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So, this was clearly intended as a trial-run for an Atlantis: The Lost Empire spinoff TV show, right? I mean, it just seems so obvious given the way that the three different adventures involved have clean three-act structures and obvious breaks for commercials and separation into individual episodes. I’m surprised Disney didn’t go through with the project as the pulpy adventure story of Atlantis felt so primed and ready for further exploration but seeing how limp the final pilot turned out… maybe it wasn’t such a shock.
Long gone is the visually appealing takeoff of Mike Mignola’s style in favor of a blockier, chunkier style the reads as passable for a mass-produced series but woefully for a movie. Just a reminder that this was not intended as a standalone movie, I guess. Here the main group of explorers from the first film launch into a steampunk X-Files agency that encounter Lovecraftian horrors, a rogue Asgardian god, and a trickster coyote spirit in the American southwest.
Each of these stories contains a connection to the hitherto unexplored history of Atlantis and its wider connections to the outside world, a fact that the original film flirted with and used as a reason for their eventual hiding. There’s vast potential here but the insistence on making them digestible 22-minute adventures leaves much of the potential undiscovered. Frankly, I’d have much preferred a 90-minute story involving the gang encountering that Lovecraftian horror and realizing how its existence is the basis for a variety of mythological creatures throughout the world and history.
Atlantis: Milo’s Return, which is misnamed as Milo never left Atlantis in the first place, needed to go full pulp fiction when it merely cockteases. These damn direct-to-video sequels, prequels, and in-betweens really do cheapen the value of the original film, even ones as cult-ish and fringe as Atlantis: The Lost Empire. But I still fully expect Disney to announce a live-action remake of it any day now, cause the House of Mouse just can’t stop itself.
