrek just made everyone go like oh no, that stuff's stupid, right? I like Shrek. He farts and shit. There's farts in this movie, though. There are, but they're such, like, Nickelodeon farts. Yeah, that's true. They're not, like, gross, necessarily, or, like, as wet as Shrek. Yeah, and then Stitch comes out this exact same year as well, which is sort of Disney hand-drawn doing their own Shrek. We talked about how the Stitch campaign, the marketing campaign was all based around like, he's the bad boy of the Disney family.

This guy's a freak. whatever uh but it was just like this movie just had no fucking shot and it is fascinating that stitch was like made by like the weird b team in like you know i think it was literally animated in hawaii is that possible i i couldn't tell you but i'll try and find out right now it was not the main animation studio it was like a satellite studio they set up it was not the main animation studio. It's like a satellite studio. They set up. It was a much smaller movie, smaller budget meant to just sort of be a programmer. This was their big epic holiday release. And then Stitch was a huge hit. This was their biggest bomb ever.

And this was such a bomb that even Stitch, having come out fucking six months later, earlier, couldn't have saved hand-drawn animation. You know, I couldn't i couldn't i don't see any evidence that they actually worked on it in hawaii but certainly obviously it has that sort of watercolor style that's and it's set in hawaii very nice and obviously um but like that's it i mean do you like lilo and stitch am? This is it's just. Yeah. This shit just always fascinates me in terms of like how you and I are the same generation. But like it's in the children's films where the gulfs are widest. We were talking about like childhood cartoons, I think, a few days ago. Absolutely.

That's another thing. What I was talking about. You were talking about Courage the Cowardly Dog. And what's another one you were talking about? you were talking about courage the cowardly dog and what's another one you were talking about i mean like my my touchstones would be like kim possible and teen titans right like code leo code weird shit like that i i and of course i've heard of all these things but like mine were like ren and stimpy and rugrats and you know rocko's modern life or whatever right like and it's just again like just that's just that's just happenstance it's whatever whatever's fucking on

when you're six years old Right? That's just the die that's cast Maybe not anymore with the streaming And all that, you know The streaming, Griffin But I also feel like this is Maybe the Disney movie with the least

Nostalgia around it Considering that the internet is now Fucking 20% Disney nostalgia Right? Like that's 20% of all content that the internet is now like fucking 20 disney nostalgia right like that's 20 of all content on the internet there's no princess which is an issue right because disney turns the princesses into like a linked universe somehow so it doesn't get to be part of that world the romance is a fucking comic subplot it's a dog and a cat having babies together. And they're both stuck up adults. They do. Stuck up adults voiced by great

actors. I just typed Treasure Planet into Tumblr though and I got some stuff. I got some kind of cool emo art. We're still out there. There's probably a little bit. Any Disney thing. But I agree with you Griffin that certainly this is an under discussed uh part of the franchise really though all all jack hawkins

which yeah you know you know here i'm gonna here here's i'm gonna make it my background guys this is exciting are you excited for this oh no this one i really like it's not it's not no come on there's a reason i don't look this shit ah fuck it doesn't he's wearing a sweater but it's oh god here i'll just link you to it you know who jack hawkins also looks like griffin jim jim sorry i'm sorry sorry sorry not jack harvey uh do you know who he looks like though griffin who the guy from um how to train Your Dragon as well also has that energy. Oh, Hiccup? Hiccup. You know, like the hair and the... Okay, now

Griffin, you've got this fucking disgusting Madame Tussauds doll, and I'm realizing what the problem with it is, is that the eyes are at cartoon size. Yeah. And on a mannequin that just looks insane. This is literally literally a madam tussauds

it was the first two fictional characters they ever included in any of their locations were jim hawkins and cyborg silver and the jim hawkins one is terrifying because it's like madam tussauds level realism applied to a fucking disney boy face. He looks like he has like pores in his skin even. Yes, he must. I mean, he's got rooted eyebrows and hair and like, yeah, realistic teeth and shit. It's terrifying. But yeah, no, it's I just think I even see more online nostalgia for Atlantis. And I also think it's notable that I have never once heard even a whisper of them remaking this. And the Atlantis rumors continue to go like, oh, Disney wants to do it with Tom Holland. Whether that's true or not, those rumors circulate.

I have not heard a murmur about doing this one again. It feels like the one that they're not even going to touch. It's's perfect the way that it is it's because it's perfect the way it is is that why tom holland is popular because he looked and i like tom holland i enjoy i enjoy the work of him but also he looks like the boy we're talking about like every single like you know treasure planet atlantis titan he just like that. That's just what he is. And he's got the voice. Like he said, oh, come on, Treasure Planet. Come on.

What are you talking about, guys? You want me to do a lip sync? Oh, I guess so. I guess I'll do it to Rihanna's umbrella. That's the thing. He's just fan casted as everything now. Every little guy. Right, right.

People want him to play fucking Link. They want him to play Milo. Of course they do. In Atlantis. They want him to play fucking link they want him to play milo of course they do in atlantis they want him to play every boy yeah he has a very like androgynously handsome boy face i think is the appeal like it's not a timothy chalamet situation where he's like all angles and shit like tom is very round yeah he does have a nice round face you want to you want to give him a little pinch. He's cute. And his American accent is good, but it sounds like a cartoon character. He speaks like a cartoon American boy. No, but you have,

he sounds like a tugboat. That's your old thing, Griffin. Oh, my thing was, but I was using that in a pejorative way. I said that Orlando Bloom in Elizabethtown sounds like a talking train who teaches you how to read do you know what this is a cat that's right someone that like an adult if they just hear the tones will be like oh god he's talking again

he picked up the book that talks. Oh, God. Oh, fuck. It's Orlando the train again. Oh, my God. Treasure Planet. Now, Emma, did you care about Treasure Island, the Robert Louis Stevenson book where you invested in the- The source material.

The source material. I'm sure that I had read like some abridged like children's version of it and i had seen i know that i had seen muppet treasure island before this another problem for this movie that's only seven six years before right yeah um and then i saw this and so and but then this became sort of in my mind like i've sort of thought like this is more or less an accurate like portrayal of the book besides the fact that you know everything and then i read the actual book and was like there's not this is different like i would i sort of felt like a little bit

separated from it just by the fact that i had seen this movie and had had that like notion in my head this whole time and then i read the book and was like, I don't know if I like this as much. Right. The skeleton of the plot is basically the same. You know, there's the Captain Flint and there's Ben Gunn is right. Yeah. You know, but yeah, no, it's not that similar.

I mean, for one, and you guys may not realize this because it's a subtle difference, but this film is set in outer space. Yeah, right. The entire treasure is a planet um griff do you you like muppet treasure island griffin i know i love muppet treasure island that's why i was gonna ask uh emma books stefanski do you think muppet treasure island is more faithful as an adaptation than this yeah it might be right i think it is because i think the most of the characters are the same right right this does this one kind of takes out a lot right right because the uh the david i pierce character droopy dog or whatever his name is

is like squire trelawney and he's the other guy right right yeah Right. Yes, Fozzie and Bunsen Honeydew or whatever. He's a Bunsen and a Fozzie, right. He's called Dr. Doppler, which is a cool name. Not a cool guy, though. He's kind of cool. I don't know if he's kind of cool. I think he's sweet and he's funny. I don't think we can use the word cool.

I like this movie, Emma. I'm here for the defense. I don't think we can use the word cool i like this movie emma i'm here for the defense i don't think we can use the word cool definitely not this is of course the just the golden age of david hyde pierce voice performances starting with a bug's life right you've got osmosis jones of course you've got this you've got hell boy i mean just do you do you need a squirrely, you know, nerdy guy? David Hyde Pierce is at your beck and call. He's the only one.

He's uptight. Like, that's his type. My man is uptight. I love David Hyde Pierce so much. He is the true definition of when's he back? He is never back. Yeah. Yeah.

No, you're right. You're absolutely right. He's he's so fucking good sideshow cecil terwilliger i feel like you left that off the list of his important late incredible though voiceover we have to right we must respect absolutely right yes but there's there's an early moment early on this film i was just like trying to clock as i was watching it i was remembering the feeling in the theater of being like i would never be able to convince any of my friends to stay in the theater right now if i was seeing this with other 13 year olds sure they would walk out that's what you're

thinking they'd be like we're out of here i truly i remember having that thought of like if i had gone to see this with friends they would say let's go to a different movie let's sneak out into a different screen is it like when i took my friends to see alexander, they would say, let's go to a different movie. Let's sneak out into a different screen. Is it like when I took my friends to see Alexander and they stayed through the entire three and a half hour movie only because they thought that for some reason Angelina Jolie was going to be naked in it. And then they were furious with me that she wasn't, even though I had promised them no such thing. Yeah. Also like Rosario Dawson has the most nudity anyone has ever had in that movie. There is nudity in the film, but I believe I even was like, what are you talking about? That was a sexy movie.

They were like, I can't believe you've done this. They were literally the vine of the angry British boy. Continue. I'm so sorry. The year after this, but I told everyone that Hulk ruled and then everyone like yelled at me. This is the origin of our podcast. Yeah, exactly. But the early chunk of the movie

where it's just like, you have the opening that Emma so beautifully recited. Emma's eyes, I want to say, glowed green as she did that, by the way. They did. Once the book is closed,

so to speak, and you're in the reality of like Jim Hawkins and his mother,y's mom uh the the movie is so squarely back in disney territory like it's got such an earnest disney vibe not just to the the look but the vocal performances and the energy and the score and all that sort of stuff and in that early chunk when like you're watching this movie that's ostensibly been sold

off of this largely wordless here's all the eye candy look at the explosions and the ships set to john williams music teaser trailer and then it's like oh you have three 90s sitcom stars having a talk in what looks like a colonial reenactment bar in space you know so it's like everyone is dressed up in like these like dorky period clothes despite being in the space and future and it's it's fucking the kid from third rock the aunt from rosanne and the brother from fraser and it's just like this this movie is i i think this movie is lovely. And then the guy from the prisoner shows up. That's not, you know.

Right, right. In his final vocal performance, there's something. So, I mean, so much of this movie's charm to me is that I don't think Musker and Clements have it in them to be strategically edgy. I mean, they cannot be cool. You know, it's just like, there's cool shit in this movie, but they cannot be like cool. Like they are incapable of putting a Poochie in a film.

And like, absolutely. And that's right. That's what, if this film were made by DreamWorks five years later, it would be fucking swimming in Poochies. It'd be called Poochie Planet probably. But like, you know, they do hercules and they're like our take on this is it's like a 40s screwball comedy like you know and they get away with it but like that's their energy their energy is not

gonna be this is radical and extreme like you know this is the kind of thing you can put in a sega genesis game like that's just not how they think can, you know, Disney can do its work to try and, you know, right. But like, you're right that they are. And like to think that this is the thing they had nursed. I know. I think I think it was Clements. Yeah, it was Clements who had nursed it the longest for for 20 years almost. They just have inherently goofy energy, which I think any listener of this

show will know I say as a compliment, but they have inherently goofy energy. And we talked in the Little Mermaid episode about how they seem to be, of all the Disney directors in this period, the ones who are the best at tonal balance. That when you get to the movies that are a little more self-serious, like pocahontas and hunchback and mulan the comic relief characters kind of butt up against like the very threatening villains and the more serious themes like it just feels a little bit uh misshaped and this movie doesn't have that problem because they choose to take all the elements that other people would have titan ae style tried to make seem cool and put them at the exact level as Doppler.

You know, like everything is working around harmonizing around the persnickety dog professor. Now, Emma, do you wish to intervene here and remind, tell us that no, this movie is actually the coolest or do you know what we're going for? I i mean no i understand i do i do think that it's cool i think that the opening when it goes from him as a little boy to like and then it says like 12 years later and the screen that's the only title thing that we ever get right uh and he's like on his solar thing and it's like that's cool that's cool and then the end when he's like doing the same thing with like the makeshift like you know wind board or whatever that's cool the storm is cool the ship itself is cool we should we could probably talk a lot about that i i want to i want to amend my

choice of words no no griff i think i think it was nothing wrong with what you said i just wanted amma to come in here but anyway sorry go ahead go amend your choice of gear a lot to him no but i do think there's a distinction I can draw here that will make this conversation easier. I think this film is successfully cool in a lot of the ways

you just cited. The distinction for me is there is nothing hip about this movie. Okay, sure. It's not a hip movie. There's nothing. It is incredibly proudly unhip.

And that is the thing that the other movies of this time were trying and failing to do to some degree. And this movie doesn't even try to play that game. It feels like an old story that some sailor would be telling you. A sea shanty. Very popular right now. Oh, yeah. A space shanty.

A space shanty. Now, but answer me this, though. Okay? Is everyone ready? Yeah. Okay. They're in these ships. They got sails. But they're out in the open. They're in space. How are they breathing?

There's an answer to this. There's an answer. Okay. I was wondering this, too. Okay, okay. Please, go ahead. I was like, rope in space? I don't know. I'm not sure about that. It's not really explained. And the word only appears once and it's in the intro.

It's like the fourth or fifth word in the entire movie. But they sail through this thing in space called the Aetherium, which is like these paths of air of atmosphere that like traverse space and this is how they get around from planet to planet is like they find air so that's how they can be on a deck breathing without like a suit all i needed to hear i love it because one that makes it like a skill right you got to navigate right these eddies you need all those weird little maps and shit and two that's way better than like oh it has like a force field you can't see which would be the boring answer right that's like the shitty answer this

that's way cooler this movie got an extra star from that from you saying that thank you it is such a fascinating choice that i deeply respect that they're like no it's just a pirate ship in space right exactly as as ben said it still seems to be largely constructed out of wood it has ropes there aren't lasers there isn't a dome over it when they go into like the fucking cook's quarters, it looks incredibly rustic and shitty. Like it's it's just this can fly in space. It's it's such a clear like it speaks to the dorky little boy in in Musker and Clemens each that they're just like, why would we change the design? Pirate ships are cool. Yeah.

Just put a pirate ship in the stars. The ship looks cool. Yeah, it does look cool. Ships are cool yeah just put a pirate ship in the stars the ship looks cool yeah um it does look cool ships are cool i mean the old sea ships are cool uh i assume griff you've heard you know that there was this the 70 30 law right their sort of design philosophy was that everything should be 70 traditional 30 sci-fi sci-fi, right? Like never go to sci-fi because then you're going to be on an enterprise. You're going to have metal, you're going to have neon, you're going to have... Right. Then you'll just be a space movie. And that's not what we're going for here. And that makes sense to me. I like that guiding principle.

They wanted it to be warmer and more welcoming and not all metal and vacuum and scary. They wanted it to be sort of like an ocean movie without actually setting it in the ocean. The closest one of these movies comes to being almost a straight hybrid, you know, because we talked about Musker and Clements really kind of pioneer the integration of CGI into hand drawn. But it often was just for one character or for one sequence or for one element or something. And this has like 30 percent of Silver as a character is CGI. All his cyborg parts are CGI, down to even his eye is CGI at every moment. Love that eye. Working around hand-drawn, you know? Ben is CGI, the ships are CGI, some of the environments are CGI. Wait, producer Ben is CGI?

This whole time? This whole time. I'll say, I mean, people have been complaining that we've been forgetting the nicknames but this one's a slam dunk your nickname for this is just ben that's your fucking musker clements nickname love it that's for bioelectronic navigator uh it's it's a really interesting combination it's a thing we've probably uh repeated to death over the course of doing these episodes but as we're re-watching these movies comparing them to the modern studio animation landscape it's like it's a bummer that hand-drawn was thrown out so entirely because there's so much potential in combining the two and this one looks like particularly smooth in a way that a lot of older and even like just a few years older

animated movies that this did not no yeah there's just a really like carefully designed way that they did the motion in this i guess probably to work with the fact that a lot of it a lot of the background stuff was cg so that it wouldn't look to like like two different things trying to be one thing uh this was far and away and still is the most expensive hand-drawn animated film in history so aside from it just belly flopping at the box office it was also the biggest spend disney had ever done on one of these 140 million dollars in 2002 that's a lot of money 140 20 years ago is pretty wild um it's a kind of treasure that a pirate would want

there's also this thing is that uh did that did that come through okay sorry absolutely disney always prided themselves on sort of fluid character animation but this one is like like liquid as you said emma when you watch likepler speak, it's just so fun to look at him. Like I love just looking at like his mouth movements and his eyes, like, and whenever he talks, I'm like, I'm dialed in 100%. Well, and Silver is so impressive. He's great.

Even if you remove the CGI elements and you just look at like the face acting and his body and everything, he's so fluid, but also he's so detailed. Like it's the exact kind of thing that these studios usually try to shy away from because the more detailed a character is the harder it is to animate the more lines and shapes you have to track at every point and he's wearing all these layers he's got all this kibble on him he's got all these rolls in his flesh and everything and

and his animation is unbelievable and then you add the cgi pieces onto it it's pretty stunning that's the glenn keen uh job in this movie unsurprisingly yes yeah i read some interview where someone was like that's like what glenn keen is like like saying that glenn keen kind of has long john silver energy which seems like fun that seems like good energy he's a fun guy just like a garrulous guy it's one of the things that i think makes um long john silver in all adaptations in all versions such a powerful kind of evergreen character is that he it really is hard to track his allegiances at any moment.

And I think this movie does a particularly good job with that characterization, especially with the Brian Murray performance. But just where you genuinely question at every point in time whether or not he's being sincere. When he's being rough and rowdy, you question whether that's an act. And when he's being nice to Jim, you question whether that's an act. Well, he has that whole thing where he like right after he gives him the big talk, he's like, oh, boy, I better like, you know, toughen up. They don't want to I don't want them to see this side of me. Right. There there is as much as he is genuinely a scary character, there is a genuine warmth and pathos to him. There is a genuine warmth and pathos to him. And I think this script does a really good job of underlining the emotional longing of how much he's committed himself to this goal of finding the treasure. It feels like they frontline more than the sort of greed of I want all that treasure. The idea where it's just like, you don't understand what I've given up in pursuit of this fucking thing. He has a great line at the at the end. I know I'm moving ahead. But there's a great line where Jim is like when they're running out of the exploding shit.

And he's like, why? Why did you come back? And he's like, Oh, it's a lifelong obsession. I'll get over it. And then the ship comes and picks them up. I just think that's such a great moment. In the book, he knew captain flint right that was the whole thing yes in this obviously that's not possible because it's hundreds of years right because he's more of like a legendary pirate type right but in the book as far as i it's been a long time but yeah he was like the quartermaster toaster to Captain Flint Or whatever like that you know That's how he And also in the book he's

Scarier he's supposed to be like Flint's like The man Flint feared right like he's supposed To be more of a rival and you know The Muppets and the Disney you know Sand him down a little bit but There's just a father Son thing right like

that's like the sort of weird dynamic right that's the thing because i do i do think it is a success of both muppet treasure island and this that they do make him on a relative scale scary they make him about as scary as those movies can handle right but but i and obviously more adult adaptations of this material will make him even scarier. But there is that thing where, like, even if he's inherently a shitty guy, the paternal nature feels real. That never really feels insincere in any version of Treasure Planet. It's just like maybe you've identified this guy's one soft spot, but it does feel like that's coming from a real place. He's cool. i like when he when

you meet him i mean you know we're going through the plot look he finds that fucking map emma it's a sphere map he gets it from billy bones he's told to beware the cyborg let's i mean like come on let's not breeze ahead billy bones is a pretty legendary dude all right okay on, let's not breeze ahead. Billy Bones is a pretty legendary dude. All right, okay. All right, let's talk about Billy Bones then. He's a big turtle. Right. You have your fucking Tony Jay opening narration that Emma said. You open the book. You close it.

You are introduced to Doppler. Jim, when you cut ahead to the future, solar surfing, getting in trouble, being caught by robot bobbies. Robot cops. I like those robo cops. They're funny. They make me laugh. I like that they are programmed to be able to raise their hat as if they're

tipping their cap, saying, like, good day. Take care now. But that's the thing I think Musker and Clemens said was an important difference for them, was that Jim Hawkins is always sort of a very sincere, earnest, sweet kid with a taste for adventure. Right. Usually. And here he's like a teen and he's like, yeah, he's a little rough.

He's an angsty teen with a skateboard. Yeah. But Billy Bones crashes into the inn that his mother runs. It's a fucking awesome ass entrance. He crashes. His ship looks like a fucking bowling ball. It crashes in. He's an old turtle man in a big coat.

True. All true. He's played by Patrick McGugan, of course. Yeah, his final performance. And he just starts going hard about this treasure, which Jim has heard about, read about since he was a little boy, but thought was just a legend and passes on to him the Rubik's Cube, the Rubik at her like little locket with like the hologram like photos of him as a little boy and he's like when he was a boy like he'd always be

holding a new pet and begging me to let him keep it and then he opens the door and it's like him with this terrifying monstrous guy I made him my background he's like a lizard he's like a kimono yeah he's a turtle he's like a snapping turtle yeah he's a turtle that's what he is like a snapping turtle yeah

he looks so fucking cool but uh he dies almost immediately warns them about the cyborg that's gonna come after him and then they come almost immediately and i love i also love when he goes to the window and he opens the window he opens the little like the part of the window that's like a tv screen to look out. That's so cool. Right. It looks they're like projecting a sunny day and then he opens it up and you see that it's pouring rain and they're cyborg pirates coming in to kill him. But yeah, it's like I like that it's got you take the Billy Bones character who's always this sort of like ominous, like, let me tell you a story, kid kind of guy.

And you give him this real urgency of like they're they're on my tail they'll get here at any second you know like you're already in the adventure this isn't a choice for you you're caught up in this shit and then and there's stakes because the inn is is all smashed up it's all burned up or whatever yeah so you gotta you gotta rebuild it right they escape to doppler's place jim cracks the puzzle they get the map he feels validated the treasure planet is real and he now has the key to get there and doppler agrees to take jim with him and to fund an exploration true truly so many disney characters like doppler right well there's the opening of atlantis is nearly identical to this yes yes i was getting

the guy with papers in my mind you know oh but sir all my studies and it's like yes yes of course but you know we couldn't possibly right like that guy like beauty and the beast fucking bell's dad is basically that guy right you know the guy with glasses guy a guy with like a house full of weird like inventions oh his inventions i would argue that the sultan is the doppler of aladdin yeah yeah sure he absolutely is except he's so dumb oh what a dumb sweetie he is he shouldn't be in charge of agrabah griff They really need to change things. But all of this is really efficient. It's also where the difference in pacing when you don't have songs kind of becomes apparent because you have the sort of Jim I want moment is him sitting on the roof, listening to his mom shit talk him to Doppler, throwing stones, just being sort of ornery. him to Doppler, throwing stones just being sort of ornery.

And you're sort of programmed with this art style to have Jim jump off the roof and take a walk in the woods and sing I Can Go the Distance. But instead, that scene is punctuated by a fucking turtle man crashing and dying. We're making this movie

sound like fucking the best. I gotta say. I mean, I like this movie. I know. I like it too. I like it too. It's because it fucking the best. I gotta say. I mean, I like this movie. I know. I like it too. I like it too. It's because it is the best. Okay. So they, they commissioned the RLS legacy. This is the ship.

You gotta, you gotta mention the fact that the spaceport is the crescent moon that they've been seeing out the window this whole time. Very cool. Correction, Emma. You gotta mention that. I gotta mention it. I give you full reign to mention anything we're glossing over that is very much your role in this

i feel like the teaser you were talking about opened with the crescent and then we zoom in and we see that the crescent's like a spaceport and that's cool uh love that but yeah they could commission the ship the rls legacy named after rls robert louis stevenson right that's cool. Love that. But yeah, they commissioned the ship, the RLS Legacy named after RLS, Robert Louis Stevenson, right? That's the joke, I assume. Yep, yep, yep. And you got Captain Amelia. You got Emma Thompson here.

She's a cat lady. And you have Arrow, who's maybe my favorite character design in the movie. The Rockman. So cool. Yeah, so cool so cool played by Roscoe Brown Roscoe Lee Brown from Barney Miller

dies in this movie I know that Mr. Arrow dies in the book like I know that that's yeah but like how many Disney movies does a character who's not evil die like midway through yeah and isn't a parent yeah exactly exactly right you can

you can lead off with a parent death thing right yeah but like just in the middle of the movie it's like well he's dead and it's like he is we're not gonna go get him it's like no fell off and it was tragic tragic it was sad because even like muuppet Treasure Island gets around that by having Arrow fake his death. Like they were like, we can't kill Sam the Eagle. So he pretends he's dead and then he like cakes himself in flour and pretends he's a ghost to scare the other pirates. Right. But this one, they just straight up fucking kill the guy. He looks like.

So, Griff, what is he? He's like a rock monster. Like, what's his vibe? Yeah, he's like a rock. He's like a rock monster like what's his vibe yeah he's like a rock he's like a he's like a fucking golem he's a boulder boy i mean i wonder if there's a species name for the some of them don't have names but other ones do he looks sort of like the rock the big rock guy from never ending story he looks like the rock kind of too yeah or he looks like a rock but uh he's he's a big fucking square jawed, broad shouldered rock.

It like just all fucking Doppler thinks he's the captain because he's so captain. Yeah, but he's he's just fucking classy, too. He's got this fucking killer red like a petticoat. He has no there's no explanation for what he is. He's just a rock like being. And he he and the captain have had like their friends. They've been together for for a long time. So it sucks when he dies because then she's sad.

I'm realizing that I probably like him so much because he's just a fancy version of the thing from the Fantastic Four. But that's cool. What if the thing is really cool? Yeah, that's but that's cool what if the thing is really cool yeah that's really cool yeah um yeah their dynamic is is really nice yeah amelia is cool too i like amelia i like emma thompson basically any you know she's money in the bank for me like i i'm i'm down with emma thompson being a i'm surprised by this you like emma like Emma Thompson playing a bossy, round-faced space captain? Those don't sound like... With a little tricorner hat!

You don't like any of those elements, David. She's got cool boots, too. Yeah, she's got cool boots. I feel like Emma Thompson just... I was saying this off mic. She's game. Like, what other cartoons has she done, Griff? I feel like she's done some other voices.

She quit the John john lassiter movie she was supposed to be the lead voice in this sky dance animated movie called luck and then when oh but they right she was ousted uh they uh sky dance hired lassiter away to be their chief creative officer and emma thompson wrote a big public letter saying she could not support it. Good move by her. She's in Brave. She's the queen. Right. She's the mother in Brave. Is there another one? And she, well, apparently she's the Yeti elder

in Missing Link, which I did see, but I sort of Yes. No. Yes. And she's actually really good in that. Yeah. Yeah. And then of course, she's the parrot in Doolittle, another movie set mostly on a ship oh geez did you see do little griff i forget did you make it to do little no i didn't make it around i've been doing a lot less this this year and i i pretty much did none on that front she is kind of the lead animal

that's that's like his right hand man is the parrot it's that thing i mean i i feel like i talk about with you a lot but that fascinating thing where like for how much she's viewed as being like oh this very serious prestigious actor here in the states because she her breakthrough was being in fucking brand-new shakespeare movies and merchant ivory movies and adapting sense and sensibility herself. Like she's this classical actress. It's like, no, she's like she's like started as a sketch comedian. That's like her background. She has no ego. She has no pretension, you know? She's sort of a weirdo. Well, there's that video of her like, I don't know if she was like drunk or pretending to be drunk at some award show where she was just like talking and everyone loved it

because it was delightfully funny. She's so fucking and it's like you know when she hosts snl people were like oh i'm surprised she's like this game and it's like this is what she did like to some degree in interviews she she reads like she's uncomfortable with how seriously american audiences view her she's got a perrier award my friends it's a comedy award right right right and she was part of footlights and everything i mean she came up with fry and laurie and yeah exactly uh i should mention that my she's good in this my background on zoom the creepy wax sculpture of jim hawkins it is a photo of emma thompson standing behind it smiling her husband, Greg Wise, and I'm assuming one of their children. Otherwise, Greg Wise, I suppose, has just gathered up a random child.

But I'm going to assume it's their offspring. We want to imagine he didn't just steal a kid. He genuinely looks like he's doing like Jim Hawkins cosplay in this photo. He's dressed almost exactly like Jim Hawkins. But the point is, David, you looked at this and emma thompson is standing over this terrifying wax jim hawkins shoulder and she's got the biggest most genuine smile and you just said wow she really is just game for anything yeah she's she's game she's like where are we going okay let's bring the kids to that one yeah it'll be fun they'll

like it they'll like the thing yeah which i also she's like you know i'm in i'm in the movie with this guy i want to point out pointing to the yeah this opened in february this opened five months after this movie had been an atomic bomb and she's like yeah i'll go to the opening maybe because you know back in the day things really would open in britain way later like i know now they sort of do the global release like is it possible it's possible it came out that much later in britain because you know in britain way later like i know now they sort of do the global release like is it possible it's possible it came out that much later in britain because you know in britain the thanksgiving release is not a thing that's not a no one cares let's see when did it come out in the uk february okay okay valentine's day okay it was but but nonetheless as you say griffin she knows the things a. Like it is not a hit.

It's not like it's going to make up all its money in the UK because they hear Emma Thompson plays a cat in it. No, I also saw like the Disney blogs when I was looking up this thing because I'd gone to this. My family went to England around that time, like that spring of 2003. time, like that spring of 2003. And we went to two shows and there was like that thing included with the admission was Treasure Planetarium, which was the London planetarium where attendance had gone down. They remodeled after Treasure Planet and it was entirely Treasure Planet themed laser light show narrated by Silver. And it had these two sculptures outside of it. And it was just my mom, Romilly and myself, I think. I guess James must have been with us. My dad wasn't there.

And we remember saying like, oh, it's included in the admission. Do we want to do this? And everyone kind of went like, why not? And Romilly said, what is this? And I said, this is that movie you saw four months ago. And she was like, no didn't yeah it never happened yeah i didn't see i didn't see no treasure planet but it was so bizarre to be sitting there and have it treated like oh it's your favorite characters from treasure planet back again living here and it was just like back in the states we moved the fuck on from this movie it's it's over guys yeah you stop trying to make fetch happen it's not gonna happen so i was looking at like old disney blogs that were reporting on when this opened and they said like you know even though the movie had failed the attendance ended up being pretty good on treasure planetarium because the

film became a surprising hit in the uk after bombing in the us and i was like surprising hit it grossed 10 million dollars i mean i guess that's fine doesn't seem like a huge hit to me no it also just speaks to how much smaller international box office grosses were 20 years ago right yeah i mean you know i guess that's almost you know that's not that far from its total american gross so i guess that's something but uh no that's not that good anyway okay so treasure planet they're on the boat yeah i'm i'm jealous that i didn't get to see this treasure planetarium thing i would have loved it you would have loved it i'm gonna see if i can find like a youtube video of it so yeah but we're on the boat we meet um a really important character his name is mr snuff um he speaks flatulai what is the language flatula

flatula excuse me um and yeah i mean it's he he's just got like a lot of yeah yeah he's got a lot of sort of noses what would you call these little these little things he's got like uh like snorting out buttholes yeah he's got like little i what do you what do you call them they're almost like tentacles like suction cup things but they're but they can he can blow air through him i guess he looks like a like a big sea slug is what he looks like he sure does another he's got little flesh horns and the horns make make toots and the toots are farts uh and that's how he talks that's language ben another one of your favorite character dynamics is represented in the crew of this ship uh big guy who's also a little guy hell yeah yep you're you're a big fan

of this the master blaster the uh the quattro quattro this takes it a step further where it's a guy whose head is a squid and then he talks out of his tummy and there's kind of two separate people but they mostly stack on top of each other his body is a face i guess is how you'd put it right right his what's that guy's name his head's a body and his body's a face his character names are oxy and moron just want to point that out damn that's a good fucking duo name too fuck emma do you have like action figures i wish i did anything like i don't i was actually looking up recently like how much it would be to like get them and some of them are a little bit expensive weirdly oh you know what is expensive is the um

art book but like the official art book the cheapest one that i could find is 220 dollars they probably printed like a hundred there's like a hundred of them in the world like that's it right and they'll never print them again. Someone just rushed in and was like, what are you doing? Stop this. We're not going to, no one's buying these. Print enough for the families of the crew.

And then they were done. Yep. Yes. Anyone else cool on the crew? Obviously there is. I love the introduction of Lon Jones silver where he's doing the cooking. I think that is so good. I mean,'s the best the way that you don't see it at first and then he turns and he does like the little bow and then you see everything is

really cool uh excuse me are we not going to talk about scroop okay please keep going this is what this is the energy i love i mean i feel like emma is the one who should introduce us to the evil bug he's a big bug yes he's played he's played by um wait i looked it up by michael wincott this is what i just wanted to shout out michael wincott who i was rude about we were shitting on was it the alien alien resurrection commentary where i'm like you know there's there's 10 people who can give me what this guy's giving me people are like how dare you come for michael wincott you the legendary villain of the crow and i was like all right sorry right but but in our defense when we watch the movies on commentary we have the sound on but the volume is lower and 90 of michael wincott's appeal is his

voice yeah so we were just looking that's why's why he's a great bug. Mostly at his physical performance. Right, right. The man makes a good bug. He gives a good bug. The man makes a great bug. Yeah. Oh god, he's great. His voice is so scary. I was watching it. I watched it half on my TV and then I switched to headphones for the like last part because I just sort of wanted to have headphones on.

My sound is not great in my apartment. And him talking is terrifying. Yeah yeah it does not feel like a vocal performance that belongs in a disney movie it's genuinely upsetting yeah he's a little too scary again and also just there's just not a lot in this movie that's i mean yes okay you have the fart alien i get you know but like, possibly because there's no songs, they're not cutting the energy, right? Like, so you're kind,

you know, it's a little more PG, I guess is how you'd put it, right? Was this, I assume this was a PG movie. I think he's the only member of the cast who kills somebody. Yeah, and brags about it. He's like proud of it.

He's a bastard. He's a bad guy. I'm going to be honest. He's a fucking rap bastard. He's worse than the big villain of the movie. Well, this is my question for you, Emma. Since you seem to be more familiar

with the original text and I'm just colored by Muppet Treasure Island and I just only keep on referencing, cross-referencing this movie against Muppet Treasure Island. And I just only keep on referencing cross-referencing this movie against Muppet Treasure Island, even though I've read Treasure Planet at some point, my default is, well,

that's the original version of the tale. Sure. The one with, uh, the fucking beaker. Um, this, there isn't really an analog for this character in the story,

right? It's, it's hands. Israel hands is the bad guy and he is in the movie. Okay. Can you guess who he is? Which of the aliens is named Hands? I'll give you a hint. The hands

are prominent in his design. Huh. Why am I forgetting this and I just watched this? Because there's a lot of fucking aliens he doesn't really have any lines i think he has one oh oh oh okay okay yes yes yes absolutely this guy yeah yeah the big the big guy who's just kind of got hands yes he's pretty cool but he doesn't do he's not really a villain he's just sort of one of the pirates. No, I mean, Scroop feels to me a little bit like them trying to take some of the menace away from Silver so that he can be a more redeemable character.

You needed him to be the one to do a really bad thing so that Silver can, A, can disapprove of it. And then B, be sort of like a little bit threatened by that as well with his like standing with his crew. be be sort of like a little bit threatened by that as well with his like standing with his crew is like well okay well if i can't you know get first blood with these people you know do they even need me yeah i mean scroop lets silver be redeemable as a character and also gives the movie a villain they can defeat and one that they can really dislike. Right, right, right. It just is so fascinating that Silver is like half villain, half the genie of this movie in a way. You know, like he's like, he was so centered, I feel like, in terms of like, this is our best character. This is the new Disney character that's going to go down in the annals of our great cast. Yeah, he'll get a descendant in the Descendants movies. Right, right, right. It is so funny, like the way you talk about this movie and how well

you know it and how you shared it with friends and stuff. This does feel like a movie that is designed to have that sort of online following people charting the species and like considering the extended universe and all of that and it doesn't feel like disney was playing that game at all as much as they did really like promote this thing and try to push it i don't think they really understood how to sell like a dorky thing like this you know how to make something appealing to people who want to spend time thinking about fictional worlds it was sort of designed to be like a cult object, I think. Right. And there was no way that they could get out of that.

Right. Like this should have had like a tie-in series of like young adult paperbacks, you know? Like, right. Like having a second video game set five years later makes sense. But there should have been a ton of shit like that. And it feels like they didn't prep any of that. Well, they did so they had a whole sequel planned where jim like he goes to like the naval academy he gets a love interest which was like very important to me because that was like my one note as a nine-year-old

watching this movie is like i don't he doesn't have like anyone to crush on like i kind of wish that he had a crush that was what was going to be in the sequel was like they were gonna go he was gonna go to school and he met like a girl and then they had yes there's a girl involved they had to team up with silver again to stop like a really a bad pirate a very a worse pirate his his classmate at the royal interstellar academy was gonna team up with him and silver to stop the villainous iron beard from freeing the inmates of a botany bay prison asteroid this sounds like a fucking blast let's make it happen right now willem defoe was on board to play iron beard it was like signed on almost signed on i don't think he actually signed anything but they were like he's gonna do it

now here's my question. Was this supposed to be theatrical or was it supposed to be straight to video? It was mold for, you know what I mean? Like, you know, I suppose if this thing had been a huge hit, then you could have taken it right to the, I don't know, right? That's the thing. How I remembered it was like at this point in time, the machinery is so in place that by the time these movies come out in theaters, they're six months away from dropping the direct to video sequel. And they're already deep into the TV series. Right. Like all of these had that ready to go. And this is kind of the one movie of this era that didn't get any of those things. Like even after Atlantis flopped,

they released the first three episodes of the canceled TV show as a sequel movie, you know, Hercules, the sequel got canceled, but the TV show happened. I mean, they just like,

they, they pushed all of these uphill. Even like Emperor's new groove got a cartoon much later. Emperor's new school. Right. This didn't get anything. And I think part of that is because their ambitions for this were a lot bigger. Like it felt like rather than have the cash in direct to video sequel that could come out six months later, they held off in the hopes

that this movie might be big enough that we could actually make an animated franchise. Yeah, that's sort of what they were going for. I don't think Disney itself was thinking that far, but I know that the people involved in this particular movie are like, yes, we are going to do this whole thing. We're going to do a sequel, maybe a TV. They had it in the bag. All they got was a fucking naval strategy PC game. That's what they ended up with.

Yeah, which David has already ordered a copy of I am intrigued yeah I'm not gonna deny it I mean I love we're gonna wait when's this episode posting I don't want to know everyone knows we're doing Star Trek yes when we get to

Wrath of Khan obviously like I love a space thing that just you know invested with naval old naval energy right like that's that's my favorite thing a great blending of genres right like and that's what this is doing and that's great

I could almost do with more of it but I like the sort of the middle of this movie where Jim is trying to prove himself and it's you know just life on the ship is sort of the middle of this movie where jim is trying to prove himself and it's you know just life on the ship is sort of clickish and tough and he can't you know you know pull his weight or he's afraid right like i like all that stuff i like all the sort of like life on the boat their dynamic is genuinely very endearing and and it becomes more endearing when the Jim character is less eager than he's usually depicted as being, when he's a little bit closed off, you know?

There's something nice about both of them having to break through to the other one. But it is so jarring when that fucking Goo Goo Dolls song comes in. And I will say, I kind of like that song on its own, especially as like a 2002 like pop rock time capsule. I think it's a pleasant song. We gotta talk about this. But when that song comes in, it's just like, man, this movie is a weird combination of fucking things. Like I'm watching like a father-son relationship

bonding montage set with pirates on a spaceship to a goo goo dolls original track i think that was another like uh we're gonna go for the boy audience thing that then backfired and made sense more for the girl audience like because girls love goo goo dolls yeah perfect illustration right it's it's clear they picked the goo goo dolls because iris had been so big but iris was like a romance movie that song crossover is kind of like a sad love song they're not like a badass rock band at this point in time you know and and all of their early fans turned against them when iris happened and they were like oh they sold out they become the soundtrack guys and then it felt like disney thought bringing them on would make this movie edgier ben do you have a goo dolls take i

don't know where are you on goo goo dolls i mean that's a bad name wow you're you're out on the name i see no it's a very 90s name goo goo doll that. That's all. It is. Yeah. Iris is kind of undeniable, though, right? Iris is so good. That's what I was going to say. Iris Fox. It's good. It's really hard to be cynical about Iris. And this is like sort of like, you know, like dollar store Iris, but that's still pretty good.

It's still fun to listen to. It is very similar to Iris. It's still fun to listen to. It is very similar to ours. It's also just your brain starts to short circuit because you're so used to see these movies having these musical sequences and to see a fast cut montage set to this song is just like this feels wrong. This shouldn't be happening. It's so jarring. It's so jarring in a Disney movie. movie it's like when and this is the same year when star trek enterprise debuted and it had a theme song with lyrics rather than the usual you know sort of james hornery jerry goldsmith kind of

and you're just like no no they're not supposed to like no you can't i don't want to hear about people's feelings like i just want to hear sweeping music and i respect the swing like it's not something disney really went for again i guess like wreck it ralph has musical mont i'm trying to think of like wreck it ralph yeah i mean when you get to the other side i mean no with the cgi movies it happens chicken little opens with a fucking uh i think a uh bare naked lady song uh i mean wreck it ralph has like fucking owl city and shit like it happens until they get back into the princess musicals they do have pop songs and montages like this there's something just

jarring about it when you're so used to there's this thing I mean it's like part of the issue with why in America animation has always been pigeonholed as a genre right whereas in other countries it's seen as a more versatile thing. It can fit into different genres. It could be for adults, whatever. Is that for American audiences, it feels like whatever the first major film is in any medium defines what genre people think that medium is, right? So like Snow White is the breakthrough in hand-drawn and people are like, that's what hand-drawn movies look like. That's what-drawn movies look like that's what they sound like those are the kinds of stories you adapt and they have music in them and then toy story is the first big cgi and people are like they're a little snarkier they got this sort of adult edge they're

more like modern setting right it's not a fantasy world it's what if this thing was a little different than what you know you know it's what if you go to a slightly adjacent world rather than fantasy land and you're adapting original stories or more modern stories or whatever it is. And then like Nightmare Before Christmas does kind of define that most stop motion films are creepy. I mean, that's predominantly the thing. And I just think there is like by the time you get to fucking Chicken Little having Barenaked Ladies, it's lame, but it doesn't stick out as much because you're just like, I don't know, but Shrek's fucking shitting to All-Star. It doesn't matter, you know? Whereas with this, it just feels odd. I do want to point out, David, because you mentioned Star

Trek twice now. Do you know that one of the original reasons why this film was sidelined by Eisner and Katzenberg, the first time it was pitched in 1985 they had just left paramount to come to disney and so they knew what paramount had on the docket and the plan at that point i don't know if it would have been star trek 5 or 6 uh it would have been around there yeah wasn't it it would have been four or five. Right. They wanted to do Star Trek Treasure Island. It was going to be, I guess, this sort of, right? Like someone's on a ship and it turns out there's like, right. Like you could do that in a Star Trek world, I guess.

That'd be cool. I'd watch that. I guess it would be cool. I have such complicated feelings about Star Trek movies because I'm like, just make them. You know, like that's where I'm like primarily at. You know, they keep hemming and hawing and I'm just like, just fucking do one. Like stop. You're going to have a lot of real estate to share those thoughts.

Okay. All right. You're right. Okay. Okay. I'm pulling. He's yanking on the leash because I'm going off it. The only Star Trek we're talking about is the RLS legacy

sailing to Treasure Planet. Thank you for steering us. Steering the ship back in the right direction. We forgot to shout out that is it Jim's home planet is called Montresor? Great name. Love that. That's super cool. I don't

think that it's an Edgar Allen Poe reference. Come on! I mean it is, right? that's that's super cool i don't think that it's an edgar allen poe reference i was but come on i mean it is right like at least they think it's a cool name i don't know if it's anything more than that i think they're spelled differently i think montrezor and amontillado is one s i've looked trust me i've looked this shit up i i i believe you i believe you this is a pet peeve of mine that I think this movie impressively avoids scenes where people

are lying and the actor or the movie or both feel the need to telegraph in the performance oh this guy's lying and he can't keep his story straight and you're just like you would sniff it out you would see it on their face when they're like uh no i didn't say that right and you're just like you're you're trying to telegraph to the audience that this person isn't to be trusted but in the process it makes your lead character seem stupid that they're

not suspicious and i like that the silver scene the introduction silver when uh jim meets him cooking he's he plays it so well like silver's a really good actor in terms of seeming confused by everything jim is asking him about you know yeah billy bone right there's no nervousness there's no no shiftiness. He's sort of distracted. He's like, what are you talking about? But it's like very sincere. And it's only when he sees like the last of Jim's feet,

like go up the stairs as he shifts to like, right. All right. This one's going to be a problem. Now we should talk about Morph. We love Morph. How have we not mentioned Morph? We love him.

Because this is Morph's introduction. Yeah. I guess that's right. I guess it's right. Of course, he's with John. I mean, he had to have been pinned as the great merchandising hope of this movie, right? They must have thought.

Yes. Yeah. But how do you make that into a toy? Can you buy a Morph toy? Is it just, I guess it's just a plastic blob. Like, you can't, you know, doesn't exist. There was a Morph toy they made that was like a rubbery blob, but it was sort of like a talk boy.

So you could talk into it and then Morph would parrot what you said. Oh, okay. That's fun. That's what he does. That was, I think, their main gimmick. But I'm looking here, all the action figures came with a Morph that was sort of to scale with a kid rather than to scale with the figures and inside the morph was a treasure you wouldn't know what you were getting until you opened it that's cool but it just feels like morph is just fucking designed to be as adorable as possible

he's so cute yeah because there's there's two big toys it's morph and ben but but morph is the cute the cute guy right ben's the cool robot the expensive electronic toy but morph is also morph is like good blarp he is good blarp i mean not not that if we have to of course acknowledge blarp's major role in uh fighting the spiders i can't remember the name of the villains but but no yeah he's good barb i i yeah he's the parrot right like that's the that's the role he's occupying that's why he mimics things right which i that look i think that's cute and i like his little noises i i feel like morph is the closest you get in this movie to like i'll, fuck off. Like, you know, you just put that in yourself, toys.

Right. But like, I kind of like Morph. I don't know. I think Morph's great. I think he's successful. They don't overdo him. It's also like, we've been watching these movies now and increasingly they have five characters like this each. And this movie has one.

And he doesn't really have any lines. Right. They don't overdo it. The scene that I love him in is when Silver tells Jim to like swab the dick or whatever. And he's like, Morph, watch, you know, keep an eye on him. And Morph's eyes get really, really big.

It's the perfect comic moment. He's good. He's good. I like Morph. Morph's alright. He's alright by me. Yeah, he's a cool guy. And he gets people in trouble by mimicking them, talking shit about other people. He nearly gets everybody in trouble.

When he pretends to be the map later and all, I like all that. They use the premise of Morph well. That's what I'm saying about this movie. There's nothing in this movie that goes to waste, that they set up and then they just don't really do anything with. It's true. Even the solar surfing and all of that that comes right tying yeah yeah everything comes back it's a pretty tight screenplay uh written by musker and clements and rob edwards but story by elliot and rossio um rob edwards though one of those guys right he

works on with them on uh Princess and the Frog as well. He's a big sitcom guy. Anyway, look, there's a mutiny. Let's get to Treasure Planet, guys. Let's talk about Treasure Planet. We haven't gotten to Ben yet. We're not going to talk about the dad montage, the sad dad montage. Emma, you have every moment in your brain.

No, I just think it's good. I think it's nice. It's good when he goes in like uh in the montage in the song uh when he's like helping silver put the skiff out and then he you know silver jumps in and leaves and he has that like you know memory flash of him being a little child and his like dad going out to the boat and leaving but then you go back to the present and silver comes back and he's like get in bud, bud. Let's go. That's so sweet.

Their relationship is genuinely sweet. I also like that in that montage, they show that the dad was unattentive even before he left. When he shows him the little boat and he's like, whatever. Right. That it's not just abandonment as an issue for this guy. It's also just that he could never get through to this dude. And then he disappeared, you know? Yeah.

But it's all good. Yes. And then Jim follows Morph into a barrel of space fruit. Oh, I guess this happens after the arrow thing. Right. There's there's the storm. You have the storm. The storm.

We can't forget about the storm. Storm is cool. storm storm is cool the storm is cool because that's the the black hole and all that star goes supernova and then immediately turns into a black hole within like 20 minutes of movie time it's cool uh scoop uh sorry uh scroop kills mr arrow by cutting his line and blaming it on Jim. It's a story gift that Jim is a fuck up because it means you can blame shit on him. I mean, you have this whole like everyone's doubting him. People think he's going to not going to amount to anything, that he's somehow going to be incompetent in his job.

And then it's like when he really tries, which he was doing during that whole thing, and then he fucks up again. And it's just it's all the more sad. It encourages his cynicism. Like, I tried my hardest. I really did. And people still think I'm a fuck up. Why should I do anything?

Right. Then you have Silver Spix Beach. Mm hmm. Kid, you got the sun and the stars in you. I mean, how dare I paraphrase in front of you? Then there's the mutiny. There's the, you know, right? That's what's next, right?

I'm not crazy. Right, right, right. He follows Morph into the space barrel filled with space fruits, and he hears them having their argument about, why is this taking so long? We killed one of them. Why can't we kill the other three? He hears Silver be like,

I didn't mean all those things that I said to that stupid kid. because they're like we heard your fucking corny speech you think you're in some goddamn disney movie and he's like no i i i'm i'm not i swear this film's cool for teenagers we said we would have shrek energy at all times what are you talking about? Scroop goes, somebody. Exactly. But I like how fast that moves. It's like he hears it happening. Silver's like, keep it level. Jim comes out of the barrel, notices the spyglass, realizes Silver's coming back down to him.

And they're just both smart enough to know that the other one knows. Jim stabs him in the leg and all the fucking chaos mutiny ensues uh they get to treasure planet emma what am i forgetting here uh they have well they have that encounter during the mutiny where morph is like going back and forth and he's like i don't know which one to go to with the map in his mouth and he goes into the the ropes and jim pulls what he thinks is the map out and he runs to the boat and then Silver Treads is going to shoot him and then he can't do it because

he likes him. He likes him too much. And you have this kind of cool escape sequence. I mean the thing where Doppler says that's more fun than I ever want to have in my life. Ben was there something we were forgetting? I feel like you had Yeah. Or am I wrong? Well. Okay. I had thoughts about

the planet. Okay. About Treasure Planet. Let's go. Yeah. Well. Okay. Well now we're here. We're here. It's a. Okay. I'm promised a planet. A treasure planet. Uh oh. Okay. Ben's sharpening a knife right

now. A whole planet's a treasure. A whole planet's a treasure. That's what you promised. Yeah. This is what I promised. Yeah. We get to the planet. It's not shaped like a chest. You wanted there to be a rectangular with like a lock in it, maybe.

I wanted them to turn a big old lock and then go into the planet this is what i was expecting ben i thought i knew where that complaint was going you could have given me 25 guesses and i never would have come up with my disappointment is that the planet isn't a chest with a lock on it that's when ben if he's in the theater angrily stands up and his popcorn goes i thought your complaint was going to be the treasure is only the core the surface is junk right right yeah why isn't it like a planet made of coins for example sure sure but no ben took ben plus you like that so if if the planet was exactly the same as it is if it was junk surface

coin core but it was housed inside a treasure chest with a giant lock and key yeah this movie would be 10 out of 10 for you yeah absolutely yet another layer to the puzzle yeah right it's

a pretty cool looking it's got a double ring thing going on looks like a skull and crossbones right that's cool also here is where you're introduced to what is unsurprisingly my favorite character in the film i was gonna say i just figured this was your guy you know ben for one you love ben and for two you love Ben. And for two, you love Marty Short. Yeah. I mean, no one's funnier than Marty Short. I love. This is the role you would play. I love Ben's in general. I love Robit's.

I'm almost always going to be inclined towards a Robit. But I think about despite not having rewatched this film since since 2002 i think about this movie a lot in terms of i think this is one of the most successful instances of a character being introduced this late in a film and feeling important really late being effective being entertaining having an arc like usually you introduce a character this late and it's just like you're getting distracted you're putting too much on the plate there's not enough time the character gets short shrift or you're taken away from the main thrust of the movie but this works and and he's really introduced in like the last 20 minutes and really feels like a pivotal part of the movie i think it's more like

40 minutes i'm not going to question you on time codes i guess he's i did check to see like how much time they spend on the ship And how much they spend on the planet And it's kind of equal It just takes a while It takes a while I mean he's obviously He's based on the character from the book

Ben Gunn Who's the guy who's on the island And he also knew Captain Flynn Obviously he's like one of his crew members who was marooned. So he's gone crazy. But since the time escape in this movie is so long, they had to make something that would live for long enough to... He's lost his mind.

Literally. Doesn't know where to find it. That's what I love. And just to make it clear, because we're talking about what ben gunn usually represents in different adaptations of treasure island i don't remember which one in particular but in some adaptations he is um a very fabulous pig who has become a diva from being stranded that long on an island by herself and and at any point does he did sorry does she say hiya is that something that comes up probably that's the thing i i like in love and treasure island though that it's like sam arrow not sam arrow but uh the captain and ben gunn have this romance and she's mostly

angry at the fact that he left her there on the island by herself which is fair yeah and then they sing to each other while hanging upside down from a rope at the edge of a cliff that movie fucking rules i i haven't seen that movie since i was a kid i should re-watch it but we'll we'll do it one day brian henson underrated director i don't blame him for happy time murders but i'm telling you you look at christmas carol you look at treasure island he was a good visual stylist. He was. He was. I mean, they're good looking movies. I think he had the potential to have like a Frank Oz career. And I feel like he got stuck with sort of feeling like he needed to run the legacy. We were talking about the genie sort of

beginning of the end thing where it's now like, oh, you just hire a comedian and have them do their persona in an animated movie, right? Like Mushu is just Eddie Murphy, but he looks different. I feel like this is a character. Like, despite the fact that it's recognizably Martin Short and that in the way he changes energies and changes topics, he's a little bit Jiminy Glicky, it doesn't feel like he's just doing Martin Short.

It feels like he's really serving the specific function of this character in this movie. He only does voice stuff like basically after this, what were you going to say? I was going to say, I love when he glitches out and like is trying to remember like really hard and then can't. It's a good moment.

All that stuff. Like how, when there's a countdown late in the movie, his eyes turn into a clock love that i just think like the animation is great the design is great he looks so interesting being in cgi in this more flat world and the vocal performance is incredible it's it's just like it's rare that a character can pop this hard this deep into a film when we finally well i guess there's actually yeah there's actually a lot of time before we finally see the treasure because

the whole standoff with the pirates who kind of like do a little siege right you know all that i will say this is where the movie slows down for me slightly i like ben but i don't know am i great is ben am i are you mad at me for saying that? I mean, they do like, they sort of go back and forth a little bit too much. Cause like Jim has to go back to the boat to get the real map. And then he has the fight with scroop. And then he, you know,

scroop gets pushed into the space. I like that. I mean, I like getting rid of scroop, but right. Yeah. It doesn't, it's a little,

it gets a little bogged down here after a very sort of, you know, propulsive start. The movie has been propulsive. The plot definitely slows down here. Ben really becomes the motor for this chunk of the movie. But also, they're kind of taking a breather to get a lot of answers out.

You know, like they're sort of answering the mysteries so that then you can go back to more action in the last 15 minutes or whatever. Yeah. And they're beefing up the the doppler amelia romance there right there happens they're having a little moment there but like you know i let you know i like when we get to the treasure when we get to the big old mound all that stuff and and how silver's sort of final act plays out that that's what i was i'm more leaning in again uh

yeah it's also like you know you're really showing off the potential of uh the the premise uh treasure uh island in space which is uh holy shit that's a lot of treasure that's more treasure than i usually see in treasure island that's an entire planet's worth of treasure yeah this is a fair amount of treasure right ben i mean you're happy with the this yeah the scale of the treasure absolutely i'm i'm real happy i mean you just wish it was i mean like in general treasure is fucking great baubles jewels gems yeah uh i was gonna ask ben if he would go on a space voyage like this if there was the promise of a treasure planet. He would pay you to do that. Okay.

Absolutely. Can I go now? Do you have any idea how many emails Ben has written to Elon Musk saying, I think there's treasure out there. You got to give me one of these ships. you gotta give me one of these ships it's just there's the thing about treasure versus like a boring ass modern movie where someone gets like a bank deposit it's like there's just so much how are you gonna fit it all in your pockets and shit like you know what i mean it's overwhelming have any of you seen that shark tank episode where a guy pitches i think i know where some treasure is i'm obsessed with it because it's like it's it breaks the format it's like so different than any other quote-unquote business

that's happened and the guy comes in like does he have a shovel and he's like let's go or is he like i need your help with like renting a boat finance my voyage to find the treasure right he's like i know where it is i'm 99 sure i don't have the money to actually get there and to transport it i need the resources but he's just like a good idea i know he's like an unassuming sharks yeah he's like money he's like 60 years old and he just comes in all these other people do their big theatrical song and dance and he's just got like a tv that looks like the tv that your teachers would roll out to show you gettysburg or something like it's on that little like black roller stand and he just presses play on the video and he's like this is a treasure i think it's worth tens of millions of dollars

who wants to go down and help me find it and people are like wait a second i'm sorry i need to define are you pitching us that your company is some sort of experiential treasure hunting thing and he's like no i have located one treasure i lack the resources to get there and to transport it back to land if you fund my expedition you get 50 of it i'm assuming none of them go for it i'm assuming no one took a flyer on him none of them go for it they're just but but they're like i don't know this is like not the kind of thing i invested and then one of the sharks i forget who it is goes i'm sorry i'm out i invested in one of these a while ago and it didn't work out well i'm not doing another treasure hunt god

damn it like four out of five sharks are just like i don't know this feels like a wrong use for this show and damon's like i've been burned on too many treasure hunts i'm not gonna make this mistake again it's how i lost this this eye yeah goddamn treasure hunt it's so good um but yeah then you get back to like you know the the film sort of ramps up the action again you realize the treasure is at the core it's at the center of the mechanism as he says they have the they did the big door the big door which shows how captain flint was doing it all this time he was like flying his ship through this thing I think that's really cool to go to like whatever planet he wanted to like a Stargate

very cool out of Stargate or that great Star Trek episode and like love that as an innovation exactly like you know that was his treasure hunting you know curveball that's how and I love that he's a skeleton love love love that

what's that Ben line where he's like, here he is like flesh and blood, except like no flesh and blood organs or anything that resembles flesh. That's funny. He's got jokes. He's good, funny and creepy. And then I love Ben putting his thing back in and being like,

right. The whole thing's going to blow up. Right. That's what I forgot. Right. The reason they took my mind was so that i wouldn't warn anybody about the thing that's about to happen is fun it's also fun that like you know the ben gunn character or benjamina gunn depending on which depiction uh you're watching uh is is that it's like oh it's someone who's

sort of got like madness from being isolated in this place for too long stuck away from society and then this is literally like his mind is broken like he just doesn't have the programming he needs he doesn't have the chip he needs he's got the incomplete puzzle to know what's going on here he forgets that they're laser trip wires and shit um i yeah it's just that's all uh awesome i think that's cool and that works with like how do we make this robot crazy like what do we do you take the mind why what's the reason for taking his mind away well they booby trap the thing so you have to yeah it all works it also like it helps amplify the premise all the door shit where you're like that's why he was able to get so much more treasure than anyone has ever gotten before and that's also why he was able to evade capture why no one was ever able to find him or the planet disappeared without a trace right like i like

the idea that it's like this guy had this fucking secret key to just running the table on the universe yep uh but his ego was so big that he even if he died he wanted to make sure that no one else ever could could get the sort of same bragging rights that he had he's he's a cool dude and i respect it i respect everything he did i like his energy and and i think that i you know he deserves his booby-trapped treasure planet he's a cool scary scary looking pirate ship the the solar sailor comes back around because you know there's the thing where jim like uses the little engine piece we skipped a big little moment here a big little moment what did we skip we skipped when the thing starts blowing up and everything's you know the like crevasses

appear and the treasure and then he gets in the ship and silver follows him and is like oh we're gonna yeah let's get out of here and he's like threatening him with a knife or whatever and then the thing comes and jim falls off and silver has to choose between the boat or yeah it's a great moment it's so good it's actually a little tense i actually was not sure maybe that's ridiculous to say but like i was like i could see silver turning here and being doomed with his treasure and jim figures it out himself right you know what i mean i don't know it's scary when you have him hanging there like by his like the tips of his fingers when those things like are going into the wall like this just like it's hopeless uh it's also like i think it's a testament to the movie setting up a

different tenor up until that point that you're like this might be a disney film where they let the fucking mentor character die you know yeah or at least you know be disgraced because it's john long john silver is a villain like you know so i could i could you know and and then he's like yeah all right or whatever you know then he then he you know does his thing and i like it i'm like all right good for you john i guess you have to yeah you gotta keep him around and then somehow they make it back to the door i don't know how they did that because everything was sort of going to shit at that point sure that's the one the one plot hole that bothers me to this day but whatever um but i like Wow, cinema sins, that must have been...

Yeah, we're up to like 60 sins at this point. Jim cobbling together his, you know, last second solar surfboard, you know, getting Silver's trust and support and the fact that then Amelia and everyone else has to trust Silver as well, that they understand we're all in this together. Silver's like, listen to him.

He knows what to do. And they're like, okay. It's sort of a redemption moment for Jim as well, that he's earned the trust of Amelia and everybody, you know? Everybody. There are two other characters alive at this point. Yeah, everybody's dead. I like that he kickstarts it with sparks.

I think that's cool. I think sparks are cool. Yeah, we haven't talked enough about the multiple modes of Silver's arm. Because he's got his detailed finger arm for chopping and shit. He's got the hand. Right? Yeah, he's got those little fingers with the littler fingers on the fingers. Which I think are pretty cool.

He's got his cutlass arm. He's got his welding arm. He's got a revolver. He's got like an old fashioned gun. But then he also has like his welding arm. He's got a revolver. He's got like an old fashioned gun. But then he also has like a cannon arm, which makes you wonder why would he ever use the flint revolver arm if he also has like a sonic cannon? Because it's traumatic. Okay. It's got flair.

Yeah. No, but it's cool. Every time that arm like flips around and a new thing comes out. So I'm just a cool fucking dude. I remember drawing like diagrams of like trying to figure out how he could fit all this stuff inside there because it only flips around like one time when he does something, when he gets something new. Like there's not like an order. It's not like a Swiss army knife where he kind of has to go through the whole thing. Was this like the biggest movie of that decade for you or were there like five

other movies you went this hard on? I'm just trying to figure out. I guess this and like Atlantis maybe were the two where I was like, this is the vibe that I want for my cinema now. And then nothing like that ever happened again. Yeah, no, it died. Yeah, they killed it. It's funny that you watch this movie and you were like, finally, they've gotten it right. And everyone's like, close up shop. Let's make sure we never make something like this. And again, I had no idea until years later when I was like, oh, that I didn't watch that. I heard that like sucked and didn't make any money.

I was like, what? Are you crazy? I always thought that Mars Attacks was beloved and a blockbuster. Like, I thought Mars Attacks was Independence Day because at my tiny school, we all loved it and, like, brought the fucking ray guns and played with them on the playground and shit. And I was just like, yeah, everyone loved that movie, right? It was humongous,

but apparently America wasn't ready for the rude gambler. So, yes, Jim activates the door just in time. Yep. And then I find that final silver scene really sweet. I cry every time I've seen that movie up a jillion times and I still cry. But even like, I remember as a 13 year old being taken aback by like, fuck,

this is like getting to me. It's, it's, it's very sensitively done. Like it didn't, you know, they, they make the effort.

Like when you mean when he's letting silver escape, when he down in the yeah and then he goes down you know and he's acts like he's not doing anything and then jim opens the door and he's like go on it's good it's just it's just what you've been talking about this whole episode griff just like sincere you know not not too goofy or jokey and that's the energy that's probably costing this movie an audience but you know it's consistent with the story they're trying to tell it does feel like they basically realized

their passion like right like I hope they did like after 20 fucking years I don't know I'm sure they were disappointed it didn't do well you know and all that well hopefully they listen to this episode and are relieved I hope so Emma do you know, and all that. Well, hopefully they listen to this episode and are relieved. I hope so.

Emma, do you know about the Glen Keane thing with that final silver scene? I don't think so. So he said he based it off of his football coach in high school. Whoa. I think I did read this somewhere. He really wanted to be a football player. He was a halfback,

and everyone else was a lot bigger than him. And he really wanted the head coach's support. And he seemed to be the head coach's favor. He worked really hard, got starting position. He played three plays, got the ball once, head coach took him out, put the other guy in for the rest of the game, never played again and was crushed. And then he said afterwards in the parking lot, the assistant coach, Mickey Ryan, a great guy who spoke with his heart and always had a twinkle in his eye, put his hand on my shoulder and said, Glenn, you're going to do great things. You're going to get that starting position. That wasn't right what happened.

And I could see that he really cared. There were tears in his eyes, and I started to cry too. I lived that scene with Jim and Silver on the boat when Silver encourages Jim after a big setback. It was one of those things where you try to animate what you lived through and hope you can even get close to it. I think that in a nutshell is why there is such a surprising emotional potency to that relationship is it's like he's, he's,

he's basing it off the fucking guy who made him believe that he could accomplish something in his life. Wow. I love it. I'm talking. I'm crying. I'm just crying. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Crying again. But crying again yeah yeah yeah crying again but it's uh it's it's very sweet and then uh all pencils were thrown in the garbage and disney disney burned all the paper it's like that dominoes meme where it's like glenn keen gets a pep talk from his coach and then it like the bigger dom the domino at the end is like disney animation stops production forever it's so i mean because like princess and the frog is 2009 is that correct yeah i think so that sounds right it sounds it's one of those things where like there's only seven years between the two and it feels like so much longer it just felt like such a cultural shift in between

these two movies right you're going from one or two a year to nothing yeah it's it's the same gap as uh batman and robin to batman begins where it just felt like oh are they never gonna make a batman movie ever again it's been seven years that's a lifetime all right let's play the box office game uh okay can i just say uh asterix onto its box office performance do you know this is the first studio film that was released in imax yes i did not know that this was the first simultaneous imax release because disney had started doing re-releases of like beauty and the beast and lion king and imax and this was the first day and date theatrical movie to also go in imax wow it's a little cool as hell in IMAX.

That's crazy, yes. Are we going to talk about the fact that the ship was animated from the inside so that they could move the camera around? Are we going to talk about that? Well, you're talking about it right now. Because I'm talking about it. I'm going to talk about it. That's the tech that's in Tarzan too, right?

Where they can kind of move through the jungle with like that cool sort of 3D environment thing that they like I feel like that was Tarzan's big selling point I remember that being cool just the way they move the camera is much more advanced in this than the stuff we've been yeah that was their big thing they were like we wanted to feel

like a James Cameron movie and in that sense they're very lucky that it took 20 years for them to get this movie made because this is kind of the first moment where you could really pull it off it's a visually very impressive movie i would say right there's a really really cool shot that i noticed this time i mean i'd like i've noticed it before but like this time around i actually like scrubbed back and watch it again when during the mutiny amelia, Doppler, Jim are making their big escape in one of the longboats. And after she pushes the lever to open the door in the belly of the ship, Amelia runs

and it zooms, it follows her running across the thing. I don't know if you guys noticed this, but that's like, I had never seen that before or since in like a hand-drawn animated movie. That was sort of like that little detail that would probably be in a live-action action movie, but not in an animated movie like this. Yeah, camera movements were really, really difficult up until this point. I definitely hooted at a couple camera moves. And then you get that really good moment in the earlier, when Jim and Silver are having their face-off,

when Jim's like, do you ever know this guy named billy bones and the camera's moving around the thing following them that's cool also silver's eye is so goddamn cool whenever you go into like silver vision yeah it's so awesome but yeah the end of the movie silver gives him a handful of treasure so his mom can rebuild the inn. And Jim joins Starfleet Academy and inspires a video game that David has already purchased on eBay. David has already Googled, like, how to play Treasure Planet video game on, like, modern Windows. Like, my computer's like, what? No. It was just a PC game, game right it was not on any platforms just pc i don't think so just just a pc game okay box office game i i just i remember like

this being one of the few times that i saw box office predictions be this off like when people were writing their pieces oh really on friday they were like look it's gonna underperform but it'll get like a default disney number one it'll make like 25 million dollars and it'll end up at 80 and it will be a flop and then it was such a fucking radical flop it opened on this thanksgiving weekend to 16 and that's like the five day weekend or whatever and number four it's the biggest new movie but it's being beaten by three

holdovers right that's the other thing it was like it seemed like it was easy for it to take that number one slot yep it's certainly of the new movies this week but no number one Emma it's a film you just watched Griffin it's a sequel it's a fantasy sequel just watched. Griffin, it's a sequel. It's a fantasy sequel. Oh, it's two.

No, it's not two towers. It's a Chamber of Secrets. Chamber of Secrets. Yep. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which in its third week has made $200 million. A big old hit. Dobby's in that one.

And a big old bug. I don't know if you know that. That's the year where Potter and Towers both come back with their second movies and they're like, what if a spider? Well, the Lord of the Rings spider

is in the third one. Well, and I'm stupid. I'm fucking stupid. I'm a loser. No, you're not stupid because he's in the book, but he wasn't in the movie. Ben, you're a Dobby fan.

I know, Ben, you've been watching the Harry Potters. Yeah. Over like the holiday break, I watched all of the Harry Potter movies for the first time for the first time never never seen them wow what are the what is that like to watch

them now after like years and years of everyone being like i can't believe you've never seen yeah like i just did it was um underwhelming. But you like Dobby. I like Dobby. No, I like parts of it. But yeah, it is like there's so much like cultural stuff that I missed out on that I'm like, oh, sure. Okay. Yeah. I guess now I know what you meant when you were like, I'm a total Hufflepuff or whatever.

Ben, I ask you not to talk about our private conversations i i apologize um but i would say what was wild too is watching the progression of the cgi yes from troll to like where they end up that's pretty wild it's insane how bad the cgi is in phosphorus stone given that it was so great. Go ahead. What were you going to say? I've been watching them. I started this week because I got them all here and I just got to Azkaban before we did this.

And it's very funny how good Azkaban looks, even for then, compared to Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets. The art direction is much better in that movie, even if the CGI is still dodgy, you accept it because at least the design is good. Mm-hmm. Like when Lupin turns into a werewolf. That's genuinely so freaking scary.

But yeah, it looks weird. Right, on an effects level, it looks terrible, but he's just a good filmmaker. He knows how to make it tense. Okay, so Chamber of Secrets is still number one. Number two, David. he's just a good filmmaker he knows how to make it tense okay so chamber of secrets is still number one number two david um it's a classic uh an entry in a long-standing series that often is in november uh is it die another day die another day a bad movie very bad oh boy is that movie bad um but a big hit uh it's real stinky it's also funny that people forget

that that was the highest grossing bond movie up until that point like it was one of those cases where it was a massive hit and they were just like we need to change things like they they had the perspective to go like people are going to be irate if we do this again we cannot trick them twice we need to reset it's true yeah apotheo everything is a mistake they've gone too far in every direction the product placement the globetrotting the cgi yeah everything madonna fencing all that shit yeah the the puns everything everything everything now griffin number, it's a series we've been talking about a lot recently. It's number two in a series you just rewatched. SC2, baby, Tim Allen, Elizabeth Mitchell,

the Santa Claus to the Mrs. Claus, the best rom-com about people in their 40s of the early 2000s. Diane Lane, come at me. And five weeks in, it's beating treasure planet disney must have been angry at themselves for that one right it has it gained 20 this week it gained griffin despite losing 700 theaters that's how well it's doing the mrs claus number four is treasure planet number five it's another uh animated holiday programmer. Number five, it's another animated holiday

programmer, Griffin, but it's a different holiday. Is it Eight Crazy Nights? Eight Crazy Nights. Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights. Yeah. See, that's a movie I did go and see with my 13-year-old friends, and they were firmly in the theater. They were not going anywhere. Right. Came a couple million within beating treasure planet which i imagine would have gotten some people fired if that had happened right and like that movie was also a huge flop and was but was produced on 1 18th the budget of treasure planet made for no money right yeah now you got number 60 got friday after next okay uh

the third in the friday series number seven, I just want to shout it out. New this week. Solaris, Steven Soderbergh's huge budget romantic drama. Why open that at Thanksgiving? Open that thing in April or something like far away from your Harry Potters and your dies another. You know, no, come on. Like you're murdering this thing in the in the crib

it's one year after oceans 11 and oceans 11 can't the same time a year and studios used to think like oh if they like george clooney they'll see him in anything well they sure tested it with that movie which i can't wait for us to discuss one day you've also got eight mile genuine huge hit huge uh in a good movie uh you've got the ring another genuine huge hit and a good movie and you've got of course they the west craven film they i do not have any memory of that existing me neither he i think he you know what you know what he didn't direct it it's Wes Craven Presents they Uh you've got uh God I have never heard of this movie

It's a night are you saying they Like t-h-e-y T-h-e-y and Mark Lucas Ethan Embry the duo I mean we you know We love them you know one two we call Just like absolutely the Fucking Hope and Crosby Of the 2000s blukas and every it was

it was released on blu-ray as a double feature with cursed hey sure why why waste space on those discs and david when do you think that blu-ray was released uh not 2003 when was it released uh the year was 2012 but the date was september 11th this is a fun fact from the they wikipedia oh boy oh boy wow they they held off for 10 years and they were like fine we'll put it on a flipper disc with cursed or whatever it's not it's not even a flipper disc it's like if you ask for toppings on one side of the pizza it's like horizontally one side of the disc is cursed and one side is that no but that's what when you play the disc it just switches between the two movies as it rotates. You don't get to pick. You just watch them both in chunks.

Hey, I want a $5 Blu-ray, Cursed on the left side, They on one side. Oh boy, we did it, guys. The clock is striking midnight. We've talked Treasure Planet. Emma, I know there must be more we have to get to. I know this is a bottomless pit for you.

I was going through it in my mind being like, was there any crucial, crucial scene that we forgot? But I don't think we did. I think we got it. They were pretty thorough. Thank you for letting me do it. I've been holding this in for 19 years. It's truly, this is so fun for me.

Because when we were trying to pick out guests for this min series davis said uh oh emma should do treasure planet and then the conversation just sort of wasn't had after that and as we got closer to recording these i said like david does emma actually like treasure planet or did you just suggest her because she feels like the kind of person who would like this movie and david said no she knows every word of this movie. I don't like campaign for myself to be like, you know, I'm always game to be on Blank Check. But for this one, I was like, if you don't have me on, I will be a little bit upset. But that's why I didn't know.

You did the Emma version of a campaign where you at one point one time mentioned like, oh, Treasure Planet. And I was like, oh, no, I know. I know you like treasure planet. Trust me. Trust me. I'm a, you know, basically you're on treasure planet unless like Manzoukas is like, guys,

I gotta do treasure planet. Like, right. Like that's, that's how I put it. Right. Yeah. I was like,

if you don't, if, if you get like, maybe like if you got JGL or if you got like John Resnick or someone like fine, whatever, that's fine. But anyone less than that

i would have been mad um we should book jgl we should we should get him on this is a loaded we've been doing a lot of jgl recently a lot of jgl i don't know if there's anything in the future we talked the walk we went to the planet and he came in and very generously gave us his time for an ad read of Of course he did. Great ad read. Emma, thank you so much for being on the show. I'm glad we gave you an outlet to share your Treasure Planet love. And I hope you've converted some people in the process.

The thought that people are going to be watching this movie for the first time just because of this podcast makes me happy. Disney Plus, it's there for you, everybody. That's the thing. I mean, I'm'm like this is the greatest benefit of disney plus it's just movies like that this that we're just never getting rented that that people can just impulsively go like oh that existed i should try that i don't know what it is about mine maybe it's just like the stuff that i've been watching it probably is but that's been on my front page like every time i log in it's like you might like treasure planet i'm like yeah i might like yeah they should say we know you love

treasure planet emma people can read your work on thrillist they sure can can follow you it's to fabsky um and they can uh look to the stars and see you cruising along. Yeah. Catch, catch some of the light coming off me. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, and, uh, thank you all for listening and please remember to rate,

review and subscribe. Thanks to Joe Bone, Pat Reynolds for our artwork. Thank you to the great American novel for our theme song. Uh, go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit and go to our shopify page for some real nerdy merch and uh go to our patreon for a star trek talk i i fucking held david back from going off the leash here because we're we got hours of star trek talk behind the nifty little

paywall for you my neck is chafed from the tugging he was doing yeah i believe uh to be clear the next trek we have post oh no coming up uh very soon is our return of jafar episode and then uh the search for spock will um we'll go search in i tune in next week for uh princess and the frog seven years later musker and clements who had been fired from disney and thought they were retired forever are called back for one last mission. So they think bring back the pencils, boys. So that's that's next week. And as always, I just want to share a trivia fact from the IMDb trivia page for this movie. It is listed under spoilers. And I'm curious. I'm looking at your face as I read this, Emma, because I'm curious to see if you know this. At the end of the movie, Dr. Doppler and Captain Amelia, two aliens, it says in parentheses, got together and had children.

A few lines cut from this movie revealed that Dr. Doppler, the male alien, gave birth to the children himself. gave birth to the children himself. Disney ordered the lines cut because they thought males giving birth, even male aliens, was too risque for a children's movie. I didn't think I'd learn anything new about this movie today, but I sure did.