Wednesday 4 January 2017

Now we can drink Diet Coke as a family

I am sure I had seen Treasure Planet before, but none of it seemed familiar this time around... well, that's not entirely accurate, because ho-lee shytt, JJ Abrams was clearly a huge fan, as there are numerous sequences, plot elements, scenes, and even action sequences that are lifted in their entirety that appear in JJA's sci-fi films, and not just a treasure map sequence which will be familiar to viewers of The Force Awakens, there's also Jack Hawkins' introduction where he's chased down by visor-faced robotic-voiced coppers on speeders for his joyriding through a dusty backwater and a scene where the Hispaniola escapes a black hole by riding a shockwave - recreated almost shot-for-shot in Star Trek's finale where the Enterprise does the same thing.  Once the Star Trek comparison was in my head, it was impossible not to see other similarities, especially Benn Gunn/Future Spock, Hawkins' absentee father narrative which formed the basis of Kirk's character in ST, the "random pipes = spaceship interior" aesthetic, and even after JJA left the NuTrek director's chair, the comparisons continue with Spaceport/Yorktown and an anti-gravity fight finding their way from Treasure Planet into Star Trek Beyond without as much change as one might expect, while - more tenuously - both films also feature terrible theme songs, though Treasure Planet's soft rawk monstrosity at least serves to highlight that animated film directors from 2002 at least understand how to initiate, stick with, and then actually resolve a Daddy Issue theme.
Desperate to fill a blog post?  You betcha.

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