"Атлантида: Анимациялық фильмнің жасалу тарихы"

2001 animated Disney film

Joss Whedon was the first writer to be involved with the film but soon left to work on other Disney projects. According to him, he "had not a shred" in the movie. Tab Murphy completed the screenplay, stating that the time from initially discussing the story to producing a script that satisfied the film crew was "about three to four months". The initial draft was 155 pages, much longer than a typical Disney film script (which usually runs 90 pages). When the first two acts were timed at 120 minutes, the directors cut characters and sequences and focused more on Milo. Murphy said that he created the centuries old Shepherd's Journal because he needed a map for the characters to follow throughout their journey. A revised version of the script eliminated the trials encountered by the explorers as they navigated the caves to Atlantis. This gave the film a faster pace because Atlantis is discovered earlier in the story. The character of Milo J. Thatch was originally supposed to be a descendant of Edward Teach, otherwise known as Blackbeard the pirate. The directors later related him to an explorer so he would discover his inner talent for exploration. The character of Molière was originally intended to be "professorial" but Chris Ure, a story artist, changed the concept to that of a "horrible little burrowing creature with a wacky coat and strange headgear with extending eyeballs", said Wise. Don Hahn pointed out that the absence of songs presented a challenge for a team accustomed to animating musicals, as action scenes alone would have to carry the film. Kirk Wise said it gave the team an opportunity for more on screen character development: "We had more screen time available to do a scene like where Milo and the explorers are camping out and learning about one another's histories. An entire sequence is devoted to having dinner and going to bed. That is not typically something we would have the luxury of doing." The opening was replaced by a sequence depicting the destruction of Atlantis, which introduced the film from the perspective of the Atlanteans and Princess Kida. The Viking prologue is included as an extra feature on the DVD release.

Kirk Wise, one of the directors, said that they chose Michael J. Fox for the role of Milo because they felt he gave his characters his own personality and made them more believable on screen. Fox said that voice acting was much easier than his past experience with live action because he did not have to worry about what he looked like in front of a camera while delivering his lines. The directors mentioned that Fox was also offered a role for Titan A. E.; he allowed his son to choose which film he would work on, and he chose Atlantis. Viewers have noted similarities between Milo and the film's language consultant, Marc Okrand, who developed the Atlantean language used in the film. Okrand stated that Milo's supervising animator, John Pomeroy, sketched him, claiming not to know how a linguist looked or acted. Kida's supervising animator, Randy Haycock, stated that her actress, Cree Summer, was very "intimidating" when he first met her; this influenced how he wanted Kida to look and act on screen when she meets Milo. Wise chose James Garner for the role of Commander Lyle Tiberius Rourke because of his previous experience with action films, especially war and Western films, and said the role "fits him like a glove". When asked if he would be interested in the role, Garner replied: "I'd do it in a heartbeat." Producer Don Hahn was saddened that Jim Varney, the voice of Jebidiah Allardyce "Cookie" Farnsworth, never saw the finished film before he died of lung cancer in February 2000, but mentioned that he was shown clips of his character's performance during his site sessions and said, "He loved it." Shawn Keller, supervising animator for Cookie, stated, "It was kind of a sad fact that [Varney] knew that he was not going to be able to see this film before he passed away. He did a bang up job doing the voice work, knowing the fact that he was never gonna see his last performance." Steven Barr recorded supplemental dialogue for Cookie. John Mahoney, who voiced Preston Whitmore, stated that doing voice work was "freeing" and allowed him to be "big" and "outrageous" with his character. Dr. Joshua Sweet's supervising animator, Ron Husband, indicated that one of the challenges was animating Sweet in sync with Phil Morris' rapid line delivery while keeping him believable. Morris stated that this character was extreme, with "no middle ground"; he mentioned, "When he was happy, he was really happy, and when he's solemn, he's real solemn." Claudia Christian described her character, Lieutenant Helga Katrina Sinclair, as "sensual" and "striking", and was relieved when she finally saw what her character looked like, joking, "I'd hate to, you know, go through all this and find out my character is a toad." Jacqueline Obradors said her character, Audrey Rocio Ramirez, made her "feel like a little kid again" and she always hoped her sessions would last longer. Florence Stanley felt that her character, Wilhelmina Bertha Packard, was very "cynical" and "secure": "She does her job, and when she is not busy, she does anything she wants." Corey Burton mentioned that finding his performance as Gaetan "Mole" Molière was by allowing the character to "leap out" of him while making funny voices. To get into character during his recording sessions, he stated that he would "throw myself into the scene and feel like I'm in this make believe world". Kirk Wise and Russ Edmonds, supervising animator for Vincenzo "Vinny" Santorini, noted Vinny's actor Don Novello's unique ability to improvise dialogue while voicing the role. Edmonds recalled, "[Novello] would look at the sheet, and he would read the line that was written once, and he would never read it again! And we never used a written line, it was improvs, the whole movie." * Michael Cedeno, supervising animator for King Kashekim Nedakh, was astounded at Leonard Nimoy's voice talent in the role, stating that he had "so much rich character" in his performance. As he spoke his lines, Cedeno said the crew would sit there and watch Nimoy in astonishment.

At the peak of its production, 350 animators, artists and technicians were working on Atlantis at all three Disney animation studios: Walt Disney Feature Animation (Burbank, California), Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida (Orlando), and Disney Animation France (Paris). The film was one of the few Disney animated features produced and shot in 35mm anamorphic format. The directors felt that a widescreen image was crucial, as a nostalgic reference to old action adventure films presented in the CinemaScope format (2.39:1), noting Raiders of the Lost Ark as an inspiration. Layout supervisor Ed Ghertner wrote a guide to the widescreen format for use by the layout artists and mentioned that one advantage of widescreen was that he could keep characters in scenes longer because of additional space to walk within the frame. Wise drew further inspiration for the format from filmmakers David Lean and Akira Kurosawa. "Mignola's graphic, the angular style was a key influence on the 'look' of the characters," stated Wise. Mignola was surprised when first contacted by the studio to work on Atlantis. text=I remember watching a rough cut of the film and these characters have these big, square, weird hands. I said to the guy next to me, "Those are cool hands." And he says to me, "Yeah, they're your hands. We had a whole meeting about how to do your hands." It was so weird I couldn't wrap my brain around it.|sign=Mike Mignola

The final pull out scene of the movie, immediately before the end title card, was described by the directors as the most difficult scene in the history of Disney animation. They said that the pullout attempt on their prior film, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, "struggled" and "lacked depth"; however, after making advances in the process of multiplaning, they tried the technique again in Atlantis. The scene begins with one piece of paper showing a close up of Milo and Kida. As the camera pulls away from them to reveal the newly restored Atlantis, it reaches the equivalent of an piece of paper composed of many individual pieces of paper ( or smaller). Each piece was carefully drawn and combined with animated vehicles simultaneously flying across the scene to make the viewer see a complete, integrated image. At the time of its release, Atlantis: The Lost Empire was notable for using more computer generated imagery (CGI) than any other Disney traditionally animated feature. To increase productivity, the directors had the digital artists work with the traditional animators throughout the production. Several important scenes required heavy use of digital animation: the Leviathan, the Ulysses submarine and sub pods, the Heart of Atlantis, and the Stone Giants. During production, after Matt Codd and Jim Martin designed the Ulysses on paper, Greg Aronowitz was hired to build a scale model of the submarine, to be used as a reference for drawing the 3D Ulysses. One scene that took advantage of this was the "sub drop" scene, where the 3D Ulysses was dropped from its docking bay into the water. As the camera floated toward it, a 2D Milo was drawn to appear inside, tracking the camera. The crew noted that it was challenging to keep the audience from noticing the difference between the 2D and 3D drawings when they were merged. The digital production also gave the directors a unique "virtual camera" for complicated shots within the film. With the ability to operate in the z plane, this camera moved through a digital wire frame set; the background and details were later hand drawn over the wireframes. This was used in the opening flight scene through Atlantis and the submarine chase through the undersea cavern with the Leviathan in pursuit.

Since the film would not feature any songs, the directors hired James Newton Howard to compose the score after the directors heard his music on Dinosaur. Approaching it as a live action film, Howard decided to have different musical themes for the cultures of the surface world and Atlantis. In the case of Atlantis, Howard chose an Indonesian orchestral sound incorporating chimes, bells, and gongs. The directors told Howard that the film would have a number of key scenes without dialogue; the score would need to convey emotionally what the viewer was seeing on screen. Gary Rydstrom and his team at Skywalker Sound were hired for the film's sound production. Like Howard, Rydstrom employed different sounds for the two cultures. Focusing on the machine and mechanical sounds of the early industrial era for the explorers, he felt that the Atlanteans should have a "more organic" sound utilizing ceramics and pottery. The sound made by the Atlantean flying fish vehicles posed a particular challenge. Rydstrom revealed that he was sitting at the side of a highway recording one day when a semi truck drove by at high speed. When the recording was sped up on his computer, he felt it sounded very organic, and decided to use it in the film. Rydstrom created the harmonic chiming of the Heart of Atlantis by rubbing his finger along the edge of a champagne flute, and the sound of sub pods moving through the water with a water pick.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire had its world premiere at Disney's El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, on June 3, 2001 and a limited release in New York City and Los Angeles on June 8; a wider release followed on June 15.

Atlantis was among Disney's first major attempts to utilize internet marketing. The film was promoted through Kellogg's, which created a website with mini games and a movie based video game give away for UPC labels from specially marked packages of Atlantis breakfast cereal. McDonald's (which had an exclusive licensing agreement on all Disney releases) promoted the film with Happy Meal toys, food packaging and in store decor. The McDonald's advertising campaign involved television, radio, and print advertisements beginning on the film's release date. Frito Lay offered free admission tickets for the film on specially marked snack packages.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire was released on VHS and DVD on January 29, 2002. Sales and rentals of the VHS and DVD combined would eventually accumulate $157 million in revenue by mid 2003. Both a single disc DVD edition and a two disc collector's edition (with bonus features) were released. The single disc DVD gave the viewer the option of viewing the film either in its original theatrical 2.39:1 aspect ratio or a modified 1.33:1 ratio (utilizing pan and scan). Bonus features available on the DVD version included audio and visual commentary from the film team, a virtual tour of the CGI models, an Atlantean language tutorial, an encyclopedia on the myth of Atlantis, and the deleted Viking prologue scene. The two disc collector's edition DVD contained all the single disc features and a disc with supplemental material detailing all aspects of the film's production. The collector's edition film could only be viewed in its original theatrical ratio, and also featured an optional DTS 5.1 track. Both DVD versions, however, contained a Dolby Digital 5.1 track and were THX certified. Disney digitally remastered and released Atlantis on Blu ray on June 11, 2013, bundled with its sequel Atlantis: Milo's Return.

Before the film's release, reporters speculated that it would have a difficult run due to competition from Shrek and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Regarding the market's shift from traditional animation and competition with CGI films, Kirk Wise said, "Any traditional animator, including myself, can't help but feel a twinge. I think it always comes down to story and character, and one form won't replace the other. Just like photography didn't replace painting. But maybe I'm blind to it." With a budget of $100 million, During its second weekend, it would drop into fourth place behind the latter film, Dr. Dolittle 2 and The Fast and the Furious, making $13.2 million. The film's international release began September 20 in Australia and other markets followed suit. During its 25 week theatrical run, Atlantis: The Lost Empire grossed over $186 million worldwide ($84 million from the United States and Canada).

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports that of professional critics have given Atlantis: The Lost Empire a positive review; the average rating is The site's consensus is: "Atlantis provides a fast paced spectacle, but stints on such things as character development and a coherent plot". Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 52 out of 100 based on 29 reviews from mainstream critics; this was considered "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale. While critics had mixed reactions to the film in general, some praised it for its visuals, action adventure elements, and attempt to appeal to an older audience. Roger Ebert gave Atlantis three and a half stars out of four. He praised the animation's "clean bright visual look" and the "classic energy of the comic book style", crediting this to the work of Mike Mignola. Ebert gave particular praise to the story and the final battle scene and wrote, "The story of Atlantis is rousing in an old pulp science fiction sort of way, but the climactic scene transcends the rest, and stands by itself as one of the great animated action sequences." In The New York Times, Elvis Mitchell gave high praise to the film, calling it "a monumental treat", and stated, "Atlantis is also one of the most eye catching Disney cartoons since Uncle Walt institutionalized the four fingered glove." Internet film critic James Berardinelli wrote a positive review of the film, giving it three out of four stars. He wrote, "On the whole, Atlantis offers 90 minutes of solid entertainment, once again proving that while Disney may be clueless when it comes to producing good live action movies, they are exactly the opposite when it comes to their animated division." Wesley Morris of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote positively of the film's approach for an older audience: "But just beneath the surface, Atlantis brims with adult possibility." Other critics felt that the film was mediocre in regards to its story and characters, and that it failed to deliver as a non musical to Disney's traditional audience. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a C+ rating, writing that the film had "gee whiz formulaic character" and was "the essence of craft without dream". Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said the storyline and characterizations were "old fashioned" and the film had the retrograde look of a Saturday morning cartoon, but these deficiencies were offset by its "brisk action" and frantic pace. Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote, "Disney pushes into all talking, no singing, no dancing and, in the end, no fun animated territory." Stephanie Zacharek of Salon wrote of Disney's attempt to make the film for an adult audience, "The big problem with Disney's latest animated feature, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, is that it doesn't seem geared to kids at all: It's so adult that it's massively boring." Rita Kempley of The Washington Post panned the film, calling it a "new fashioned but old fangled hash" and wrote, "Ironically Disney had hoped to update its image with this mildly diverting adventure, yet the picture hasn't really broken away from the tried and true format spoofed in the far superior Shrek." In 2015, Katharine Trendacosta at io9 reviewed the film and called it a "Beautiful Gem of a Movie That Deserved Better Than It Got" and said that the film deserves more love than it ended up getting. Summer has regarded the character of Kida as one of her favourite roles and even considers the character among the official Disney Princess line up.

Several critics and scholars have noted that Atlantis plays strongly on themes of anti capitalism and anti imperialism. M. Keith Booker, academic and author of studies about the implicit messages conveyed by media, views the character of Rourke as being motivated by "capitalist greed" when he pursues "his own financial gain" in spite of the knowledge that "his theft [of the crystal] will lead to the destruction of [Atlantis]". Religion journalist Mark Pinsky, in his exploration of moral and spiritual themes in popular Disney films, says that "it is impossible to read the movie any other way" than as "a devastating, unrelenting attack on capitalism and American imperialism". Max Messier of FilmCritic. com observes, "Disney even manages to lambast the capitalist lifestyle of the adventurers intent on uncovering the lost city. Damn the imperialists!" According to Booker, the film also "delivers a rather segregationist moral" by concluding with the discovery of the Atlanteans kept secret from other surface dwellers in order to maintain a separation between the two highly divergent cultures. Others saw Atlantis as an interesting look at utopian philosophy of the sort found in classic works of science fiction by H. G. Wells and Jules Verne.