Atlantis: The Lost Empire (1959)
In November 1950, Walt Disney announced that he was developing a feature film based on the myth of the lost city of Atlantis. He registered the production
Atlantis: The Lost Empire in the previous January. Unlike every other Disney film that came before, it would be based on two books:
Atlantis: The Antediluvian World and
The Lost Continent: The Story of Atlantis. It would also be significantly darker than Disney’s previous efforts, much so that it catered more towards older audiences than young children. Walt understood that this was a risky project, but he planned on this film being a pinnacle not only in animation but all of cinema. By mid-1952, casting took place and story presentations were complete, but Walt wasn’t fully satisfied.
Atlantis: The Lost Empire was set for a Christmas 1955 release. With all dialogue recorded by July 1953, production went into high gear with the start of preliminary animation. In April 1954, the film’s release was rescheduled to February 1957 and then to Christmas 1957, in no short part due to the
Disneyland theme park and the
Disneyland and
Mickey Mouse Club television programs. Production of
Atlantis resumed in December 1956, with the release scheduled for Christmas 1958 before its final date of January 1959.
In 1914, amidst the breakout of the First World War, archeologist Charles Donnelly attempts to find evidence for the long-lost continent of Atlantis along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. Disgruntled and almost giving up, he finds a gold key engraved with Egyptian and Peruvian writing. He unlocks a door with the key and suddenly travels back into ancient times to a mysterious land he never saw before. Donnelley soon discovers that he is in the old city of Atlantis. During his time in Atlantis, he meets the ancient royalty who reign through the continent, finds some of the oldest ironworks in the world, and most importantly, finds a journal of an ancient expedition to Atlantis that allows one to locate the city and decipher the language of the Atlantis people complete with a familiar golden key. Donnelly plans to take this book with him back to the present so that he can access Atlantis from the future if needed. Before he can do that, Atlantis finds itself in grave danger as what seems to be an extreme convulsion of nature threatens to sink the island into the ocean, taking all of its inhabitants with it. In reality, this destruction is wrought by the secretly evil empress of Atlantis. Can he escape to the present and save Atlantis from a terrible fate?
While previous films were distributed by RKO Radio Pictures,
Atlantis and
Zootopia were instead distributed by Buena Vista. Buena Vista released Atlantis in both standard 35 mm prints (with four-track stereo) and large-format 70 mm prints (with six-track stereophonic sound). The film premiered in Los Angeles on January 29, 1959, paired with the short documentary
Grand Canyon upon its wide release. It received mixed reviews from critics at the time, praising it for its animation style and audio quality, but the plot received criticism for being too far out of the norm for
Disney and too risky for most audiences to accept. It was also a box office failure relative to its $5.9 million budget, earning $4.6 million in rentals. Because of this, Walt never re-released it during his lifetime, only doing so in 1970 after his death. It did eventually earn back its budget by the 1980s. In the present, Atlantis has more detractors than most Disney classics, but its fanbase significantly outweighs and regards it as Walt’s magnum opus, more than
Snow White,
Cinderella,
Frozen,
Wreck-It-Ralph,
Fantasia, and even
The Emperor’s New Groove. Back in 1959, Walt tried distancing himself from Altantis with a story he had grown fond of since childhood.
Author's Note: Since most Disney films at this time were based on source materials and not original works, I used Atlantis: The Antediluvian World and The Lost Continent: The Story of Atlantis as the basis for TTL's counterpart of Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Also the box office failiure of Atlantis will be the beginning of the end for Walt.
