If you haven’t seen it since you were a kid, do yourself a favor. Watch it tonight. Listen for the clank of Silver’s limbs. Feel the wind of the solar surf. And when Jim stands on the bow of his ship, looking at the stars, remember that sometimes the biggest treasures aren't gold—they're the weird, expensive, beautiful failures that studios are too afraid to make anymore.
This Silver is a hulking, steam-punk monstrosity of metal and meat. He has a cannon for an arm, a telescopic eye, and a knife that flips out of his fingertips. He should be terrifying. But he feeds Morph (the pink blob pet) crackers. He cooks Jim eggs in the morning. He teaches Jim how to rig a sail.
They blended 2D traditional animation with revolutionary (for the time) 3D CGI backgrounds. The result is breathtaking. When Jim Hawkins catches a solar flare on his solar surfer, the movement feels fluid and dangerous. The massive port of Crescentia—a space station that looks like a Tatooine cantina mixed with Venice, Italy—is a visual feast. You feel the rust, the salt, and the vacuum of space simultaneously. Let’s talk about the protagonist. Jim isn't a prince. He isn't a chosen one. He is a rebellious, angry, fatherless teenager who gets his adrenaline fix from "sky-surfing" on restricted utility beams.
Have you rewatched Treasure Planet lately? Did you have the PlayStation 2 game? Let me know in the comments below—and don’t forget to hoist the solar sails. 🏴☠️✨🛸 Planeta del tesoro de Disney
Two decades later, this “flop” has aged better than almost any other film in the Disney Renaissance’s hangover era. If you haven’t revisited it lately, or if you dismissed it as a kid because it wasn’t Lilo & Stitch , buckle up. We are diving into the genius of the most expensive hand-drawn film Disney ever made. The premise is pure genius on paper: Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic adventure novel Treasure Island… IN SPACE.
The score, by James Newton Howard, mixes sweeping orchestral adventure with synth-heavy electronic beats. It sounds like a Hans Zimmer pirate movie playing inside a TRON video game. We have to address the elephant in the room. Treasure Planet was a box office bomb. It cost $140 million to make and only pulled in $109 million worldwide.
But directors Ron Clements and John Musker (the duo behind The Little Mermaid and Aladdin ) didn’t just slap spaceships onto a period story. They invented a new genre: If you haven’t seen it since you were
You get Treasure Planet .
The tragedy of Silver is that he genuinely loves the boy, but he loves the treasure more—until the very end. The climax, where Silver takes a blast to save Jim, only to realize the treasure is literally a planet-destroying weapon, is a masterclass in anti-capitalist storytelling. He chooses the kid over the gold. And in the final shot, when he sends Jim off with a salute, you will cry. I don’t make the rules. Forget “I’ll Make a Man Out of You.” The Treasure Planet soundtrack is the most 2000s thing ever produced, and it slaps.
In an era of photorealistic CGI sludge, the hand-drawn energy of Jim’s messy red hair and Silver’s shifting metal plates feels alive. It took risks. It gave us a Disney hero with daddy issues, a villain who wasn't really a villain, and a literal planet that explodes into a supernova. Feel the wind of the solar surf
John Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls wrote the theme, “I’m Still Here (Jim’s Theme).” Listen to the lyrics: “I am a question to the world / Not an answer to be heard.” That is the anthem for every kid who felt lost and misunderstood in the early 2000s. It’s raw, angsty, and acoustic. It doesn't sound like a Disney song, and that’s why it works.
Let me paint you a picture. It’s 2002. You walk into a movie theater expecting the usual Disney formula: a princess, a plucky sidekick, and a happy musical number. Instead, you get a punk-rock cyborg, a solar surfer, and a spaceship that looks like a 18th-century galleon.
His arc is painfully real. He craves adventure to fill the void left by his dad, but he has no trust in male role models. Enter John Silver. The relationship between Jim and Silver is the heart of this movie. It’s not a hero/villain dynamic; it’s a fractured father/son story.
The scene where Silver tells Jim, “You give up a few things... chasing a dream,” hits differently when you realize Silver sees his own lost youth in Jim. And when Silver betrays Jim? That moment on the deck of the Legacy isn't a villain gloating; it’s a broken man realizing he’s about to break a kid's heart. Long John Silver has been played as a charming rogue, a ruthless killer, and a schemer. But Treasure Planet gives us the definitive version: The Cyborg Dad.