47 Fun Facts About Atlantis: the Lost Empire

The directors of Atlantis: The Lost Empire had earlier directed which Disney film?

Beauty and the Beast, the first animated Best Picture nominee, came from the same directing pair, Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise. A decade later they swapped fairy tale for a pulp adventure about explorers.

Who voices linguist Milo Thatch in Disney's Atlantis?

Michael J. Fox was the directors' first choice: they pictured Milo as 'a Jimmy Stewart, Harold Lloyd guy' and wanted the 'spunky underdog quality' they heard in his voice.

Who voices Commander Rourke in Atlantis: The Lost Empire?

James Garner, the easygoing star of Maverick and The Rockford Files, makes the expedition's commander bluff and fatherly, the kind of leader a crew would follow anywhere.

Who voices Princess Kida?

Her animator found her so intimidating in person that it shaped how Kida meets Milo.

Which Star Trek actor voices the King in Disney's Atlantis?

Leonard Nimoy learned his Atlantean lines from Berlitz-style tapes. One critic called him that rare actor asked to master both Vulcan and Atlantean.

Which Airplane! star was cast as Whitmore in Disney's Atlantis but died before finishing the role?

Lloyd Bridges had already begun recording the part. John Mahoney of Frasier took over, and his zest led the makers to rework the character's personality.

Which Atlantis voice actor died in February 2000, before the film was finished?

Jim Varney, the voice of Cookie the cook and of Slinky Dog in Toy Story, had recorded most of his lines. His sessions always ran long: the first hour went on stories about Tennessee.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire is set on the eve of which war?

World War I broke out in 1914, the year the expedition sets off. When the crystal is stolen, Milo fears that the thief is 'probably gonna sell it to the Kaiser'.

What is the name of the ancient manuscript that guides the expedition?

Writer Tab Murphy invented it because the characters needed a map to follow.

What is the name of the expedition's submarine in Disney's Atlantis?

The Ulysses is a huge submarine, and when it comes under attack it launches a swarm of small sub-pods to fight back.

In Disney's Atlantis, what destroys the submarine at the cave entrance?

A mechanical leviathan, a lobster-shaped war machine still guarding the way in, tears the sub apart. The explorers' old book had warned of it, but Milo took the creature for a myth.

In Disney's Atlantis, roughly how old is the young-looking Princess Kida?

Thousands of years: Kida was a small child when Atlantis sank, and she remembers it. The crystals her people wear have kept them alive ever since.

In Disney's Atlantis, what can Milo do that the Atlanteans no longer can?

Reading their written language is a skill the Atlanteans lost in the disaster, so Kida cannot make sense of the inscriptions on her own people's machines until Milo translates them.

In Disney's Atlantis, what is the giant crystal that powers the city called?

The Heart of Atlantis keeps the city's people alive through the small crystals they wear. The explorers' old book mentions it, then breaks off: the page that explains it is missing.

In Disney's Atlantis, what does the dying King say brought about the city's destruction?

He tried to weaponize the crystal 'in my arrogance', and its power proved too great to control. Afterwards he hid it away, and his people slowly forgot what they once knew.

In Atlantis: The Lost Empire, who was absorbed by the crystal when the city sank?

The princess's mother, the queen, was lifted into the crystal, which then threw a shield over the city. She never came back, which is why the King fears the same fate for Kida.

Where does Milo Thatch work at the start of Atlantis: The Lost Empire?

The Smithsonian employs him as a linguist and mapmaker but keeps him in the boiler room, and its board slips away rather than hear his plan to find Atlantis.

Which Atlantis crew member was raised among the Arapaho?

Joshua Sweet, the expedition's doctor, tells Milo he was 'born and raised' with the Arapaho: his father, an Army medic, settled in Kansas Territory after meeting his mother.

Which member of the Atlantis expedition is its teenage chief mechanic?

Audrey Ramirez is the youngest of the crew, and Milo is warned not to let her age fool him: she has 'forgotten more about engines' than he will ever know.

What is the profession of Gaetan 'Mole' Molière in Disney's Atlantis?

Geologist, and a digger with 'a nose for dirt': a story artist turned him from a dry professor into a burrowing little creature with a wacky coat and extending eyepieces.

Which 19th-century author's adventure novels inspired Atlantis: The Lost Empire?

Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth was the makers' first idea for a film. They decided the lost city of Atlantis deserved a whole story of its own instead.

Which comic book artist's angular style shaped the look of Disney's Atlantis?

Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy, was hired as a production designer, and Disney's animators were taught to draw in his blocky, square-fingered manner instead of the studio's rounded house style.

The linguist who invented Atlantean for Atlantis: The Lost Empire had earlier created which language?

Klingon's inventor gave Atlantean a grammar of its own, and Disney's artists drew its 29 letters with his help. Milo's animator sketched him during their meetings, as the only linguist he had ever met.

Who pays for the expedition in Atlantis: The Lost Empire, settling a bet with Milo's late grandfather?

Preston Whitmore, an eccentric tycoon, was an old friend of Milo's grandfather and builds the whole expedition to honour their wager. 'When you settle a bet, you settle a bet,' Milo tells him.

How is the written language in Disney's Atlantis read?

In zigzags: left to right on one line, right to left on the next. The film's linguist suggested it because the movement reminded him of flowing water.

Which television creator shares a story credit on Atlantis: The Lost Empire?

Joss Whedon was the first writer on the project and kept a story credit alongside five others after he left. The screenplay is by Tab Murphy, who had a version the team liked within about four months.

Why can the Atlanteans greet the crew in French and Chinese in Atlantis: The Lost Empire?

Their tongue is a root language, Milo decides, 'just like the Tower of Babel'. The film's linguist built Atlantean from Indo-European roots so that it would sound like the ancestor of other tongues.

The deleted original prologue of Disney's Atlantis followed which group to their doom?

A Viking war party sailed in search of the city and was wiped out within minutes. The finished scene was dropped in March 2000 for one showing the fall of Atlantis, because audiences weren't caring enough about its people.

Which staple of Disney's 1990s hits did the makers of Atlantis: The Lost Empire replace with action scenes?

Character songs were left out on purpose: the producer felt audiences were 'screaming' for something different after a decade of Disney musicals. The film's one song plays over the closing credits.

Which member of the expedition in Atlantis: The Lost Empire turns out to be after the crystal for profit?

Commander Rourke has been carrying the old book's missing page in his boot all along. Called a mercenary, he says he prefers the term 'adventure capitalist'.

Which famous caves did the makers of Atlantis: The Lost Empire tour to design its underground journey?

Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico took the team 800 feet underground, where chambers 'many football fields across' showed them how vast a buried world could feel.

Whose writings guided the city's ringed layout in Disney's Atlantis?

Plato's dialogues are where the story of Atlantis begins, and one line of his guided the production from the start: the island vanished 'in a single day and night of misfortune'.

What does Milo choose to do at the end of Atlantis: The Lost Empire?

Stay in Atlantis with Kida: offered a hero's welcome on the surface, he says the world doesn't need another hero, and his crewmates agree to keep the city a secret.

Which Spielberg adventure did the makers of Atlantis cite as a widescreen inspiration?

Raiders of the Lost Ark had revived the globe-trotting adventures the makers loved as children. To match its wide frame without extra cost, the artists kept their usual paper and simply drew inside a wider, shallower window.

The ancient flying machines of the Atlanteans in Atlantis: The Lost Empire are shaped like what?

Fish carved from stone, to be exact. A whole armada of them races the great wave in the opening scene, and long afterwards Kida keeps one under a tarpaulin, unable to make it start.

Which Dinosaur composer also scored Disney's Atlantis?

James Newton Howard took the place of Alan Menken, who had scored both of the directors' earlier Disney films. He gave the explorers one theme and the lost city a grander one of its own.

At the end of Disney's Atlantis, giant stone guardians raise a shield to save the city from what?

A flood of lava pours in after the last battle wakes the dormant volcano above the city. The crystallised princess rouses the fallen stone giants, who raise a dome of energy that holds it back.

In Disney's Atlantis, Cookie's four basic food groups are beans, bacon, whiskey and what?

Lard completes the cook's list. Shown a box of lettuce and told that the men need the four basic food groups, he answers that he has his own four covered.

Where did Atlantis: The Lost Empire hold its world premiere on June 3, 2001?

El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood is Disney's own showcase cinema. Next door, a three-storey Destination: Atlantis exhibit offered props from the film, laser tag and tanks of live sea creatures.

Which film kept Atlantis off the top spot on its opening weekend?

Atlantis took $20.3 million against the raider's $48.2 million.

Which spin-off TV series from Atlantis: The Lost Empire was cancelled after the film's box-office miss?

Team Atlantis would have sent the surviving crew after strange phenomena around the world, a kind of steampunk X-Files, with a planned crossover with Disney's Gargoyles.

What was the 2003 direct-to-video sequel to Disney's Atlantis called?

Atlantis: Milo's Return was stitched together from finished episodes of a cancelled television spin-off, with new linking scenes, which is why it plays as three separate adventures.

Which anime series was Atlantis: The Lost Empire accused of copying?

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water aired in Japan about a decade earlier, and fans in both countries listed matching characters and plot turns. Its makers talked of suing but never did; a Disney director said he had never heard of it.

Critics likened Milo of Disney's Atlantis to Daniel Jackson, the hero of which 1994 film?

Stargate also sends a bookish scholar and a military team to a lost civilisation. Years later its television franchise launched a spin-off called, of all things, Stargate Atlantis.

Don Novello, the voice of Vinny in Atlantis: The Lost Empire, is best known as which Saturday Night Live character?

Father Guido Sarducci's deadpan courtliness carries straight over to Vinny, the crew's explosives man, who reveals that his family were florists and that he means to reopen the flower shop.

Which of Vinny's voice actor's habits did his animators note?

Don Novello would read a written line once and never again.

Which other animated film was the voice of Milo offered alongside Disney's Atlantis?

Titan A.E. lost out when the actor let his eight-year-old son decide. The boy, one director boasted, 'saw the coolness of our movie'.