Did you know that John Musker, Ron Clements, Richard Rich, Tim Burton, and Don Bluth all worked on this movie at different stages in its development? All of whom would go on to become famous for their own movies in the future.
Interesting, all of them have had dark things in their movies especially Tim Burton! It is crazy how dark some of the older movies are! A movie that scared me as a kid was the secret of nimh, you should check that one out if you have time.
I will never understand why people (you and Nostalgia Critic) have this take on Taron as an egotist. He's a kid who wants a chance to live out his daydreams of being a heroic knight. Yeah, he fails. But he also keeps trying. He loses Henwig but he infiltrates the castle of an evil wizard/warlord. When he's captured of course he starts to comply with the Horned King. He's an unarmed child at the mercy of a demon like figure and all his very armed soldiers and he still ultimately fights back. Being left alone with his thoughts in the dungeon of course he bemoans his failure and feels guilty he ever let the pig get away from him. That's not growth. That's acute depression. He found the magic sword whose rightful owner is dead. Taron has every right to claim that sword it's his. This kid just got hit in the face with the fact that he's in way over his head and is barely more than potential casualty or prisoner. The sword just took him from zero to hero in no time flat. He gives up a magical key to living his dream life for the mission and has from the near beginning shown the courage to put himself at risk for others. He's a much better character than it seems he's normally given credit for.
No "good guy" character ever stays dead when they die at the end of a Disney movie. Examples: Meg, The beast, Flynn Rider, Snow White, Pinocchio, Baymax, ect. You have to die earlier in the movie to even have a chance at staying dead. examples: Tadashi, Bambi's mom, Mufasa, Baby Gorilla from Tarzan his parents too, Ariel's mom, Mr Arrow from treasure planet, Moana's grandmother, ect.
It's such a bad cliche that often doesn't even make sense. Like in lady and the tramp when one of the old dogs falls in front of a car, the others even howl sadly, the cinematography clearly indicating he died, and then he is shown alive. And apparently that only happened because a voice actress found the scene too sad.
Technically, Baymax did 'die'. The Baymax at the end is another model. I mean, you can argue they're the same, cause it's just a machine. But then, you can't argue he died. Since you wouldn't be acknowledging him as having lived.
The Black Cauldron was one of those movies that I am still surprised to this day Disney actually made. Also it gives me major Dungeons & Dragons vibes, and I like that. 🙂
I honestly find it pretty amusing that parents were already flipping out cause "it was too scary for kids", imagine if the deleted scene where three people rot away to skeletons when the Horned King's soldiers touched them(which explains the abrupt cut in that scene and the girl saying,"Oh that's horrible) was included as well. The parents would have tried to sue Disney's ass to oblivion
Great review! The horned king is definitely the highlight of this movie! Too bad the holy algorithm of RU-vid has hidden this review. Ironically it’s just like Disney with the Black Cauldron.
I actually did grow up with this movie. I was watching Disney movies on VHS in the late 90s, at the perfect time to see promos for its home video premiere in 1998. Eventually it led me to the Chronicles of Prydain books that inspired it, which have much more cohesive arcs for all the characters. I hope Disney makes a full TV or movie series based on them... at least when they have a business model that I can trust to do it justice.
Same here! Grew up watching a lot of the Disney classics on VHS and renting a lot of videos (and then later on, DVDs and Spyro games) at Hollywood Video/Blockbuster! ^^
I would call this movie dark in the way Twilight Princess (TLoZ) is, while movies like Pinocchio and Hunchback are dark like how Majora’s Mask is. Also, the scratchy style you mentioned at 6:41 is something I’ve always liked of the movies that have it (The Rescuers, 101 Dalmatians, etc). It isn’t very clean, of course, but it just feels so raw and distinct to me. In 101 Dalmatians especially, I think it works perfectly. However, I definitely agree that this movie looks p h e n o m e n a l, and that it deserves more praise. Amazing video as always! (:
The problem with The Black Cauldron is a too many cooks issue. They didn’t want to commit to making a scary/weird movie while they were making a scary/weird movie.
21:58 that scene was most likely one of the scenes that Jeffrey Katzenberg accidentally and/or arbitrarily cut out in his infamous fit of rage during the film’s production
The sad thing about this movie, which I assume you already mentioned, is that this movie was taken over by this one guy who had absolutely NO CLUE about storytelling or animation, and cut out the most important parts, which made the movie seem 'chopped'! Thinking that this was supposed to be an adaptation of a BOOK SERIES, breaks my heart!
That guy’s name is Jeffrey Katzenberg, brand new to Disney at the time and looking to make his mark. He certainly did that. He has always seemed to me remarkably conservative to be a creative executive in the entertainment business.
This one really pisses me off, as I was a huge fan of the original novels as a kid. What really gets on my nerves is that they completely butchered Eilonwy, they removed all her wit, sarcasm, and charm. That shit was what made her character interesting in the first place, making her a boring generic lady in the movie was infuriating. In the original novels, she was something of a firecracker. She was brash, witty, and blunt in a way that makes her absolutely hilarious. She's like the only one in the entire series of books who's genre-savvy enough to make fun of aspects everyone else plays completely straight, and that makes her an endlessly interesting character to read about. What's more, her character was I think the only thing in the entire series that really stood out from the genre as a whole for precisely that reason. There were no other characters like her in the fantasy genre in the entire 20th century (none I'm aware of anyway), really the only other comparable example I can think of is Angela the witch from the Inheritance novels. Preserving that in the movie would've really made it stand out and be better remembered, I feel. It also on a much more personal level makes me sad that one of my favorite childhood characters will probably never actually get any proper screen appearances due to this fucking movie.
I feel like this movie is great, but having read the books it makes the characters so disappointing. Princess Eilonwy is so much more playful in the books. She is sort of ditsy and silly but also a very strong, independent young women who was so unique for the time of the books. Gurgy is the best character in the books. He is similar to his character in the movie but he is much more pitiful. Taran is pretty close to the books, but obviously the books give more backstory so his character is less boring. It is kind of a "no brainer" that the characters aren't going to be as well developed since they did cram several books into 80 minutes of animation, it's just disappointing since the books aren't as well known as the movie.
Now I want to read the books! The main reason I didn't like the movie was because of how uninteresting the characters were, and having good characters is vitally important for me to enjoy a piece of media. I always felt like these guys had some potential to being good, so it's good to know that there are better interpretations of the characters out there.
Read the books for some great perspective on how much better these characters can be. Especially poor Gurgi, who's legit one of the best characters in the books.
I actually am very curious about the books, they seem to have a style that I would really like from what I can tell, though I don't know for sure until I do read them.
This movie was a key piece of my childhood, and I love it! I rewatched it recently and definitely noticed its shortcomings, which was honestly kind of bittersweet. Gurgi is an absolutely heartless prick and I always found that hilarious! I always loved Flam as well, but I honestly just found him to be super relatable when he wasn't screaming. Did you notice how much that guy bellows throughout the film? He really should have been in a metal band instead of being a minstrel XD The two things you didn't mention that I really liked about the witches was 1) Taryn's development I felt was a bit more significant than that because it kinda represented the fact that he was willing to give up the only true motivation he had in life (to become a knight) and 2) that Flam just absolutely shuts down the advances made on him along with some other shenanigans like an absolute chad. The skeletons coming out of the cauldron and the horned king being sucked in was awesome, I agree with that 100%. Also the fact that Gurgi basically committed self-die out of self-pity messed me up really hard, not gonna lie. #RestoretheBlackCauldron
9:23 "This is by far Disney's scariest villain". Scroop from Treasure Planet has entered the chat. Speaking of which, when are you gonna do a review on that underrated magnum opus?
Back in the day Disney released a "Choose Your Own Adventure" comic book replaying the story of The Black Cauldron with a few variations to allow for player choice. Loved the comic, and still love the movie.
I think I have only ever watched this movie once but I kind of forgot how dark it was. It is sad they took out so many scenes. Also I didn't know that the boat was the first time they used CGI, interesting. Keep up the good work!
17:50 to be fair they secured the safety of the Pig so the HK couldn’t find it but he did know for sure it exists. They have a magical sword that fights for them and can destroy anything it its path, so now they have a way to destroy it. This kind of falls apart when they give it up for the cauldron and now can’t destroy it while it was safely hidden with the Witches😂😬 Also when Tarin gave up the sword it was essentially him giving up his dream (or his best chance at it) for his goal. Then he gives it up later for his friend (😒) but there’s symbolism that can be drawn from this. His refusal of the sword later could’ve been the culmination to his arc: it’s not about the weapons or power that makes you a heroic knight but your deeds and loyalty to those who are dear to you
Not to mention John Hurt who voiced the horned king was absolute perfection. He sounded like evil incarnate and I freakin loved it. The horned king was easily the best part of the movie for me and without him the movie wouldn’t be any good at all. I want to see another villain like him so badly in another 2D animated kids movie and it doesn’t even have to be from Disney but to this day since this movie released I can’t recall a villain that was anything like him ever made again.
The worst thing about this movie is how it butchers the source material. The book/s it was based on remain the most unique fantasy books I’ve ever read. Taran is never the hero in the books until the very end. He sometimes assists in heroic victories, but the most heroic actions are always performed by others and Taran remains a relative nobody, just contributing to the fight through hard work. It was a fascinating take on the fantasy genre where you expect the protagonist to become the hero and they never are, until the very end and even then they can’t take the credit because it’s largely luck. They bastardized several books to make this movie and it’s pretty hard to watch as a fan of the books.
Movie Horned King is a mix of book Horned King and series villain Lord Arwan, who in this movie is the guy the cauldron is sealing away. But what makes him so scary in the original story is that he never talks. He’s a silent, psychopathic warrior that serves Arwan. The dread every time he shows up is out of a haunted story, again why I imagine a more faithful adaptation would look like Sleepy Hollow for the first act. I know Disney isn’t known for straight adaptations of source material, but man imagine if
I know it’s not a Disney movie and that’s usually what you prefer to cover in your videos but you should totally make a video on The Secret Of Nim. I love that movie so much.
I intend to branch out from Disney, I've mostly focused on Disney so far because I both have a lot of experience and attachment to many Disney movies and they are more popular than most, helping to give my channel a much needed head start in the competitive world of RU-vid. But Secret of Nimh is a movie I will almost certainly talk about some day, but trust me when I say my up coming plans are very packed already, so it will probably be a while.
@@Rockotarthepurplehatguy That’s ok with me. I’m just glad you’re willing to eventually make it and I’ve been enjoying your Disney videos a lot too because you seem to cover the same Disney movies I enjoy the most anyway that are basically the older ones which are the classics so feel free to keep covering them as much as you want.
I’ve liked this movie for a long time. It was darker and edgier than a standard Disney film (or what we imagine when we hear the company name). It felt like a step up towards more mature films, at least from the perspective of a kid. The visual style and animation are beautiful and well done. John Hurt as the Horned King is pure perfection. The plot is a little all over the place and the hero characters are bland, but I see that as a way to project yourself in the roles. I will admit, as a kid I liked Gurgi and thought that some of his antics were funny but I suppose that is the appeal for kids, balance some of the scarier elements. I agree that it’s an okay movie to enjoy
The Horned King is definitely a Lich, you don’t really see him do any magic like you’d think a Lich would do but the not quite alive but not quite dead either look definitely sells it. I wish they’d remake it in the same style and with altered better writing
The Horned King didn’t really scare me, even at seven years old. To me, he was Filmation’s Skeletor, with a darker twist. IS John Hurt the original Frank Langella, animated? I think so. 😂😂
I’ve always loved the movie but something weird is I remember it being darker than it was originally: there’s a deleted scene where the reanimated soldiers attack and convert the living soldiers in a horrible fashion. It was my first experience with zombies and it was Awesome. Also scarred me but I’ve never seen a version of the film with that deleted scene included since then🤔 The Lych from Adventure Time looks just like the Horned King
Let me paint a picture here. When Taran first leaves the farm after Henwyn, he’s almost immediately cut down by one of the Horned King’s men, only saved by the great hero Prince Gwydion, who turns out to be older than he thought. He learns through his journey how to fight, and also to respect his elders more. Eventually, we see the horned king burning people alive in wicker baskets. And even later, after meeting Gurgi, we’re introduced to the Cauldron Born, these horrible undead abominations that overpower and capture our heroes. ALL of that, with the exception of Gurgi, is axed from the movie. Could you imagine a spooky, dark fantasy forest adventure with Disney quality animation? It would be like their fairytales meet the last act of their Sleepy Hollow adaptation, so cool! But nah, just do a huge skip in the plot. It also damages Taran’s character development because those humbling moments never happen.
It's a little to low in volume for me to confirm, but oh, how I hope _VS Arvis_ is playing when the guy's getting burned to death. I _think_ it is, just from the instrumentation I can hear. _Fantastic_ touch.
@@Rockotarthepurplehatguy Yeah, I saw the description to confirm; I just wasn't QUITE sure when it was playing, but from what instrumentation I could hear around that moment, I was pretty sure. It's nice to see older songs from the franchise being used, especially in such _perfect_ situations. In general, I think your music selection is pretty nice for fitting any given 'mood'-from what I've seen so far; I only stumbled upon your channel yesterday.
One of the big problems with this movie is the severe creative liberties taken. 1) Arawn is not the Horned King. 2) Hen Wen the pig flees in The Book of Three, and not in The Black Cauldron. 3) Eilonwy receives more attention, and she is barely friends with him at the end of their adventures. She is also regularly insulting him and putting him down until much later in the saga. 4) There is actual warfare brought to the land as well as allies falling out with each other over the Cauldron. 5) The Cauldron was first stolen by Arawn from the Witches, who resemble the Fates more than the movie shows, and they steal it back. 6) Another young man, and anti-hero of the story, sacrifices himself and is given honor for the man of quality he became. 7) Neither the Cauldron Born not the Dark Lord are destroyed in The Black Cauldron. The Cauldron born are instantly slain when Taran uses the magic sword to kill one. Arawn is slain in the form of a serpent after he bites and kills Eilonwy's formerly sorcerous aunt. These books are generally a bit dark thematically than this movie which is faithful in only a very few things.
Also I am happy to see "Darky mcshadow"/the Shadow figure again! I disagree with his opinion on Winnie the Pooh and think he needs to watch it again though.
Never saw this movie as a kid but rather as an older person I love it and The Horned King is not only my favorite character but one of my favorite Disney Villains
I've never actually watched this movie, but I remember seeing the preview for it on a ton of Disney VHS tapes. I can't remember which movies had it in the previews, but it always felt way out of place. Thanks for the quick nostalgia trip!
The original book series is actually very good and tries to imitate the traditional folktales and mythology of the British isles. Specifically Wales. But yeah, the movie really is only okay 😅🤣
@@Rockotarthepurplehatguy i mean, yeah, but the resemblance is rather amusing. i like to think Taran is what Hiccup would have been like if he had killed Toothless instead of freeing him.
I didn’t grow up with this movie but I’d heard of it for a long time (I’m a 2000s kid but I grew up on a lot of animated movies from the 80s and 90s and even earlier in addition to contemporary stuff) and I finally watched it for the first time just a couple weeks ago. I like darker stuff and I’ve always liked medieval fantasy/sword and sorcery movies, and the lost media aspect for the deleted and cut scenes is really fascinating (and an uncut version is actually confirmed to still exist), but as for my experience with watching the movie itself, I just thought it was okay but that it had the potential to be greater than it ended up being, especially since a lot of scenes and the context and continuity they would have given are widely known to be missing. I’ve never read any of the “Chronicles of Prydain” books so I can’t really compare, plus IMO they seem kinda obscure compared to other medieval fantasy books like for example “The Lord of the Rings” and “A Song of Ice and Fire”, at least in my experience. The only characters I really cared for were Eilonwy and even Gurgi, plus the Horned King was a really amazing villain. The most I thought about Taran is that he kinda looks like Hiccup in the first “How To Train Your Dragon” movie and other than that I didn’t really care about him. I also noticed that the fairy king has the same voice actor as Mr. Ages from “The Secret of NIMH”. Plus the actor who voiced Creeper also played Vohnkar in “Willow” (another medieval fantasy movie from the 80s and a huge favourite of mine growing up) even though he only has like a couple minutes of screentime there. I really hope we get a remake or further adaptations of “The Black Cauldron” and/or the other “Prydain” stories sometime in the future, but I don’t know how or when that would happen since the remake currently seems to be stuck in development hell since it was first “announced” in 2016. In the meantime I’m tempted to have a look at the ancient Welsh myths that inspired the whole thing, most of the character names and place names are sourced from stories in the Mabinogion and the Welsh Triads and TBH I think it’s a pretty neglected area of the ancient/medieval European mythologies compared to the Greek, Roman and Norse mythologies.
Movie horned king is not a villain but rather a force of nature villain where if left to his own devices he will just win unless the good guys intervene.
I wonder if this movie would have been somewhat good back in the 80s if Disney took chances and decided to make Black Cauldron the way it was supposed to be, a dark fantasy film that’s a bit closer to Lord of the Rings or maybe Legend of Dragoon. Not gritty dark like Berserk, Diablo, Attack on Titan and Demon’s/Dark Souls.
This was a great video! I enjoyed your commentary. I thought the glowing ball was the first usage of CGI though? I could be mistaken. Anyway, keep it up!
Honestly this movie while decent and definitely an animation milestone for Disney, is really not that great a version of the book. It didn't do well because it's too dark and a lot of elements that made the novel great were reduced or removed and whole sections were taken out, no doubt for runtime so you can't really complain (the hobbit trilogy was tortuous so I certainly not saying we need every detail). Overall a watchable flick but not their best unless you can get off on the animation alone.
A wasted occasion for Disney - Not only there were all five novels of Lloyd Alexander's "Chronicle of Prydain" available for adaptations, not only there were the entire world of Welsh mythological book, the "Mabinogion", upon which they were based which was a franchise waiting to be built, but they could have also started going in a different direction altogether, more epic- and fantasy-driven, with their whole animated division. I think this should have been the right post-"Nine Old Men" direction to be taken, but instead they didn't believe in it and then, after the initial fiasco of this movie, they simply got up with it. Now "The Black Cauldron" has a cult following, and many of its fans wonder what if Disney wouldn't have discouraged themselves and actually put their money on that direction and believed more in it.
While I don't recall ever having seen this movie myself, I am somewhat interested in it, partly because I read one of the books this movie was based on when I was in school. Funnily enough, the things I most remembered from that book I read were Gurgi, who was constantly whining about wanting his "crunchings and munchings", he was pretty annoying, really -- something the movie did well; and also Fflewddur's harp strings constantly breaking because of how spineless he was. Other than that, I don't recall that much from the book, unfortunately, but from what I heard, it definitely had the potential to be much greater than what we wound up getting in the end, and finding out that the movie essentially merged multiple books from the series into one animated film seems to me like the movie's biggest shortcoming, as they could've explored the characters more thoroughly and made them more interesting and, dare I say it, likeable, even, if there had been more time devoted to fleshing them out. I recall in the book I did read, there was some character development for some of the cast, of which was sorely missing from the final version of the Black Cauldron; I believe it could've been great if they had split it up into multiple movies like the book series did, and that could very well have made it more engaging and enjoyable. That said, it does seem like the movie tried to be dark first and foremost, maybe even to the point of being detrimental: as I mentioned about the characters not getting the progression they should have in the movie, this seems to have been pushing aside in favor of making a more "dark and scary" movie, which seems to have lead to people remembering it for the wrong reasons. I think that Disney did eventually learn from their mistakes here, with the Hunchback of Notre Dame (as was alluded to in this video) being able to better embrace darker themes while still making the characters engaging; though in that movie's case, it was because of the way they were portrayed, using the dark themes of the film to write them in ways that made them feel more fleshed out that it got right. By contrast, the Black Cauldron, as I mentioned, leaned far too heavily on making the movie as scary as it could possibly be -- from my perspective, at least. It feels like the kind of project that, if picked up by someone else who is going to be more faithful to the source material (since I don't think there's any real chance Disney will touch it again, as they don't seem to have any faith in anything else based around this story succeeding) could actually be worth people's time to check out; although I do worry about what they might change to better fit the ideologies of today's day and age
I very, very rarely say this about any Disney adaptation, but Black Cauldron is the one Disney movie where I truly do have to say it - THE BOOK WAS BETTER. Like TEN TIMES better.
I feel like the cult following surrounding Black Cauldron elevates it to a status of classic that it doesn't really deserve to the point where I finally watched it thinking it was going to be another Sleeping Beauty only to find it as a jumbled mess. Is the animation amazing? Absolutely. And even then some of the character animation is a little inconsistent (itself probably due to some of the cuts it went through). But I feel like its the highest compliment to say that with Disney and its animated films I think we can usually expect more than "pretty pictures." No amount of great animation can make the story any better, the dialogue any less formulaic, the editing any worse or the voice actors any less grating (I've even noticed that the commercials for Black Cauldron's VHS clearly has Taran's voice dubbed over by another actor). I also notice that Gurgi's "death" tends to turn up in a lot of Saddest Disney scenes compilations even though the character was so damn annoying that - while I wasn't exactly giddy that he did what he did - it didn't generate much emotion from me one way or another (its also not like I didn't think he would eventually be resurrected somehow). I feel the same way about Treasure Planet, which is like the Black Cauldron of the 2000s, in that TP's animation and graphics ARE amazing, but there are so many other elements of the film that I feel are either formulaic or outright underwhelming/lacking that I can't in good conscience agree with people who try to claim its some undervalued gem of a classic. But we won't go there lol
Yeah it's no masterpiece, I just appreciate it for trying to do something new and different, even if it took several missteps along the way. But I won't hear anything against the masterpiece that is Treasure Planet, I genuinely don't know why that movie is so underrated, it's one of Disney's best.
@@Rockotarthepurplehatguy Yeah like anything else, art is subjective - again the animation in both films is beautiful and gorgeous there's no doubting that. And although I'm not a big fan of either I can understand why people would appreciate Treasure more than I can Cauldron, which really was just underwhelming and came off as an attempt to cash in on the Dark Fantasy craze of the early-mid 80s. The fallout from TP is a bit sadder because where most of the team on BC was able to redeem itself many times over in the years following, 2D animation never really recovered entirely after TP even if it briefly tried to make a comeback between 2009 and 11. The Renaissance era is almost bookended between those two films lol
Talking Animals or Animals that speak a human language never get eaten in Disney movies, seems true? It is sad that the magical pig disappears, it seems to me that the pig had no personality and Gurgi replaced the pig. The Black Cauldron is good in sense that Disney went against its comfort zone to do something different, but the execution didn’t work out. Surprised that they haven’t tried again to remake this movie considering that the movie is loosely based on the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, a series of five novels based on Welsh mythology. At least do the source material justice, this movie feels like it is just too compressed, the plot was wrapped up too quickly, and it needed to be a trilogy of three movies to do it justice.
I plan on doing more, my schedule was just always behind and I would have been too late in past holiday times. But I'm getting things back on track at the moment, so hopefully I'll have at least one Halloween and Christmas video if not 2 of each this year (gotta make up a bit for missing the past 2 Christmases and the past Halloween).
Legend was originally released the same year that The Black Cauldron was released. 1985. I know The Black Cauldron was released in July 1985, but not sure exactly when in the year Legend was released.
I grew up with this movie. It wasn't my favorite, not even from Disney's line up, as I much preferred Treasure Planet, Atlantis the Lost Empire, Lilo & Stitch, ect. But I think you made one minor mistake. Tron from 1982, actually used CGI before the Black Cauldron. In fact it used so much that they were denied a nomination for best special effects because it was thought that using computers was cheating (and look how that turned out lol).
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