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Part of the film’s downfall is attributed to suffering under the weight of already released family friendly fare such as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Disney’s own The Santa Clause II, both of which were in their third and fifth weekends respectively and still managed to outgross Treasure Planet upon its opening weekend. Thinking about it, positioning their film three weeks after the release of Chamber of Secrets actually wasn’t that bad a move, just an unfortunate one.

The film’s target audience of young children and teens probably had no idea what Treasure Planet actually was. It looked more like an original film (not really a bad thing) and in some cases only their parents would work out the connection to Treasure Island. The youngsters were more likely to purchase tickets on something they were already aware of, hence the popularity of Harry Potter and The Santa Clause sequel during that weekend. I also wouldn’t rule out that those who did see the film were most probably swayed by the Disney brand more than anything.

A theory was going around that Disney purposely mishandled the release of Treasure Planet, hoping that it would bomb. That way they could use it as an excuse to finally stop working on traditionally animated films in favour of computer animated films, as well as laying off hundreds of staff. Personally I find it hard to believe that Disney would spend so much money with the intention of fast tracking the death of hand drawn animation.

The rise of computer animated films during this period has been noted, with traditional hand drawn animation slowly starting to wane. Treasure Planet does feature a mixture of both, though it certainly doesn’t look like a film that cost over $100 million. While the target audience would be lured by cutting edge computer animation, Disney did prove that it shouldn’t really matter, after Lilo & Stitch (which had one of the best marketing campaigns for any Disney film) turned out to be a runway success for them earlier that year. Disney was apparently surprised with an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, which may have felt like it was offered out of pity more than merit, but it certainly wasn’t the most competitive category that year.

Most critics appeared to enjoy the film, but reviews seemed to have a "good, but not great" vibe, which I agree with. There’s a lot crammed into those 90 minutes, but not enough to fully develop the supporting characters (there’s not enough Captain Amelia). It even has time for a soggy midsection as Jim and John Silver bond to the sounds of John Rzeznik’s ‘I’m Still Here.’ It takes a star going supernova and the death of Captain Amelia’s first mate, Mr. Arrow, to inject a bit of excitement back into the film.

On the whole, mainstream sci-fi animation is a dicey genre and audiences have avoided the likes of Final Fantasy, Titan A.E., Astro Boy, and as we’ve seen more recently, Mars Needs Moms. Robots, Monsters vs Aliens and WALL-E would be the main exceptions, though it’s probably down to those films being much more comedic and less serious.

Given the success Disney recently had with The Lion King, they’re clearly looking at their back catalogue for their next three-dimensional make over and personally I think Treasure Planet is ripe for a 3D re-release (there are some moments that would work quite well converted in the format). Timing may be partially to blame for its low returns; not just the eventual release date, but maybe a sci-fi interpretation of Treasure Island was a little ahead of its time? However, serious animated sci-fi (which excels in Anime) just isn’t a big enough draw for mainstream audiences.

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