Summary: A young adventurer named Milo Thatch joins an intrepid group of explorers to find the mysterious lost continent of Atlantis. - Imdb.com
Length: 95 minutes
Rating: PG
Date of Original Release: 2001
Directors: Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise
Writers: Plato; Tab Murphy, David Reynolds, Gary Trousdale, Joss Whedon, Kirk Wise, Bryce Zabel, Jackie Zabel
Art Director: David Goetz
Music: James Newton Howard
Cast
MILO THATCH - Michael J. Fox
PRINCESS KIDA - Cree Summer
COMMANDER ROURKE - James Garner
HELGA SINCLAIR - Claudia Christian
DR. JOSHUA SWEET - Phil Morris
VINNY SANTORINI - Don Novello
AUDREY RAMIREZ - Jacqueline Obradors
MOLE - Corey Burton
MRS. PACKARD - Florence Stanley
COOKIE - Jim Varn
PRESTON WHITMORE - John Mahoney
KING OF ATLANTIS - Leonard Nimoy
MR. HARCOURT - David Ogden Stiers
Plot & Commentary
We open our story with a quote from Plato: “… in a single day and night of misfortune, the island of Atlantis disappeared into the depths of the sea.” [360 B.C.] I will start by reminding everyone that Plato’s Atlantis was an allegory.
The ocean horizon. There’s a confusing bang and airships come flying at us. The water behind them swells into a huge tidal wave. Someone is already blaming someone else: “You fool! You’ve destroyed us all!” These are Atlanteans, and they’re trying to warn Atlantis, but for most of them it’s too late. A handful make it back to the island as the shadow of the wave grows over it. An alarm goes up. The royal family is told to get to safety. The princess, who is maybe four years old, drops her doll and wants to go back for it. Her mother uses as much time as it would take to go back for the doll to tell her that there’s no time to get it. A red light sweeps over the queen and she turns toward it as though in a trance. Her eyes and the pendant around her neck start to glow. All the lights that have been sweeping across the area turn blue and gather in one spotlight on her. She starts to float upwards, and carries her daughter’s bracelet with her. Some sort of laser wall/dome grows over a portion of the city. It sinks as the wave overtakes it.
Washington D.C. 1914. We enter a museum or something like it as a scholar’s voice thanks the panel for gathering to listen to him talk about the legend of Atlantis. Oh yes, it’s a scholar. He’s got the build, the bowtie, the glasses, and the haircut. Young, too. Kind of reminds me of you, Megan. Ha ha ha. Just kidding. He talks about the power source that allowed Atlantis to develop electricity, advanced medicine, and flight. “More powerful than our modern internal combustion engines!” You’ve got my attention, buddy! He wants to find Atlantis and bring the power source to the surface. He talks about a book called the Shepherd’s Journal, which offers the island’s exact location. Everyone thinks the book is in Ireland. “But after comparing the text to the runes on this Viking shield—” gotta love nerds “—I found that one of the letters had been mistranslated. So by changing this letter and inserting the correct one, we find that the Shepherd’s Journal, the key to Atlantis, lies not in Ireland, gentlemen, but in Iceland. [to himself] Pause for effect…” Personally, I would be far quicker to fund a trip to Ireland than Iceland. That probably goes without saying.
His name is Milo Thatch and he works in Cartography & Linguistics. The phone rings and we find that his audience is made of stuffed animals and skeletons, and someone Upstairs wants him to fix the boiler.
The cuckoo clock sings and it’s showtime. He gathers his maps and pauses to smile sentimentally at an old photograph of tiny Milo and his grandfather. A note arrives. His meeting has been moved from 4:30 pm to 3:30 pm. Another note arrives. “‘Dear Mr. Thatch, due to your absence the board has voted to reject your proposal. Have a nice weekend. Mr. Harcourt’s office.’ THEY CAN’T DO THIS TO ME!”
The Board is exiting the building en masse.
BOARD MEMBER 1: I swear, that you Thatch gets crazier every year!
BOARD MEMBER 2: If I ever hear the word ‘Atlantis’ again, I’ll step in front of a bus!
BOARD MEMBER 1: I’ll push you!
Everyone erupts into laughter. Milo appears on a run, dropping scrolls and maps all over the place.
MILO: Mr. Harcourt!
BOARD MEMBER 1: GOOD LORD, THERE HE IS!
MILO: Mr. Harcourt, members of the board, wait!
MR. HARCOURT: How did you find us?!
The Board members scatter while I roll off the couch laughing. Mr. Harcourt manages to make his escape into his car, but Milo catches him and tries to give his presentation. Mr. Harcourt tells him that he’s only going to approve an expedition based on fact, not legend—besides, they rely on him to keep the boiler working.
MILO: [momentarily distracted] Boiler?
MR. HARCOURT: Onward, Hines!
The car races away, with Milo chasing it. He jumps on the hood and announces he’s quitting. He falls off the car and the windshield wipers wipe off the spit that got on the glass. Heh. “You’ll what, flush your career down the toilet, just like your grandfather?” Mr. Harcourt implies that the man was insane, but sounds sincere when he says, “You have a lot of potential, Milo. Don’t throw it away chasing down fairy tales!” Then he tells Milo to jump in the Potomac to clear his head.
A dejected Milo enters his apartment. “I’m home. Fluffy? Here kitty.” The light won’t turn on. A buxom blonde is standing by the window. Her name is Helga Sinclair and her employer has a proposition for him. She drops the coat off her shoulders and shows a little leg, moves which go totally unnoticed by our dear scholar. “Who is your employer?” demands Milo of the endearingly one-track mind.
They drive up to a huge mansion with WHITMORE emblazoned on the gate. I would dearly love to change that T to a D so that I can make LOST jokes during this scene. Inside, Helga briefs Milo on dos and don’ts. She drops him off in a huge library. Milo is surprised to see a portrait of his grandfather.
Mr. Whitmore is not nearly as intimidating as he was made out to be. He’s wearing a robe and doing yoga in front of the fireplace. Turns out Preston Whitmore and Thaddeus Thatch were longtime friends. “He was crazy as a fruit bat, he was!” That label could be applied some other people in this room.
“Mr. Whitmore, should I be wondering why I’m here?” Milo is directed to a package on the table. His grandfather brought it to Whitmore years ago, to give it to Milo. It’s the Shepherd’s Journal. Milo can’t believe it. By the fireplace, Whitmore is double fisting. He goes to change his clothes.
MILO: Mr. Whitmore, this journal is the key to finding the lost continent of Atlantis!
WHITMORE: Ha! Atlantis! Hahahaha! Wasn’t born yesterday, son.
Whitmore eggs Milo on until the scholar shouts, “I will find Atlantis on my own, I mean if I have to rent a rowboat—!” Whitmore: “Congratulations, Milo. This is exactly what I wanted to hear. But forget the rowboat, son! We’ll travel in style.”He presses a button on a table and an awesome model of a huge submarine and other vehicles emerges. It was a test!!! Everything is prepared. Turns out that Whitmore got tired of listening to Milo’s grandfather yap about Atlantis and made a bet that if he found the Journal, Whitmore would fund the expedition.
WHITMORE: Now I know your grandfather’s gone, Milo, God rest his soul. But
Preston Whitmore is a man who keeps his word. You hear that, Thatch? I’m going
to the afterlife with a clear conscience, by thunder!
He waves his cane at the portrait and laughs, then sighs. I love this frame—it’s fast, but it speaks volumes. Just him, Whitmore, standing in front of his huge fireplace. An man staring at the face of an dear, dead friend. An old man in a big, empty house. He says, “Your grandpa was a great man. You probably don’t realize how great. Those buffoons at the museum… Dragged him down, made a laughingstock of him. He died a broken man. If I could bring back just one shred of proof—that’d be enough for me.” I love that there’s so much more to this story, everything that happened before that Milo had no involvement in. He has the passion, but not the means—and the means arranged themselves because of a whole different portion of history. That’s life, everyone. It’s not just one story. It’s a million stories all feeding off of the ones that came before them and feeding the ones who will come after them.
The team has been assembled—the best of the best. Most are members of the same team who went to Iceland to retrieve the journal. “All we need now is an expert in gibberish.”
Milo vomits over the boat’s side. A huge ocean liner cruises across the water. The intercom blares, “Attention. All hands to the launch bay. To whoever took the L from the Motor Pool sign, ha ha we are all very amused.” That sounds like something I would encourage Megan to do and would end up doing myself. Milo reports for duty—to the same blonde from before. An old man straight out of the California gold fields arrives. “Blondie, I got a bone to pick with you!” He’s called Cookie. “You done stuffed my wagon full to bustin’ with non-essentials. Look at all this. Cinnamon. Oregano. Ci-lantro. What in a cockadoodle is ci-lantro? What is this?” It’s a head of lettuce, you know, one of those hard-to-recognize vegetables. He looks like she wants to feed them poison. “LETTUCE?! LETTUCE?!” According to Cookie, the four basic food groups are beans, bacon, whiskey, and lard. I know a few people who would be happy to live solely off of bacon and whiskey.
Everyone descends to the launch bay to load into the sub. Milo bumps into the explosions expert, who I think Whitmore said they busted out of a Turkish prison.
MILO: ‘Scuse me. Excuse me? You dropped your d-d-dynamite. Ah ha. What else
have you got in there?
VINNIE: Oh, eh, gunpowder, nitroglycerin, NOTEPADS, fuses, wicks, glue… and
paperclips. Big ones.
Whitmore introduces Milo to Commander Rourke, previously seen leading the Iceland team. Whitmore bids farewell to Milo and the sub dives. Ah, Blondie is the lieutenant. That explains it. Milo watches from the window in wonder as they descend.
Intercom: “Attention. Tonight’s supper will be baked beans, musical program to follow. …Who wrote this.” Milo enters his cabin and settles onto his bed. This understandably angers his bunkmate, who has arranged piles of dirt in his sheets.
MOLE: England must not merge with France!!!
MILO: What’s it doing in my bed?!
Moliere extracts something from Milo’s finger and examines it with his weird eye contraption. “Parchment paper from the Nile circa 500 B.C. Lead pencil, number 2. Paint flecks of a type used in government buildings. You have a cat, short haired Persian, two years old, third in a litter of seven. These are all the microscopic fingerprints of the mapmaker.” He licks the fragment and his eyes narrow. “And LINGUIST.” Outraged, he tries to shove Milo out of the cabin, and they run into a huge man standing in the doorway. “Uh-oh. Sat in the dirt, didn’t you?” I like him immediately. His name is Joshua Sweet, medical officer. He goes to his bag and takes out a saw. Milo’s eyes, already huge with his glasses, are now the size of plates. Sweet: “Nice, isn’t it? The catalog says that this little beauty can saw through a femur in 28 seconds. I’m betting I can cut that time in half.” Har har, cut, get it? He examines Milo and holds up two huge specimen jars. “I’m gonna need you to fill these up.” Milo: “With WHAT?” Our dear scholar is paged to go to the bridge and makes his escape.
Mrs. Packard, Queen of the Intercom: “So I says to him What’s wrong with my meatloaf and he says to me—Oh, hold on, Margie, I got another call. Sir, we’re approaching coordinates. Hello, Margie? Yeah, so anyways, he says—” Rourke welcomes Milo to the bridge. The rest of the team is assembled and waiting. Milo: “How about some slides?” The team members exchange glances. Milo’s off to a good start, accidentally loading a shot of himself at the beach in FULL GEAR, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. Mrs. Packard: “Hubba, hubba.” Milo tells them about the Leviathan, the guardian of the entrance to Atlantis. The Bible describes the Leviathan as a ferocious sea creature, but Milo thinks in this case it’s a carving. Once they get to the entrance, they’ll go through a tunnel that opens to an air pocket, which leads to the highway to Atlantis.
MILO: Kind of like the grease trap in your sink.
HELGA: Cartographer. Linguist. Plumber. Hard to believe he’s still single.
MOLE: [tugging at her hand] You said there would be digging!
HELGA: Go AWAY, Mole.
Helga’s kind of an ice queen, but I like that she’s no nonsense. Everyone else is a bit eccentric. I’m not saying I want to be her friend, but if I was taking an expedition to the bottom of the ocean, I’d want her on my submarine.
The ocean floor outside is littered with “ships from every era.” He WOULD know that. The spotlights light up and move past a pile of rock that comes to life and slides away with a metallic clang. It’s about ten times bigger than the sub and it’s shaped like a lobster. Duh duh duhhhhhhh. The hydrophone picks up what the subtitles of this film call “groaning and whooshing sounds.”
ROURKE: What is it, a pod of whales?
MRS. PACKARD: Uh-uh. Bigger.
HELGA: It sounds metallic. Could be an echo off one of the rocks. [messes with the dial]
MRS. PACKARD: Do you want to do my job? Be my guest.
The sound gets louder, then stops altogether. Then the thing smashes into the side of the sub. The ship goes into battle mode. Milo gets a good look into the eye of the monster and shouts, “Jiminy Christmas, it’s a MACHINE!” The ship takes a bad hit and everyone is forced to abandon it. The Leviathan blasts the ship to pieces with its laser eyes and goes after the escape pods. They head into a crevice and get away from it, then surface in the aforementioned air pocket.
On the shore of the grease trap, the remnants of the crew are gathered. They amount to a handful of what they were. Sweet sets a candle in a bowl floating on the surface of the water. They watch it soberly as Rourke speaks. “Seven hours ago we started this expedition with two hundred of the finest men and women I’ve ever known. We’re all that’s left.” Oh, this is heartbreaking. He ends on a SUPER reassuring note: “Looks like all our chances for survival rest with you, Mr. Thatch. You and that little book.” Mrs. Packard: “We’re all gonna die.” I cannot tell you how much I agree with that comment.
They load up the trucks. Mole is put on point in a monstrosity of a vehicle and Vinnie is ordered away from the oiler. Milo can’t drive, as it turns out—he does a poor job of operating a stick shift and is towed behind Mole’s monstrosity. It’s a great start to the trip. I thought this guy was an engineering whiz. You're really telling me he wasn't first in line to get his hands on a car?
The convoy makes their way through the caverns, advancing down the highway to Atlantis with Milo deciphering the directions (he’s mostly accurate). He falls prey to plenty of practical jokes and doesn’t make much progress in the way of making friends with the rest of the team. Unbeknownst to them, the convoy is being followed. They come to a rock wall.
ROURKE: Looks like we have a little roadblock. Vinnie, what do you think?
VINNIE: I could unroadblock that if I had about two hundred of these [holds up stick of
dynamite]. Problem is, I only got about… ten. Plus, you know, five of my own. And, couple
of cherry bombs. Road flare. Hey, too bad we don’t have some nitroglycerin, eh Milo?
The digger plows into the wall and immediately shorts out. Mole sits there screaming, “You—are—stupid!” which is a relationship my computer and I are quite familiar with. Audrey says the rotor’s shot. She orders Milo away from the engine and goes to find a spare. He disobeys, of course, and uses his superhero boiler-fixing skills to mend the machine. It roars to life. Audrey wants to know what Milo did. He’s rather impressed with himself, and suavely explains his ultra-impressive skillz, getting a “Yeah yeah, thank you very much, shut up” for his pains. I wish Audrey was the bouncer at my office.
They arrive at a bridge spanning a canyon, over which a huge green light is glowing. Mole says it’s a natural phosphorescence. I love these people, still coming up with reasonable explanations for what they’re finding! Vinnie: “That thing is going to keep me up all night, I know it.”
Dinner is a mess of brown disgustingness that Milo gets an extra portion of to put some meat on his bones. Cookie: “You’re so skinny if you turned sideways and stuck your tongue out you’d look like a zipper.” As usual, Milo is sitting apart from the group, and Sweet and Audrey feel bad about being so hard on him. They call him over and ask what he’s working on. Milo is stuck on a passage in the journal—it talks about something called the Heart of Atlantis, but then cuts off, as though there’s a missing page. They tell him to relax; he laughs about his enthusiasm…
MILO: But that’s what this is all about, right? Discovery, teamwork, adventure! … Unless
you’re just maybe in it for the money.
AUDREY: Money.
PACKARD: Money.
SWEET: Money.
MOLE: Money.
VINNIE: I’m going to say, money.
Sweet cracks Milo’s neck in a way that I wish someone would crack mine right now, and tells him he learned the move from an Arapaho medicine man. We get a little character backstory here—his father was an African American army medic, who settled down in Kansas in the good old days of it being a territory and married Sweet’s Arapaho mother. Aw, Kansas. Hey, neighbor. The gang dumps their meal mess into the fire and it goes up like a miniature atomic bomb.
Setting up tents, we get more backstories. Milo’s parents died when he was young and his grandfather took him in. Audrey’s dad was chief mechanic and she took over when he retired. Mrs. Packard sleeps in the nude—Sweet tosses Milo a sleep mask: she sleepwalks. Vinnie’s family owned a flower shop. “We would sell roses, carnations, baby’s breath, you name it. One day, I’m making about three dozen corsages for this prom [PRAHM]—you know, the one they put on their wrist. And—everybody—they come. ‘Where is it? When is it? Does it match my dress.’ It’s a nightmare. Anyway. I guess there was this leak next door of gas or what, BOOM. No more Chinese laundry. Blew me right through the front window. It was like a sign from God. I found myself that boom.” HAHAHAHAHA. Mole burrows into the ground and settles in with a primeval chuckle. Sweet says Milo doesn’t want to know his story. Thank you for sparing us all.
Middle of the night and the convoy stalkers pay a visit. They’re human, but they wear huge glowing lion-like masks and are covered in white fur. One goes through Milo’s things and finds the photo of his grandfather, which makes me think they recognize him but it’s not the case. Speak of the devil: Milo wakes up to go to the bathroom. The stalkers dash out of sight.
The green glowing thing on the ceiling is growing brighter. Small sparks float out of it. They make buzzing sounds and swarm the camp. Anything they touch bursts into flame. Milo sounds the alarm. Everyone jumps in the trucks and makes a run for the caves. Exploding vehicles shake the green glow bucket which, now empty, falls from the ceiling and inconveniently breaks the bridge which the whole convoy is currently trying to cross right in half. They slide down to the canyon floor with a crash.
Some of the trucks are totaled but for the most part everything is salvageable, because they lucked out and landed in pumice ash. Mole informs everyone that they’re at the base of dormant volcano. Helga shoots a flare at the ceiling, which takes a long time to make contact.
MOLE: The magma has solidified in the bowels of the volcano, effectively blocking the exit.
PACKARD: I got the same problem with sauerkraut.
Mole reassures Sweet—the only way the volcano would blow would take an explosive force of great magnitude. Everyone looks at Vinnie. Rourke theorizes that if they can blow out the ceiling they can reach the surface. What’s Milo’s opinion? Where IS Milo?
I’ll tell you where. Knocked unconscious and the convoy stalkers have found him, that’s where. He wakes up with their glowing masks right in his face, which is, come to think of it, the best possible way to recover from the wreck he just managed to survive. One of the group removes her mask. She’s clearly an Atlantean—the same white hair, blue tattoos, and glowing pendant we saw in the opening sequence. She scans her pendant over and presses her hand to the cut on his shoulder, and it heals instantly.
The digger comes roaring through the rubble and the Atlanteans are off like a shot. Milo chases after them. They’re either half-kangaroo or they’ve got springs on their feet, I swear, because no human can jump like these people. Mile scrambles up a rock ledge and comes out on a grassy cliff overlooking a huge waterfall. The digger ploughs out of the wall behind him, and the team joins Milo. Everyone stands stunned at the sight before them: the island of Atlantis, green and beautiful.
The Atlanteans reappear and one starts speaking to Milo. I don’t speak Atlantean but I know what Who are you and Where have you come from and Why are you here sounds like when I hear it. She takes off her mask—it’s the healer from before. They manage to progress from Atlantean to Latin to French. Mole is thrilled at this, and whispers in her ear. She punches his lights out and Sweet and I applaud. “Ooh! I like her!” The Atlanteans are fluent in many languages, including English. Rourke announces that they’re explorers from the surface, and they come in peace. The Atlantean woman welcomes them with a genuine smile. She says they need to meet her father. Rourke tells his captain to go back to the wreck site and see what’s salvageable, and meet back in 24 hours.
The team crosses a long rope bridge to the city. Milo spends the ride babbling about the root of the Atlantean dialect, which no one listens to. Helga is concerned that there are people down here. “This changes everything.” This changes nothing, Rourke tells her. “Take THAT, Mr. Harcourt!” yells Milo.
The throne room is mostly water, with stepping stones. The Atlantean woman is the child princess Kida from the beginning of the movie. The king, now blind, is unhappy about the visitors—no outsiders who have seen the city are allowed to stay alive. She thinks the explorers can help Atlantis. Rourke steps forward to thank the king for welcoming them. The king sees through Rourke immediately. “I know what you seek, and you will not find it here. Your journey has been in vain.” He tells them to leave. Rourke convinces him to allow them to stay one night. The explorers leave the throne room.
The king tells Kida she’s getting soft—“A thousand years ago you would have slain them on sight.” This might be the first murderess heroine Disney has ever produced. She says that the Atlanteans have fallen far—they have little light and they’re hard up for food. She thinks the visitors can help them by teaching them the secrets of Atlantis’s past.
KIDA: Our way of life is dying.
KING: Our way of life is preserved!
Outside, Milo explains the tension between the king and his daughter. The team strategizes: someone needs to talk to Kida, to find out what the king is hiding. They collectively volunteer Milo for the job.
MILO: Okay, Milo, don’t take no for an answer. “Look, I have some questions for you, and
I’m not leaving this city until they’re answered!” Yeah, that’s it, that’s good, that’s good.
KIDA: [clapping her hand over his mouth] I have some questions for you, and you’re not
leaving this city until they’re answered!
MILO: Yeah well I!—Okay.
He wants to know how Atlantis wound up down here. She doesn’t remember anything but a bright star floating above the city. Milo realizes that she’s 8,800 years old and manages to take it in stride. Sort of. She wants to know how they found the city. He shows her the Shepherd’s Journal, but she can’t read it: no one has been able to read since the Great Flood. Beware of this the next time you go swimming, audience: large amounts of ocean water render Man illiterate. She leads him to a flyer shaped like a sea animal. He reads the instructions to her and, using her crystal pendant, they manage to get it to work. Until Milo crashes it.
She takes him on a tour of the city: the highest point of a high building, the fishing port, the harbor, the market. Audrey and Cookie are in the market, admiring tattoos. Cookie shows off the map of all 38 states tattooed to his stomach. Heh. I like these little doses of 1914. The team eats dinner together in an Atlantean home and Kida gets to know everyone.
Somewhere, someone is unpacking huge guns and gas masks. I’m guessing NOT the Atlanteans.
Milo is busy catching the glowing bugs that set fire to the camp this morning, which Kida puts into a container to make a lantern. She tells him her people are not thriving—just existing. “We are like a rock the ocean beats against. With each passing year, a little more of us is worn away.” She asks for his help in reading an inscription on a mural. The mural is underwater, and they swim to it. I’m impressed with the animation of people swimming—the way hair moves and breath is held, the way bodies are buoyant, so skillfully drawn out to look like the true movement. I think one of the tricks to animation is the mimicry—no matter what the style is, the movement is the same, recognizable, and that’s what makes it an art, even more so than the beauty of the picture. They’ve got it down pat in this movie.
The mural is Plato’s history of Atlantis. Milo figures out that the bright light Kida remembers and the power source he’s been looking for are the same thing: the Heart of Atlantis. It’s the reason Atlantis is still alive. Neither of them know where it is, though.
Milo surfaces and is greeted by Rourke and the rest of the team, all heavily armed. He realizes that even this is a treasure hunt. Rourke pulls out the missing page from the journal detailing the Heart of Atlantis. “I’m no mercenary,” spits Milo as Kida surfaces. One of the soldiers grabs her by the hair, but she throws him in the water and fights off the ones who charge at her next. She has her knife out and headed towards someone’s throat when Rourke shoots it out of her hand. Two soldiers grab her but she lands a good kick in the groin of the soldier she was about to kill. Badass points to Kida.
“You don’t know what you’re tampering with,” Milo tells Rourke, who seems to have no interest in learning just what it is he's tampering with. “What’s to know? It’s big, it’s shiny, it’s gonna make us all rich.” Does anyone REALLY think like this? In real life, are there really people who are capable of thinking like this? The sad part is that I’m positive there are. Thankfullly, they seem to be of a limited number, although there’s no lack of them in films. Also, if I were about to steal a huge power source and carry it around, you better bet I'd make sure just what it is I'm dealing with.
MILO: You think it’s some kind of a diamond, I thought it was some sort of a battery, but
we’re both wrong. It’s their life force! That crystal is the only thing keeping these people
alive. You take that away and they’ll die!
ROURKE: Welllll, that changes things. Helga, what do you think?
HELGA: Knowing that, I’d double the price.
ROURKE: I was thinking triple.
Rourke tries to explain his bullsh*t excuses for his actions to Milo, who doesn’t bite. Then he burns his bridges by comparing Milo to his idealist grandfather and advising him not to be like him—“For once, do the smart thing.” Milo and I glare at Rourke. Tight mouth, eyes narrowed, defiant chin. It’s a beautiful thing.
Rourke trains a gun on Kida in the certainty that now Milo will be willing to cooperate.
The team bursts into the throne room with Kida as safety. Everyone spreads out to search. Milo translates all the journal has to offer—“The Heart of Atlantis lies in the eyes of her king.” Rourke roughs up the king, who warns that they will destroy themselves. Rourke hits him, which infuriates Kida and is the first step to Sweet breaking with the commander. “Plans change, Doc,” says Rourke. “I’d suggest you put a bandage on that bleeding heart of yours, it doesn’t suit a mercenary.” He settles onto the king’s throne. Looking over the hall, he realizes the stepping stones are laid out on the shape of the Atlantean heart. The king bows his head, defeated.
Part of the floor sinks and Rourke, Helga, Milo, and Kida go down into the chamber below. It’s a huge cavern and part of the bottom is a lake. Far above, stones with glowing carved faces rotate around the glowing crystal. “The kings of our past,” says Kida, and bows to the ground and starts chanting. Rourke makes Milo stop her, which he looks mad about and Helga looks slightly sympathetic.
Rourke kicks a pebble into the water and the crystal in the sky turns red. He and Milo argue about what to do next, while Kida, staring at the crystal, reenacts the events that prefaced her mother entering the crystal—her pendant glows and her eyes shine over, and she enters a trance of sorts. She starts walking toward the water.
ROURKE: Talk to me, Thatch.
MILO: Look, all it says here is that the crystal is… alive somehow, I don’t know how to
explain it, it’s their deity, it’s their power source.
ROURKE: Speak English, professor.
MILO: They’re part of it. It’s part of them. I’m doing the best I can here!
ROURKE: Well, do better!
MILO: Oh, I know, why don’t you translate, and I’ll wave the gun around!
They’re stopped by Kida talking in a metallic, echo-y voice: “All will be well, Milo Thatch. Be not afraid,” in Atlantean. The other three watch as she walks across the water until she’s directly beneath the crystal, which then picks her up in a beam of light and draws her into it. The stone faces speed up as the crystal bonds Kida to it. When the process is done, her body is still shaped like her but she’s entirely crystal. She descends back down to the water and an orb of safety around her prevents water from hitting her while she crosses the lake, as the stone faces come crashing down into the water. She’s conscious but unresponsive and Milo is distressed. “No, don’t—don’t touch her,” he tells Rourke. I don’t really understand what just happened.
CrystalKida is locked inside a huge metal case, which Audrey looks none too happy about, but seals up anyway. The case is loaded onto a truck. Milo’s glower is back on his face. “So. I guess this is how it ends, huh? Fine. You win. You’re wiping out an entire civilization, but hey—you’ll be rich. Congratulations, Audrey. Guess you and your dad’ll be able to open that second garage after all.” She goes still, then gets into the truck and slams the door closed. “And Vinnie, you can start a whole chain of flower shops, I’m sure your family’s going to be very proud.” Vinnie looks away. “But that’s what it’s all about, right? Money.” Keep going, Milo, you COAT that money in blood. I am thoroughly impressed by the guilt trip speech.
Rourke tells him they’re just aiding Darwin’s theory of natural selection. He punches Milo in the jaw and tells him to take solace in the fact that now he’s part of the Atlantis exhibit. The team watches this in silence. Rourke tells them to move out. Audrey, who is full of scowls today, groans and hops out of the truck, stomps over to Milo, and picks him up. She shoots a look at Vinnie, who takes his place by them. Cookie and Mole look at Mrs. Packard, who sucks deeply on her cigarette; they go to join the others. “We’re all gonna die,” she says and follows them.
ROURKE: Oh, you can’t be serious!
AUDREY: This is wrong and you know it!
ROURKE: We’re this close to our biggest payday ever and you pick now of all times to
grow a conscience?!
VINNIE: We’ve done a lot of things we’re not proud of—eh, robbing graves, plundering
tombs, double parking… but! nobody got hurt. Well—maybe somebody got hurt, but
nobody we KNEW.
I want to frame everything that Vinnie says and hang it on my wall.
Rourke, Helga, and the other soldiers drive away across the bridge. The glow starts to fade from the Atlanteans’ crystals. Milo, seeing this, runs after the trucks. Vinnie grabs him before he gets to the bridge, which Rourke detonates. Sweet (who I will forever love because whether to stay or go wasn’t even a topic of debate with him, he’s a doctor and he stays where he’s needed, he’ll save his patients or go down trying—at least, those are the lines I’m reading between here) calls Milo to come to the throne room because the king is dying. Milo thinks the king’s pendant might heal him, but the king stops him. He wants to know where Kida is. Milo has a hard time verbalizing, but the king already knows.
KING: She has been chosen, like her mother before her… In times of danger, the crystal
will choose a host, one of royal blood, to protect itself and its people. It will accept no other.
MILO: Wait a minute. Choose. So this thing is alive?
KING: In a way. The crystal thrives on the collective emotions of all who came before us.
In return, it provides power, longevity, protection. As it grew, it developed a consciousness
of its own. In my arrogance, I sought to use it as a weapon of war, but its power proved too
great to control. It overwhelmed us, and led to our destruction.
MILO: That’s why you hid it beneath the city—to keep history from repeating itself.
KING: And to prevent Kida from suffering the same fate as my beloved wife.
MILO: What do you mean, wh—What’s going to happen to Kida?
KING: If she remains bonded to the crystal, she could be lost to it forever.
I have a hard time following this. While the king talked, we saw images of Atlantis from before it sank—did the crystal cause the tsunami? Why would it still protect part of the city? To keep itself safe, I guess. Still unclear on the current state of Kida, though.
The king takes off his pendant and gives it to Milo. He commissions him to save Atlantis and Kida, then dies.
Sweet takes a deep breath and shuts his black bag. He asks Milo what the plan is. “I followed you in, and I’ll follow you out.” Ah! What a contrast to the start of this movie, where NO ONE had faith in Milo, where NO ONE believed anything he said or thought he had value—and now this.
Milo is not on the same page as me.
MILO: I think we’ve seen how effective my decisions have been. Let’s recap! [Yes, let’s!]
I lead a band of plundering vandals to the greatest archeological find in recorded history,
thus enabling the kidnap and/or murder of the royal family, not to mention personally delivering
the most powerful force known to man into the hands a mercenary nutcase who’s probably
going to sell it to the Kaiser!!! Have I left anything out?!?!
SWEET: Well, you did set the camp on fire and drop us down that big hole.
MILO: Thank you! Thank you very much.
SWEET: Of course, it’s been my experience, when you hit bottom, the only place left to go is up.
MILO: Who told you that?
SWEET: A fellow by the name of Thaddeus Thatch.
Milo takes another look at the crystal pendant. He looks determined now. He marches past the group and announces that he’s going after Rourke. They follow him to the crystal-powered aircraft. Vinnie: “Hey Milo, you got something sporty? You know, like a tuna?” The Atlanteans flock to Milo, wanting to learn how to fly them. Everyone saddles up and takes off after Rourke.
In the volcano, at the site of the wreck, Rourke and Co. blow out the cap and daylight shines through. The hot air balloon is launched.
MILO: Okay, here’s the plan.We’re going to come in low and fast and take them by surprise.
AUDREY: Well, I’ve got news for you, Milo. Rourke is never surprised and he’s got a lot of guns.
MILO: Great, well, do you have any suggestions?
VINNIE: Yeah! Don’t get shot!
They arrive at the launch site and Rourke opens fire. Vinnie discovers by happy accident that his flying rock fish can shoot blue lightning out of its mouth. Milo and Vinnie distract Rourke and Helga, keeping them busy while Sweet and Audrey try to saw free the case chained to the base of the balloon. Helga starts dropping torpedoes on Audrey. She keeps sawing determinedly—that’s our girl!—but Sweet grabs her and drags her to safety. Milo makes a new plan. “All right, Milo, this is it. Any last words? … Yeah, I really wish I had a better idea than this!” He drives his ship straight into the balloon. It blows out one of the side supports, and the balloon starts sinking. “Lighten the load,” Rourke orders Helga. She dumps things off the ship. “That’s it, unless someone wants to jump.” “Ladies first,” he says, and throws her over the side. She grabs a bar as she falls, and swings herself back over the side and gets in a couple good kicks at his face. He manages to grab her foot, and this time when he throws her off she falls all the way to the ground. “Nothing personal!” he calls after her. Well, that's one down.
Now it’s Milo’s turn to come after Rourke, and he swings down the ropes and they grapple. “I have to hand it to you, you’re a bigger pain in the neck than I ever thought possible,” Rourke tells him. That is what I aspire to, myself. Milo tries to punch him and fails hilariously. Rourke sends him flying over the side, and Milo manages to hang on to a pole.
On the ground, Helga is broken but not dead yet. She grabs her flare gun and aims. “Nothing personal,” she snarls, and the flare blows up the balloon. It starts to sink quickly. Rourke grabs an axe and, looking wholly like a madman now, goes after Milo. He swings and misses, but smashes open the glass of the case window, which crystallized when they put Kida in it. Milo grabs a shard of glass. Rourke grabs him by the neck. Milo slices Rourke’s arm with the crystal and scurries up the chain when Rourke releases him in pain. Rourke’s whole body crystallizes into a weird dark blue and red combination. He stands frozen and Milo drops his head and relief—until Rourke, definitely still alive, comes at him again. He climbs the chain and Milo swings him up to the rotating blades, which shatter CrystalRourke INTO A GAZILLION PIECES. The blades cut the chain holding the case, too, and everything falls to earth—Milo, case, and flaming balloon.
Flaming balloon = explosion of great magnitude. The team lands as the volcano beneath them begins to rumble. REALLY, ANOTHER PROBLEM? They chain the case to one of the flying fish and zoom away as boiling magma shoots out of fissures and courses through the tunnels. It erupts out of the highway entrance and takes out the abandoned digger.
The ships land in the middle of the city. Milo tries to open the case. Mole, with an eye on the tunnel, freaks out. They are really running out of time. Milo manages to pry open part of the case and it separates the rest of the way itself. CrystalKida makes the carved patterns across the city glow blue. The lines stretch down to the cavern, where the stone king faces light up and shoot up out of the cavern. The stones and Kida soar into the sky above the city. Electricity shoots out of the spinning crystal and hits the giant statues who have toppled at various places around the city. They come to life and walk to the edges of Atlantis, creating a force field dome over it seconds before magma surges out of the tunnel and covers the city.
There’s another jolt of electricity and the magma hardens. After a moment, blue light carves patterns in the magma, and it crumbles off of the dome. The force field held and the city is untouched.
Kida, human again (WHY? HOW? WHAT?), floats to the ground and Milo catches her. In her hand she holds the bracelet. She hugs him. He shows her Atlantis—green and watery and safe—and her face breaks into a huge smile. This girl has the best smile of any Disney lady I've ever seen.
Kida thanks the team. A huge dolphin airplane is being loaded with gold and gems. The team says their goodbyes to Milo. Vinnie: “You know, I’m gonna reopen the flower shop and I’m gonna think of you guys every single day. Monday through Friday. 9 to 5. Saturday until 2. Sunday—I’m gonna take Sunday off probably, and… maybe I’ll go in for a couple of hours, you know, but… August, I’m gonna take August…”
They gather for one last group photo in front of the fish.
Whitmore stands before his fireplace in front of the group. They’re all jazzed up in diamond and furs and ties. He looks at the photos Mrs. Packard took during the trip.
WHITMORE: Let’s go over it again, just so we’ve got it straight. You didn’t find anything.
VINNIE: Nope. Just a lot of rocks. And fish, little fish. Sponges.
WHITMORE: What happened to Helga?
COOKIE: Well, we lost her when a flyin’ zeppelin come down on her. [Mrs. Packard hits him
with her umbrella] Er, missing.
WHITMORE: That’s right. And Rourke?
SWEET: Nervous breakdown. You could say he went all to pieces.
COOKIE: In fact, you could say he was transamorgafied and then busted into a zillion—hrm.
He’s missin’ too.
WHITMORE: What about Milo?
AUDREY: Went down with the sub.
Whitmore looks at photos of Milo and Kida looking gooshily at each other.
WHITMORE: I’m gonna miss that boy. At least he’s in a better place now.
There’s a small packet hidden between the photos. To Whitmore, From Milo. It’s one of the crystal pendants, wrapped in the photo of Milo and Thaddeus. “Dear Mr. Whitmore, I hope this piece of proof is enough for you. It sure convinced me! Thanks from both of us. Milo Thatch.” Whitmore smiles and puts on the pendant.
Milo, now sporting blue tattoos, stands beside Kida, now sporting queenly garb, as she lights the blue lines of the face of her father carved into a boulder. It lifts off. They climb to one of the highest roofs to watch as it rises to join the other stones, spinning around the crystal that hangs above their thriving city.
It’s over!
-follow this link for the complete list of Atlantis posts-
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