Comic Genesis Forums

Somehow, Andrick, I'm not surpized in the least that "Treasure Planet" is flopping. But that doesn't stop it from being a great movie. The real problem (as far as I can tell) is that they're doing stuff that's targeted at people older than four, but the general population hasn't figured it out yet. Other problem with treasure planet: science fiction attracts a lot of people who are intellilgent enough to realize that the physics for the movie are completely different from the real world, but these same people were plenty snooty enough to take one look at a ship flying unperturbed through what sure as hell looks like the Void itself, with everyone breathing comfortably and just go the hell somewhere else.

Hey, we can't all be Unicorn Jelly fans, right?

(The reason this post got put here is that my post did that stupid futurey thing. I'll try to keep on top of this problem and prevent anyone from getting shut out because the forum labled their post wrong.)

allan_ecker wrote:Other problem with treasure planet: science fiction attracts a lot of people who are intellilgent enough to realize that the physics for the movie are completely different from the real world, but these same people were plenty snooty enough to take one look at a ship flying unperturbed through what sure as hell looks like the Void itself, with everyone breathing comfortably and just go the hell somewhere else.

What? They've never played Spelljammer?

I've never played Spelljammer... don't really want to either. There is still plenty of fiction and pulp genre which deals with space as being filled with an ether based gas as opposed to void. These center around steam engine technology and zeppelin based inter-galactic travel amid a Victorian Colonial setting all the way to science fantasy made popular with story adaptations in Japanese animation. It's not that it doesn't have an audience unexposed to the concept, the problem may be that the marketing didn't properly prime said audience.

Star Wars is a science fantasy which wowed its audience with cutting edge special effects and a plethora of bizarre aliens to woo them into suspending their disbelief. Titan A.E. used smooth animation, fast paced action and bizarre technology to do the same for their audience. What did Treasure Planet do wrong that it couldn't also do what those two did. Where did it miss triggering the wonder with their viewers?

If I may say, Titan AE flopped. The fact that we all loved it doesn't change that fact.

American audiences don't seem to be quite ready for animated space opera yet. Treasure Planet WASN'T as good as Titan AE. But it was really damned good. And, as with Titan AE, marketing failures are likely to kill the coolness, at least from the bottom line's perspective.

I forgot the standard I used wasn't everybody else's, my bad.

Fantasy films, and science fantasy in particular, is a huge money losing field for movie-makers. For every one movie which is a box office success (Jackson's LotR, Star Wars (all... so far), Harry Potter) there are 20+ more which don't recover the production cost (Dragonslayer, the original LotR movie, Fire & Ice).

Thus, the standard I use is far different for fantasy films than for films of any other genre. If a fantasy/scifantasy film covers more than a quarter of its cost or more than 25 million (whichever is greater) in mainstream box office revenues, then I deem the movie a success.

What I was saying is the general audience needs to be groomed to suspend their disbelief more than they do. A lot of that grooming is done in marketing but far too often the people who market films try to grab too much of what the movie isn't and target it completely wrong. The recurring theme for animated movie marketing is "target the kiddies" no matter the type of film. This can have disasterous results. Since I didn't see any advertisements for this movie, just an article in the business section of the newspaper, was it true here as well?