With the “Disney renaissance” now over, their animated features started to struggle for relevance against a host of new(ish) rivals. Though gorgeous to look at, with animation that pretty much hits the right balance between computer generated backgrounds and a traditional hand-drawn look, Treasure Planet is burdened with a derivative plot (as its title suggests, it’s an outer space reworking of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883)) and under-developed characters. It was also a box office flop of truly epic proportions, returning one of the poorest box office showings for any animated feature film.

As a child growing up on the planet Montressor, Jim Hawkins (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is enthralled by stories of the space pirate Captain Flint who supposedly hid his ill-gotten gains the near-mythical “Treasure Planet”. As a teenager, he’s surly and resentful after his father left him and his mother Sarah (Laurie Metcalf) who needs his help running the Benbow Inn. His life takes a dramatic turn when a spaceship crashes near the inn and dying pilot Billy Bones (Patrick McGoohan) gives him a sphere that turns out to be a holographic star map and warns him to “beware the cyborg” shortly before pirates attack and burn down the inn. Jim flees with his mother and their friend Dr Delbert Doppler (David Hyde Pierce) and Jim decides to search for the Treasure Planet, using his star map as a guide. Doppler charters the ship RLS Legacy, which looks like an ancient sailing galleon fitted with warp drive, commanded by Captain Amelia (Emma Thompson) and first mate Mr Arrow (Roscoe Lee Browne) and crewed by, among others, the cyborg cook John Silver (Brian Murray). The ship survives a close encounter with a supernova before finding the Treasure Planet only to find himself knee deep in space pirates.

Treasure Planet more or less follows the plot of Treasure Island but its attempts to work up some interest by relocating the story to a futuristic steampunk milieu in the end adds nothing of any real interest. It had, to varying degrees, been done before anyway – Treasure Island in space had featured as the basic plot for the 1982 Bulgarian animated film Planetata na sukrovishtata, also known as Treasure Planet, and in the Italian television mini-series L’isola del Tesoro/Treasure Island in Outer Space/Space Island (1987) directed by Antonio Margheriti while sailing-galleons-as-spaceships were central features of the Doctor Who serial Enlightenment (1983) and the anime Odin – Koshi Hansen Starlight/Odin: Photon Sailer Starlight (1985) among others. Here, the Treasure Island is just bolted on to standard Star Wars (1977) inspired imagery to not a great deal of effect.

So, without originality and compelling characters we have little to get excited about here. The action set-pieces are certainly nicely done – especially an early sky-surfing scene and the scientifically illogical but spectacular supernova sequence – but we really could have done with a bit more than that. As written and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, with Rob Edwards helping out with the script, it’s fast-paced yet shallow, the script suffering from Musker and Clements’ regular “trick” of anachronistically forcing very contemporary slang and quips into a story that doesn’t need them. Indeed the humour all gets a bit much, too frenetic, too obvious and far too broad. Despite all the action, it still feels dull somehow, lacking despite all the hi-octane action scenes.

The cast do what they can with the unmemorable characters – Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes for an engaging hero and Emma Thompson is very much cast against type as the swashbuckling Captain Amelia, through poor old David Hyde Pierce just seems to be channelling his Frasier (1993-2004) character Niles Crane, which seems to be how his character was written. Elsewhere, Patrick McGoohan is wasted in a vocal cameo that barely amounts to a few sentences as the doomed Billy Bones.

Clements had first pitched the idea of setting Treasure Island in space as far back as 1985, at the same meeting that he and Musker had suggested that Disney make The Little Mermaid (1989), but Disney boss Michael Eisner got wind that the next Star Trek film would have a Treasure Island theme (a film that never got made) and the project lay dormant for many years until its time came. It hardly seemed worth the wait really. Though the critics were kind to it, the public proved resistant, and the film failed to make back its budget, causing Disney’s distribution arm Buena Vista to reduce its projected earnings for that year when the film’s poor box office became evident. Disney had big plans for the film, suggesting before the box office results became evident, that direct-to-DVD sequels and a television series were in the offing. All that was cancelled and any fans that the film had were left with just a handful of video games based on the now dead franchise.

Disney had long struggled with science fiction subjects. 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1954) had been a huge hit but after that, success with the genre kept eluding them. The animated Lilo & Stitch (2002) was a lot of fun and a huge commercial success but Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), another steampunk adventure, failed to click with audiences. There were live-action comedies like Moon Pilot (1962), the Medfield films (The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), Son of Flubber (1963), The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), Now You See Him, Now You Don’t (1972), The Strongest Man in the World (1975), The Shaggy D.A. (1976), Flubber (1997)) and one-offs like Unidentified Flying Oddball (1979), the post-Star Wars blockbuster The Black Hole (1979) and on to big-budget critical and box office flops like Tron: Legacy (2010), John Carter (2012) and Tomorrowland (2015). None of them amounted to very much, though Disney kept plugging away regardless. You’d have though that they might have learned a lesson…