History Headscratchers / AtlantisTheLostEmpire

** 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.

!!Anlantean Linguistics

* Cookie, the Chef who act's 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!

** 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 assume 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 wouldn't want to steal it for himself.

!!Atlantean Languistics again
* Supposedly, the Atlantians can understand the explorers because they speak a root language from which English (and French) descended. It's plausible enough that Atlantian 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?

** 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 to late. He didn't want her to be bound to the crystal forever.

** This seems to be the case, as, when Kida got crystalized, she told Milo something along the lines of "Be not afraid" or "Have no fear, Milo Thatch."

*** Perhaps what happened to the Atlanteans is like what happened to people around the collapse of the Bronze Age, where handwriting had almost died out and had to be recreated, with literacy dying out in some parts of the world afterwards. A mass disaster like we saw in the beginning would have been one of the things prompting linguistic changes, shifting it from more written to more verbal. In another vein, they probably never learned because, by the time Atlantis was submerged, they didn't need to use handwriting/petroglyps.

*** 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 Mebelmorf" and "after the Mebelmorth"). Her dad's the oldest Atlantean we see.

*** If it helps, the younger generation probably learned more English from Milo, 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.

** Part of it is really down to release timing. This film came out around the same time as ''WesternAnimation/{{Shrek}}'' and ''Film/LaraCroftTombRaider''. In the animation department, ''Shrek'' made a stronger impression because it was fully CGI at a time when that was novel and had a more subversive, anti-Disney message at a time when Disney was coming off of its renaissance period. In the action department, ''Lara Croft'' was live action, based on a popular video game franchise, and more adult, all of which are more appealing to action fans. ''Atlantis'' as a result kind of got lost in the shuffle.

** Part of it is really down to release timing. This film came out around the same time as ''WesternAnimation/Shrek'' and ''Film/LaraCroftTombRaider''. In the animation department, ''Shrek'' made a stronger impression because it was fully CGI at a time when that was novel and had a more subversive message. In the action department, ''Lara Croft'' was live action, based on a popular video game franchise, and more adults all of which are more appealing to action fans. ''Atlantis'' as a result kind of got lost in the shuffle.

** Because you asked...I don't hate it, I just don't think it's very good. The issues I took with it are: weird pacing, a boring main lead, too many side characters, them not getting to Atlantis until halfway through, a confusing narrative, the villain's plan making no sense, and it being way too dark at certain points. It does feel like Disney was trying g to make the movie more adult, but it only sort of worked.

* 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?

*** 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?

** 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.

*** Given the nature of the war and the huge funds going into new weapons research, how is it doubtful that any of the existings 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?

*** Given the nature of the war and the huge funds going into new weapons research, how is it doubtful that any of the existings 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, along with everything nearby?

*** Given the nature of the war and the huge funds going into new weapons research, how is it doubtful that any of the existings 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?

*** 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...

** To be fair, Rourke could have also gotten rich if he stole some Atlantean artifacts and sold them to some antiquities collector.

* 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?

* Ever notice that Kida is the ''only'' Princess created by Disney to become [[TheHighQueen a Queen]] at the end of her film? (Well, until ''Disney/{{Frozen}}'' thirteen years later.)

* Anyone notice that Rourke (and to a much lesser extent, Helga) is the ''only'' character from the film to actually still appear in the merchandise? Why did Disney still want to market him instead of everyone else from the film? They actually did [[SublimeRhyme the same thing]] with [[Disney/TheBlackCauldron the Horned King.]]

** RuleOfFunny

* RuleOfFunny

* 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?

** 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.

* 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?