Busy images rush at us like in a video game throughout Disney’s new version of an old tale, Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island.” There are nods to Stevenson everywhere (the main ship, for instance, is called the RLS Legacy), and you’ll recognize much of the story about Jim, a kid who joins a pirate ship in search of buried treasure. But this ship floats around space, and it’s captained by a woman (happily, since that woman has the brisk voice of Emma Thompson, leaping on the “r” sounds in her dialogue like a cop hauling down a miscreant).

It’s a handsomely designed film with gorgeous, Winslow Homer skies and lickety-split action scenes, but the script loses track of key characters, voiced by Thompson and David Hyde Pierce, for long stretches of time. Character development is the short suit, with a protagonist who lacks the thing Disney usually does so well: a clearly understood set of dreams. Maybe the filmmakers spent so much time on the kid-friendly comic relief (including Martin Short, droll as the voice of the robot equivalent of “Shrek’s” donkey) that they stinted the main characters?

Making up for that, though, is Stevenson’s sturdy framework. No matter how confused the story gets or how unclear Jim’s motivations are, we still have Long John Silver, whose is-he-good-or-is-he-bad complexity is so fascinating that he’ll make us stick around for any movie he yo-ho-hos in.