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June 10, 2001 Atlantis takes off Disney sets course for Adventureland in animated flick By BRUCE KIRKLAND -- Toronto Sun HOLLYWOOD -- The idea of an animated movie about the fabled lost city civilization of Atlantis has been kicking around the Disney cartoon arena for a decade. Nothing much was done until a bunch of the boys got together at a Mexican restaurant near the studios in Burbank and, over the chimichanga appetizer course and between burps, kickstarted the idea into action. When it came time to sell the idea to Michael Eisner, Disney's head honcho, and to Roy E. Disney, Walt's nephew and the animation department's independent guru, producer Don Hahn put it over in unique fashion by using a few Disneyland attractions as references. According to Hahn now, this was his "boneheaded" pitch: "We've been to Fantasyland a lot. We've done a lot of fairytale musicals and been through the castle at the end of Main Street a few times. Let's go down to the end of Main Street and turn left, because there's this whole place there called Adventureland. Let's make an Adventureland movie!" The pitch worked. On Friday, Atlantis: The Lost Empire opens across North America as a big-screen animated adventure, the first of its kind for the studio. Atlantis is animated in an intricate combination of computer- generated images and traditional hand-drawn cel animation -- all in rare (for animation) anamorphic widescreen. It's a gamble. "Because we've done so many (movies with) fuzzy sidekicks and people breaking into songs, this is a big departure," Hahn says. "So that represents a certain amount of risk and trepidation. Animation itself is not a genre. It's a medium where you can do a lot of different genres. "So the first question is, 'Why animate that?' And it's a valid point these days. Ten years ago, you could have argued that animation does these things well -- creatures, special effects -- and live action doesn't. "Now, all those lines are grey and kind of blurred because, arguably, The Mummy Returns is an animated movie. In the end, you have to come back to storyline and character and come back to a level of fantasy in our movies that we think is interesting." In Atlantis: The Lost Empire, producer Hahn and co-directors Kirk Wise and Trousdale -- this trio was also responsible for Disney's Beauty And The Beast and The Hunchback Of Notre Dame -- give us a story set in 1914 that starts with a humble New York museum worker who aspires to be a famous archeologist like his grandfather. Because he holds some of the keys to the secrets of Atlantis, he is recruited by a philanthropist to join an expedition searching for the legendary lost empire. As the expedition enters the bowels of the Earth, there are monsters and mythic creatures and battles and double-crosses and heroic acts and selfless moves and romance in the air. Hahn says the spark was a passage in Jules Verne's Journey To The Centre Of The Earth. "There was a part of that book where they passed through a dusty ruin that was Atlantis on the way to the centre of the Earth. We thought, well, why not just pluck that out and make that the nut of our movie?" The voices behind the characters include Michael J. Fox as the young hero Milo, James Garner, Leonard Nimoy, Don Novello (famous as Father Guido Sarducci on Saturday Night Live), the late Jim Varney (in his last role), John Mahoney, David Ogden Stiers, Claudia Christian (Babylon 5), Phil Morris, Corey Burton and Cree Summer as the Atlantean princess-warrior Kida. "To be part of a Disney classic, are you kidding?" Burton teases when asked if he is juiced about playing the half-black, half-Native American doctor on the expedition. "It's the ultimate achievement. That we can continue to entertain long after we've gone is wonderful to me." Adds Christian: "To walk down that aisle of Toys R Us and see your little figure there -- wow! It is very prestigious." "They're watching the nuances, watching the way your face moves when you phrase words," Fox says in a prepared video interview (he was unable to do print interviews). "So it's really cool when you're watching the animation and, while the character doesn't necessarily look like me, he would move in ways I move. It's a spooky feeling. You kind of feel that they've got your soul." John Pomeroy, the supervising animator in charge of Fox's character, explains the process: "We try to take everything that makes up Michael J. Fox, his gestures, his attitude. We take this information as animators and we fuse it into the animation, trying to create a character that is believable for you, that is convincing for you, that will captivate you. Because we as filmmakers and artists want to engage you in that willing suspension of disbelief." Another key was the creation of a near-seamless blend of computer- generated images and hand-drawn images, according to co-directors Wise and Trousdale. "Our contribution artistically," says Wise, "was to make sure those two worlds merged so that the CG elements didn't leap out at the audience and holler, 'I'm computer generated!' We wanted those two worlds to blend seamlessly. I think we get pretty close on Atlantis, the closest we have ever gotten." The filmmakers were not satisfied with that process on Beauty And The Beast, Trousdale says. "When you go into that ballroom, you know you're in Computerland. Everyone's dancing around and they're falling in love and everybody's happy so you don't care that much. But it's still pretty clear that you're in Computerland, and suddenly you're back in Cartoonland. We wanted to not have that division this time." There is also a strong moral message at the heart of Atlantis, as there is in all Disney animation. "There is always a thematic centre," says Thomas Schumacher, head of Disney's animation studio. "There is an agenda about how to be true to yourself, to honour yourself, respect your parents, search for the truth, that the light always emerges, that good always triumphs over evil and that sacrifice is important. Schumacher believes the story ends with Milo's true heroism shining through. "Not only did he do the right thing, stick to his guns, convert all these people to his side, heroically save the day in a very Star Wars kind of move, but then he protects the place in a kind of noble move. I think that's beautiful. That's what it's about." http://www.canoe.ca/TorontoShowbiz/06t1.html ********** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn