Disney’s Biggest Sci-Fi Flop Accidentally Foreshadowed Skeleton Crew

Thanks to all the TV shows on Disney+, Star Wars is no longer just a space opera. The Mandalorian showed the franchise as a space western, The Book of Boba Fett gave us a space crime thriller, and Andor is a nuanced space spy drama. Now the latest series, Skeleton Crew, takes on another new tone as a space pirate story.

But the space pirate genre itself isn’t new at all; the crossover between swashbuckling adventure and science fiction dates back 100 years. It’s not even new for Disney: 22 years before Skeleton Crew’s release, a similar story told in a cutting-edge medium became one of the studio’s most underrated movies.

Treasure Planet isn’t so much the forefather of Skeleton Crew as a companion piece. The 2002 Disney animated film is an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, but in space. It’s about 70% original 18th-century aesthetics and 30% sci-fi: pirates still travel in huge sailboats, but they sail across the universe instead of the high seas. Jim Hawkins (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) still comes across a treasure map, but now it’s an orb containing a hologram, while Long John Silver (Brian Murray) is still a pirate with a pegleg, but also a cyborg. All of these little touches are a ton of fun.

Treasure Planet doesn’t just blend the old and the new with its story, as its art style is a captivating mishmash too. The movie blends the 2D hand-drawn animation that made Disney famous with the then-new technology of 3D computer-generated animation. The goal was a seamless transition between the two, and even today, it’s impressive how well everything works together. Long John Silver, for example, is animated in 2D, except for his CGI cybernetics, but if we hadn’t told you that, you probably wouldn’t have noticed.

What is noticeable now is how beautiful it looks. The slow zoom on a crescent moon that’s revealed to actually be a bustling space station city is awe-inspiring to this day, and the painterly takes on nebulas and black holes capture the heart and soul of sci-fi movies. Combine that with an all-timer pop song montage featuring Goo Goo Dolls frontman John Rzeznick, and it’s enough to make you consider if the early 2000s really were the peak of pop culture.

The story is just Treasure Island with the serial numbers filed off, but that’s what makes it work. Treasure Island has inspired both an Orson Welles movie and a Muppets movie; there’s a reason it’s the most enduring pirate story of all time. Jim’s journey from bumbling cabin boy to hero is inspiring whether he’s in space, in a silent movie, or surrounded by felt critters.

Now, Skeleton Crew is taking a similar approach. The Star Wars series’ story is suspiciously similar to Treasure Planet — Jude Law’s Jod Na Nawood is basically the Lucasfilm version of Long John Silver — but it’s blended with nostalgia for Star Wars’ own past and the family adventure movies of the 1980s. If Treasure Planet was 70% old-fashioned adventure and 30% sci-fi, then Skeleton Crew is a 50/50 blend, but the overall vibe is similar.

Treasure Planet was unappreciated upon release, and infamously became one of the costliest box office flops of all time. But over 20 years later, it’s a glimpse into the awkward era when animators were learning how to blend the modern and the familiar, resulting in something unlike anything you’d see today.

Treasure Planet is streaming on Disney+.