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The Black Cauldron (film)

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The Black Cauldron
File:Bcposter.jpg
Directed byTed Berman
Richard Rich
Written byLloyd Alexander (novel)
David Jonas
Produced byRon Miller
Joe Hale
StarringGrant Bardsley
Susan Sheridan
Freddie Jones
Nigel Hawthorne
John Hurt
Music byElmer Bernstein
Distributed byWalt Disney Pictures
Buena Vista Distribution
Release dates
July 24, 1985 (USA)
Running time
80 minutes
LanguageEnglish

The Black Cauldron (also known as Taran and the Magic Cauldron in some countries) is the twenty-fifth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. It was produced by Walt Disney Productions, and originally released to theatres on July 24, 1985 by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution. It is based loosely on the first two volumes of Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain. The movie was directed by Ted Berman and Richard Rich and starred the voices of Grant Bardsley, Susan Sheridan, Freddie Jones, Nigel Hawthorne, and John Hurt.

The story concerns the evil Horned King who attempts to secure the Black Cauldron in order to rule the world. The Horned King is opposed by the heroes Taran, Princess Eilonwy, Fflewddur Fflam, and a strange creature named Gurgi.

Plot summary

Taran is an assistant pigkeeper with boyish dreams of becoming a great warrior. However, he has to put the daydreaming aside when his charge, an oracular pig named Hen Wen, is kidnapped by an evil lord known as the Horned King. The villain hopes Hen will show him the way to The Black Cauldron, which has the power to create an invincible army of undead soldiers. With the aid of a stubborn princess, an exaggerating bard, and a pestering creature called Gurgi, Taran will try to save the world of Prydain from the Horned King. As the new friends face witches, elves, magic swords, and the Cauldron itself, Taran starts to learn what being a hero really means and that some things are more important than glory. (Summary written by Max Vaughn, taken from imdb.com)

Editing of the film

Shortly before the film's release to theaters, newly appointed Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered several scenes from The Black Cauldron be cut, due to the fear that the graphic nature of them would alienate children and family audiences. The bulk of the cut scenes involved the undead "Cauldron Born", who are used as the Horned King's army in the final act of the film. While most of the scenes were seamlessly removed from the film, one particular cut involving a Cauldron Born killing a person by slicing his neck and torso created a rather recognizable lapse due to the fact that the removal of the scene creates a jump in the film's soundtrack. Additionally, a scene involving Taran taking the magic sword and slaying his foes while he escapes the Horned King's castle for the first time was removed, as well as another scene with Princess Eilonwy partially nude as fabric was ripped off of her dress as she is hanging by her hands with Taran and Fflewddur Fflam [citation needed]. Another scene cut featured a man being dissolved by mist. [1] The final version of the film was the first animated film from Disney to get a PG rating from the MPAA.

As of this day, the original cut of the film with the removed scenes restored, has never been released on video or DVD. A version of the film with more cuts has appeared on the Disney Channel and the Toon Disney channel.

Film legacy

The Black Cauldron represented the Disney studio's attempt to reach out to teenage fans of fantasy novels, a popular genre at the time. However the gamble proved unsuccessful, with the film receiving very poor box office figures. For many years, it was considered by many to be Disney's most spectacular animated flop, a distinction The Black Cauldron held until the release of 2002's Treasure Planet. Critics blamed the film's lack of appeal on the atypical dark nature of the book. Internally, many at Disney (which underwent a change of management, with the arrival of Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg months prior to the release of the film) felt that the lack of songs and musical elements hurt the film. The film's failure at the box office combined with its dark tone led to Disney all but disowning the film for nearly 15 years.

The company has generally refused to incorporate the characters of the film into any Disney related merchandise since shortly after the films debut, though The Horned King has made several low-key appearances in recent Disney merchandise and a series of The Black Cauldron themed beanie toys were produced in limited quantities for sale at Disney Stores in the late 1990s. Also, Disney refused to release the film to home video for over a decade before quietly doing so in 1998. After the video/DVD was released in 2000, like many Disney DVDs, it went out of print and won't be available for the foreseeable future.

Even with its initial failure and treatment as the ugly stepchild of the official Disney animated feature film canon, The Black Cauldron has garnered a cult following amongst many animation fans. Roger Ebert's review from the time of the film's release was mostly positive. The film has received positive reviews on Internet Movie Database and the fact that the film has been unavailable to the public, combined with the film's darker tone and absence of the often loathed "Disney Formula", has resulted in the film becoming a full-fledged cult classic.

A computer game, The Black Cauldron, based on the movie, was released by Sierra On-Line under Disney's license and was a popular adventure game for a generation of computer owners. It followed the classic Sierra adventure formula and proved to be very popular.

Differences between the film and the books

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  • Quite a number of significant characters were omitted from the film, including Coll, an assistant to Dallben, an evil queen/witch named Achren, a war hero named Gwydion, and an evil lord Arawn who was actually the master to the Horned King.
  • In the books Eilonwy is described as having red-gold hair, but in the film her hair is mainly blond.
  • Dallben had a beard in the books, perhaps having an appearance closer to Gandalf, in The Lord of the Rings.
  • Creeper, who served as the henchman to The Horned King was an added character in the movie, not found in the books.
  • Fflewddur Fflam is described as having more yellowish hair in the books.
  • The Horned King did not try to get his hands on the black cauldron. Unlike, the movie where the cauldron is hidden, and being searched by the horned king. In the books The Horned King was the servant to the evil lord, Arawn, who already owned the cauldron to release the cauldron-born, in the beginning of the books. It was only in the second book, The Black Cauldron, that the good characters stole the cauldron from Arawn, and decided its powers needed to be destroyed.
  • In the movie Doli can clearly be able to disappear/become invisible. In the first book, The Book of Three, Doli's main wish is to be able to have the power to become invisible.
  • In the movie, Taran meets Eilonwy in the dungeon of the Horned King's castle. In the first book, The Book of Three, Taran was trapped in the evil witch, Achren's castle, and was then rescued by Eilonwy.
  • In the book, Taran first meets the Horned King, riding on a horse through the forest. However, in the movie, the Horned King is never seen riding a horse.
  • The characters met Fflewddur Fflam, in the movie, in the dungeon. However, in The Book of Three, Taran and the war hero, Gwydion are separated in different dungeons. Taran sends Eilonwy to rescue his war hero friend, but mistakenly takes Fflewddur Fflam for Gwydion.
  • At the end of the film, The Horned King's castle collapses. In the middle of the first book, Achren's castle collapses.
  • In the movie, Gurgi puts his body into the cauldron to destroy its powers. However, in the book it was a character named Ellidyr. Ellidyr goes into the cauldron and dies. (In the movie Gurgi died, but was brought back to life by the Witches of Morva.)

Titles in different languages

Trivia

  • The first use of the APT-process in a movie, which replaced Xerography at Disney.
  • The most expensive animated feature made as of its release in 1985, it cost $25 million in actual production costs, but returned less than $10 million at the North American box office.
  • The first Disney animated feature to employ computer-generated imagery. The dimensions and volume of the animated objects were fed into a computer and then their shapes were manipulated through computer programming before they were transferred as physical outlines the animators could work on. (Animated features with cels containing computer animation are probably rather rare as animation studios stopped using cels years ago.)
  • The first Disney animated film to get a PG rating, all the other movies had been rated G. The first Disney film to garner a PG rating was The Black Hole, although this was a live-action film, unlike the Black Cauldron.
  • Tinkerbell makes a cameo in the flim.
  • Acclaimed director Tim Burton did animation work on the film.
  • First Disney animated feature to have closing credits since Alice In Wonderland. The earliest, but not the first, Disney animated feature to have closing credits is Fantasia, beginning five years later.
  • This film was shot using the Super Technirama 70 widescreen 70 mm film process and is one of only two Disney films to have been produced in such a manner. The other being Sleeping Beauty.

References

  1. ^ [1] - Graphic image. An animation cel which was auctioned on eBay, from Sarah's Black Cauldron Page
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