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1!!Atlantean Linguistics
2* Others have said it, but it still needs saying: Atlanteans from the time of the Mebelmok are still alive today, but they don't know how to read their own language. Even granted that Kida was a toddler and the king was blinded (assuming that Atlantean has no equivalent to braille), ''even if'' you WildMassGuess that only the royal family lives for thousands of years (with the commoners living mere hundreds) this is impossible. There must have been at least ''one'' literate adult among the survivors, and teaching Kida would have been one of their first priorities. By all rights, Atlantean as a written language should be alive and well, with Kida ''teaching'' people how to read the walls, not asking to be taught. But no, they had to give the MightyWhitey something to do.
3** It's possible that she read all the directions but misread the vital one.
4--->'''Milo''': ''While'' your hand was on the inscription pad?
5--->'''Kida''': Yea... no.
6*** Not really. Milo doesn't have to take any particular time or effort to read the instructions, so they're apparently both legible and straightforward. If Kida could read at all, she would have been able to read them herself, especially because she's clearly been trying to get the fish-speeder to work for some time. The things she ''has'' done so far have been trial and error - which the fish-speeder is apparently designed to ''prevent'' from working. Sensible, since children carry around those crystals, too.
7** They could live in an orally driven society. It's been thousands of years since Atlantis sank into the sea and the culture has been declining ever since. Maybe the adults were too busy figuring out how to survive to place much importance on reading, so gradually the skill was just lost. Or the language could have evolved - how many people do you know who speak ancient Greek? Old English is generally unintelligible to modern speakers, and even if you read it it makes no sense. Therefore it's easy to assume that if (and it's a big if) the need for written communication got lost, the language moved on and left the writing behind.
8*** Atlantis wasn't an orally-driven society before it sank - they've got writing all over the damn ''walls'', after all. And one would think that one of the most important things they could do for their survival was to make sure everyone was still able to use their technology (which, after all, was still undamaged and functional in 1914). This linguistic explanation would work just fine for us surface humans, but it ignores Atlanteans' extended lifespans. Remember, Kida herself was alive at the time of the Mebelmok, and she's only aged from the equivalent of a toddler to - at the oldest - her early twenties since then. All it would have taken was someone taking the time to teach her - just ''her'', never mind everybody else - how to read back in the day, and written Atlantean would never have been lost.
9** Since only those of royal blood can join the hive crystal its possible that many 'common' Atlanteans don't have a good grasp on what the Mebelmok was and why it all happened that way. Because of the king's rage and grief over his wife's assumption he may have outlawed reading and writing to prevent such tragedies from happeninging again.
10*** Not impossible, but it would require two major assumptions: 1) that the Atlanteans wouldn't decide that the king had gone mad and depose him, and 2) that Atlantean commoners were much less long-lived than the royal family, so there were no literate adults left when the ability to read became necessary to save the city from invaders.
11** Also, Atlantis could have been set up parallel to ancient Christianity, where only those in power (nobility/clergy) could read, and the "poor" didn't. Since that was the case here with a lot of history, it's conceivable they'd lose their written language too. Also, RuleOfDrama.
12*** A technology-driven society couldn't function that way. People need to be able to read manuals and instruction books. And the whole point of the [[Headscratchers/HomePage Headscratchers]] page is that viewers think something pushes the rules too far.
13** The writing on the walls could have been an official style. Something similar occurred in ancient Egypt, where you had hieratic writing for everyday use and hieroglyphic writing for religious/formal functions. Only priests could read hieroglyphic writing, as it was considered a mark of their position. If the Atlanteans who weren't priests use a different type of writing and all the priests are dead, then that explains why Milo is the only one able to read. After all, if a modern-day Egyptologist were to travel back in time, their skills would be markedly different from those of the common people. And hieratic writing wasn't carved into the walls or onto the Rosetta Stone.
14*** Fair enough for the walls, but surely technical instructions like the ones on the fish-speeder would be in hieratic writing instead of hieroglyphics.
15** What if only the royal family lived that long. The only ones left from that period would then be the king and Kida, and the king could have refused to help rebuild his civilization beyond keeping his people content because he has seen what power-hunger and arrogance leads to.
16*** Yes, but even if the king and Kida were the only survivors from the time of the Mebelmok in 1914, there were surely some literate survivors of the original disaster, who would have continued educating their children (including Kida).
17** If one uses the ages that the King and Kida were at during the introduction scene, and assuming that the regular people of Atlantis have lifespans as long as the royal family, the surviving adults would be ancient. "Surviving", because they just had a major cataclysmic disaster and you can see that a good portion of the population was left outside of the protective shield when the continent sank. There's also the fact that the King alludes to the continent sinking because of them getting arrogant or abusive of their technology. They seem to regard the Kings of Old with some sort of religious significance, as opposed to historical or as another form technological protection. So it's entirely possible that the people of Atlantis who survived the disaster figured that their gods were punishing them for their technology and abandoned it until it was forgotten. Kida found it and was the first person in some time to try to use it. That would also explain why the people seem so surprised when Milo leads them to the flying machines later.
18*** This seems plausible enough. Consider what happened in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'': Sin destroys the cities that rely heavily on machina, and not only do people abandon them, but the damn ''church'' starts teaching that machina are inherently evil. The situations aren't that different, apart from the lack of religious authority in Atlantis. Unless the king did in fact outlaw the machines, with this as his justification.
19** According to the [[http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Kida Disney Wiki]], the king was afraid that other Atlantians would attempt to use the crystal as he did (which was, you know, what ultimately led to the place being sunk) and passed laws forbidding the people from learning the language to keep that from happening.
20** Perhaps Kida didn't know her own written language because she has dyslexia.
21** Another guess is that maybe the Great Crystal was rewriting minds (either Kida's or all of Atlantis) to think in its terms. Since it's from a distant planet, maybe that planet's writing system (or heiroglyphs, or runes, or whatever) was being written into their minds. There was no example of that writing anywhere, so they couldn't read it, but it had replaced all their knowledge of their ''own'' writing system in the years of direct, inescapable exposure to it. It may have affected Kida more than anyone else because it was preparing her to be its avatar.
22** One possible concept is the complexity of the Atlantean language. Take this, for example: What wasn't destroyed during the Mebelmok? The royal palace, some civilian housing, and religious structures and foundations which merely sank. Now imagine that in one day everything but your neighborhood was wiped out in an instant, including Libraries, Schools, etc. etc. In ancient times, literature was a luxury, and when the flood occured, that luxury was nearly entirely wiped out. Now, even if you were the most literate adult in Atlantis after thousands of years away from contact from your language due to most of it being sunk, most of it being criminalized and so on, after thousands of years would you really recognize complex writings required to operate machinery? You can communicate just fine, but it's been so long since you've seen it that you can only pick up on so much, which is why Kida was still able to read the instructions, but she couldn't make out more complex symbols due to a lack of resources. It seems logical when you account what all was destroyed as opposed to what all was preserved, and when you think of it, the only reason people nowadays have an easier time reading is because we've integrated it into our everyday lives. We depend on it. Most likely not the case way back then.
23** What if it had something to do with the crystal? If it has the power to give extended life to Atlanteans, then there is a possibility that it has also the power to take away knowledge as well. So in order to prevent itself from being used as a weapon again it took the ability to read which was essential in order to use those flying machines.
24** It is entirely possible that Atlantians have lost the ability to read, and by extension, write. It happened to the Ancient Greeks in the late Bronze Age and resulted in a period that lasted roughly four hundred years called the Dark Ages. The Greeks only accquired the knowledge to read and write because they adopted the alphabet of a trading people known as the Phoenicians (the same ones that are in Homer's Odysessy). It's actually a case of FridgeBrilliance because the Atlantians have had little to no contact with any civilisation after the sinking of Atlantis so therefore they couldn't have gotten outside knowledge of how to read and write.
25** What if Atlantis had already been in decline for an extended period prior to the cataclysm? If their society had been declining for decades or centuries, it's possible that the ability to read had been lost and they were essentially operating in a cargo cult (thus why the King managed to accidentally destroy their civilization- he was using weaponry that he no longer understood). This is borne out by the fact that Atlantean technology survives with no maintenance (so they wouldn't need to remember how to build or maintain it) and barring a little bit of idiot-proofing in the ignition department, is very intuitive and easy to use (they get the hang of it in minutes once Milo shows them how to turn it on again).
26*** A surprising number of Americans today are barely literate enough to text 'lol' to their friends and learn which celebrities are getting divorced this week. A surprising number are incapable of programming or maintaining their various gadgets, using the instructions written in their manuals. An absolutely astounding number vote on complex political issues without reading the plentiful information provided to help them decide. Now imagine a large percentage of the engineers and educators die in a great flood and there's a 6000-year period in which the gadgets don't need maintenance or repair, and the King has the only vote.
27*** Additionally, we have to realize that literacy among common people is a relatively 'new' concept, ca. 1700s or so. Only the aristocracy, clergy and royalty needed to read, and commonfolk were often just told what they needed. It's very likely that, even if this is a people who lived from the Great Flood to the end of the movie, that most of them wouldn't know how to read in the first place. The King probably does, but he is blind now and definitely doesn't need anyone making the same mistakes he did, and Kida was likely too young to learn how to read in the first place, which can explain her lack of knowledge.
28** This premise actually isn't too farfetched. For a real-life example, Linda Schele is a renowned archaeologist who is known for teaching the modern Mayan people their indigenous language. There have been similar cases in Egypt (hieroglyphics) and Greek (Mycenaean Linear A). There weren't any immortals around in those cases, of course, but both time gaps were ''much'' smaller.
29** There's also a line from Kida where she says the people are only content because they do not know better. It sort of implies that Kida and her father and possibly a select few others are the only ones to have been alive when the island sank. So if there's only two plus people alive from olden times, it's not surprising the written language has died out. Hell, there are people who have all but forgotten how to write with a pen since leaving school.
30*** Perhaps, they probably never learned because, by the time Atlantis was submerged, they didn't need to use handwriting/petroglyps (note that the written language was used during times of war) or, by now, they're using a different dialect of Dig Adlantisag. That said, it's entirely possible to have something that was practiced by a culture for some time but then (either what it is or its purpose) was forgotten for some reason.
31
32!!The Timeline and its math
33* What's with the timeline? It's established that the movie is set in 1914 (for the humans, at least). Yet dialogue suggests Atlantis sunk hundreds if not thousands of years prior. Kida tells Milo she remembers the day Atlantis sunk and Milo calculates that she has to be a hundred years old. Um, what? Did Atlantis sink in 1814 instead? Or maybe I missed the point and Atlantiens just age slower than humans?
34** He actually said 'eighty-five... eighty eight hundred years old,' which if anything would be too long. But from the context he's probably overstating the age.
35*** To further clarify: the subtitles use digits and say "8,500-8,800 years old."
36** Atlanteans, at least the royal family, age much, ''much'' slower than surface humans due to their connection to the Heart of Atlantis. This was part of what made it so urgent that Rourke be stopped from removing it: the Atlanteans weren't just losing their power source - it was entirely possible that losing the Heart would kill them all.
37*** Kida might be that old in our calculation of time, though Kida herself might not know how old she is (her measuring of the timeline is "Before the Mebelmok" and "after the Mebelmok"). Her dad's the oldest Atlantean we see.
38
39!!Atlantean Linguistics again
40* Supposedly, the Atlanteans can understand the explorers because they speak a root language from which English (and French) descended. It's plausible enough that Atlantean language contains the words (or at least words similar enough) for them to tell what the explorers are saying, but how on Earth do they know how to ''only'' use "English" words when speaking to them?
41** Compound this with the fact that English and French are not even derived from the same root language (English is a Germanic language derived from the Angles and Saxons, French is a Romantic language derived from Latin) and the fact that even sharing a common root would still make the languages near-impossible to translate immediately and on the spot. Try speaking Italian and translating Spanish. Sure, you could figure some words out, but differences in verb usage, sentence structure, and pronunciation would make it very, very difficult to have a meaningful conversation between the two.
42*** English and French DO share a root language, albeit one pretty distant in time. The proto-indo-european language is the obvious example here. English and French could have split as little as 3500 years ago.
43*** Even later than that actually, Modern English has some Norman in it as well, from when William the Conqueror took the throne of England. So they'd be connected as late as the 11th century.
44** And even assuming that all Indo-European languages (which both English and French are) are descended from Atlantean, how would that help with communication? Old ''English'' is completely unintelligible to modern English speakers, with a completely different grammar system and three genders. Speaking a certain language is far from a guarantee that you'll be able to understand its descendants. And anyway: Atlantean and English are ''different languages.'' Except for a few cases of mutual intelligibility, you can't magically speak another language fluently with no studying whatsoever, even if they are related.
45** That whole thing was just a handwave to get over the communication problem; else everybody would have to speak through Milo and there would be a lot more subtitles. It makes absolutely no sense if taken seriously.
46** One could always go with the excuse that [[AWizardDidIt the crystals helped break down the language barrier.]]
47** AcceptableBreaksFromReality has a part in it. Realistically speaking, they should have spent ''months'' at least down there.
48*** If it helps, the younger generation probably learned more English from Milo (and Kida), as he was a translator. In terms of how the Atlantean language works, Atlantean probably started off as a proto-language or, if this is actual term, "ancestor language" to Latin and then other languages branched off from that. A meta-explanation is that the director used, in constructing [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantean_language Dig Adlantisag]] (Atlantean Language), he barrowed proto and currently existing languages.
49!!Pop the balloons!
50* Note to Milo and the heroes rescuing Kida...JUST POP THE DAMN BALLOON WITH YOUR ENERGY SHOTS.
51** Perhaps they were afraid that it would cause her to fall too fast.
52** Also, the resulting explosion might've obliterated her seeing as she was in crystal form and all. That or she'd melt in it before they got down to rescue her.
53** Or they were afraid that by doing so would active the dormant volcano -- which, you know, ''did'' happen when Helga popped the balloon.
54*** Except that it wasn't popping the balloon that caused the explosion, it was popping it with a flare gun which caused the fire to mix with the gas inside the balloon. It's possible that the energy weapons wouldn't have had that kind of violent reaction. Or even, you know, going at it with the saw they were using to try and cut Kida free.
55!!Rourke's Secret Planes
56* Why did Rourke have those planes packed away? When they started out, they had no idea that there would be any space to fly in the ''water'' and all; they only found out on the submarine. So does he usually pack fold-able planes with him wherever he goes?
57** [[CrazyPrepared Yes]].
58** This becomes horrifying with the realization that those planes must have been stored in the escape pod's and that many people died because there was not enough room.
59*** Not really horrifying at all. Most of those that died did so because the escape pods they were in were destroyed. There were originally five pods, not counting the two-man "fighter" pods. Only one made it. If one could hold all the people we see during the memorial service as well as all that equipment, then there was plenty of room for all 200 of the Ulysses's crewmembers in the five escape pods, which probably also held even more equipment. Everything on the expedition that cannot be found in period photographs was a custom job. That all had to be carefully packed in, checked multiple times by the crew, and approved by the officer in charge of loading equipment. Whitmore placed the order for those ships. He's crazy, not stupid.
60!!The Crystal
61* When Rourke and others finally reached the Heart of Atlantis, it looked like they have no idea how to take the giant sphere flying high above. And the next move of that thing? It packed itself in compact Kida!box, thus simplifying the task of stealing it. Why? How could this help to protect Atlantis?
62** The heart of Atlantis only seems to have a few measures of protecting itself. These are A: protect the entire of Atlantis with a force field, but this would be useless in this case. B: Transport the heart into a person and hope they will not be destroyed. Besides, it might not be that smart.
63** It may have been trying to trap Rourke/the others, since it crystalizes everything it touches. It just didn't work because Milo told them not to.
64** Another possibility is that since option (A), as stated above, was not a variable for the crystal it's possible that it was leading the threat away from the city and would've killed them when it was at a safe enough distance from the people it was trying to protect. Then it'd simply waltz back.
65** What if there was something still wonky going on with the Heart at that point? Maybe there was supposed to be some machine-like reaction, like 1.) Crisis strikes, 2.) the Heart takes the nearest member of the Royal Family to power it 3.) the Heart stops the crisis, 4.) and the member of the royal family is returned. Given that the Heart didn't work properly after the king abused its power (it didn't return Kida's mother, and was only able to shield part of Atlantis), it seemed that the mild abuse of it somehow corrupted it into not working properly as a defense mechanism. That would explain why it possessed Kida at such an inopportune moment. It saw the invasion of Rourke and the others as a danger, but was unable to function properly to get to actually fixing it. As to what fixed it by the end...well, not entirely certain. It could have been some result of Kida, one of the few Atlantians desperate to actually solve the problems of her society, being the one at the wheel, so to speak.
66----
67* How exactly did they get Crystal Kida into that box? When she came down from the light show, it looks as if she just kept walking in no particular direction. Did Rourke have time to run up to the surface, drag down a giant metal container, and just wait for Kida to walk into it? It's made clear that nobody mortal can touch her without getting crystallized.
68** Considering air vehicles were on a submarine expedition, it's not much of a stretch to believe they just happened to have a metal box with them.
69** Rourke and Helga (and Milo) knew that Atlantis had "some sort of power source"; since Rourke and Helga intended all along to take it, they would need something to transport it in. It just happened to put itself in a human host first.
70** Also, Rourke didn't get crystallized by touching Kida. He got crystallized by having his wrist slashed with a shard of crystallized window glass.
71----
72* Rourke was crystallized when Milo sliced his arm with the glass. Okay, great. But then why does he turn into a wailing demon? It adds a bit more horror to the climax, but...why? Nothing was mentioned about the crystal turning people into monsters.
73** One could interpret it as a direct poisoning of the body with the crystal tainted glass, rather than simply absorbing the rays of the giant crystal. Remember Milo told everyone to not touch [=CrystalKida=], and her being confined in the box almost instantaneously affected the glass.
74*** Shouldn't it have cut Milo's hand a little bit then?
75*** Maybe the crystal, having uploaded Kida's knowledge, recognized Rourke (but not Milo) as a threat, so it would not harm Milo even if he did cut himself on the shard accidentally.
76** This seems to be the case, as, when Kida got crystalized, she told Milo something along the lines of "All will be well, Milo Thatch."
77** The movie doesn't spell out every single thing that the crystal can possibly do. Until it's discovered, the only things we know are that it is some sort of sentient power source and that it ate Kida's mother. Nothing was mentioned about it possessing someone and walking around on the ground in their body either--because no one knew it could do that until it did. It's entirely possible that it would have turned anyone into a zombified monster if it had entered their bloodstream through a deep cut, and that we only happen to see that fate befall Rourke.
78----
79* Milo and other characters harp on about how taking the crystal out of Atlantis will kill the Atlanteans, but only a couple of mentions are made of the potential danger to the surface world if it got into the wrong hands. So, if Milo's logic is followed, the death of an already dying civilization is somehow a greater evil than the use of the crystal as a weapon of mass destruction. ValuesDissonance, much?
80** Taking the Heart of Atlantis out of Atlantis would ''definitely'' kill the people there. Taking it to the surface world only ''might'' kill the people up there. The Atlanteans were a more pressing issue.
81** It depends on the timing, but if the expedition takes place late in 1914 - which it almost has to, for Milo to jump so quickly to worrying about the Kaiser specifically being reasonable - then their last news from the surface might well have suggested that plenty of people are being killed up there with or without a crystal of vaguely defined powers (that might not even be feasible to turn into a WMD with the level of technology possessed by the warring powers of Europe). The Atlanteans, on the other hand, will die if the crystal is removed and won't die if the crystal remains.
82
83!!Kidagakash
84* Why does a trained linguist have such difficulty pronouncing 'Kidagakash'? It's not ''that'' hard to say.
85** RuleOfFunny.
86** Poor guy was also pretty tongue-tied around her. With a voice and...well, EVERYTHING like hers, it's fairly understandable.
87** He also might be one of those people who needs to see the words written down to properly pronounce it. Kida's full name is long and she only said it once. He also might have felt a bit formal calling her by her full name.
88** It's also possible he was flustered by trying to say someone's proper name in a language he'd only recently started speaking out loud. That nervousness could be what made him botch his first attempt, and then his embarrassment is what led him to asking for an alternative instead of trying again.
89** She'd also corrected his accent and pronunciation earlier in the movie. He was probably second-guessing himself while trying to replicate her accent and didn't want to embarrass himself further.
90
91!!Fish-shaped flying cars
92* Why are the Atlantian's flying machines shaped like fish? They were built ''before'' the city was sunk.
93** Fish have quite an aerodynamic build, so it would be practical to have them fish shaped. Maybe they decided to fully go with the fish theme after that.
94** Also, Atlantis was an island and presumably had a pretty big ocean-based life (fishing, trade via sea, etc).
95** As an aside, early examples of NoseArt on airplanes included painting the entire aircraft to resemble a flying fish. Right around the time this movie takes place, actually.
96!!Kida's Disney Princess Status
97* Ever notice that Kida is the ''only'' Princess created by Disney to become [[TheHighQueen a Queen]] at the end of her film? (Well, until ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}'' thirteen years later.)
98** Also, her dress at the end appears to have a sash of some sort hanging down from the front. The problem is that, only the top part of her sash was visible when she was wearing that dress. What does the bottom part of her sash look like?
99** This (it's [[AllThereInTheManual a rare illustration]] showing a full view of the dress).
100*** She's not considered a Disney Princess, not officially, anyway. The reasons the execs gave is because of her age and the fact that she's a queen. Earlier, when the concept was brought out, she was one, alongside Alice and, at one point, IIRC, Lilo.
101!!What could have been.
102* An infamous deleted scene from the film was actually originally going to have the movie begin with [[HornyVikings a team of Vikings]] making an attempt to look for Atlantis, but are immediately blown up by [[KrakenandLeviathan the Leviathan.]] How the heck are those Vikings able to get to Atlantis if they all lived at a time long before ''any'' submarines were even invented?
103*** The Viking captain is pretty HotBlooded, so he might not be thinking far enough ahead/have read far enough ahead to realize they'd need to go underwater to get to the city. Also, the Vikings may not have translated all of the Shepherd's Journal yet.
104*** They simply would have sailed to the island Aziz found Atlantis in, hence the journal (since that island is all that is left of the original kingdom prior to the Mebhelmok, he got to Atlantis accidentally while exploring the caves inside that island)
105*** The leader thought that there was an actual portal to Atlantis. Like in Treasure Planet or Flint Lockwood's Grocery Deliverator.
106----
107* Why does the Leviathan have tentacles? It's supposed to be a giant mechanical lobster, and [[ArtisticLicenseBiology lobsters don't have tentacles!]]
108** The Leviathan has retractable tentacles directly below its eyes. The tentacles come together to fire the beam weapon which can be seen in the scene where it destroys the ''Ulysses''. Energy is channeled through each tentacle, and when all of that energy is combined...''BOOM!'' The fact that the Viking longship is so small (relative to the Leviathan) is probably why the tentacles are actually used as tentacles (if the thing just smashed the longship with a pincer, the scene would be over in two seconds flat). As for lobsters not having tentacles, the Leviathan is ''based on'' a lobster, but is not meant to be a perfectly accurate 1000x scale model of one (it has two sets of pincers, its head can move without turning the entire cephalothorax, its tail is different from a real lobster's, etc.).
109!!More on the Crystal
110* The first time the Crystal took someone of Royal Family, we're suppose to assume that she died, but when it uses Kida to do basically the same thing it did with her mother, why did it give Kida back? Why didn't it give back her mother? What's the distinguishing characteristic between the two characters or the two events?
111** Maybe the difference had something to do with the 10,000 years of fusion-time difference, and possibly the sheer amount of energy that it originally took to avert the worst effects of the Maebelmok and produce a permanent geological shield to keep the city sustainable.
112** The King also admitted to arrogantly trying to use the Heart as a weapon. Perhaps the Heart was being a little vindictive and punished him by taking the Queen away permanently. In Kida's case, it was outsiders trying to steal the Heart.
113** The king mentioned that it would "bind" to Kida if they didn't disconnect quickly enough. That was partly why he asked them to save her before it was too late. He didn't want her to be bound to the crystal forever.
114!!Atlantean Skintone
115* How are the Atlanteans dark-skinned if they're living in a place without any sunlight? Kida has lighter skin than those of the other Atlanteans, yet even she's really dark.
116** Genetics.
117** There is light in Atlantis. Where it comes from is another question entirely.
118** Brown comes in different shades. It's entirely possible that Kida is just naturally lighter.
119!!How'd they get back?
120* How the heck did everyone get back to the surface? They can't use the RopeBridge anymore since Rourke blew it up, with said bridge built over a river of lava, and the tunnels leading to that kingdom are now clogged up by the now-cooled lava left behind when the volcano erupted. They can't use the DrillTank anymore (during the scene when they escape the erupting volcano, said tunneling drill can be seen falling into the lava). Even if they do find another away around, they have to account for the bridge above the volcano that crumbled apart under their trucks' wheels when the Pyreflies set their camp on fire, and even if they make it back to the air pocket leading from under the Atlantic Ocean, there's still no way out from there since the Leviathan is still waiting for them at the entrance leading to the air pocket.
121** Actually, in that same scene, one can see [[IfItSwimsItFlies a giant narwhal-shaped blimp]] in the background. They could fly over the [[WaterIsAir river of lava and up the volcano's shaft]] that was opened up by Rourke so that he and Helga would escape with Kida on their own blimp. Their geologist even described that volcano as being dormant, implying that its crater was stopped up sometime after Atlantis was sunk, creating that volcano, but before it was discovered, considering the Shepherd's Journal theory for the Vikings was true. And it's pretty obvious that once the explorers get out of that blimp at the volcano's crater, and head toward the beach surrounding whatever island now sits over Atlantis, Whitmore is probably going to send one of his ships to pick them all up and take them back to Washington, DC.
122** In the sequel they do show a little more of this. There are other entrances to the cavern system that leads to Atlantis, including one that connects with Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Also, if you're wearing an Atlantean crystal, the Leviathan won't attack you, so traveling via sub is okay as long as you've got one.
123!!Even More on the Crystal
124* When Rourke and Helga cross the bridge with crystal!Kida in tow, there's a scene of a few Atlanteans watching the crystals around their necks cease glowing. In the next scene with the king, his crystal is still functional, and in a scene shortly after that, many crystals are glowing and functional because Milo walks the group of Atlanteans through starting the fishmobiles. It's shown multiple times that the crystals are indeed glowing. Continuity error, or is there an explanation?
125** Because the Heart is (somewhat?) sentient, it could prioritize its energy on important shards of crystal (such as her father's, which was then passed onto Milo- both people Kida cares about intensely). Maybe Milo's crystal then became so charged with energy because he was the one who could prevent them from taking the Heart out of Atlantis, that crystal!Kida used it as a beacon, able to energise the nearby crystals and facilitate the restoration.
126*** The crystals fade because their immediate power, the big one, is leaving them. The further it gets, the weaker their crystals until eventually they'll stop working entirely and everyone will begin to age and die.
127** If you look closely, you'll see that they don't stop glowing entirely, they just get fainter. They're much less bright, but they are still glowing a little.
128!!Kida's Kidnapping
129* When Kida is kidnapped (before she gets crystallized), she has just come from swimming and is only wearing her bikini-style top and briefs. This is [[FanService very]] firmly established [[SheFu when she fights her kidnappers]]. Then she is crystallized and the climactic battle happens and ends and the border giants come up and shield Atlantis, etc, and she comes down from the crystal - wearing her scarf-skirt again. Did the crystal fix her outfit?
130** She wearing it before she was crystalised, wasn't she? Once Milo agreed to lead them to the Heart, they at least let her put her skirt back on.
131** They let Milo put ''his'' clothes back on. No reason to believe they wouldn't let Kida do the same.
132** And even if she wasn't, the Heart can protect an entire damn city from lava and floods and prolong life for an entire city. It can probably manage a scarf-skirt.
133!!Cookie and everything about 'im.
134* Cookie, the Chef who acts like it's 1870, makes absolutely no sense. Think about it, these are highly specialized, highly paid and highly trained Mercenaries that are hunting for "myths" and trying to make a buck while doing it. But Cookie is not specialized in any regard; he's not smart, he's not specialized, hell, he can't even Cook (His food is all gloop and slop and unhealthy)! Unlike the rest of the team that has specialized equipment or standard buggies for the time, he uses a freakin' wagon as his mode of transportation and a Civil War era '''musket''' as his weapon of choice! Why have this guy on your mercenary team at all? He doesn't do anything that would help the Mercenaries at all!
135** It's slop, but it's edible, and according to him will 'keep and keep and keep'. He's apparently figured out how to make nasty but very long lasting, evidently nutritious food with ridiculous but simple ingredients, such as [[BreadEggsMilkSquick beans, bacon, whiskey and lard]]. Maybe not gourmet, but on potentially month-lasting expeditions who wouldn't want a man making such useful food? Beans in cans, whiskey barrels... it's all fairly easy to cart around and preserve.
136*** He does question the ingredients he's given to Helga. Maybe he's not USED to whipping up long lasting but distasteful meals with the healthy 4 basic food groups, but who's to say he CAN'T? The previous expedition he's been on was in Iceland. That's not completely isolated from human society since there are plenty of villages were the crew can collect supplies and quality food. But a voyage to the depths of the sea and subterranean realms require lots of foods planned well ahead.
137** There's some implication that he's a long-time ActionSurvivor, what with his age. Maybe Cookie was actually part of Whitmore's earlier teams back in the days when he went on these kinds of expeditions ''himself,'' and was simply the only one whose skill set never needed to be upgraded to 'best in their field'.
138!!Kida's Stars
139* How does Kida know what stars look like, if Atlantis has been submerged for 9000 years?
140** Because she was alive before it was submerged. Probably has a basic memory of what stars are like.
141** The Atlantean environment does replicate if it's day or night, so this probably includes starlike formations.
142!!Burning a Bridge (literally)
143* Rourke detonates the bridge to prevent Milo and the others from stopping him. Just one little problem--how the heck did he and his crew manage to wire dynamite to a bridge suspended over ''a boiling river of lava''?! There is no possible way even ''Vinny'' could've wired the bridge without plummeting into the molten magma below! So how did they wire the bridge to the detonator?
144** Are you doubting Vinny's skills? The bundles of dynamite were attached on the edges of the bridge, so he easily could have just reached under while lying down to attach them. He also could have had a rope and/or partner holding on to keep him on top of the bridge. Wiring it all up wouldn't be much different from placing the dynamite; it's nothing more than leaning over and tying a bunch of fuses to a wire, which an explosives expert of Vinny's caliber could easily do.
145!!Even more Timeline Math
146* A flaw in historical consistency, but remember that whoopee cushion Mole used on Milo? The movie is set in 1914, yet the whoopee cushions we know of today weren't invented until the 1920s/30s.
147** Hot water bottles existed at that time, and Mole could very easily have converted one to a more flatulent purpose.
148!!More on Rourke's Plans
149* Why did Rourke bother hiding that page from the journal? It's HandWaved, but it doesn't really make sense. Note that a.) Milo begins the movie by saying that he wants to take the Atlantean power source and put it in a museum; b.) Rourke doesn't even think that it's a power source, just a really big and valuable diamond; and c.) none of them know that the city is full of people who need the Heart to live. (Unless Rourke knew but didn't tell Helga, but that also seems random.) Why does he assume that he needs to hide the Heart's existence to get Milo's help at this point?
150** Simply hedging his bets. Remember both that he has some military training and that he doesn't know Milo at all, personally or professionally. He would have been trained to keep information from people until it was necessary for them to know about it. It's likely that almost everyone was clueless about the crystal except for Rourke and perhaps Helga. If you are going to take something and sell it for an absurd amount of money, you don't want any loose ends, which is why Rourke waits until he's desperate (he has one night to find the crystal and Milo hasn't been immediately led to the crystal by Kida) to show Milo the page that he needs. It's likely that even Whitmore didn't know about the missing page and thus about the crystal, either.
151** He didn't want to risk competition for the crystal. He would have no way of knowing whose hands the journal could fall into, and if he could conclude the crystal was worth his time based solely on the illustration, then anyone could. He took the page to prevent anyone else from coming up with the same idea he did. Hell, he didn't even know for sure that Milo didn't secretly want to steal it for himself.
152** Also note that at the beginning of the film, Milo's using the "power source" he knows next to nothing about as a key part of his pitch, but then once they actually get to Atlantis he admits to Rourke that all he'd expected to find were "ruins, some pieces of broken pottery." It seems like he was just using the mysterious power source as a way to convince the museum to fund the expedition and didn't actually think they would find it until Kida showed him the underwater mural.
153** Rourke thought there was a massive diamond somewhere in Atlantis, and Milo was talking about a "power source," which he describes as being like a battery. To me it always seemed that Rourke didn't realize they were talking about the same thing until they actually got into the crystal chamber. So therefore Rourke wouldn't have had reason to think that he and Milo wanted to extract the same thing and thus had reason to be on the same side.
154!!Mole's "button".
155* A question not about Atlantis or the timeline, but something more benign that always bothered me. Mole implies that having a two year old cat from a litter of seven is one of the "microscopic fingerprints of a mapmaker", and then after tasting it he angrily adds "and linguist". I'm sorry, how is having a two year old cat from a litter of seven a fingerprint of being a mapmaker and why is he so angry about Milo being a Linguist?
156** RuleOfFunny
157** This may have been a subtitle error, but on my DVD of the movie the subtitles indicate that Mole says "microscopic fingerprints of ''the'' mapmaker," implying that Milo's "fingerprints" matched the fingerprints of the person who made the maps for their voyage (plausibly could have been Milo). As for the linguist part: some professions just don't get along with one another, particularly in [[RuleOfFunny comedic scenes in movies]], and it's possible that Mole simply doesn't like linguists because of that.
158** Media frequently [[AcceptableTargets depict the French]] as [[FrenchJerk intensely chauvinistic]] about their culture, and often holding their language as [[EverythingSoundsSexierInFrench superior, if not outright perfect]] (consider that they were '''the''' ''[[CommonTongue lingua franca]]'' for centuries). An upstart scholar would be judged accordingly by a Frenchman like Mole.
159!!Stealing the Atlantean heart, why?
160* I don't understand why the villain thought stealing the heart of Atlantis was the best way to get rich...''Maybe'' it made more sense when he thought there was nothing left but ruins, but once the crew gets there, they immediately find out that the people and their civilization are still alive and kicking. Does he think the people of the world wouldn't pay well for discovering that?
161** To be fair, Rourke could have also gotten rich if he had stolen some Atlantean artifacts and sold them to some antiquities collector.
162*** At the beginning of the film Milo was fighting a tremendous uphill battle to convince a museum that Atlantis even ''existed'' in the first place. Rourke would almost certainly have had terrible trouble trying to sell artifacts from a civilization that people didn't even believe was real to begin with.
163*** Considering the time period where the film takes place, if Rourke had even gotten the Heart of Atlantis to the surface, would someone really have paid him for it? The film is set at the time when World War I has just started and it's highly unlikely that anyone would be interested in buying such an expensive artifact in favor of buying weapons or supplies...
164*** Historian here: private buyers were not acquiring weapons or supplies at the exclusion of fine art and other sumptuary displays of wealth, particularly not before the war had formally started. The European aristocracy was still going strong in 1914, and before the war began still had plenty of money to burn.
165*** Given the nature of the war and the huge funds going into new weapons research, how is it doubtful that any of the existing factions would not have paid multiple fortunes for a source of endless power which can easily be used for an entirely new class of AOE wave-motion weapons which make cooked meat and scrap out of anything they are fired in the general direction of?
166*** By ''that'' logic, how is it doubtful that the contending factions wouldn't have simply ''confiscated'' the Heart from Rourke the instant they realized its potential, to secure its power for themselves and ensure their enemies couldn't outbid them for it? If the Manhattan Project physicists had put their A-bomb up for auction, they'd have been arrested for treason on the spot!
167** Rourke was just greedy.
168!!All that equipment
169* Did they really cram multiple trucks, a few planes, a blimp, Mole's digger, tents, supplies, Cookie's wagon et cetera in one and a half evacuation pod? Is that even possible?
170** Most of the vehicles, pretty much everything but the digger, could have been disassembled and thus fit in a smaller space than otherwise, so there's just a bit of plausibility there. Scaling it against the main sub, it actually is rather large. Still, with the digger it doesn't quite add up.
171
172!!Leviathan's functions
173* The Leviathan is not shown to be manually operated like the other Atlantean machines, and is apparently capable of acting autonomously. The sequel even mentions that the Leviathan could recognize the crew as non-threats, as if it's able to distinguish between friend and foe. Are we to believe that the Atlanteans were able to unlock machine programming, some kind of AI, or possibly even give their Leviathans a certain degree of self-awareness?
174** Atlanteans, no. The ''crystal''--um, yeah. Atlanteans have access to extremely advanced technology, including non-propelled flight, powered by the crystal. It's highly possible that Ye Olde Ancestral Atlanteans built the Leviathan and "turned it on" just like they turned on those fish speeders, and the crystal made it quasi-sentient because it was intended as a guardian. The full body of the Leviathan has the same blue life line markings as the Atlantean people do.
175
176* Generally knowledge becomes lost because those who had it die out without passing it on. The Atlanteans are effectively immortal. What, everyone ''forgot how to read''? Why?
177** Wrath of the Gods?
178** [[HolyIsNotSafe Probably out of fear of the same knowledge and technology that destroyed their civilizations]]. Likely the King suppressed all forms of knowledge for fear that some upstart could discover the secret of the Heart of Atlantis and cause yet ''another'' disaster. Therefore, the Atlantis that we see is losing all knowledge of its own cultural identity, its people are kept blissfully ignorant of their own cultural identity, and very likely have forgotten, or never even learnt, how to read in the nearly 9000 years since the flood.
179*** The [[AllThereInTheManual Summer 2001 issue of Disney Adventures]] mentioned that he had the library closed off.
180** The ''royal'' Atlanteans are effectively immortal, aging extremely slowly and having extremely long lifespans, presumably because the crystal needs them, but the commoners are never stated or implied to be the same. Besides, Atlantis would be grossly overpopulated if that were the case, since Atlantean children are shown. Also, Kida was very young when Atlantis sank, so it's possible she never learned to read while the rest of Atlantis forgot over generations, and it's no stretch the king made decrees which Kida was too young to remember.
181* How could Rourke have known which page of the Shepard's Journal, that contains the exact details of the "Heart of Atlantis", to tear out if Milo's the one that can read Atlantean?
182** Illustrations on the page?
183*** Agreed. That page had a great big shiny star-diamond thing on it that took up almost half the illustration. It's not hard to figure that's the most important moneymaker in the quest.
184** Milo didn't learn Atlantean in a vacuum -- his grandfather, Rourke's old companion from the Iceland expedition, taught it to him. There's every possibility the elder Thatcher inadvertently told Rourke of the importance of that section of the journal.
185* When Milo slides off the blackboard at the beginning to take care of the boiler, the chalk stays on. But when he slides off the second time, he indeed does clean it off.
186* So the movie needs a group of heroes for the finale, but is it not out of character that the mercenaries are suddenly squeamish about making the biggest payday of their lives? How is killing people not part and parcel of a mercenary expedition like this? Did they not ever expect to kill anyone as mercenaries?
187** Probably because it involves mass genocide instead of open combat or grave robbery of a long dead civilization.
188*** Especially if the aforementioned civilization is considered by the rest of the world to be pretty much nonexistent and therefore will not be missed.
189** Even most mercenary companies, who accept that they will be killing enemy soldiers just to get rich, generally recognize that it's not ''right'' to strand non-combatants in a situation that will inevitably kill them. EvenEvilHasStandards / EveryoneHasStandards is pretty common for a reason.
190** Not to mention that when they are received by the Atlanteans, Helga says that there weren't supposed to be people in Atlantis and that that changes everything for the operation. She even looks a bit unpleased when Rourke just says it will all remain the same.
191** Given Vinny's KirkSummation to Rourke, and Milo's attitude when he calls Rourke a mercenary, it's entirely possible that's just an insult. The majority of the group seems to be glorified thieves rather than actual guns for hire.
192* Kida mentions to her father that the previous kings would weep if they could see how Atlantis has fallen, and later she falls to her knees to pray to their stones around the Crystal. But, Kida's 8500 - 8800 years old and she looks like she's in her late teens - early twenties - how old is her dad? And how old were "the kings of our past" - how long has Atlantis been around?!?!
193** King Kashekim is apparently about 27,000 years old, according to official material, and there's eight or so carved faces around the crystal. Assuming they're all previous kings, and lived as long as Kashekim... Something tells me that after Atlantis surfaces in the sequel, the history of the evolution of man is going to need a little reworking...
194** There's nothing that says the other kings had the same longevity. Some of them must pre-date the crystal itself at the very least. Others may have died in battle, Atlantis being notoriously belligerent. There's just not enough details to assume that Atlantis itself is hundreds of thousands of years old.
195* Why did the Crystal even need a person to fuse with? Especially the second time, when fusing with Kida only made the situation worse by making the Crystal able to be captured (it didn't even fight back or anything). And why did the Crystal give back Kida at the end, when it didn't give back her mother? Why ''didn't'' it give back her mother?
196** Her mother was connected to it for too long. The king said that if "Kida remains bonded to the crystal for too long, she will be lost to it... Forever." So presumably her mom was just bonded to it for a bit too long when it sank the city and the crystal just absorbed her.

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