Customer Reviews

Atlantis The Lost Empire: The Essential Guide (FIRST AMERICAN EDITION)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book for myself, not my children. As an artist, animator, and Disney fan I wanted the book as a reference for the artwork used in the film. All I can say is I love the look of this film and I can't wait to see the movie. However, this is not an art book and in fact is not approved by Disney. It gives a little background on each of the characters, vehicles, and equipment used in the film, accompanied by gorgeous artwork from the movie itself, but is not a narrative story. Be aware, if you have not seen the film, this book gives away almost all of the plot. It also has none of the creative process behind what went into the movie. It is simply a very nice picture book and, in my opinion, worth the price.

If you have seen and enjoyed the movie, you will enjoy this guide. It actually sheds some light on the reasons why the artists featured various items and artifacts.

If they had included some of the facts in this book in the movie, it would have made it way more interesting for me. I'm almost wondering if you read the book first, you would enjoy the movie more.

In this book you can find out more about your favorite characters, explore the underwater royal chambers and secret caves, see detailed pictures of the amazing fleet of vehicles and travel to the magical world of monsters, giants, princesses and kings.

~The Rebecca Review

This book has a wide range of hidden facts about the movie It's also full with awesome pictures and fantastic guidelines for a collector to know .There's also some speciality in this book that amaze me like a complete data and knowledge of each and every single character,maps,about vehicles,history of Atlantis and much more.It's simply a must have for all the disney and atlantean fans out there.

I think this book is a must have for any Atlantis: The lost Empire fan. It thoroughly describes just about everything in the movie: from characters to places. I love it and I highly recommend it.

Dorling Kindersley makes great looking books. This book for Disney's ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE is very nice. It covers each character and hardware used in the film and is both captivating and educational. Excellent!

I bought this book because I remembered that the movie had some excellent visuals. I was particularly interested in the assortment of vehicles, early 20th century exploration craft and otherworldly Atlantian airships. I hoped for detailed drawings of these with information about their design and functions in the context of the fictional world (something akin to the Star Wars cross-section booksStar Wars Complete Cross-Sections: The Spacecraft and Vehicles of the Entire Star Wars Saga for instance). Instead I was treated to several pages of character bios, each one dominated by a large picture of the character with pointers and labels such as: "glasses","gun holster", "spiky hair", "walking stick", and "pants". There is almost no information not in the movie itself, excluding the corner on some of the pages that is dedicated to elementary real-world facts.
What is most infuriating is that the pages dedicated to the aforementioned vehicles just fail to deliver and many of the of them are given no regard at all. The WWI style planes that are featured in the climax of the movie can only be glimpsed (from behind, at a near horizontal angle, partially cut off by the edge of the frame) in a single small image. These had a minor roll in the movie, but the animators must have actually drawn them out, so a single frame in which one could be seen clearly (that would allow the reader to appreciate their work) would have been great for me and would not have required any extra effort an the part of the authors. The vehicles that do get some recognition are equally dissatisfying. The the flagship of the expedition, the Ulysses, does have its own page. This entails two large-scale depictions of the sub. This sounds excellent except that the ship is dark brown and the background of the page is black, so the contrast is poor. One can see the ship more clearly on the DVD cover. Additionally, it's somewhat simple to look at, lacking any major details that cause one to ask "what's that?". This would be a complaint directed at the movies creators and not the publishers of this book, except that the ship features a multilevel, rotating glass cockpit filled with instruments and things, that can be just barely seen through the tinted glass of the smaller picture. Again the animators would have had to draw up a plan of the command bridge in order to allow the characters to interact with it. A cut-away view of the globe, or even just a bird's-eye-view blueprint would had been wonderfully informative. This said, I give the book credit for delivering on the sub pod page with a clear central picture and pointers labeling all the interesting bits. The data is simplistic but nothing that can't be expected from a book about a Disney movie.
I can see that some readers (particularly younger ones) might enjoy this book, however it seems terribly deficient in depicting what, in my opinion, was by far the most interesting and entertaining aspect of the movie.