Disney Count Down #42: The Black Cauldron (1985)

 Ah, and here we are at The Black Cauldron.

I have mixed feelings about this movie, and I think the rest of the audiences in 1985 felt the same way. It’s considered Disney’s greatest failure, grossing only a measly $21 million dollars in North American theatres and costing the studio $25 million to make.

The history of what it was that happened to make this movie such a head case is long and convoluted. In 1983, Ron Miller, an employee of Disney’s film division and Walt Disney Productions president since 1980, was promoted to chief executive officer. He was the replacement for Card Walker who, during his reign, spent most of his time letting the film division of Disney fend for itself and focused his efforts on the new Disney World theme park that opened in 1971. While there wasn’t much indication that the company was having financial troubles, especially since Disney World was such a success, the general consensus of the outside world was that of a theme park first and the—mostly unsuccessful—creation of films second.

With the Star Wars franchise sucking box office dollars from most other films at the time, Disney realized that the new target demographic that needed to be reached was the teenage male crowd—the ones that were spending their money on things like Star Wars rather than cartoons and would rather attend their grandmother's Bingo night than be caught dead watching a Disney movie. With this in mind, the material presented in The Black Cauldron makes a lot of sense. There would be darker themes, more violence, no music, and the story headed by a teenage boy. At this time, new technology called APT replaced xerography that had been used since the late 50’s and allowed for a broader range of color manipulation and well as more lines and styles. It would also be shot using Cinerama, which hadn’t been used since Sleeping Beauty and has yet to appear since. In a word, this film was expensive.

When Ron Miller was eventually kicked out of his position (as it was clear that not many people seemed to like him), he was replaced by Michael Eisner who brought with him Jeffery Katzenberg. Katzenberg was put in charge of cleaning up the stagnant, festering puddle of mediocrity that had become the film division, weighed down by the costly movie they were supposed to be putting together. Katzenberg arrived to find The Black Cauldron in a complete and utter state of disaster. The film had been created by two separate divisions that didn’t have much contact with each other, resulting in a convoluted and nonsensical plot as well as left many famous animators—including Glen Keane, Tim Burton, Ron Clements, and John Musker—either running from the project or almost taken off because of the bickering. Katzenberg ordered that fully-animated scenes be cut from the movie, something that had never been done up until that point, after realizing that what he had was something unmarketable in its present state. Producer Joe Hale objected, so Katzenberg took the film into an edit bay and carved parts out of it himself. The rest of the development was hustled along to completion until its release in July of 1985.

While it would be easy to disregard this movie as something that was just a big flop on Disney’s part, it’s not a complete waste. The ideas and mythology behind the film are interesting, namely because they come from borrowed material. In this case, it’s Lloyd Alexander’s novels entitled The Chronicles of Pyrdain. The film pieces together the events of the first two books in the series about a young boy named Taran who is put in charge of watching over a pig named Hen Wen who has the ability to see the future when her snout is dipped into water. Through a series of events, Hen Wen is captured by the Horned King who wishes to use her seeing abilities to find the Black Cauldron, a magical device that will allow him to take over the world with an army of undead soldiers. Taran goes on an adventure to rescue her, meeting a combination of friends along the way.

The biggest problem that I have with this movie is the characters, which I think can be credited to the fact that the story itself is a bit of a mess. Despite the simplified explanation I gave above, everything that happens within the 80-minute run time is so poorly-paced and confusing that it’s impossible to even have time for proper characterization. Instead, we’re left with a bunch of questions. Taran desperately wants to be a great warrior, but doesn’t seem to have a motivation to do so. Were his parents killed in a village raid? Did his dad fight in the army? Were any members of his family involved in fighting in SOME WAY? We don’t know. The only thing we’re given is that he ended up with this old man and pig and now wants to be a hero. How are we supposed to root for him? There’s nothing there for us to grab onto.

Then you’ve got Princess Eilonwy, who, bless her heart, is so incredibly useless that you know the only reason she was in the movie in the first place was to cater to the female demographic. She spends the entirety of the film just looking pretty and being nice, never picking up a sword or a shield, or heck, even a rock to help Taran as he’s getting his butt kicked by the Horned King’s henchmen. The only time she does anything serviceable is when she patches up the Luter’s pants. Then, when Taran criticizes her for being a girl and not knowing anything about swords, she blows a tantrum and then proceeds to go cry under a tree. Not to mention the fact that she was also taken prisoner by the Horned King, and yet no one is looking for her. She’s a princess—wouldn’t it make sense for there to be an entire army hunting her down? The girl is gone for possibly weeks and yet makes no mention of home, her family, or the fact that somebody has got to give a damn that she’s missing.

The side characters, Luter and Gurgi. Gurgi looks like the bastard child of Einstein and Geppedo after being injected with dog DNA:

...and sounds like someone punched him in the throat, henceforth severing his vocal chords and producing a sound that makes me choke just listening to it. The Luter is also meant to be comic relief, but in a more subtle and sensible way. He isn’t nearly as rage-inducing as Gurgi, but he doesn’t do anything, either. There’s no real reason for him to be present. At all. He’s just another body Taran has to cart around with him.

And of course you have your villain, the Horned King, who is totally a rip off of Maleficent, except male and lacking skin. Even his minions look similar to hers, minus the whole pig thing:

But instead of an eerie, silent crow perched on his shoulder, we get an irritating, borderline psychotic side kick that is regularly strangled because apparently everything that goes wrong is always his fault.

Aside from the characters, the storyline itself is awkward and strangely paced, with much of the action just sort of launched at Taran and his gang without much warning. The ending is very Deus Ex Machina--forced and very weird, bringing back the revival of a character that probably would have been better off staying dead.

The animation as a whole looks fine, but there are moments where the colors are so saturated that it’s hard to not get lost in everything that’s on the screen. And speaking of animation, the influence of a particular man can be seen all over this film: Don Bluth. You might know him through his other more famous movies such as The Secret of Nimh, An American Tail, Thumbelina, and of course, The Land Before Time. He was also the front runner for the popular arcade game, Dragon’s Lair, which included various scenes of graphic deaths of the main character involving fire or acid or being eaten by something (and of which I have many fond memories of playing). But holy dear gracious, does The Black Cauldron feel like one of his movies. Bluth’s philosophy was that kids could handle anything as long as it had a happy ending, something that you can see played out in every single one of those movies I listed above. There’s a large element of darkness in everything he touches, which can be great if used with care. The problem with The Black Cauldron is that…well, the darkness isn’t. It’s dark without really needing to be, swallowing the flimsy characters and making the bleakness almost unbearable.

Perhaps that’s what ultimately ended up killing The Black Cauldron and forcing Disney to pretend that it never existed: It’s the most un-Disney film they could have possibly put out, and for many people, that just doesn’t cut it. I would argue that it’s a great movie to check out if you’re into animation (even though it’s dark and Don Bluth-y, the animation IS still beautiful) or in a particular brooding mood. If you’re looking for a happy, Disney-esque feel-good film, skip this one.