One of the writers of "Treasure Planet" talks here about how they changed Robert Louis Stevenson's classic book into a sci-fi adventure.
How hard was it to take a classic novel and set it in outer space?
It was extremely challenging. There are so many elements in science fiction - things like the metal space ships and the coldness. We did away with a lot of those fairly early on. We also aged the character. He's very young in the book. In the film he's older. He's a troubled teen. There are a lot of things we did to make it more modern and the idea all the way through was to make the story as exciting for kids now as the book was for kids then.
Tell us about some of the characters you created...
There's Scroop, a huge spider who's really threatening and walks on ceilings and stuff. As my son says, Scroop rocks! Then there's Hands. He's this big forearmed animal that's a giant. Doctor Doppler is a different guy in the original. We actually synthesized two characters to make Doctor Doppler. We wanted all sorts of characters who have some place to go, so the idea of a wheelchair explorer who becomes an actual explorer was really exciting to us.
What do you like most about the finished film?
It's so beautiful. It's just so lush and lavish with the woods, the brasses, and the pewters. A lot of science fiction, when it takes place in space, is really, really cold and this film is really, really wonderful. It's a good seaworthy swashbuckler!
