The Black Cauldron Review: Disney Marathon

Spoilers

In the 80s Disney decided they wanted to make an epic fantasy movie. They purchased the rights to The Chronicles of Prydain, a popular fantasy novel series. They now owned the rights to five popular novels. This here must have been how the conversation went down at Disney HQ.

Person 1: Great, we have the rights to The Chronicles of Prydian let’s make five films, one for each.

Person 2: Nah, we’ll just adapt the first two novels into a single 80-minute movie.

Person 1: But those are long, detailed novels, won’t it be hard to fit them into a single movie that isn’t even that long?

Person 2: Nah, just cut out the middle of the story, who needs a second act.

The Black Cauldron is actually the name of the second book in the franchise, the first is called The Book of Three but to be fair to Disney people are dumb enough that a large group of people wouldn’t have seen the movie, thinking it was the third in the series and they missed the first two. Although nobody watched The Black Cauldron anyway so I guess it didn’t matter. Joining the ranks of The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron could have been so much more. What’s there is mostly good, it’s just that there appears to be a lot missing. Imagine getting The Lord of the Rings trilogy, cutting out everything that isn’t Hobbiton or Mordor and turning those scenes from a 10/10 to probably around a 7/10, that’s what The Black Cauldron feels like. A pretty good opening, a pretty good ending, but no middle. Oh, and it’s not a musical which is interesting, the first time a Disney Classic doesn’t have some songs in it.

Apparently, Disney are planning on making a pentalogy of movies based on the books which could be pretty good, that’s what they should have done to begin with. But before we let them bury the past let’s have a look at their original take on the classic series, The Black Cauldron.

We start with a description of the origins of the titular black cauldron. Whoever has it will be able to raise an army of the dead with which they could take over the world. Of course, an evil villain named the Horned King wants it so he can take over the world.

A young assistant pig keeper Taran wants to join the war against the Horned King but his guardian Dallben doesn’t want Taran to get hurt. One of Dallben’s pigs, Hen Wen turns out to be a magical pig with the ability to create visions or something, it’s kind of vague. Hen Wen has a vision of the Horned King looking for the Black Cauldron so Dallben the lazy asshole sends his underling Taran to go hide in some random house or something with the pig so the Horned King can’t find Hen Wen as Hen Wen might be able to show the Horned King where the black cauldron is located. It’s a pretty good opening. We learn about our protagonist Taran, a useless pig keeper with a desire to do good. There’s only one thing I can think of though. A character not made for combat leaving the simple life with an item of great importance, it’s almost like, what’s it called again? Oh yeah, The Lord of the Rings. This film copies The Lord of the Rings a lot. The book series was written between 1964, and 1968 whilst The Lord of the Rings book trilogy was written between 1954 and 1955. I’m not sure if a lot of the blatant copying was present in the books, I write these reviews daily so I don’t have the time to read the books to confirm but I’m certain that this film was inspired by The Lord of the Rings books quite a bit. I’ll bring up the other similarities when they appear.

Taran goes on an adventure with his pig yet the useless toser somehow loses it. When looking for the pig Taran finds Gurgi, the Gollum counterpart. Gurgi is a morally ambiguous character who knows where to go, calls the protagonist master, and sounds so much like Gollum I had to check to see if Andy Serkis voiced him. He doesn’t. That is kind of interesting actually, I believe there is a possibility that Gollum’s voice was actually based on Gurgi. I thought maybe The Black Cauldron could have stolen from the animated Hobbit movie but no, Gollum sounds completely different in that. He also sounds different in The Lord of the Rings animated movies so yeah, I’d say you could make a good case that The Lord of the Rings stole, or at least was inspired by The Black Cauldron.

Gurgi hasn’t got any friends so he follows Taran. The pair see Hen Wen get taken away by a dragon and taken to the Horned King’s castle. Taran tells Gurgi that if he really wanted to be his friend, he’d come to the castle with him but Gurgi is too scared to do so, so Taran goes in alone.

Here we meet the Horned King and Creeper (aww man). Creeper is the comic relief villain who is bullied by the Horned King and his men. Creeper is nothing more than a punching bag for everyone and is a fine enough character. The Horned King is very intimidating whilst on screen although he does fit into the let’s just make them pure evil villain camp. In fact, do you know who else fits that bill? Sauron. To be honest I think just like Sauron, the Horned King doesn’t really matter, they’re a reason for the heroes to go on a quest and nothing more.

When trying to infiltrate the Horned King’s castle Taran ends up getting noticed by everyone. The Horned King demands that he makes Hen Wen show where the black cauldron is or he’ll kill Hen Wen. Taran agrees but before the Horned King can look at Hen Wen’s vision Taran grabs Hen Wen and runs. With the help of Taran, Hen Wen escapes, but Taran gets caught and locked up.

Taran gets broken out of jail by Princess Eilonwy. Princess Eilonwy is great, one of the first good Disney women at this point and the fact that she doesn’t officially classify as a Disney Princess is a crime. She’s kind, gets angry at Taran’s incompetence very frequently, loves to adventure, and I know it’s been done a few times since The Black Cauldron but the idea of the princess rescuing the man is pretty great. This is one thing they definitely didn’t steal from J. R. R. Tolkien because you know, he was misogynistic.

After she rescues Taran she’s disappointed to find out he isn’t a warrior who can help her with her escape plan but tells him he can come along if he wants. The pair escape and eventually find another prisoner, Ffewddur Fflam, and yes, I did have to look up how to spell that. Ffewddur Fflam is a minstrel who for some reason whenever he lies a string on his harp snaps. This might have been explained in the books, but it’s a bit weird and random in the movie. I do like him as a character though. He’s kind of pathetic, he hates conflict and just goes along on the quest later because I guess he has nothing better to do.

Taran finds a magical sword which turns him into an amazing warrior and the trio escapes. Later around a campfire Taran is boosting about how great he was when Princess Eilonwy reminds him that he’s still pretty useless it’s just that the sword is magical. That was pretty funny. The trio decides to go find Hen Wen and get him to safety before going after the black cauldron and destroying it before the Horned King can find it. Gurgi comes back and tells them he knows where Hen Wen is. Taran doesn’t trust him because he didn’t go into the deadly castle with him but decides to follow him because he doesn’t exactly have any other leads (Taran, I don’t think you can really be annoyed at someone for not going into a deadly castle with someone they just met).

The four heroes go to a pixie village where it turns out Hen Wen is being held. The pixies give them Hen Wen and sends Doli a random ass pixie to help them find the black cauldron as he knows where it is. The king of the pixies sends Hen Wen back to the farm (wait this whole thing started because they didn’t want Hen Wen at the bloody farm).

The quest has begun, let’s go find the black cauldron, I wonder what adventures will happen in between. In the next scene the group are at the location of the black cauldron. Can you see what I mean when I say this movie doesn’t have a second act. You’d expect the majority of the film to be their adventure to find the black cauldron and it is presented as if that’d be the case but nope, the second they find out where the black cauldron is, they arrive there immediately. This stops the characters from growing and getting to know one another through an adventure, yet they all act like best friends by the end. You’ve gotta earn it, you can’t just tell the audience that characters are best friends, you’ve gotta show it. Show don’t tell.

Some witches protect the black cauldron and in exchange for Taran’s sword they give it to him. This could have been a powerful scene. Taran’s sword was the only thing making him useful to the group up until this point, the problem is we haven’t had time to establish Taran’s reliance on the weapon.

It turns out that the black cauldron can’t be destroyed but if a good person jumps into the cauldron of their own free will the magic of the cauldron will cease to exist. Taran agrees to sacrifice himself but before he can do it, they are captured by the villains. Gurgi sneaks off to safety.

The heroes now captured by the Horned King have to watch him awake the army of the dead. When all seems lost Gurgi decides to rescue his friends before sacrificing himself to stop the Horned Kings magic by jumping into the cauldron. The Horned King and Taran fight and somehow Taran wins, look I know the message is that he was a great warrior and didn’t need his sword but in reality, he was incompetent until he got the sword and he didn’t train or anything. This is the cliché of “he believed in himself therefore he is strong”, and is a cliché that I’m tired of. The Horned King falls into the black cauldron to his death and the group escapes.

The group meet up with the witches and agree to give them the black cauldron in exchange for them bringing Gurgi back to life, which they do because apparently nobody can die in a Disney movie. The group agree to go on a bunch of other adventures which we’ll never see and the movie ends.

Did I like The Black Cauldron? Almost. I liked all of the main cast of heroes but the movie genuinely feels like it’s missing an hour of content. They escape from the castle and at that point don’t know each other but ten minutes later they find the black cauldron and act like best friends. I don’t believe their friendship. There’s a reason you can believe Gimli and Legolas have became friends in The Lord of the Rings, they’ve actually spent time together, turning from an elf and a dwarf that put up with each other for the sake of the world to best friends. The same problem existed in The Fox and the Hound, Disney you can’t just say people are friends and expect us to believe you.

The movies backgrounds look great, muted colours are used constantly and are a nice breath of fresh air from the vibrant nature of the rest of Disney’s catalogue. The problem is the characters feel out of place. The characters are vibrantly coloured which is clearly done to contrast them from the subdued nature of the rest of the colour scheme, that’s good but they also just feel out of place. It’s hard to explain so I’ll just show you a few screenshots.

Maybe it’s just me but the characters just never feel like they belong in the environment.  

I’ll praise what is there but what is there feels so unfinished I can’t give it a positive score. I’m excited to see Disney take another swing at The Chronicles of Prydian because from what I’ve seen the world and characters seem interesting and I’d like to spend more time with them. I’ll make sure to review them whenever they come out. Anyway, that’s The Black Cauldron, next up we have The Great Mouse Detective.

5 / 10