In the Disney film 20,000 Leages Under the Sea, Captain Nemo has an island headquarters housing his most ground-breaking research. At the end, European military forces, led by Ned Land’s messages in bottles, find the island, and Nemo blows it up to keep his discoveries secret, before scuttling the Nautilus and dying. Arronax is outraged at first, but at the end tells Ned, “Maybe you did the world a favor.” I don’t recall whether the island is named in the film. I do recall riding the 20,000 Leagues ride at Walt Disney World (Orlando), now dismantled, and the announcer, speaking as Nemo, says at the end of the ride that the Nautilus is docking at his home island – which I thought I remembered as “Caprona.” Only, doing some research I found that is the name of the island in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Land_That_Time_Forgot_(novel). It’s the name an Italian explorer gave the island – the natives call it “Caspak.” So what was the name of Nemo’s island? (Disney version, I mean.) Nemo’s island in Verne’s Mysterious Island is called “Lincoln Island” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysterious_Island – and I’m sure that’s not the name I heard on the Disney ride.
In the Disney film Nemo called it “Vulcania”. Ned Land didn’t call it that, of course – he gave the latitude and longitude in his bottled messages.
I don’t recall Nemo even having a base in Verne’s original book. The script for Disney’s film takes it cues not only from Verne’s “20,000 Leagues”, but also from his other, lesser-known submarine novel, whose name has been translated as “For the Flag” (which also served as the basis for the interesting live action/animated Czech film released in the US as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052374/ ). There’s an island base in that, but I don’t recall if it had a name, or what it was.
ulcania:
http://www.world-wide-art.com/art/shpg10884917325643ctvasku20040607155057/artworkResults.html
this site claims the 1954 Disney film borrowed the idea from the silent version, which placed Nemo’s island in the Baltic:
http://www.cornerstonemag.com/imaginarium/fest/2004/firesidesf/hubbard.htm’
http://www.cornerstonemag.com/imaginarium/fest/2004/firesidesf/fleischer.htm
Ultimately, it claims the idea was lifted from Verne’s novel Master of the World, where Robur has a secret base in a crater in North Carolina. But I seem to recall an Island base in “For the Flag/Facing the Flag/Face en Drapeau”.
Not exactly a “base”, maybe, but there was a hollowed-out volcanic island where he and his crew mined the sodium to recharge the Nautilus’ batteries. And coal, too, but they didn’t use that, except to burn it to produce smoke to make the island still look volcanic and keep inquisitive eyes away.
Hm! There was a silent version of Mysterious Island in 1929? I can’t find that in the IMDb or Wikipedia.
The Mysterious Island (1929)
It took three years to make, and cost MGM more than $1 million. Part Technicolor, part talkie. Turner Classic Movies shows it occasionally.
Even thouigh there was a silent Mysterios Island in 1929, I was referring to the silent 20,000 Leagues which is a wonderful flick (and it’s in the site UI linked to). They shot a lot of it underwater (!!) in the same spot Disney would later go back to, since the water there was so clear. They also manage to tell the stories of both 20,000 Leagues and The Mysterious Island (and are infinitely more faithful to Verne than that 1929 version) without seeming forced. It’s also the only film (until the recent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) to portray Nemo as Indian, as he’s described in TMI.