DVD review: ‘Tron,’ ‘Atlantis’ show scant signs of aging

Geoff Carter

Friday, Feb. 8, 2002 | 9:13 a.m.

No animation studio takes the risks Walt Disney Animation routinely takes. You can gather up "Waking Life," "Princess Mononoke" and "Shrek" and just roll 'em up and smoke 'em, because without "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Toy Story," not one of those films would exist.

The studio's animation division, contrary to popular belief, has never turned out sure things. "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast" were released at a time when musicals -- to say nothing of animated musicals -- were a dead medium. "The Lion King" was expected to tank. "Fantasia" was a flop, and didn't turn a profit until some 30 years after it was released. Yet the studio made these films anyway, strictly out of responsibility to a tradition some seven decades old.

This week's featured DVDs, "Tron: 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition" (Disney DVD, $29.99) and "Atlantis: The Lost Empire (Collector's Edition)" (Disney DVD, $39.99; there's also a less-desirable single-disc version) are two of Disney's more ambitious failures. Both were moderately profitable, but paled next to unexpected summer blockbusters: 1982's "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" and 2001's "Shrek," respectively.

Both were critically backhanded, praised for their good looks but denigrated for nearly everything else.

It's somewhat easy to understand why. "Atlantis" has no songs, no cute animal sidekicks; instead, it offers a grand boyish adventure, in the tradition of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and Saturday-afternoon serial. A fleet, funny exploration yarn that makes a few subtle digs at industrialization, "Atlantis" deserves much better than the lukewarm reception it got.

And, speaking strictly as a lad, the submarine "Ulysses" is just way too cool.

On the other hand, "Tron" remains a narrative and visual anomaly 20 years on -- a wild experiment even for Disney. A live-action/animated hybrid that follows a young hacker (Jeff Bridges) on a Lewis Carroll-like trip through a computer-generated otherworld, "Tron" set the stage for "The Matrix," "Virtuosity" and nearly every other alternate-reality picture you've seen.

And similar to those movies, "Tron's" dialogue stinks. It reminds me of the exchanges in "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- men and women in extraordinary circumstances, talking about the most mundane stuff imaginable. (In fact, during the live-action scenes shot at California's Lawrence Livermore laboratories, "Tron" is lit and staged like a Kubrick film.) But the filmmakers could hardly be blamed: In that new world, the most mundane of computer functions looked like poetry up close.

Each film is given a generous double-disc treatment, and the documentary elements of each put the films in proper perspective: Neither disc has an inflated notion of itself. The filmmaker's commentary tracks are self-deprecating -- "Tron's" Stephen Lisberger still seems amazed that his film was made at all, and "Atlantis" producer Don Hahn freely admits that the makers of "Atlantis" simply wanted to see a movie similar to the ones they'd enjoyed growing up. (He adds puckishly that the film was conceived over a platter of chimichangas.)

Both movies look and sound gorgeous. "Tron" was shot in Super Panavision 70, a super-widescreen format that previously only served biblical epics and westerns, but it pays off: "Tron's" cool blue computer world is completely encompassing. (Dead giveaway: the computer company in "Tron" is called "Encom.") The DVD preserves that widescreen sweep, and backs it with a Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound mix that's as full as the picture.

"Atlantis" does "Tron's" gorgeous transfer one better: The film was processed to disc completely digitally. You could stare until your eyes fall out and not find a single speck of dust. And both films boast extensive "making-of" documentaries, deleted scenes, galleries upon galleries of conceptual art and more.

(The concept art -- drawn by Syd Mead and Jean Giraud for "Tron" and Mike Mignola for "Atlantis," among others -- could sell handsomely if compiled into a coffee-table book. Oddly enough, the art of the two films complement each other perfectly.)

Disney may have failed with these two films, but it wasn't the studio's fault. Watching the discs of "Atlantis" and "Tron," it's easy to imagine both films doing "Lion King"-sized business under better circumstances. The films themselves don't know that they're small, and that's a mark of bravery.