Disney's action/adventure cartoon Atlantis: The Lost Empire opens nationwide in more than 3,000 theaters this weekend. Atlantis is expected to rake in some $25 million in its debut, but few of the five to six million viewers who see the film will realize that a lot what makes Atlantis look different from previous Disney films is the work of comic artist Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy. Mignola was involved in the Atlantis project from its very early stages, and his influence is readily apparent to anyone familiar with his style. In a very perceptive review in the New York Times, Elvis Mitchell zeroed in on Mignola's contribution: 'In a clear break with Disney's past, one of the film's designers is Mike Mignola, the comic book artist. The movie benefits from his influence. His figures have long faces with squared jaw lines that could cut diamonds, and his spooky, good-humored simplicity has forced the Disney artists to scale back, too. The economy gives Atlantis vigor and speed; nothing feels like it has been lingered over.'
Retailers can benefit from Mignola's involvement with Atlantis because the Dark Horse graphic novel adaptation of the film includes a special eight-page section of production drawings and sketches that he did for the film, thus giving this comic book adaptation of the film more value and interest for viewers who enjoy Atlantis or collect Disney artifacts. Atlantis does represent something very new for Disney -- a full-blown adventure story that doesn't depend on cheesy music or funny animal sidekicks. Mignola provided a basic look for Atlantis, giving it a fresh innovative style that will be remembered fondly long after audiences have tired of the tricks of computer animation.
ICv2 caught up with Mr. Mignola just as he was in the process of moving from Portland to the East coast. Despite the rigors of moving his household, he graciously answered our questions about his work on Atlantis.
Tell us about your involvement in the making of Atlantis. Disney called and said they were interested in adapting my style for the film. When I got there they had already worked on some of the characters, and I could tell that they were interested in using something of my style for the look of the film. I worked extensively on the backgrounds and all the stuff from Atlantis.
Disney went looking for you, didn't they? They wanted your distinct style, your strong line to inform the film. Have they ever done that before, chosen an outside artist to provide the essential style for a film? They did that with Hercules with Gerald Scarfe, I think the illustrator's name was. I think to a certain extent they do it on certain projects, they bring in outside people, but I don't ever remember seeing something like this where they were so vocal about giving somebody credit for it, or saying 'this is the style we went after.' I think because they were changing gears in a very obvious way -- they were trying to do this as an action-adventure movie compared to a lot of the stuff they have done -- there was more thought, more attention to saying 'let's model it on something different, let's do what we can to separate it from what we have done before.' I know that early on there were various people at Disney who were very dubious about my particular style working on that film, or the possibility of finding a happy medium between my style and Disney's, but it seems to have worked. Because there was a certain amount of 'well this style won't work' or 'if we change the look of our films this much people won't like it,' I was prepared at any moment to find that they had abandoned that whole look on the film. Early on I felt, well, I will go in, give them my two cents' worth, throw some ideas around, but there is no way that the finished result is going to be anything like what we were talking about doing; but in fact they actually stuck to their vision all the way through -- the directors and the producers were adamant that they wanted this particular look on the film, and they pulled it off.
The submarines looked a lot like your stuff. That is a testament to the fact that they wanted to apply my style to the film, because I had nothing to do with the submarines. Anything to do with the regular surface of the world, earth vehicles, I had nothing to do with. I actually designed that whole flying fish thing at the end, at the climax of the film. All the Atlantean machinery and stuff I worked on, but the big submarine stuff, that was there before I got there. They already had a big model built of that thing.
But you did work a lot on the backgrounds of Atlantis and the whole Atlantean civilization? Yeah, I was involved in all that stuff, and I was involved in the story too; well, the story was pretty fluid early on -- when I was there anything was possible. They were very open to my input on everything and anything as far as story, pacing, stuff like that, so there are whole scenes in the film that came out of conversations that I had with the director and the producer over lunch.
Tell us about the extra material you added to the Dark Horse graphic novel adaptation of the film. Disney was great about turning over to Dark Horse a ton of my production design stuff, and then I sat down with my editor at Dark Horse and we picked out eight pages worth of stuff and I went through and I gave notes as to what this was and what I was thinking about when I drew it, and stuff like that. Disney has actually been great about making that stuff available. I didn't do that much work on the film, that many drawings compared to the people that actually work at Disney, but so much of what I did is out there in the film available for people to see.
Are you happy with the film? Yeah, it's a little hard for me to say because I have been involved in this since the very beginning so there is no way that I can really be terribly objective with it. It would be great if there were certain scenes in there that we designed, but were cut out. So I have some regrets, but it works great for what it is. I have so much baggage when I look at it that it is hard for me to be objective. But yeah, I was pretty happy with it.
