Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: On this week's prequel episode, we follow up on our School for Good and Evil listener polls and preview Treasure Planet.
Hello and welcome back to this film Is late to Pockets where we talk about movies that are based on books. It's another prequel episode.
Lots to get to. We're going to start, as we always do, with our patron shout outs. I put up with you because your.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Father and mother were our finest patrons.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: That's why. No new patrons this week. But we do have our Academy Award winning patrons and they are Nicole Goble, Harpo Rat, Nathan Vic Apocalypse, Matild Cottonwood Steve Teresa Schwartz, Ian from Wine Country, Kelly Napier Gratch.
Just scratch Shelby's glad the new Fantastic Four gets that sue is a badass. That darn skag and V Frank thank you all for your continuing support. We appreciate it so much.
Katie let's see what people had to say about the School for Good and Evil.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: Yeah, well you know, that's just like your opinion man on Patreon we had two votes for the book and one for the movie.
Kelly Napier said, what do you get when you combine once upon a time, Disney's Descendants, Mean Girls, Divergent, the Hunger Games, and Wicked?
Turns out it's the School for Good and Evil.
Okay, so the first Descendants movie came out after the first book in this was published. But I stand by my point.
This book was a mess and it was too long. This movie was a mess and it.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Was too long and not long enough somehow.
[00:01:47] Speaker C: But I actually preferred the book, mostly because I think it did a better job of world building for being two and a half hours long. The movie's pacing is so bad that the world is never properly set up.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: I agree with that.
[00:01:59] Speaker C: Things that should be slowed down and explained are rushed and things that are totally obvious we spend too long with.
The book has a fantastic first line. Sophie had waited all her life to be kidnapped. Yeah, it's pretty good first line. In one line you immediately learn that this is a girl who is unhappy with her lot in life and is looking for something more.
This also led to one of the things I preferred in the book that Sofie is already aware of the School for Good and Evil and the lore surrounding it. And I agree with Katie that the detail of the kidnappings happening every four years in the book is much better than in the movie where it happens just every once in a while.
There's another detail in the book that I thought was interesting that the village Sophie and Agatha live in exists only to serve the fairy tale world. You can't leave. If you walk through the woods, you just end up at the village again.
It would be interesting to see a spin off story about someone whose quest is to actually leave the village and discover what exists outside of their bubble. I may have been reading too much into the book and giving it more credit than it's due, but I found the book to be an interesting exercise in the argument of nature versus nurture. Does Sophie's evil emerge because she's evil on the inside, or is it a reaction to the people around her constantly telling her she's evil and unworthy of love? Would she have been as corruptible if she had been nurtured like Agatha was on the good side instead of constantly being cut down?
Maybe. Yeah. I don't know.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that could be an interesting the movie. I didn't feel that in the movie at all and obviously you're talking about the book here, but that that could have been an interesting thing for the movie to explore. Yeah, I don't think it does at all.
[00:03:43] Speaker C: No, definitely not the movie.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:49] Speaker C: Next comment was from Shelby who said I didn't read or watch, but it's nice to know Kit Young is in things I never finished Once Upon a Time, but Rumpelstiltskin is the best.
I'm probably fine not finishing Once Upon a Time.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: I mean technically we didn't finish.
[00:04:06] Speaker C: Yeah, we didn't watch the last season. That was like a soft reboot, soft.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: Spin off or whatever. Yeah.
[00:04:12] Speaker C: Our next comment was from Nathan who said I give this one easily to the book, but I'm willing to admit that it might be because it had so much stuff in it that I I was able to preserve the stuff I liked and ignore the dumb stuff.
From the very beginning of the book, I had Aggie and Sophie pegged as a couple and thought the natural ending to the book was them getting together and working to destroy the obviously evil school.
I still hold that ending makes the most sense, right?
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not opposed to it.
[00:04:43] Speaker C: As Katie said, the book never really establishes the two as friends since their relationship obviously just started as Sophie's fake attempt to befriend someone below her.
However, the book kept having both of them, but especially Aggie, proclaim how close of friends they are.
This read to me like a romantic crush that they aren't really mature enough to identify.
At the end, their kiss and disappearance felt like a good setup for them to come back as avenging Sapphic warriors to free everyone else.
This clearly wasn't what the book meant as spoiler Alert. The second related trilogy is about Aggie and her true love Tedros ruling in Camelot.
That makes zero sense as they had less than no romantic chemistry and it was enough to get me to nope. Out of any further reading in the series.
Yeah, I wouldn't say I'm really interested in continuing to read this series.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: And it sounds like the second related trilogy, so it's not even in this trilogy.
[00:05:41] Speaker C: So there's the School for Good and Evil trilogy, and then there's another trilogy that's something like the School for Good and Evil, the Camelot Years or something like that.
Yeah.
I also agree with Kelly about the nature versus Nurture line of the book. It seems clear to me that Sophie only became evil because she was placed in evil, since everyone in Good minus Aggie was as self interested and manipulative as herself.
There were also moments when Aggie seemed to be turning into a vapid shallow hero like the rest of the, only to have the text walk back on it later for no real reason.
That was a problem in the text generally as it combined rapid plot twists with unjustified360 personality changes by characters to create a confusing mess.
The end is particularly bad as the book shows Sophie as manipulating Aggie with arrows to guide her to the evil area, but then implies she threw the no ball out of the goodness of her heart and then immediately now it was to manipulate the good to attack. But then actually that only happens because Good misread Sophie's note to evil. But then Sophie had a plan to sweep to swap the sides, so maybe it was her goal to do this the whole time and then fuck it, none of this matters because the schoolmaster is going to become relevant for the first time in 400 pages with a 12th hour plot twist that also doesn't really last long enough to matter.
Yeah, that was kind of how I felt.
I'm sure that last sentence was confusing to read or listen to and so was the book.
The book should have been at least a trilogy and had enough ideas to do it. Well written and by extension the movie should have been a series as y' all said.
A couple other thoughts.
As I said, I think the true endgame should be Agatha and Sophie together to form Sofa afy. Probably not Saggy.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: Yeah, what is their ship name?
I'm sure it exists.
[00:07:41] Speaker C: Yeah, I kind of like. Well, AFY is too close to Alfie from Wicked, I think. So maybe Sofa.
Sofa. I don't know.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: That's pretty good. Sofa's pretty good. I like that.
[00:07:56] Speaker C: But the larger Book is very much unquestioningly princes marry princesses and there can be no other way. It does ask if two princes could go together to the ball, but mostly in the context of how Keiko can't even comprehend that such a thing would happen.
I don't like how heteronormative the whole thing was, especially since the author thought Tedros and Aggie were supposed to be endgame instead of the obvious correct answer.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Dumb author didn't even get his own book right.
[00:08:27] Speaker C: Definitely with Katie on movie. Hort being hot. See a man of taste. I can see that they tried to ugly him up, but it didn't work. Hort greater than Tedros.
[00:08:37] Speaker A: I'm not even arguing that because I thought Tedros was pretty bland.
[00:08:40] Speaker C: But anyways, I still got mad sapphic vibes in the movie, but I may have the same problem that Brian mentioned where I see it too much in fiction. There should be a space for friend love in film lit, but I don't think my brain ever really reads it that way.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: Yeah, again, for whatever reason this one, I didn't really get it. There was like one moment early in the movie. I can't even remember what it is now because I movie. I vacated it from my brain immediately upon us finishing recording. But there was like one small moment. But other than that, I just. I mean, I just don't think they had the chemistry. I don't know. It just didn't. I didn't feel it in this one.
[00:09:22] Speaker C: I didn't care for the increased importance of Rafal in the movie because it was an added thing in an already overstuffed movie. But it does make a lot of sense to have a true evil rather than fairy tale evil. Be a threat that endangers both sides of the school.
In my hypothetical trilogy, that would be the third book where the two sides have to work together to take out Rafal. And we could have fun pairings across schools where, say, Beatrix and Hester become fast friends and a formidable fighting team.
Sounds more fun than what we got. Honestly.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: Is there?
So Nathan keeps saying in his hypothetical trilogy, is this series a trilogy?
[00:10:01] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Okay. He's saying he would make the first.
[00:10:06] Speaker C: Book into a trilogy.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: Boy, I don't know if the book needed to be. Well, I don't know. I didn't read it, but I'm not.
You would have to convince me that the first book needed to be its own trilogy.
[00:10:17] Speaker C: But I don't know about a trilogy. It could have been two books.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:22] Speaker C: I think at least it is pretty.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Long to be fair.
[00:10:25] Speaker C: Yeah. On a related note, I think it makes sense for Lesso to abruptly change sides in the movie because she's forced to confront the actual threat to herself that Dean Dovey warned her about earlier.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: I don't remember that.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: I don't remember any of that.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: None of that means anything to me. So.
[00:10:44] Speaker C: At least in the book, I don't think Sophie is being evil. When she embraces her inner fashionista after her hair is cut off, she provides a true positive for the evil students to learn that they can be happy, confident, and pretty. I can see that this did not really come across in the movie.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: I don't even get what that sentence means.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: So there's a whole plot line in the book that we didn't even talk about because it didn't matter where. After Sofie gets her makeover, she holds, like, her own beautification classes for the school for evil students.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:17] Speaker C: And. And like. And it's initially, like, a. Like, a good thing because they.
They all, like, really like it, and they're like, more. They, like. Their confidence grows, and then, like, they all randomly decide that they hate her again.
And it doesn't matter.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: It's also just. I don't get the messaging about looks.
[00:11:37] Speaker C: Yeah. Because there isn't one.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:11:40] Speaker C: The author doesn't know, so it's impossible for us to know.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: Just feels so right. Like, it's like, sometimes being pretty is a good thing because it makes you confident. Other times, like, sometimes there is value. It feels like there is value and goodness ascribed to being pretty or attractive. And then other times, it feels like the whole point is that doesn't matter, and it's. You shouldn't care about that or. But then other times, it.
I don't get. It just makes.
[00:12:13] Speaker C: Okay, the side switch in the movie is dumb. Especially the facial scar that they gave Tedros, which is so totally a hot guy scar. It's funny. Yeah, he gets, like, a little scar on his face when they do the aesthetic swap at the end.
However, in the book, one of the villains is green and her skin turns white. Having a character's skin turn white when they become good is some Mormon level. Yikes. Here's the thing, though. I think you could do that if you were prepared and good enough to give it, like, the care that it would need in being deconstructed and commentated on. This was not the book to do that.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:57] Speaker C: Finally, a lot is made in the book of Sophie killing Beast because she is so evil. But while he only cut her hair off, I Feel like we are meant to believe that in a school where people get transformed without consent into all sorts of monstrous creatures, it's reasonable to believe he has done much worse to others before and would have done so to Sophie. So in the moment, killing him didn't seem that bad.
Aggie, whose goodness we never really question, knocks out her cupid pet with a rock and traps him in a wall.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: You're saying nonsense. These words you're reading is nonsense.
[00:13:31] Speaker C: I actually thought I, I. Maybe I'm misremembering. I thought it was Sophie who trapped the cupid in the well.
I'm willing to be wrong, Nathan. I thought that was Sophie though.
Anyway, he's all just walking over me like waves. I don't even traps him in a well because she isn't able to train him to behave. The cupid doesn't die, but trapping someone in a well and never going back is at least as much attempted murder as pushing someone in the water. I would argue it's much worse because it was premeditated according to the book, and that's a worse way to die.
This was one of many contradictions throughout the book, but it stuck out the most to me because of how important killing the beast becomes later on.
Okay, I wouldn't even say that it became important later on.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: I have no comment because none of this means anything to me and you.
[00:14:22] Speaker C: Should be thankful for that.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: I am. I am. No thoughts over here.
[00:14:28] Speaker C: All right. Nathan's last comment here was after further thought. My trilogy is book one, Aggie v Sophie that turns into a romance and they go home. Book two is they have to go back and we learn more about the schoolmaster's past with a reveal of his true identity at the end of the book.
Maybe he has been helping Sofie and Aggie up to that point. Book three, Sofie and Aggie are back and good and evil unite to fight the schoolmaster. Rafal.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:14:55] Speaker C: I mean, I have no feelings on this.
All right.
Over on Facebook, we had one vote for the book and zero for the movie.
Adam said giving the book my vote with the caveat of I finished the book and didn't have time to watch the movie, so it may not count. You really didn't miss all that much. No, I will say I got a bit confused by the reader versus fairy tale denizen thing because at the start of book one, one of them notes that no one can leave Gaveleton and if you walk in the woods in a straight line out of town, you wind up back in town.
So they're also in a fairy tale, right? The real world is already operating on fairy tale magic rules, so what's the point? I also imagine the non existent denouement of the book going something like agatha, I always knew you weren't evil and sacrificing yourself to save me proved it.
Yep. Deep down I've always been truly good. Even when I murdered that kid.
When you what?
Well, he was a beast at the time, but the one I drowned in self defense during the battle.
Oh no. He cut my hair. You know how I loved my hair. So I waited until later and then snuck up and drowned him for it. Don't think I ever really felt any remorse about it either. I never even told anyone. I didn't. They're probably still wondering where he went. Anyway, what's for lunch?
I truly, truly I don't understand what this book was about. Yeah, what is it saying? I don't know.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: No idea.
[00:16:42] Speaker C: On Instagram, we had zero votes for the book, two for the movie, and four listeners who couldn't decide which was the funniest thing ever to me. Yeah, a socially awkward butterfly said the cast of the movie elevates the book for me. Kerry Washington, Kit Young and Queen Charlize kept me interested. I think Netflix is considering a sequel.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: There's no way they're considering.
[00:17:07] Speaker C: It was like, I mean, they have enough material.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: That's not. I mean, I guess I don't know what their internal metrics are. I guess maybe it.
I thought I looked it up and there was no talk of a.
I don't think it.
[00:17:24] Speaker C: I mean, I don't know. I don't know what their metric.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: Yeah, again, it would just be. Yeah, because obviously there's no theatrical release or anything.
[00:17:29] Speaker C: And I mean it got like pretty panned.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Horrible reason.
[00:17:33] Speaker C: But yeah, but if, yeah, if they got enough streams, you know.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
It was the most viewed film on Netflix on October 20, 2022, the day after its release.
According to Nielsen, during its first six days of release, it received a billion viewing minutes, placing second on the streaming chart after the Watcher, whatever that is.
And its first week, the film debuted at number one on Netflix's top 10 with 78 million hours viewed. The next week, it dropp second behind the good nurse.
In the third week, it was still in the top. It was third, tied with evil. Yeah, I mean it sounds like it did fairly well, I guess. I don't know.
Oh, potential sequel in October 2022, Feig stated. We're actually already figuring out what the next film is going to be. He has the goal of creating a franchise with the material from the other School for Good and Evil novels. According to Chainani, the possibility of the sequels depends on this. On Wikipedia, there's not really any nothing other than literally the month that came out saying yeah, we might make a sequel. It's, you know, who knows. But I was gonna see I guess the thing Allow me look and see if if there's anything on Paul Feig's IMDb in his coming, you know, like his future projects upcoming.
There's nothing unless he's not producing it, which I would bet he is upcoming Houseman yeah, there's nothing on his upcoming projects on IMDb for this so I think so. Unlikely.
[00:19:12] Speaker C: Say lovey yeah.
Our other comment on Instagram was from millerk96 who said the costumes definitely push the movie to the next level.
It's rare that the look of the movie characters exceeds what you pictured when reading There you go.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Somebody enjoyed the well, they made 700 of them. Whatever. I said for the and yeah, the costumes were pretty good.
[00:19:35] Speaker C: They were fun.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: Arguably the best part of the movie.
The cats are wrestling.
Very cute.
[00:19:43] Speaker C: All right. On Goodreads we had zero votes for the book, zero for the movie, and one listener who couldn't decide. People did.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: I don't know man.
[00:19:52] Speaker C: Honestly, I was like a brain breath away from making this one a tie. Yeah, that listener who could not decide was Mikko who said comparing the book and the movie felt pretty tough. Do I prefer a whole lot of unexplored ideas or a couple barely explored ideas?
The book has a sort of fan fiction quality about it. Yeah, like it stuffs the story with all the ideas the author had without considering the pacing or the justification for all of it.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: That's what I was getting at when I was trying to say like it felt like a first draft or like something I would write of just like. Or something I like I would read in like a screenwriting class of just like 8 million ideas. No real like editing or thought done on like how this all works together and like what? Yeah.
[00:20:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
A clearer picture of how much the fairy tale dictates what people do and how much the people control the tale would have helped a lot.
The movie is in the awkward spot where it is neither good nor bad enough to be entertaining.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Completely agree.
[00:20:54] Speaker C: I like what the movie is trying to do with the evil corrupting good stories and the good becoming vain, but it's just barely touched upon the book's explanation that the story is simply getting back to the Evil twin for killing the good one feels lacking compared to that. And even on its own, honestly, the good is beautiful, evil is ugly. Thing is so messy in both. In the book, it's present more, but feels unexplored and confusing when I think it tries to deconstruct it.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:24] Speaker C: And in the movie, it's only present in Sofie's transformation, and otherwise it's just a palette swap. As you said, it's implied a couple times in the book that there are no other villages beyond the woods than Gaveledon. So are they just the normal village archetype in this fairy tale universe? I'm sure it's explained in some of the other eight books, but it's just one of the myriad things the book brings up without exploring.
If someone wants tales about the good and evil, the power of stories, and twisted fantasy tropes, just go read the Witches series by Terry Pr.
Those have whimsy with actual insight. Yeah, yeah. Read anything by Terry Pratchett.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: I would say it's tough. It's a little tough to be like. To compare any author to somebody like Terry Pratchett. That's like a tall.
[00:22:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: You're asking somebody to measure up to one.
[00:22:12] Speaker C: I would never want to be compared to Terry Pratchett.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: That's what I mean. Like. Yeah.
[00:22:16] Speaker C: I have to say this is a tie. Every time I think I've decided one is better than the other, I remember something else that flips the order. It's fair. Yeah.
So our winner this time was neither.
This is, I think, the first time this has ever happened.
We had five listeners who couldn't decide, plus three votes each for the book and the movie.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: That's a perfect poll for this movie, in my opinion. Fantastic. Thank you all for your comments, despite my lack of participation because I already don't remember anything from the movie.
Yeah. I really appreciate it and we always love hearing from you, Katie. It's time to preview Treasure island.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: Coming to theaters November 27th.
[00:23:06] Speaker C: Mr. Yoke in there, right?
[00:23:11] Speaker B: Beware the cyborg.
This appears to be somewhere kind of map. This is the moment Jim Hawkins had always dreamed of.
[00:23:21] Speaker C: Whoa.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Treasure Planet. Now he's determined to go for it.
[00:23:27] Speaker C: This is my chance to set things right. Treasure island is an adventure and historical novel by Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson.
It may be his best known work, although you'll probably recognize his other most known work, the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: I think it would be tough to say which is more known. Yeah, those are pretty. Both Pretty.
[00:23:52] Speaker C: I don't know which would be more known. I think Treasure island might be more.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: Culturally impactful in some ways. Yes. Obviously influencing tons of things. Like, I mean, the pirates, you know.
[00:24:05] Speaker C: I mean, literally every pirate media came after it.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: Hugely influential in that way. There is something to be said. I think it's probably Treasure island, to be fair, but I think there is something to be said for the fact that, like, just the concept of Jekyll and Hyde being such a culturally prominent. It's kind of the ex. The.
One of those things that is. I'm trying to think of even a comparison from, like, classic literature, but it's one of those, like, ideas within a book that has permeated our culture into, like, everyday usage where people just.
[00:24:42] Speaker C: As just a concept.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: A concept of like Jekyll and Hyde kind of. Yeah. But again, same. I mean, it's very true. The same with Treasure island that just pirates in general and. Yeah, it's hard to. Hard to overstate that influence.
[00:24:55] Speaker C: So Treasure island was written by Stevenson after returning from his first trip to America. He was still a relatively unknown author at the time, and during the summer of 1881, he amused his stepson by telling him a story using the idea of a secret map as the basis for a story about hidden treasure.
Later that summer, he wrote to a friend. I love this quote. He wrote to a friend stating, quote, if this doesn't fetch the kids, why, they have gone rotten since my day.
Will you be surprised to learn that it is about buccaneers? That it begins in the Admiral Benbow public House on the Devon coast? That it's all about a map and a treasure and a mutiny and a derelict ship? It's quite silly and horrid fun. And what I want is the best book about buccaneers that can be had.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:25:48] Speaker C: And I feel like he nailed it, man. He got it.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: I mean, he really. He called a shot.
Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:54] Speaker C: World historic called shot right there.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:58] Speaker C: So the novel was originally serialized. It was published between 1881 and 1882 in the Children's magazine Young Folks under the title Treasure island or the Mutiny of the Hispaniola.
And it was credited to the pseudonym Captain George north, and it was published as a full novel in 1883. Treasure island includes a number of historical allusions.
Historian Luis Junco suggests that it was inspired by both the story of the murder of Captain George Glass aboard the Earl of Sandwich in 1865 and in 1765 and the taking of the ship Walrus off the island of La Graciosa Near Tenerife. Tenerife?
Not sure.
The pirates of La Graciosa buried their treasure there and were subsequently all killed in a bloody battle with the Royal Navy, but the treasure has never been recovered.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: That's essentially the plot of Black Sails, correct?
[00:27:01] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Because the Walrus is Captain Flint's ship in Black Sails.
[00:27:05] Speaker C: Yeah, Black Sails, yes.
[00:27:07] Speaker A: But also, aren't a lot of the pirates in Treasure island real historical figures?
[00:27:12] Speaker C: Funny you should mention that, I thought.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:14] Speaker C: Because there are several real life pirates mentioned. Five of them that are mentioned in the text are William Kidd, Blackbeard, Edward Englund, Howl Davis and Bartholomew Roberts. The name Israel Hands was also taken from a real life member of Blackbeard's crew.
The character Long John Silver was partially inspired by Peter Scuddimore, who was a ship surgeon from Robert's crew, who amputated his own leg and was later hanged at Cape Coast Castle. I'm not going to list every single thing that was like real or inspired by something real, because there is a lot of. But I highly recommend perusing the novel's Wikipedia page if you're interested in learning more. It's really interesting.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: I'm also interested to see how many, because I don't know how many of the characters from Black Sails are mentioned are or appear in. A lot of them die, obviously. But how many are mentioned or appear in Treasure Island? Because most of the characters in Black Sails are based on historical people.
[00:28:16] Speaker C: A lot of them or a lot of them?
[00:28:17] Speaker A: I say maybe not most, but a lot of them are, you know, like Calico Jack and like all of those. And I don't. And I thought they were relevant to Treasure. Maybe not. I don't know. I don't know. The connections. We'll.
[00:28:27] Speaker C: We're going to find out. Yeah, you're probably going to hear us talk a lot about Black Sails.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: We're going to talk a lot about Black Sails. It's one of my favorite. One of both of our favorite shows, but it's. Yeah, it's fantastic.
[00:28:38] Speaker C: As for the titular island, Stevenson has never said that he based the island on a real place.
However, there are several real islands that arguably could have served as inspiration, including Dead Chest Island, Isla de Pinos, Norman island and unst.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: It's the techno music sound.
[00:29:04] Speaker C: One of the Shetland Islands to which the map of Treasure island bears a vague resemblance.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:29:12] Speaker C: So earlier this year we covered Dracula and we talked a lot about how influential the novel was on cultural and media depictions of vampires. Treasure island is that but for pirates, because we're just. We're talking about all of our favorite things this year.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: Two of our.
[00:29:30] Speaker C: Two of our most favorite things.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: Yeah. And two of our most fleshed out cosplays or costumes. Pirates and vampires. Yeah.
[00:29:39] Speaker C: A few elements that come from this novel include deserted tropical islands, treasure maps marked with an X, and one legged seamen with parrots perched on their shoulders.
[00:29:50] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:29:51] Speaker C: Also like Dracula, Treasure island is one of the most adapted, dramatized and reimagined works of fiction in English language literature.
It's been adapted numerous times for film and television, theater, radio, comics, and has many prequel and sequel works that it inspired, including, like we mentioned, one of our favorites, Black Sails. And that's not even getting into unrelated pirate media that uses elements from the novels.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:18] Speaker C: Like we said earlier, this truly, this novel had an effect on literally every piece of pirate media.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: Yeah. From 1883 forward, it is the urtext on pirates, essentially. Like it's. If you. If there's a thing you like about pirates today, it probably started with Treasure island in some way.
[00:30:38] Speaker C: I'm going to end this with a fun fact about me.
I was in a children's theater production of Treasure island as a kid.
I barely remember it. I played Mrs. Hawkins and most of the other girls in the cast were in drag because there are not a lot of female roles.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: Amazing.
[00:30:58] Speaker C: Nonetheless, I will see if I can find a photo. By which I mean I will text my mom and see if she can find a photo.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: You just tell her right now if she's listening.
Perfect.
Now it's time to learn a little bit about the movie that won our poll, which people already know at this point. But it was Treasure Planet.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: He may be on a quest for gold.
[00:31:21] Speaker C: Gonna make people see me a little different.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: Mr. Silver Cyborg. But he better watch out for Silver.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: Changing plans.
[00:31:30] Speaker C: Pirates on my ship. Oh, mama. We move now.
This isn't over yet.
[00:31:36] Speaker B: Sometimes courage can be the greatest treasure of all. You think a pup like you can take on the likes of me?
Watch me.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: By one vote, Treasure Planet came out on top.
[00:31:54] Speaker C: Squeaked by by a hair.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: Close as could be.
But don't worry, we'll still be talking about Muppet Treasure island on the bonus episode, so.
All right. Treasure planet is a 2002 film written and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, known for the Great Mouse Detective, the Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, the Princess and the Frog, and Moana, among other things.
Their co writing and directing team, who were involved in all of those movies, usually as directors, but also as writers on most of Them. It was also co written by Rob Edwards, who wrote the Princess and the Frog as well as Captain Brave New World and was a writer on TV shows like Fresh Prince, Full House and In Living Color back in the 90s and also co written. I said like story, animation, writing credits or something. Again, I don't understand animation credits for writing. They're interesting. Ted Elliott and Ted Terry Rose Rossio, who seem to primarily work together because they both had credits together on Aladdin, Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean, 1, Godzilla, verse Kong and the Mask of Zorro, among other things.
The film stars Joseph Gordon Levitt, Brian Murray, Emma Thompson, David Hyde Pierce, Martin Short, Michael Wincott, Laurie Metcalfe, Roscoe Lee Brown and Patrick McGoohan. McGoohan, I'm not sure how to pronounce his name. It has a 69% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 60 on Metacritic and a 7.2 out of 10 on IMDb and was nominated for one Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It made $140 million against a budget of 109.6 million. It was a gigantic flop.
The film was originally conceptualized as Treasure island in Space and was pitched by ron Clements in 1985 at the same meeting that him and John Musker also pitched the Little Mermaid. At the time it was rejected because Michael Eisner knew that Paramount was working on a Star Trek sequel that apparently had some sort of Treasure island influence or angle or something.
That film never ended up getting made. And then the duo pitched the idea again in 1989, but they still didn't want to make it. So then they pitched it a third time to Jeffrey Katzenberg after Aladdin came out. But he, quote, just wasn't interested, end quote. So they, they went above him. They took their pitch or sideways. I don't know what the hierarchy of Disney was at the time, but they took their pitch to Roy E. Disney, who was like the head of animation. And he liked the idea, supported them, and the movie ultimately would go into production. After Clements and Musker finished their work on Hercules, principal animation began in 2000 with roughly 350 people working on the film. When it was finished in 2002, it was estimated that the credits would contain roughly 1026 crew members working on the film. One of the screenwriters, Rob Edwards, said that the decision to set the story in space was, quote, intended to make the story as exciting for kids now as the book was for kids then, end quote. So just modernizing a classic, pretty straightforward stuff. Another one of the writers, Terry Rossio, actually ended up having some criticisms of one specific choice that was made with the final version of the script.
And I wanted to point this out here so that we could take note of it and see if we agree specifically, you agree or not.
Once we get to the episode, he said, quote, treasure Island. The book is a boy's adventure about a young cabin boy who matches wits with a crew of bloodthirsty pirates. All of the key scenes are made more dramatic by the fact that it's a young kid who is in danger. Treasure Planet made the kid into a young man, which dilutes the drama of all the situations, start to finish. Instead of being an amazing and impressive kid, he became a petulant, unimpressive teen. End quote. So he did not like aging up Hawkins or whatever. Jim Hawkins or whatever.
[00:35:50] Speaker C: Yeah, we'll have to keep an eye out for that, I guess.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
So while designing for Treasure Planet, the whole crew operated on this idea that art director Andy Gaskell credited to Ron Clements that they called the 7030 law, which meant that the overall look of the film should be 70% traditional and 30% sci fi.
So they were trying to really kind of balance how much of it felt, you know, true to the original book and stuff like that and how much of it was sci fi inspired.
[00:36:19] Speaker C: I feel like it ended up with kind of a steampunk almost.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: I am real. I think I'm realizing more and more and I will know for sure after when I'm editing this and I watch the trailer. I don't think I've ever seen this movie. Yeah, as I was looking at images and stuff from the poster, I was like, none of this seems familiar. I'm pretty sure I was thinking of Atlantis or one of the other ones.
So they also applied this rule to the sound effects in the music, which I thought was interesting. Sound designer Dane Davis said that he, quote, scoured hobby shops and junk stores for antique wind up toys and old spinning mechanisms, end quote. To create the sound effects that they used for John Silver in order to avoid anything sounding too slick or too sci fi, because they wanted it to be that mixture that leaned more towards traditional, but just like an influence of sci fi. Getting into a couple IMDb trivia facts before we get to the reviews here.
Little like fun Disney Easter egg thing when Jim's mother sits with him on his bed to read a book on his bookshelf, there is a stitch doll in an astronaut suit, so you can look out for that.
And a sequel was planned with Willem Dafoe set to voice the villainous Ironbeard, who I assume was their stand in for Black Beer, I would guess. But obviously that sequel got canceled because the movie was a huge failure at the box office.
So getting, yeah, getting to some reviews. I'm so excited. I will get to it, but getting to some reviews. Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post gave it four out of five stars, saying, quote, the film boasts the purest of Disney raptures. It unites the generations rather than driving them apart. End quote Writing for people Leah Rosen said the film was, quote, earth. That the film, quote, has imagination, humor aplenty and moves briskly, and that the animation combining traditional and digital digital techniques is ravishing. End quote. Claudia Puig of USA Today said that the film's most noteworthy feature is, quote, the artful way it combines the futuristic and the retro.
Also going on to say that it does not have the charm of Lilo and Stitch, nor the dazzling artistry of Spirited Away, but that it is, quote, capable and a capable and diverting holiday season adventure for a family audience audience end quote Writing for box office profits, Kim Hollis said, quote, there's plenty to recommend the film. The spectacular visuals alone make Treasure Planet a worthwhile watch. But she was a bit disappointed because she felt that the characters were, quote, not all that creatively rendered. And then finally, I think these are a little bit negative, more negative reviews. Andy Klein of the Daily Variety Gothams complained about the script, saying that it was listless and remarked, quote, if only its script were as amusing as its Visuals. End quote. A.O. scott for the New York Times described the film as, quote, less an act of homage than a clumsy and cynical bit of piracy. End quote Saying that it was not much of a movie at all and was a brainless, mechanical picture.
Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly said the film was quote, all cutesy, updated fripperies and zero momentum. End quote. And finally, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times gave it two and a half out of four stars, saying that he felt that a more traditional take on the story would have been more exciting and less gimmicky. We shall see.
As always, you can go all the social media Write us Reviews support us Patreon.com ThisFilmozit Katie where can people watch Treasure Planet? I keep getting confused on what the name is. Treasure Planet.
[00:39:41] Speaker C: Well, as always you can check with your local library or if you still have a local video rental store, you can check with them.
Otherwise you can stream this with a subscription to either Disney plus or Hulu for however much longer Hulu exists Or you can rent it for around $4 from Amazon, Apple TV, YouTube, or Fandango at home.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: I'm like, I was just about to say before we got here, I am excited.
Like I said, the more and more I look at stuff, the more I'm like, I don't think I've ever watched this. Or if I do, I remember nothing about it.
[00:40:17] Speaker C: I'm like, pretty sure I saw it at least once.
But gun to my head, I couldn't tell you anything about it.
[00:40:24] Speaker A: I don't remember. When we watch it, I may be like, oh, I do have vague memories of this, but I really think I may have never seen this. And if that's the case, I'm very excited to watch it for the first time because it hits, I mean, Treasure, you know, Treasure island, the inspiration for all pirate stories already on board, giving it a touch of sci fi.
How can I say no? It's everything I love. How could I be disappointed? We'll see. Maybe I will be. But I am excited.
[00:40:52] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm excited, too. I am already really enjoying the book. It is a short book. It's like 200 pages. The edition that I have, I'm on page 30, and it has already gotten good.
[00:41:04] Speaker A: Sweet. All right, that's gonna do it for this pretty prequels episode. Come back in one week's time where we're breaking down and talking about Treasure Planet. Until that time, guys, gals, non binary.
[00:41:14] Speaker C: Pals, and everybody else, keep reading books.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: Keep watching movies, and keep being awesome.
