Atlantis, The Lost Empire

Director Gary Trousdale
Rating G
Classification Comedy
Production Company Walt Disney
Length 90 minutes

Language Not Offensive

No comment

Adult Situation None

No comment

Nudity No Nudity

Kida's attire is suggestive.

Violence Minimal Violence

This is a little more than typical cartoon violence. The battle at the end is pretty violent, but there is no blood or death depicted.

The setting is the early 20^th century. Milo Thatch is a young linguistics scholar who believes he has solved a mystery regarding Atlantis. According to the story, there is a "Shepherd’s Guide" book hidden somewhere in Ireland. Milo comes to the conclusion that the whereabouts is actually Iceland.

Armed with this information, Milo tries to persuade the museum benefactors to fund his expedition to find the book. This book, Milo believes, will lead to Atlantis. The benefactors turn Milo down flatly and he then resigns his post at the museum.

The Atlanteans, according to Milo, were advanced even beyond modern man and had some form of power source more powerful than electricity. They were the perfect society.

Then, an eccentric financier makes himself known to Milo. This financier tells Milo that he had also financed Milo’s grandfather, who had indeed found the book in Iceland. The financier promises to fund Milo’s expedition to Atlantis to satisfy a bet that he had made with Milo’s grandfather that if he found any evidence for Atlantis, the financier would fund the expedition. But Milo’s grandfather didn’t live to make the expedition.

Thus begins the expedition.

The cast of the crew is an odd bunch of experts: a chiseled, militaristic captain, Commander Rourke; a voluptuous lieutenant, Helga Sinclair; a filthy geologist, "Mole" Moliere; an ex-convict who is the demolitions expert, Vinnie Santorini; the doctor who had studied with a Navajo medicine man, Dr. Joshua Sweet; and the engineer is a teenage girl (who had worked with her father in a garage), Audrey Ramirez.

The financier, Preston Whitmore, has built a fantastic submarine (reminiscent of captain Nemo’s submarine). Not long into the trip, the sub is attacked by a giant sea creature. Milo makes mention of "leviathan" which is mentioned in the Bible in the book of Job.

Just so you know, this is what is written in the Bible concerning Leviathan.

(Job 41 NIV) ¹⁾ "Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope? ²⁾ Can you put a cord through his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook? ³⁾ Will he keep begging you for mercy? Will he speak to you with gentle words? ⁴⁾ Will he make an agreement with you for you to take him as your slave for life?

5) Can you make a pet of him like a bird or put him on a leash for your girls? ⁶⁾ Will traders barter for him? Will they divide him up among the merchants? ⁷⁾ Can you fill his hide with harpoons or his head with fishing spears?

8) If you lay a hand on him, you will remember the struggle and never do it again! ⁹⁾ Any hope of subduing him is false; the mere sight of him is overpowering. ¹⁰⁾ No one is fierce enough to rouse him. Who then is able to stand against me? ¹¹⁾ Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.

12) "I will not fail to speak of his limbs, his strength and his graceful form. ¹³⁾ Who can strip off his outer coat? Who would approach him with a bridle? ¹⁴⁾ Who dares open the doors of his mouth, ringed about with his fearsome teeth?

15) His back has rows of shields tightly sealed together; ¹⁶⁾ each is so close to the next that no air can pass between. ¹⁷⁾ They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted.

18) His snorting throws out flashes of light; his eyes are like the rays of dawn. ¹⁹⁾ Firebrands stream from his mouth; sparks of fire shoot out. ²⁰⁾ Smoke pours from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds. ²¹⁾ His breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from his mouth.

22) Strength resides in his neck; dismay goes before him. ²³⁾ The folds of his flesh are tightly joined; they are firm and immovable. ²⁴⁾ His chest is hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone.

25) When he rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before his thrashing. ²⁶⁾ The sword that reaches him has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin. ²⁷⁾ Iron he treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood. ²⁸⁾ Arrows do not make him flee; slingstones are like chaff to him. ²⁹⁾ A club seems to him but a piece of straw; he laughs at the rattling of the lance.

30) His undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge. ³¹⁾ He makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment. ³²⁾ Behind him he leaves a glistening wake; one would think the deep had white hair.

33) Nothing on earth is his equal-- a creature without fear. ³⁴⁾ He looks down on all that are haughty; he is king over all that are proud."

No doubt that legends of fire-breathing dragons are born out of this passage. And, I don’t want to get into a discussion about what leviathan is or is not. Although, most scholars believe that "leviathan" means crocodile. We do know that the Nile has crocodile in it. The point here is to let you know exactly what the Bible says. Disney answers this puzzle of leviathan by making it a machine, which (we are left to presume) was fashioned by ancient Atlanteans to protect Atlantis. (One would also be enticed to believe that Atlantis predates the Bible – or at least the book of Job.)

The submarine is promptly destroyed by the leviathan and a small contingent of the original crew manage to find an air pocket deep within the sea. Lucky for our wayfarers, this is the way to Atlantis. About half of the movie is devoted to the events to this point and to the actual discovery of Atlantis, which turns out to be a surviving civilization living in an air pocket within the earth under the sea.

Again borrowing from Jules Verne, the civilization is reminiscent of the distant future in "The Time Machine"—a civilization that is highly advanced, peaceful and simplistic however has lost its knowledge through neglect following a cataclysm (in "The Time Machine" the cataclysm is global catastrophic war, in Disney’s "Atlantis" the cataclysm is self-inflicted by their mystical power.)

The protagonist-heroin, Kida, is taken straight out of Disney’s "Pocahontas"—from the general appearance (except the hair and skin color) down to the moment she discovers the unsuspecting adventurer. Like Pocahontas, Kida then becomes the advocate for the members of the expedition who would be indiscriminately killed by her father, the king, Kashekim.

The king relents and allows the expeditioners to live, only on condition that they leave the following morning. During the night, however, many things happen. Milo and Kida learn many of the lost secrets of the Atlantean culture (since Milo is a linguist, he can read and interpret the ancient inscriptions that contain all knowledge). And, the captain and crew decide to plunder Atlantis and kill its inhabitants.

The captain and crew force the king to reveal the "secret" of the power source of Atlantis and then they steal the power source and attempt to escape. Through a series of fights and battles, the power source is saved, but not before the king dies.

This makes Kida the queen. Just then, all the ruckus from the battle has aroused a volcano which now threatens to destroy Atlantis. Kida is able to conjure up some magic that causes a force field to cover Atlantis like a dome. The lava covers the dome, cools and hardens and then is broken away, to reveal a new and improved Atlantis.

Amid all the battles, the captain and lieutenant are killed. The other surviving crewmembers realize their folly and aid the Atlanteans in the end. They are given gifts of wealth and all return home except Milo, who of course is in love with Kida.

In the closing scene, the returned crewmembers are being briefed to deny any knowledge of Atlantis.

Now, the mystical power spoken of earlier involved several things: magic, healing crystals, and some form of energy described as a life-force and also as the collective conscience of ancestors. This energy then became their deity and developed a personality/volition of its own. In times of crisis, the force would take a citizen as a sacrifice for the benefit of the others. This sacrifice is a member of the royal family. This resembles a type of Christ figure. In the final crisis of Atlantis, Kida is taken but later returns victorious (type of Christ’s return).

See my commentary on Atlantis in general.

The music is pretty good, which is typical for Disney.

Reviewer Jeff Justus Review Date 06/15/2000 Score 3

The story itself is interesting and the animation is good.  The idea of Atlantis is romantic, and like the stories about the Titanic, is captivating on that merit alone.  But there is so much New Age philosophy in this movie that you would have to have a solid grounding in your own philosophical beliefs to avoid picking up some new ideas.

Some of the events and characters are borrowed from other stories to make this one more interesting, but all in all, I would say this is an OK movie.

Michael James Fox
James Garner