The Black Cauldron 1985
Disney’s The Black Cauldron has a terrible reputation as a giant misstep that nearly caused the death of Disney animation. I am not sure I had even heard of it until I started getting interested in the whole Disney canon. People reviewing it said it is too dark or is a ripoff of The Hobbit. It definitely has that same fantasy vibe as The Hobbit, but that is pretty much an entire genre and this movie doesn’t seem to borrow much of anything from Tolkien. That doesn’t mean it is good. The initial setup shows a teenaged boy being entrusted with a very important pig, that if it falls into the wrong hands, could end life as we know it. He has one job and within minutes he has lost the pig. Once the pig falls into the wrong hands, he has an opportunity to kill the pig, which would be horrible in a Disney movie, but given the stakes just makes a lot of sense, but instead agrees to help the villain use the pig. So I am watching this and thinking this is terrible storytelling. And it doesn’t really get better. They add in more characters and try to soften a really evil and scary villain with a funny sidekick, but you can’t have cuteness and terror co-exist like this. Most of the major plot points seem to happen at random for no particular reason and a lot of characters are introduced. There are some nonsensical magic rules about the titular cauldron and the whole climax seems like a big letdown. There is a story underneath where this irresponsible boy who thinks he wants to be a great warrior instead learns to be brave and value his friends. It feels like a very flawed story overstuffed with characters. The voice actors aren’t that notable except maybe for John Hurt, and one overly cute character uses a funny voice and pidgin English that is hard to understand.
That said, the animation is actually very good. The backgrounds are rich and the characters are very well done. Effects work is very good with smoke and explosions. Some of the animators would go on to work through the Disney renaissance that would follow a few years later after the studio recovered from the losses of this movie. Long shunned by Disney, the movie has never gotten a blu-ray release (it was over ten years before it was released on home video), but somehow when Disney Plus was introduced, a 4K version of the movie was available for streaming and it does look great.
Written: 21 Apr 2020
Owned on: Digital