Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Rated PG for action violence.
reviewed by Christopher Lyon
What starts out as an old-fashioned adventure movie eventually becomes a New Age, politically-correct adventure movie—losing most of its steam in the process. And although the style of the animation is interesting, “Atlantis” doesn’t stack up against other recent animated hits.
Set in 1914 “Atlantis” tells the story of Milo Thatch (Michael J. Fox), a young cartographer and language expert who has inherited his late grandfather’s passion for finding the legendary lost city mentioned in Plato’s writings. When he can’t get exhibition funding through the museum he works at, an old friend of his grandfather’s reveals that he’s already funded the search and it’s leaving that night.
Milo is whisked on to a huge, very cool-looking “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”-style vessel with a cast of colorful adventurers. Guided by the recently discovered “Shepherd’s Journal,” they set off to find the city. Milo simply wants to prove the legend is true and maybe find the city’s rumored power source to help out the rest of humanity. The motives of the exhibition’s leader, Commander Rourke (James Garner), aren’t as clear.
The animation—using a combination of hand-drawing and computer technology—gave the movie a dated feel I liked, almost like those old adventure cartoons from the 70s. I was also impressed by the drawings of the huge submarine and all the smaller ships that traveled with it. Unfortunately, the ship (along with most of the crew) doesn’t survive the surprisingly quick and dangerous trip to Atlantis.
The carefully multi-ethnic cast of characters is mostly fun and funny, especially demolitions expert Vinny Santorini (Don Novello, who used to play Father Guido Sarducci) and switchboard operator Wilhelmina (Florence Stanley). Fortunately, there are no talking animals and no singing—unusual for a Disney movie. Unfortunately, lots of the old Disney stuff still shows up.
We still get the young and innocent heroine drawn and dressed like a swimsuit model. We still get the old Disney trick of making sure all the parents mentioned in the movie have either been killed or get killed (for some reason). And with Atlantis, we get the old New Age teaching by the truckload.
It turns out that the power source that allowed Atlantis to experience flight and have electricity long before the rest of the world is a giant crystal. Not only that, this crystal is powered by the collected souls or memories of all the Atlantis-ites who have died. Small pieces of the crystal have kept the citizens of Atlantis alive for thousands of years and give them great health and light. The healing and life-giving power of crystals is a popular New Age teaching. When the crystal is threatened, all of that power enters and possesses one of the characters. Another New Age idea—channeling the spirits of the dead.
Of course, Christians believe that the souls of those who die either go to heaven or hell, depending on whether they’ve placed their trust in Jesus. We don’t believe souls live in the earth or in crystals or in the great universal oneness. We don’t believe they get reincarnated and come back in another form. For a Christian, to be absent from the body is to be with God (2 Cor. 5:1-10).
The movie does quote from the book of Job (ch. 41) about leviathan, the great beast of the sea that ends up trashing the exhibition’s ship. Mentioned several times in the Bible, leviathan was apparently a huge and nasty monster-like animal. But Job’s point was that the God who created such a monster must be incredibly powerful. In the movie, the citizens of Atlantis created the monster to protect their city. Again, Disney steals credit from God and gives it to men.
Maybe it sounds like I’m being harsh on Disney, but they’ve built a Magic Kingdom with movies that encourage kids to celebrate the supernatural without ever acknowledging the ultimate source of supernatural power—God. If we’re going to let Disney entertain us, we should at least be able to identify the lies so we can reject them and explain them to our friends.
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