After reading the Robert Louis Stevenson classic, I decided to rent the 1950 Disney movie Treasure Island, which got the highest reviews of all the movie adaptations. It was Disney’s first completely live-action movie and is pretty amazing because of the sets, the ships, and the locations. The island is pretty much how I imagined it would be as I was reading the book. The only part that didn’t mesh with how I thought it would be was the actual location of the buried treasure. I had envisioned it to be on the side of a large hill or mountain, above the jungle treeline. The rest of the island was pretty neat, though. The stockade and the inlet to the island was just like the book described.

The plot in the movie followed the book loosely, with the beginning happening too quickly. There is pretty much zero backstory told in the first five minutes. Before you know it, they are boarding the ship and heading out on the treasure hunt. In contrast, the book spent a good deal of time with Jim Hawkins at the Admiral Benbow Inn and explained much about pirates and the map. Besides this, there are some simplifications in the movie, which is understandable, and nothing that is too drastic.

The acting is really good, especially the character of Long John Silver played by Robert Newton. His role pretty much set the standard for pirate-talk as we know it today. It’s kind of cool to know that some of the the popular pirate expressions “avast”, “shiver my (not me) timbers”, etc came from him. It was like watching history unfold when I heard him speak those lines in the movie! The only part of the casting that was strange was that Jim Hawkins had an American accent, while everyone else was British. Also, all the dialog seemed very appropriate for the period, except when Jim says, “One more step, and I’ll blow your brains out!” I was like “whoa”… And he did blow the guy’s brains out, actually.

All in all, it was a good movie and still looks great today. The ship was really neat, the island looked perfect, and of course the story is a classic. If you haven’t seen Disney’s Treasure Island, go rent it! I watched a bit with Bay who is almost 6, and he enjoyed it too.