In 2002, DIC Entertainment made their own adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
In addition to Pierre, Conseil, and Ned, this adaptation featured an exclusive character: Bernadette, Conseil's niece.
In a Framing Device, three teenage divers - Grace, Darren, and Jason - drop anchor near New York, searching for treasure. It isn't long after a shark encounter that they find some: an ornate, sealed chest.
Inside the chest, the first article the trio examine is a sealed journal, over 130 years old, of the travels of one Bernadette Aronnax, from her arrival in New York to her rescue in Norway alongside titular characters Pierre, Conseil, and Ned. As Grace reads, the audience is taken through Bernadette's experiences and struggles traveling onboard the Nautilus, from battling monstrous sea creatures and escaping Atlantis to hiding her identity as a woman from Nemo.
Tropes in this work
- Adaptational Heroism: Nemo is stern, but is more hospitable to his guests/prisoners compared to the book, his hatred for sperm whales and killing of them is Adapted Out and he's overall nicer to animals, strongly rejecting Ned's suggestion of hunting the sea elephants for their meat while in the South Pole.
- Age Lift: Conseil is much older than Aronnax, edging in being a senior compared to his book counterpart who's 10 years younger than Pierre.
- Big Eater: Ned enjoys himself with Nemo's Exotic Entree, desiring a nice steak meal with roasted potatoes and bread simply for growing sick of eating fish all the time.
- Book Ends: Bernadette's story begins on the Scotia, captained by her father. After the maelstrom in Norway, he picks up the gang.
- Doomed Defeatist: When things get tough, Conseil usually reacts by crying about being "doomed".
- Hooked Up Afterwards: Throughout the course of the movie Bernadette and Aronnax fall in love. After escaping from the Nautilus, they marry and live together until he passes away from old age.
- Ill Girl: Bernadette ends up succumbing to a nasty illness towards the end of the movie, being saved by the last sample of Nemo's medicine. After almost losing her, Aronnax decides that he'll too focus on escaping.
- Leave Me Alone!: Bernadette leaves the room saying that at one point after Ned makes her feel conflicted about wanting to escape or not. Later, Nemo does this in a more dramatic effect to her: "Leave me in peace" when she fails to talk reason to him about his need of avenging his family and people.
- Lighter and Softer: Electrical harpoons are used by Nemo's crew to fend off threatening animals and shock to death a Giant Enemy Crab instead of butchering them with real blades and blunt objects.
- Makes Us Even: Ned helps Nemo from a Threatening Shark while rescuing the pearls collector in the Indian sea, and Nemo saves Ned during the giant squid battle later, declaring that they're now even.
- Memento MacGuffin: The giant pearl. While not powerful in any way, it is a prominent centerpiece in the salon after its recovery, and is rediscovered twice, by Bernadette and Darren, after the Nautilus goes under; Bernadette and Pierre received it from Nemo as a parting message, in the same chest the teenagers would find, and Darren lifts away the cloth with Nemo's insignia after the journal concludes with Bernadette dropping the chest into the sea, revealing the pearl to the others.
- Mythology Gag: Bernadette's character and the way she initially pretends to be male so that she may accompany her uncle Conseil aboard USS Abraham Lincoln is very similar to Sophie from the 1997 Michael Anderson TV adaptation, who's Aronnax's daughter and ends up romancing Ned.
- Nightmare Sequence: Bernadette has one while she's sick, it ends with her being eaten by a monstrous Nemo-headed Kraken.
- Oh, Crap!: Ned has this reaction after an arrow pierces the coconut he was holding.Ned: Run for the boat! RUN!
- Pirate Booty: When Ned questions how Nemo can afford everything on the Nautilus, Nemo shows them a chest filled with treasure, and says that no shipwreck can elude him, just before taking the crew pearl hunting.
- Politically Correct History: Averted. Despite Ned Land's Race Lift, when Nemo expresses a small "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how the people on mainland are criminals, warmongers and slavers, Ned angrily asks him "What would YOU know about slavery?!" which implies that he probably had to endure a lot in order to become a respected harpooner and Nemo's comment hit too close home. Later when he rants about wanting to escape, he also says "I'm a free man now and I plan on staying that way!"
- Race Lift: Ned Land is adapted into a black man in this animated film, while he's a white Canadian in the book.
- Truer to the Text: While not without its own liberties and omissions, this cartoon remains arguably the most faithful adaptation of the book for now.
- Uncertain Doom: Averted. Nemo is never heard of and seen after the Nautilus is caught into the Maelstrom, but Bernadette and Aronnax end up receiving the giant pearl through a mail package. It strongly suggests that this incarnation of Nemo survived and presumably went on to experience events similar to those from The Mysterious Island.
- Villainous Breakdown: The main characters witness Nemo collapsing and sobbing in grief for his family as they make their way out of the Nautilus towards the end.
- Wham Line: As the Nautilus rocks and our intrepid quartet sit confused in the dinghy, Ned manages to pick out a startling detail from the panic of the crew:Ned: He's let the ship wander! We're caught in the Lofoten Maelstrom!
- The Women Are Safe with Us: When they end up on the top of the Nautilus, Ned guesses that it's some kind of vessel and cuts Bernadette's hair because he fears that the owners of the vessel could be pirates, therefore she must hide the fact she's a woman. Later this is Played Straight with Nemo seeing through Bernadette's act and reassuring her that she'll be safe.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Ned's reaction to Nemo showing his deep diving suits that allow walks on the ocean floor: "You can't be serious!"
- You Remind Me of X: Nemo tells Bernadette that she reminds him of his deceased daughter.
