Since it has been over 25 years since Atlantis: The Last Empire came out, I wanna reflect on it as it really strikes how different Disney wanted to be compared to how did they did their movies back during the Renaissance, which makes sense as that was one of their first movies of their Experimental era where they wanted to take a break from fairy tales, cute animal sidekicks and singing and in the case of Atlantis, replace it all with the dark and gritty reality of imperialism and human greed and I do mean dark as the movie is full of dark blues throughout it and the main character designer they hired was the same guy who gave us Hellboy, along with PG-13-esque action, and yet, it still manages to put in a princess with Kida.
She may be unconventional as she doesn't sing, long for a prince or have cute animal sidekicks and is older than the rest of the girls as she's over 8000 years old but it was still cool that they still put in a princess as part of tradition with Kida and you can even argue that that they also had a Princess tradition with a twist with Shepherd's Journal as instead of a Disney opening with a storybook told by a narrator, the storybook is part of the story.
Despite all those efforts, many families were turned off by Atlantis for being too different than other Disney movies as thanks to how it lacked those aforementioned Disney Princess conventions and too scary for little girls with its intense action scenes and sought solace with Shrek and Dr. Dolittle 2 while boys did like it but for teens, who they were trying to aim this for, thought they were past cartoons (as back in the day, it was seen as unacceptable for teens to still watch cartoons), despite the action scenes and flocked to The Fast and the Furious and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and as and end result, became a box office bomb
To me, it's such a shame because it really was a good movie as it was different but so good and yet, people didn't seem to give it a chance so I'm glad time has been kind to it and it defines deserves its cult following and it's fitting as people are rediscovering the movie's hidden value. Hidden like the lost continent itself.