Edges

Rating: Null/10 (17 July 2006)

Smart movies always have a seed. If you want to read them, it always pays to start from that seed.
Disney has been very smart about those seeds in the past, and they may be entering a new age of power in this regard, now that at least one of their research ideas has born fruit.
The seed in this case comes from the business reality that Disney has a special way to leverage movie franchises through their themeparks. The question is: what cinematic effects can you put into a movie that will stick in the popular imagination AND be exploitable in a completely different domain, the one of physically built rides, what they call "attractions." There are colorful characters of course. But what else? Worlds, but how to define worlds. What works? Viewers might not be aware of the rather exotic science that comes into play, in addition to following trusted artists with intuition.
"Treasure Planet" was an experiment in how to place a camera so that the environment was the star, more precisely the built environment, the ship and planet. And in that case, the edges. The world is made of edges  in our eye and mind. It wasn't a particularly effective movie, either as entertainment or architectural experiment.
But there were lessons learned from it. Most of what we know in film and architecture goes back to Orson Welles, in particular his "Othello." The first one in this franchise was very serious about this, a heavy investment. Sure, they wanted to sell theater tickets. But more than that they wanted to built monetizable intellectual property, duly injected into the culture.
With that as preface, look at how the camera relates to the built spaces here. Its extraordinary, extreme. Every shot starts with the inclusion of an edge, which is then registered with an object: a ship usually, but any space. The reason is because they will later be selling entry into that space.
See how every composition is thus influenced. You can see it immediately from the opening: rain on lips of teacups... what a device! Then scanning  not panning  to tell you that what you will get is place defined first. The situation is always placed.
Later, the big effect is a huge wheel. You can just see the brainstorm: we need something that is spatial, that moves, that moves differently than anything else in life or the movie. We have to be inside it and outside. We have to as characters be manipulated by it, its dynamics not influenced by humans.
Then see how that is set up earlier by the similar device, men in suspended globes (of bones!).
Its a remarkable advance in the cinematic lexicon. Celebrate.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.