LogFAQs > #983589887

Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Originally released June 15, 2001

This is one that I had never seen before, but was always aware of. I think it's one of those movies that I didn't know Disney was even involved with at all; the art style, and similar story idea, made me think it was from DreamWorks, because it REALLY looks and feels like The Road to El Dorado. But now that I've actually seen this movie, I know that it's not El Dorado; it's Stargate.

Daniel Jackson, aka Milo Thatch, is a linguist working at a museum who's obsessed with Atlantis and thinks he knows where it is. After threatening to quit his job because they won't fund a journey to Iceland he goes home to find an attractive woman waiting for him, who introduces him to the rich and eccentric Mr. Whitmore, who knew Milo's grandfather. Whitmore briefly tests Milo on his determination and then reveals that he's already built a cool-ass submarine and assembled an expert crew to find Atlantis, and offers Milo the position of linguist/guide.

Milo meets the crew, and there are a lot of characters in this movie so like A Bug's Life I'll only name them if they become relevant in the writeup, and they're off. Most relevant is the military leader, Commander Rourke. During the journey Milo mentions a legendary guardian "The Leviathan" but theorizes that it's just a statue or myth meant to scare people off, but joke's on him, it's a giant robotic lobster. The Leviathan destroys the cool-ass submarine in a battle and most of the crew is killed, but the characters with names survive in escape subs along with a few dozen gas mask-wearing soldiers.

Now stranded in an underground cave, the crew drives their Wacky Races vehicles deeper inside, guided by Milo who they continue to treat horribly. At one point Milo mansplains boilers to the crew's expert mechanic, and this is the turning point where they start to accept him and share their respective backstories. After a swarm of fireflies burn down their camp, Milo is found by a scouting party of Atlanteans led by the princess Kida. The crew arrives at Atlantis itself where the king tells them to fuck off back where they came from, but Kida insists that they might be able to help with a vague problem.

This problem, as it turns out, is that Atlantis is slowly dying due to a lack of resources and the fact that their people have forgotten how to read their own writing and use their own technology. Fortunately, Milo is able to read and speak their language, so he's free to mansplain to Kida how an ignition key works on a flying fishmobile. She leads him into an underwater cavern to translate some ruins, and they learn that the Heart of Atlantis is a giant crystal that powers the city. When they surface, Rourke and the rest of the crew have turned heel and hold Kida hostage, threatening to kill her if the king doesn't reveal where the Heart is so they can steal and sell it.

Rourke figures out that the Heart is in an underground cavern beneath the throne room, and descends along with Milo, Kida, and his partner Helga. Kida is absorbed by/absorbs the Heart and becomes a glowing god, whom Rourke and the crew lock in a box and prepare to depart, leaving Milo behind. Milo guilts the crew into siding with him and Rourke and Helga leave with the soldiers and Kida. After the king explains some backstory and dies, Milo shows the crew and Atlanteans how to use their flying fishmobiles, and they fly off to battle.

An admittedly cool underground dogfight breaks out inside a dormant volcano, where Rourke is trying to blast his way back to the surface and escape on a balloon. During the fight he betrays Helga and she shoots the balloon down with a flare, Milo turns Rourke into a crystal Hulk using a piece of glass, and Rourke is killed by a propeller. Milo and the crew bring Kida back to Atlantis as the volcano begins to erupt, and she uses her god-powers to awaken multiple giant stone statues that surround the city in a force field, protecting it from the lava flow before she returns to normal.

As Atlantis returns to prosperity, Milo chooses to stay behind while the rest of the crew is returned to the surface along with a shitload of gold. They later get their cover story straight with Whitmore in order to cover up Rourke and Helga's deaths and protect Atlantis and its secret, and the weird mole guy gets naked and buries himself alive in a giant vase. The End.

I actually really loved this movie, even though it's incredibly derivative of Stargate. Milo as a character is literally Daniel Jackson in every way; a widely mocked academic obsessed with an ancient legend, who's given a chance to prove himself by an elderly rich person, then thrown in with a military unit who's already set to go, immerses himself in the culture, stops the military guy from killing everyone, then chooses to stay behind in the end. The similarities are so numerous and on-the-nose that I refuse to believe it's anything but a ripoff -- even more blatantly than Toy Story ripped off A Christmas Toy or Hercules ripped off Superman, so I'm a little on the fence whether or not to penalize it for that.

But everything about this movie is fantastic. It's a legitimately fun and exciting action/adventure movie with a colorful and fun cast, albeit a lot of them don't contribute anything and are just there for laughs. But even the comic relief characters demonstrate themselves to be capable and reliable in their respective fields, so there's never a reason to doubt why would they be picked for the crew. Everyone here is likeable in their own way, including the movie's villain.

If I had seen this movie as a kid/teenager, there's no doubt I would have been absolutely obsessed with it and watched it on a loop. It's still a very fun thing to sit and watch as an adult, though, with a lot of humor that would go over kids' heads and some actual moments of violence and a little sex appeal for the horny dads (sorry, Fandom). It kind of appeals to just about every age and is very well put-together. I really liked it, and aside from being a little unoriginal can't think of a lot of major flaws... oh, what the hell, even though it's a very blatant Stargate ripoff, I think it deserves this score.

Final Score: 10/10