Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Atlantis: The Lost Empire is a 2001 American animated science-fantasy action-adventure film created by Walt Disney Feature Animation, marking the 41st entry in Disney's animated features canon and its first science-fiction film.

Plot
An inexperienced young adventurer becomes the key to unraveling an ancient mystery when he joins up with a group of daredevil explorers to find the legendary lost empire of Atlantis. A naive-but-determined museum cartographer Milo Thatch (Michael J. Fox), dreams of completing the quest begun by his late grandfather, a famous explorer. When a journal surfaces, an eccentric billionaire funds an expedition and the action shifts to high gear.

Why It Makes Atlantis Rise Again

 * 1) Its attempt to branch out into the sci-fi genre and appeal to an older audience is a pretty interesting take for an animated Disney film.
 * 2) The animation style is pretty unique, giving the appearance of a comic book or graphic novel.
 * 3) Milo and a lot of the side characters have charm to them, which shows in several scenes, with characters such as Vinnie, Cookie, Mrs. Packard, and Sweet giving some pretty good one-liners. The side characters also all have very distinct personalities and backstories, and each of them cone from all around the world and all kinds of different countries.
 * 4) *Vincenzo "Vinny" Santorini is an Italian demolitions expert who has a strong passion for his job as a demolitionist and generally keeps himself in a deadpan snarking mood. His family ran a flower shop, which he was manning one day, making corsages for a prom ["You know, the one they put on the wrist."], when the next-door Chinese Laundry exploded due to a gas leak. He survived the explosion, but the store was ruined.
 * 5) *Dr. Joshua Strongbear Sweet is a medic who from African American and Native American descent. When he talks, his voice is loud and boisterous, showing good self-confidence, along with having a habit of getting his priorities mixed up. While living on Reservation Territory, Sweet was tutored by his uncle, an Arapaho Elder and Medicine Man, Iron Cloud. During this time, Dr. Sweet developed a talent and appreciation for unconventional forms of medicine. During his time spent trying to earn his medical degree, Sweet was drafted during his second year of medical school to join in the Spanish-American War. When living and traveling with the 24th Infantry, he would assist the medical corps where his father was assigned as a medic, including providing aid to Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders in The Battle of San Juan Hill in 1898.
 * 6) *Audrey Rocio Ramirez is a teenage Puerto Rican mechanic who is generally aggressive and sarcastic and very proud of her family and job. When her family moved to Detroit, her father and sister took night jobs at the Henry Ford Automotive Plant to supplement the income of Manuel's shop. Audrey soon got one in a huge and well-appointed machine shop at Ford. She began a period of research and invention, where she specialized in gear drives and hydraulics, and she became the forefront of the new Automotive Labor Movement. And because of her, the Ford Motor Plant is now one of the most enlightened and well-paying manufacturers in the Automobile Industry.
 * 7) *Wilhelmina Bertha Packard: an elderly, sarcastic, chain-smoking radio operator. She married multiple times (her first husband being Cavalry Officer Dennis Whitehead, her second one was Rep. Truman, she had no less than 6 more husbands between the years of 1876 to 1890, then Chichester Bell, with her most recent marriage being to Curtis Packard).
 * 8) *Jebidiah Allardyce "Cookie" Farnsworth, a Western-style chuckwagon chef. In 1866, he was with the 7th United States Cavalry. He toured with Custer during the 1867 Sioux and Cheyenne Expedition. In May 1876, he was blamed for a rash of food poisoning that struck the enter officers' corps and was demoted and transferred to the command of a general cook at Fort Abercrombie in North Dakota. He left the Army in 1878 and moved to Houston, Texas, where he quickly rose to the position of Yard Boss of Whitmore Industries Stockyard and Feedlot. He attended culinary school in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. He moved to New York and opened Three Chestnut Restaurant, where he worked as Chef. He later sold his restaurant at a loss and took a position as Chef for Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
 * 9) *Gaetan "Mole" Molière, a French geologist who acts like a mole. He displayed an early interest in subterranean pursuits at a young age when he began exploring the vast sewer networks that lie underneath old Paris. By the age of thirteen, Molière had developed a specialized type of goggles and headgear to wear while exploring caves in the surrounding countryside, as the sewers and catacombs held no further challenge or mysteries for him. He entered the Sorbonne at age seventeen but left soon after when given the opportunity to act as a special technical adviser to a local mining company.
 * 10) Kida is a pretty cool Disney princess (despite not exactly being considered one by most people), proving to be fully capable of taking on several men by herself (she actually knees one in the groin, grabs another by the head and tosses him away and pulls a knife on a third).
 * 11) The Atlantean language is actually pretty original, and is stated to be the source of all other languages throughout the world.
 * 12) There is actually lots of creativity done with the world of Atlantis, such as having technology centuries before every other country in the world and having crystals that can heal and keep people alive for centuries. What's especially cool is how they have vehicles based on various sea creatures.
 * 13) The action scenes are cool to watch. Particularly the battle near the end with the cast coming together to stop Rourke and Helga from wiping out Atlantis for the sake of money,
 * 14) Amazing score composed by James Newton Howard. And it is his second Disney animated film he composed after Dinosaur.
 * 15) Each of the side characters gets a chance to show how useful they are, and gives the audience a dance to know them and how they got into their respective careers which led them into joining the expedition.
 * 16) There is the rare moment where the romantic couple, Milo and Kida, only give a hug rather than kiss and/or get married. To have an animated film do something like this with romantic leads is extremely rare.
 * 17) The adult tone is a nice touch.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Commander Lyle Tiberius Rourke, the main antagonist, is a very underwhelming villain, although his death was pretty cool.
 * 2) It can be clichéd at times.
 * 3) The pace of the film is rushed.
 * 4) The fact that Kida is a sexualized 8,500-8,800 year old woman wearing basically lingerie for most of the movie and falling for Milo, a likely around 20 year old man, is kind of gross.
 * 5) The prologue where the Vikings try to find Atlantis was replaced by a scene where the Great Flood is seen. It gave away a good amount of the plot.

Reception
Atlantis: The Lost Empire was met with mixed reviews from critics, but received positive reviews from audiences and became a cult favorite, due in part to Mignola's unique artistic influence. Some critics praised it as a unique departure from typical Disney animated features, while others disliked it due to the unclear target audience and absence of songs. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 49% of 143 professional critics have given Atlantis: The Lost Empire a positive review; the average rating is 5.51/10. The site's consensus is: "Atlantis provides a fast-paced spectacle, but stints on such things as character development and a coherent plot.".