"First, I have to say, there is no resemblance between the movie and the book. Having said that, the movie in itself, purely as a movie, I found to be very enjoyable. I had fun watching it. What I would hope is that anyone who sees the movie would certainly enjoy it, but I'd also hope that they'd actually read the book." -Lloyd Alexander on The Black Cauldron film. At least he was nice about how it was not like his book.
From someone whose story was so thoroughly butchered, that's glowing praise. Many another author has shown no mercy to similar changes and artistic liberties.
@@thomaswrightson2230 The only other author I can think of who had a similar reaction to their book being butchered is Max Brooks, who basically said “World War Z the movie pretty much has nothing to do with my book besides the title, but it’s a pretty fun movie.”
@@callanfox9870 Unless you also count Gary Wolf who went so far as to say Who Framed Roger Rabbit was actually far BETTER than his original book and even wrote a sequel that was more in line with the movie.
Re: the sword; "Royal Blood" was later revealed to be a mistranslation on Eilonwy's part. Its use was actually restricted to those of "Noble Worth," and Taren learned to wield the sword after a lot of character development.
Even in the first book, Eilonwy tells Taran that "royal blood" doesn't actually mean birth, and even if he were the long-lost son of a king, that wouldn't give him the right (or the ability) to draw Dyrnwyn. Interestingly, Book Dyrnwyn's properties are nearly opposite those of the legendary Dyrnwyn, which would only blaze if drawn by the well-born.
@@lawrenceking192 Is that the one the legendary owner was said to offer to permit any noble to draw, in a sort of "Yeah, I have this legendary sword, you can have it if you want", but everyone refused on the off chance it would not alight for them (... Or possibly out of fear they'd catch fire too if it went on? I was never *entirely* clear on that)?
@@thaddeusgenhelm8979 Yes, that's the one. Not sure why, maybe some of both - I've heard even the noble got burned if drawing for an unworthy purpose, but I have no source for that.
The film was actually somewhat more successful in Japan. It was a big inspiration on the Legend of Zelda after they abandoned the original sci-fi idea and it was a prominent part of the Mystery Tour at Tokyo Disneyland all the way until 2006.
Actually Dom while the little mermaid started the Disney Renaissance many film historians believe the one that was the stepping stone to that and kept the studio alive to make it was The Great Mouse detective based off the Basil of Baker Street book series
Great Mouse Detective is the best Disney movie of the 80s and in their top 5 ever. That movie is responsible for my eternal love of almost everything Sherlock Holmes related.
But also Walt Disney considered adapting the Little Mermaid as early as the late 1930s using legendary illustrator Kay Nielsen's watercolour and charcoal art for inspiration. That ending would have removed the daughters of air and ended with the mermaid turning to seafoam. I had a strong disney animation obsession and fairytale obsession concurrently from the ages of 11 to 15 if it wasn't obvious!
Disney is literally remaking everything, and yet they won't even acknowledge that this movie exists. C'mon Disney, this is the one thing everyone would be down for a remake of!
You overestimate the number of people who would *care* severely, largely because of the insulation of the internet and the type of people who reside there.
Why make something again that didn't work when you can take something that already makes a metric fuckton of money and do it again to make even more money?
So fun fact about Black Cauldron's CG. Cauldron and the next film in the Disney canon, The Great Mouse Detective, were being worked on at almost the same time. Allegedly someone from Black Cauldron's staff caught a test render of the Big Ben sequence and was so blown away by it that once those artists finished their work on GMD, they were swiftly brought onboard to squeeze some CG effects wherever they could into Cauldron to make it pop a bit more. Since Black Cauldron had an earlier release schedule, they weren't able to do much, just some added effects from the titular cauldron itself.
Funny enough, when I read the books as a kid, I kinda imagined him to look like Gossamer from Looney Tunes... that's the big, orange, hairy monster in sneakers.
Dom deciding to rant on the Alpha vs Beta of the Horned King had me rolling. 😅😂😅😂 And tell me I'm not the only one who heard Catherine O'Hara screaming 'Kevin!' after the true name bit.
This is one of the first movies I remember seeing in the theater. I remember crying when Gurgi died and being REALLY happy that the Horned King died for what happened. I didn't look away. I was born in November of 78, so I think I was almost 6 when this came out? Gurgi has been my favorite Disney character ever since. In the 90s I met a guy who had tattoos of every Disney character. I think he was actually known as 'Disney Tattoo guy'. He indeed had Gurgi on his shoulder.
Apparently there's a Little Mermaid horror movie out there. Kinda pointless, since all they had to do to make a horror movie was adapt the original story.
@@boxorak yes. There were definitely some 'not for kids' bits in the tale, though, like the fact that every step the little mermaid took while she had legs hurt like knives.
@@boxorak Andersen tacked that one on to the original story to make it more palatable for kids (this from the guy who wrote "The Little Match Girl"). In the original version, she just dies.
Another fun fact: The origins of the terms Wales and Welsh for Cymru (the actual name for both the people and the country) comes from the Old English word wealas which translates to "stranger" or "foreigner" which considering the fact that the Anglo-Saxons were immigrants to Britain is some next level arseholery.
TIL it’s “Welsh” and not “Welch” I always assumed Welches was referencing some sort of “Fair Trade” deal gone wrong in history as a testament that their grapes were high quality and wouldn’t “Welch” on their promised deliciousness. But nope. It’s another one of those “The Brits pointing at their roommates and complaining” deal. Thank you for unlocking this childhood misconception in my mind that I didn’t even realize I had.
@@GallowglassVT I mean, Celts are also immigrants to Britain. Just earlier immigrants, by roughly a thousand years. (The Celts immigrated from about the region of modern day Austria in ~300BC, and the Anglo-Saxons immigrated from the region of northern Germany starting ~450AD). There were many previous waves of immigrants from Europe and Asia prior to that as well. They, ah, didn't make it, genetically speaking.
The way they went with Gurgy's voice was just awful and made him super annoying. I listened to the audiobooks years later and there the narrator took the *exact same dialogue* and made him sort of like a sad old man and it worked so much better as a personality and character than the squeeky raspy child sound they gave him. Lines like "Gurgy likes crunchings and munchings" can be dumb, but works way better when the actor is putting some charm into it. Also, he wasn't a little dog thing but a big guy, more like a monkey. If they'd gone more of a Chewbacca direction with him... but you know, they were trying to make a plush toy, not a book accurate character. I can only imagine what it would have been like if Gary Burghoff had actually done the part, he would have certainly brought some Radar O Reilly charm to it and might have been a lot better.
Funny you said Little Mermaid saved the animation department, since it skips over The Great Mouse Detective which did much of the heavy lifting after this film. Still, great review and looking forward to what's to come.
Well, the Little Mermaid is credited by many, Disney first of all, as the saviour of Disney animation and the start of the Renaissance. Mouse Detective is not as well known, as far as I can tell.
My clearest memory of this film is falling asleep through it when my teacher screened it in my high school mythology class. To be entirely fair, this says more about my insufficient sleeping habits than it does about The Black Cauldron; I was still sleeping through movies even into my college days.
I absolutely loved Lloyd Alexander books growing up - reading all that were available at the library. I honestly thought he was British! I've been bewildered that his books haven't been picked up for adaptation more - he wrote very different ones, but his characters usually had a depth that rarely occurs in books aimed at this age bracket. The Westmark series especially - it goes quite dark...
Thank goodness for public libraries! That was my source, too -- and I was Today Years Old when I found out Alexander was an American, as well. I just kinda assumed otherwise, y'know?
I had read the first three books when I saw this movie in 1985 (I was 15). The absence of Gwydion was major. There’s a scene early on where they see a funereal tumbrel and a corpse’s arm flops out from under the tarp/cover, and I got the impression that was Gwydion, and thought it was a really crummy way to treat him. It was my first adventure in being irritated at a movie adaptation of a book.
I saw a deleted storyboard scene included in the dvd that confirmed that the corpse that Taran took the magic sword from was supposed to be Gwydion, so yeah I get you, that would’ve been an awful way to treat him.
I actually have checked out the first two books that the movie is based on they're really good. Going to be honest I think the Black cauldron deserves a live-action remake.
@@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithmDisney really messed up the animated one back in the day. And with the trend of live action movies. I feel like the Black cauldron deserves a second chance
One thing that helped make Taren more tolerable in The Book of Three was the fact that every other character was constantly roasting him the entire book.
Thanks Dom for this - it's an old favourite. When the movie came out I was about 7 years old - at that time I had no idea it was based on a book series. My sister and I loved this film so much. We each had the sticker book and bought new Black Cauldron sticker packs each week for as long as we could. My mum always likes the weird little characters the best, so she adored Gurgi - she adopted the phrase 'munchings and crunchings' and we still say it now when talking about food.
I really hope this series gets another chance in terms of adaptation. It's rare to see such an unfiltered homage to Welsh mythology in any books made by folks outside of Wales/the UK in general, but to know that an American author did it makes it all the more surprising, given that a good chunk of them online think Wales is part of England (and that British means just English). Also, Dom is from the Wirral? That... explains a lot (not a bad thing btw. I live nearby and one of our things is goodnaturedly taking the piss out of the Wirral).
The Black Cauldron actually won a technical Oscar for a new process of creating animation cells which was a step up from the Xerox process they were using before. Though it wouldn’t be in use long as they would be using a fully digital system called CAPS by 1991.
This book series is a classic. It's so good to return to even as an adult. As a child I wrote to Lloyd Alexander and he wrote back! I am waiting desperately for a live action of this, but I suspect the budget and 1985 memory will get in the way.
~17:31 Okay, usually I wouldn't comment on this but Dom brought it on himself by making the comment about half-swording: yes, holding a sword by the blade is clearly different from half-swording, because half-swording refers to griping the blade with one hand in order to direct it into narrow gaps more effectively, whereas Taran is holding the blade with both hands... Which is more in line with the mordhau, or murder-strike, a technique in which the sword is held by the blade in order to use the cross guard as a blunt-force weapon like a mace. You come for the sword pedants, you best not miss, Dominic ;P
I actually shared Dominic Noble's joke on "An interesting scientific experiment that pretty much anyone can do, take any book that's been adapted into a Disney movie to a wide open space make sure you're facing downwind, and throw it as far as you possibly can. If you think you can do better than the first try feel free to pick it up and have as many go's as you like. You'll discover that it's a mathematical certainty that no matter where the book lands it will always be closer to you than the Disney movie adaption to its plot." during a film class where adaptations were brought up, the teacher agreed.
Honestly, I would love a look at The Great Mouse Detective. It's probably In Name Only (not even, as the books are called Basil of Baker Street), but is definitely a much funner film, and kickstarted a whole generation of Sherlock Holmes fans.
My favorite part of the book series was Eilonwy starting to tap into her magical abilities, at one point using her bauble to set a lake on fire, there was also a giant cat that Fflewdder Flam befriended which I loved. I remember having a bit of a crush on Gwydion when I read the series in fifth grade.
@oneinathousand2156 fun fact: in the original Welsh myth, Gwydion is far more of a trickster and wizard figure than a warrior, though he does fight as a warrior in some stories. It's something that's been carried over into modern Celtic paganism.
Never crushed on Gwydion, even though most folks expected I would/should... As should be evident, I was much more into Eilonwy -- and only later figured out why (I'm queer af, that's why! And she's a badass role model.)
The film that actually saved the Disney animation department was The Great Mouse Detective, though I realize it's a bit hard to do a lost in adaptation for like.......the essence of Sherlock Holmes. Still, Basil walked so Ariel could run.
Of all the movies in Disney's vault, this is the one that most NEEDS a remake. Maybe even a full TV show. You could do a really faithful adaptation these days.
As a matter of fact, the movie was somehow succesful in Germany and got an "FSK 6" release (meaning it was for age 6 and over). There were even follow up comics in the style of the "Find your Fate" adventures printed in the German Mickey Mouse Magazine.
I cannot express how delighted I am by the possibility of Dom reviewing The Little Mermaid. I've loved the fairy tale and film version for years. I think it was the first film I saw,
I loved the Black Cauldron movie growing up, it's still one of my favorite movies to pop on. But I think that's because the twisted side of me loved the Horned King. His presence was unnerving and uncomfortable. That creepy raspy voice was so perfect for his design. It was a risky move to basically make him a corpse, but he was a villain that always stood out amongst the amazing selection of villains we do have.
What’s interesting to note is Disney decided to renew their holding rights to “The Chronicles of Prydain” book series. As Disney continues to be on this remake kick, I think a proper adaptation of “The Chronicles of Prydain” that is more faithful to the source material with some nods to the animated film could do quite well with the right cast and crew.
An important thing to remember about why this film nearly killed the animation department is that Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg had just joined Disney and were looking to cut costs where possible. Eisner came from working at Paramount where he had a strong philosophy of “singles and doubles” (ie: producing a bunch of mid-budget features) and the animation department toiling away on a film that was taking way too long was not ideal in their eyes.
The Black Cauldron was my favorite movie as a child, but I was banned from watching it with my friends, after a couple of them had nightmares after seeing it and called my mom to complain :(
I would love to see a Lost in Adaptation of The Great Mouse Detective. Considered your earlier Sherlock Holmes videos and the fact that Basil of Baker Street is itself something of an adaptation, I think it would be perfect for you, Dom.
The fact we live in an artistic world where safe and easy investments mean the stuff that will get remade is stuff that is already loved and popular and not stuff that actually deserves a second chance frusturates me. I think an animated series based on the Chronicles of Prydain can be absolutely amazing.
For years I remembered a line "It's not good" as being spoken by the Horned King. Turns out that's from Owl in Pooh's Grand Adventure, a film which terrified me so much I confused it with The Black Cauldron!
Don Bluth: "I'll start my own animation company! With Black Jack! And hookers!" Thank you so much for that! Dom, you really know how to [NOTICE TWO THINGS].
If this is the beginning of a Disney classics marathon I'm here for it. But you can't leave it at The Little Mermaid, We need The Rescuers, The Great Mouse Detective and The Fox And The Hound added to the lineup.
This was actually one of my favourite movies growing up. Every weekend when I went to my dad's, we went to the video shop to rent some movies, and one of them would always be The Black Cauldron. He got annoyed that it was all I wanted to watch, but I was an undiagnosed autistic kid that had found a special interest.
Minor correction. The Disney dark age is usually considered to have begun with Walt's death and the subsequent Free Fall the company was in. Roy took over but after he died, other companies smelled blood in the water. They spent the first few years of the '70s fending off corporate raiders and producing mostly live action movies. The black cauldron was just the nadir of the dark age, not its cause.
Just want to plug some other Lloyd Alexander properties like the Arkadians where he switches from ripping off Welsh Tolkien to riffing on Greek drama and makes his hero a Ancient Greek accountant-as Dom says, Alexander can really write!
I've never clicked so fast 😲 this was one of my all time favourite Disney movies and because i stupidly bought the second book first i've not read the series yet
The Black Cauldron is my fave Disney cartoon movie. Its one of those ones thats objectively not a good adaptation but i think is highly entertaining in its own right.
Eilonwy swiftly joined Téa Gardner, Misty, and Kiki as "characters 8-11 year old me had a major crush on" before I even watched the film. Thanks, previews. I rather enjoyed the film when I finally saw it, and I rather enjoyed the actual chronicles, though I found it rather difficult to follow at times and even now I forgot a lot of the content of the series. Maybe one day I'll re-read it.
I have always felt that if Disney was going to do live action remakes the should have done ones from the Dark ages like Black Cauldron or the Sword in the Stone. They are ones that could be greatly improved thanks to hindsight and could look amazing in live action. Though with the Black Cauldron being a book series, maybe a movie wouldn't be the best way to go with it. Anyways, Another great video. Keep it going.
21:00 I was hoping he was hinting at The Great Mouse Detective and then the music started 😂 But seriously while The Little Mermaid kicked off the Disney renaissance, The Great Mouse Detective is the movie that saved Disney’s animation department from going under and it is based on a book series, so hey how about some love 😊
I was always excited as a small kid when this movie was being showed on TV. It is probably responsible, at least in part, for my love of Celtic folklore, languages, etc. and I really really hope that one day we'll get the Extended Cut that traumatized those little shites.
Also, I'm pretty sure that it's not the Welsh that makes it impossible to read the bard's name, because that's now how you would spell it in Welsh. I couldn't tell you how to spell it without digging up a guide, but I do know it's anglicized because I at least remember that "fllew" should be spelled "lluegh."
@@KayWhyCommando I had a feeling the double d had a different pronunciation, but I wasn't sure what it was. I thought it might be a soft th, but it seems I was wrong
@@gota7738 I stand corrected. I'm only learning Welsh, so to me the "th" sound made by the "DD" sounds very similar to a soft "v." Either way, though, still not a hard "D" sound.
I loved reading the Lloyd Alexander books as a kid, that movie is like if they tried combining the first two books and throwing in elements of the other 3
My grandpa owned one of the original animation frames from the movie and hung it above the bed in his guest room. That thing scared the shit out of me as a kid
This is one of the very few Disney Classics I never got around to watching. Thank you for the episode, Dominic! And that teaser has me tantalised, I'd love to see you do the first Disney classic i ever saw ❤
The movie trailers were all over the Disney VHS tapes. My mom of course fast forwarded that because scary (she wasn’t wrong) Eventually she got me to read the books. I loved them. Never have seen the movie, never want to because of how they changed how the Black Caldron is dealt with. Also, loved the giant cat that shows up later in the books. She is just, so cool
Actually, the editors didn't want to touch it, they thought it was good as is. Jeffry Katzenberg, Petty Asshole, did the re-edits himself. Having seen everything that can be found on what was cut, whether it be test footage, or story boards . . . well, the ending was a bit more coherent in that you could actually tell what was going on and there were a few additional character beats of the bard stoking Tarran's ego, which explains why he was suddenly so aggressive towards the princess when she questioned him, and it had a stronger opening . . . but I honestly don't think the original cut would have been any more successful. It still would have had to compete with expectations of the time, it still had numerous plot and character issues, the Horned King is still a boring villain, so it had a lot working against its success.
"I can only assume that the people involved had never met or even been a teenager!" I am convinced that business, economics, and politics majors, upon graduation, undergo a procedure to have the bone removed from their brains that lets them remember what it was like to be a teenager.
Since Disney insists on badly remaking their classic films in lousy CGI augmented live action, I wish they'd go back and revisit some of their less successful films. Top of my list is "The Black Cauldron". 1) Broaden it to AT LEAST a trilogy, or maybe a miniseries. 2) Give this thing the full "Labyrinth" treatment. Human cast with people either in monster suits, or straight-up puppets. Think "Jim Henson's: The Storyteller". I also feel like "The Aristocats" could be given the live-action "101 Dalmatians" treatment. It's time all the cat people got a movie too, right?
“Less subtle about Tolkien’s influence” proceeds to list a bunch of extremely common fairy tale tropes (if not straight out of the Mabinogion). If two authors have the same influences, that doesn’t mean one ripped off the other.
I mean, both authors are Welsh influenced, so i image the fanasty and the likes would be very similar. Kinda like how 2 authors from Japan make a story based on their native folklore would be quite similar
Yeah, he's made the mistake of thinking these tropes originated with JRRT when they were almost directly pulled from the Mabinogion, which itself is drawn from IRON AGE oral legends.
To be fair I'm not sure if the tropes he listed do turn up in the Mabinogi or other older Welsh myths. I can't really recall a story where there's a McGuffin that tempts people to evil, a story about an unassuming young man from the countryside, seemingly small acts of kindness that come back around, and not really conveniently outcold characters to avoid graphic descriptions of violence. Perhaps a side-character of ambiguous loyalty like Efnisien or Gwydion, but those guys cause a lot more trouble I'd argue. There's a very different feel to Welsh legends that later "mythic" storytelling doesn't quite fall in line with.
@@gota7738 All of the tropes he listed show up (at latest) in Grimm, which are a collection of German folk tales, if not much older (the “annoying” or creepy “Gollum-esque” character and the item that corrupts otherwise good characters both show up in the Ring of the Nibelungen), and the “casual act of mercy that eventually pays back manifold” (especially to birds) is nearly a human universal tale.
"...it would only be fair if I have a look at the adaptation that ended [the Disney Dark Age] and saved the animation department." The Great Mouse Detective Hype! (I know, I know, it's really The Little Mermaid, but a guy can dream, can't he?)
I watched this in France when I was a kid. I loved it so much. Kids can love dark movies. Just like adults can love horror. Same reason too. I did rewatch it decades later and the decision to cast John Hurt will be echoed by Hasbro casting Orson Welles. A genius gift to the audience, moreso than to the actor. And also, still so much darker than you'd expect from the people making it.
This movie most definitely traumatised a lot of children with it's blood and gore. Me at the age of 3 or 4: "OOOOH, YES THE HORNED KING DIES! YEEEEEEEEESSSSS!!!!! (also I like how taran looks ngl but I'll realise why in about 12-14 years)"
As a small child, I watched this on VHS over and over again without ever understanding what was going on lol. I just liked the animated undead and watched it for that.
I didn't know what a terrible adaptation this was, but the movie holds a strange 'could have been' sort of nostalgia for folks of a certain generation. Kid me would love to have seen the original, un-chopped-up version of this movie
The Little Mermaid did usher in the Disney Renaissance, but the movie that actually saved the animation studio was The Great Mouse Detective. They wouldn't have been given the green light to adapt Little Mermaid if Great Mouse Detective hadn't done so well.
I love this series, I first read it when I was 10 and it jump started my love of fantasy that endures to this day. I also like the Disney movie too despite it's flaws.
Considering that I know who the "nameless" Disney execs at the start of this are actually, just makes this funnier. Here's a hint: one of them would make fun of the other in the film version of Shrek.
I love the Prydain series. Disney made the mistake of trying to combine everything together. It ruined the story. They could have had a great series of movies and blew it. It's been decades, and I'm still angry over Disney's treatment. The least Disney could do since the own the movie rights is give this a live action treatment and finally do justice to it. ETA: I loved this series so much (yes, I am old af) that I dragged my now husband to the movie when it was released. It says a lot about his tolerance that we stayed together. Utter trash (the movie, not him).
I read the Chronicles of Prydain at least once a year from fourth grade until high school. If I were to ever realize my filmmaking dreams, it would be to adapt the Chronicles of Prydain Peter Jackson LOTR style.
As an American in a large area of the US with very little accent differences, it amazes me that someone can grow up across a River from Wales and not sound a little welsh.
Alexander and Tolkien were both pulling from the same sources of inspiration: Welsh Mythology, particularly the Mabinogion. Though Tolkien also added Scandinavian and Wagner's Ring Cycle as influences on him as well, while Alexander was more straight up just sticking to purely Welsh mythology alone.
Tolkien himself allegedly denounced any influence by Wagner's works. They were both harping on the original Germanic myths, and Wagner's adaption comes across as an early example of disneyfication.
I haven't seen it in a long time, but the movie was honestly one of my favourites as a kid. When I got to college, my Film Studies teacher had the same moustache, and haircut, as Gurgi and it always made me smile.
As a woman closely named to Henwig/Hedwig, this movie is forever cursed in my mind and I even glossed it over when me and my husband were watching all the disney movies. ("No no darling. Disney didn't release any movies in 80s before Great mouse detective. REALLY BAD TIME!") You can't imagind how much grief I got from my bullies because my name was sounding like a pig's.
10:58 - point of order, the letter ‘Dd’/‘dd’ is not pronounced as ‘d’. Yes you read that right, it’s a single letter, not two sequential ds. The closest way I can think to transcribe it is its close to, but not quite, how you pronounce ‘th’ in English (which side note, used to be itself by a single letter, represented by the thorn, but that was lost over time, largely due to it being omitted from printing presses for resembling a Y too closely). I’d peg it as about halfway between a ‘th’ and a ‘v’. Similarly, if you see a ‘Ll’/‘ll’ in a Welsh word it’s approximately pronounced as a combination between a ‘th’ and a ‘L’ in English.
A welsh Ll doesn't really have a close approximation I don't think. I hear people use Ch as a substitute but it's still not really close. The best instruction I've known for it is to keep your mouth in an L shape, with your tongue on your hard palate, and exhale hard, pushing the breath around your tongue and between your teeth.
Live action remake. This deserve the live action remake. With the darker elements used in Malefecent. No CGI unless absolutely necessary EXCEPT the Horned King and keep John Hurts recorded lines. Film it in New Zealand, in case anyone misses the LOTR refrences. (Bonus points for the confused Narina fans)
Honestly it’s disappointing just how much was left out, because some of that stuff could have made for prime cartoony humor. Like when the evil sorceress captured Taran and Gwydion she tries to intimidate them by casually breaking Gwydion’s sword, only to fail multiple times and hurt herself in the attempt that did eventually work.
if it wasn't Frozen, it was probably going to be Trolls that you have to sing over and over again. Also this sounds like an DnD campaign gone wrong in both versions lol Explaining Black Cauldron like it was a DnD Campaign: DM: Then the NPC Gurgi sacrifices himself to the black to save everyone Players: No we love him don't kill him DM: But this the climax of the story Players: But we got to know him so well, we want to adventure more with him DM: If you guys hadn't taken so long with Fairfolk you would meet Ellidyr but I had to cut him out Players: Pretty please DM: Fine... but I'm adding an horrifying death scene for the Horned King enjoy~ Players: AHHHHH!! ☠
has i said before on a previous comment section of Lost in Adaptation episode this movie is a freaking disaster of adaptation smashing the first two books in the series together and changing the characters for for no reason you better off reading the comic book adaptation by Saeriellyn online
Definitely not. I remember just pausing mentally when I saw Disney cut most of Taran’s journey through the forest. That(And his meeting with a legendary hero) is where a lot of his character development is set in motion, the atmosphere would’ve been prime for some of Disney’s darker animation, and it was where the film pretty much died for me. Taran suddenly having the selflessness to make any sort of heroic sacrifice rings hollow when we don’t see what put him on that path.
"First, I have to say, there is no resemblance between the movie and the book. Having said that, the movie in itself, purely as a movie, I found to be very enjoyable. I had fun watching it. What I would hope is that anyone who sees the movie would certainly enjoy it, but I'd also hope that they'd actually read the book." -Lloyd Alexander on The Black Cauldron film.
At least he was nice about how it was not like his book.
Honestly, really agree with him.
From someone whose story was so thoroughly butchered, that's glowing praise. Many another author has shown no mercy to similar changes and artistic liberties.
@@thomaswrightson2230 The only other author I can think of who had a similar reaction to their book being butchered is Max Brooks, who basically said “World War Z the movie pretty much has nothing to do with my book besides the title, but it’s a pretty fun movie.”
@@callanfox9870 Unless you also count Gary Wolf who went so far as to say Who Framed Roger Rabbit was actually far BETTER than his original book and even wrote a sequel that was more in line with the movie.
I feel like the Welsh are the Canadians of the UK.
Re: the sword; "Royal Blood" was later revealed to be a mistranslation on Eilonwy's part. Its use was actually restricted to those of "Noble Worth," and Taren learned to wield the sword after a lot of character development.
That's only revealed in The High King -- aka, the LAST book, which bears little to no impact on this movie.
@@phastinemoonstill neat trivia
Even in the first book, Eilonwy tells Taran that "royal blood" doesn't actually mean birth, and even if he were the long-lost son of a king, that wouldn't give him the right (or the ability) to draw Dyrnwyn. Interestingly, Book Dyrnwyn's properties are nearly opposite those of the legendary Dyrnwyn, which would only blaze if drawn by the well-born.
@@lawrenceking192 Is that the one the legendary owner was said to offer to permit any noble to draw, in a sort of "Yeah, I have this legendary sword, you can have it if you want", but everyone refused on the off chance it would not alight for them (... Or possibly out of fear they'd catch fire too if it went on? I was never *entirely* clear on that)?
@@thaddeusgenhelm8979 Yes, that's the one. Not sure why, maybe some of both - I've heard even the noble got burned if drawing for an unworthy purpose, but I have no source for that.
The film was actually somewhat more successful in Japan. It was a big inspiration on the Legend of Zelda after they abandoned the original sci-fi idea and it was a prominent part of the Mystery Tour at Tokyo Disneyland all the way until 2006.
south America too.
The Horned King: Big in Japan. Because...Japan.
My absolute love for Zelda is probably why I liked this movie as much as I did, lol
@@mitchellalexander9162 And now he's getting a lot more love with Disney-related games like Lorcana and Villanios.
LoZ was going to be sci-fi~? Where's that AU?
Actually Dom while the little mermaid started the Disney Renaissance many film historians believe the one that was the stepping stone to that and kept the studio alive to make it was The Great Mouse detective based off the Basil of Baker Street book series
I was really hoping for a fakeout there
😮😮😮
Great Mouse Detective is the best Disney movie of the 80s and in their top 5 ever. That movie is responsible for my eternal love of almost everything Sherlock Holmes related.
Yes! We need a Great Mouse Detective lost in adaptation!!!
But also Walt Disney considered adapting the Little Mermaid as early as the late 1930s using legendary illustrator Kay Nielsen's watercolour and charcoal art for inspiration. That ending would have removed the daughters of air and ended with the mermaid turning to seafoam. I had a strong disney animation obsession and fairytale obsession concurrently from the ages of 11 to 15 if it wasn't obvious!
Disney is literally remaking everything, and yet they won't even acknowledge that this movie exists. C'mon Disney, this is the one thing everyone would be down for a remake of!
Disney logic: Rely on nostalgia to make money > Fixing past mistakes
This is a blessing. May their eye continue to leave some bastions unadapted. 😅
You overestimate the number of people who would *care* severely, largely because of the insulation of the internet and the type of people who reside there.
It used to feature prominently in an attraction at Tokyo Disney, but that's gone now.
Why make something again that didn't work when you can take something that already makes a metric fuckton of money and do it again to make even more money?
“We should all aspire to be assistant pig keepers.” -Lloyd Alexander in the introduction to The Book of Three
So fun fact about Black Cauldron's CG. Cauldron and the next film in the Disney canon, The Great Mouse Detective, were being worked on at almost the same time. Allegedly someone from Black Cauldron's staff caught a test render of the Big Ben sequence and was so blown away by it that once those artists finished their work on GMD, they were swiftly brought onboard to squeeze some CG effects wherever they could into Cauldron to make it pop a bit more. Since Black Cauldron had an earlier release schedule, they weren't able to do much, just some added effects from the titular cauldron itself.
Another important change is that Gurgi was not a cute little creature. He was something much closer to a very furry man sized monkey.
While not called as such, Gurgi fits well into the medieval legends of the Woodwose, or Wild Men.
I just straight up thought Gurgi was a deer person
"Cute"????
I mostly remember Gurgi for his Axe and I believe the highest body count in the book series.
Funny enough, when I read the books as a kid, I kinda imagined him to look like Gossamer from Looney Tunes... that's the big, orange, hairy monster in sneakers.
Dom deciding to rant on the Alpha vs Beta of the Horned King had me rolling. 😅😂😅😂
And tell me I'm not the only one who heard Catherine O'Hara screaming 'Kevin!' after the true name bit.
I hand't until I read this. Now I can't unhear it, lol
This is one of the first movies I remember seeing in the theater. I remember crying when Gurgi died and being REALLY happy that the Horned King died for what happened. I didn't look away. I was born in November of 78, so I think I was almost 6 when this came out? Gurgi has been my favorite Disney character ever since. In the 90s I met a guy who had tattoos of every Disney character. I think he was actually known as 'Disney Tattoo guy'. He indeed had Gurgi on his shoulder.
Apparently there's a Little Mermaid horror movie out there. Kinda pointless, since all they had to do to make a horror movie was adapt the original story.
Didn't the original story have an epilogue where instead of dying the Mermaid gets revived as an air spirit so she could work to gain a soul?
@@boxorak yes. There were definitely some 'not for kids' bits in the tale, though, like the fact that every step the little mermaid took while she had legs hurt like knives.
Or just adapt the opera Rusalka
@@boxorak Andersen tacked that one on to the original story to make it more palatable for kids (this from the guy who wrote "The Little Match Girl"). In the original version, she just dies.
@@BlueTressym Or having her tongue cut out. Or getting a dagger to kill her man and be able to become a mermaid again.
Fun fact: In the past people would sometimes cross the border into Wales to escape their creditors. Hence to "Welsh" on a deal.
Another fun fact: The origins of the terms Wales and Welsh for Cymru (the actual name for both the people and the country) comes from the Old English word wealas which translates to "stranger" or "foreigner" which considering the fact that the Anglo-Saxons were immigrants to Britain is some next level arseholery.
TIL it’s “Welsh” and not “Welch” I always assumed Welches was referencing some sort of “Fair Trade” deal gone wrong in history as a testament that their grapes were high quality and wouldn’t “Welch” on their promised deliciousness.
But nope. It’s another one of those “The Brits pointing at their roommates and complaining” deal.
Thank you for unlocking this childhood misconception in my mind that I didn’t even realize I had.
Another (not so) fun fact is that Welsh only became 1 of the official languages of Wales in 2011 (thank u british colonialism)
@@GallowglassVT I mean, Celts are also immigrants to Britain. Just earlier immigrants, by roughly a thousand years. (The Celts immigrated from about the region of modern day Austria in ~300BC, and the Anglo-Saxons immigrated from the region of northern Germany starting ~450AD). There were many previous waves of immigrants from Europe and Asia prior to that as well. They, ah, didn't make it, genetically speaking.
@scifigeek14 *English colonialism. British world include the Welsh as well.
The way they went with Gurgy's voice was just awful and made him super annoying. I listened to the audiobooks years later and there the narrator took the *exact same dialogue* and made him sort of like a sad old man and it worked so much better as a personality and character than the squeeky raspy child sound they gave him. Lines like "Gurgy likes crunchings and munchings" can be dumb, but works way better when the actor is putting some charm into it.
Also, he wasn't a little dog thing but a big guy, more like a monkey. If they'd gone more of a Chewbacca direction with him... but you know, they were trying to make a plush toy, not a book accurate character.
I can only imagine what it would have been like if Gary Burghoff had actually done the part, he would have certainly brought some Radar O Reilly charm to it and might have been a lot better.
Yeah, Gurgi is basically described as a shorter sasquatch in the book, not a tiny dog person thing.
I remember his Disney voice being described as a weird mix of Gollum and Donald Duck and that's definitely spot-on
Funny you said Little Mermaid saved the animation department, since it skips over The Great Mouse Detective which did much of the heavy lifting after this film. Still, great review and looking forward to what's to come.
Well, the Little Mermaid is credited by many, Disney first of all, as the saviour of Disney animation and the start of the Renaissance. Mouse Detective is not as well known, as far as I can tell.
Everyone always forgets about Roger Rabbit...
@@wratched That'd be because while Disney owned the studio and distributor, at the time Touchstone and Bueno Vista were treated as separate from them.
Great Mouse Detective was scary!
I had the same thought, everybody seems to forget not only this movie's impact (thebest Sherlock adaptation IMHO) but even that it exists at all!
This film wasn’t the beginning of the Disney Dark Age, it was the height of it. The Dark Age was from 1970-1988.
My clearest memory of this film is falling asleep through it when my teacher screened it in my high school mythology class.
To be entirely fair, this says more about my insufficient sleeping habits than it does about The Black Cauldron; I was still sleeping through movies even into my college days.
I absolutely loved Lloyd Alexander books growing up - reading all that were available at the library. I honestly thought he was British! I've been bewildered that his books haven't been picked up for adaptation more - he wrote very different ones, but his characters usually had a depth that rarely occurs in books aimed at this age bracket. The Westmark series especially - it goes quite dark...
Thank goodness for public libraries! That was my source, too -- and I was Today Years Old when I found out Alexander was an American, as well. I just kinda assumed otherwise, y'know?
I had read the first three books when I saw this movie in 1985 (I was 15). The absence of Gwydion was major. There’s a scene early on where they see a funereal tumbrel and a corpse’s arm flops out from under the tarp/cover, and I got the impression that was Gwydion, and thought it was a really crummy way to treat him. It was my first adventure in being irritated at a movie adaptation of a book.
Why, an epic character badass was even needed in the dynamic, why is he ... you need a sword wielding badass in your group, why?
I saw a deleted storyboard scene included in the dvd that confirmed that the corpse that Taran took the magic sword from was supposed to be Gwydion, so yeah I get you, that would’ve been an awful way to treat him.
I actually have checked out the first two books that the movie is based on they're really good. Going to be honest I think the Black cauldron deserves a live-action remake.
Honestly this is the one I’d agree for SURE - slap a lavish miniseries on D+ and call it a day. Hit them in the House of the Dragon lulls.
Can't we have a live action adaptation instead?
@@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithmDisney really messed up the animated one back in the day. And with the trend of live action movies. I feel like the Black cauldron deserves a second chance
@@tayloredwards4968 A remake would be a movie based on the movie. An adaptation is a movie based on the book.
Why live action? WHY
Is animation not real enough of an artform for you?
One thing that helped make Taren more tolerable in The Book of Three was the fact that every other character was constantly roasting him the entire book.
plus the fact that he ultimately fails to live up to his fantasies, where gwydion saves the day instead
Thanks Dom for this - it's an old favourite. When the movie came out I was about 7 years old - at that time I had no idea it was based on a book series. My sister and I loved this film so much. We each had the sticker book and bought new Black Cauldron sticker packs each week for as long as we could. My mum always likes the weird little characters the best, so she adored Gurgi - she adopted the phrase 'munchings and crunchings' and we still say it now when talking about food.
I really hope this series gets another chance in terms of adaptation. It's rare to see such an unfiltered homage to Welsh mythology in any books made by folks outside of Wales/the UK in general, but to know that an American author did it makes it all the more surprising, given that a good chunk of them online think Wales is part of England (and that British means just English). Also, Dom is from the Wirral? That... explains a lot (not a bad thing btw. I live nearby and one of our things is goodnaturedly taking the piss out of the Wirral).
The Black Cauldron actually won a technical Oscar for a new process of creating animation cells which was a step up from the Xerox process they were using before. Though it wouldn’t be in use long as they would be using a fully digital system called CAPS by 1991.
This book series is a classic. It's so good to return to even as an adult. As a child I wrote to Lloyd Alexander and he wrote back!
I am waiting desperately for a live action of this, but I suspect the budget and 1985 memory will get in the way.
please do Secret of Nimh. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh is one of my favorite children's books
I’m pretty sure he did! It’s so good!
~17:31 Okay, usually I wouldn't comment on this but Dom brought it on himself by making the comment about half-swording: yes, holding a sword by the blade is clearly different from half-swording, because half-swording refers to griping the blade with one hand in order to direct it into narrow gaps more effectively, whereas Taran is holding the blade with both hands... Which is more in line with the mordhau, or murder-strike, a technique in which the sword is held by the blade in order to use the cross guard as a blunt-force weapon like a mace. You come for the sword pedants, you best not miss, Dominic ;P
I actually shared Dominic Noble's joke on "An interesting scientific experiment that pretty much anyone can do, take any book that's been adapted into a Disney movie to a wide open space make sure you're facing downwind, and throw it as far as you possibly can. If you think you can do better than the first try feel free to pick it up and have as many go's as you like. You'll discover that it's a mathematical certainty that no matter where the book lands it will always be closer to you than the Disney movie adaption to its plot." during a film class where adaptations were brought up, the teacher agreed.
Honestly, I would love a look at The Great Mouse Detective. It's probably In Name Only (not even, as the books are called Basil of Baker Street), but is definitely a much funner film, and kickstarted a whole generation of Sherlock Holmes fans.
My favorite part of the book series was Eilonwy starting to tap into her magical abilities, at one point using her bauble to set a lake on fire, there was also a giant cat that Fflewdder Flam befriended which I loved. I remember having a bit of a crush on Gwydion when I read the series in fifth grade.
hard same to the 'having a crush on Gwydion' XD I liked Aragorn fine, but Gwydion was always my scruffy ranger prince of choice growing up
Omg yessssssss crushing on Gwydion!
@oneinathousand2156 fun fact: in the original Welsh myth, Gwydion is far more of a trickster and wizard figure than a warrior, though he does fight as a warrior in some stories. It's something that's been carried over into modern Celtic paganism.
crushing on Gwydion is practically a rite of passage with this series! He was such a good character
Never crushed on Gwydion, even though most folks expected I would/should...
As should be evident, I was much more into Eilonwy -- and only later figured out why (I'm queer af, that's why! And she's a badass role model.)
The film that actually saved the Disney animation department was The Great Mouse Detective, though I realize it's a bit hard to do a lost in adaptation for like.......the essence of Sherlock Holmes. Still, Basil walked so Ariel could run.
Great Mouse Detective was actually based on a book, so it's still on the table for a Lost in Adaptation!
I mean, the novel Basil of Baker Street does exist.
@@firiel2366 was it? I had no idea!! To the library!
I don't know part of the charm for me was the fact it was terrifying
Same. Kids kind of adore being terrified. (I cannot tell you how many of my elementary schoolers watch/play horror)
Same
A Disney film that had blood, decay, terror, and prostitutes! Katezenburger really was a blight on this.
Of all the movies in Disney's vault, this is the one that most NEEDS a remake. Maybe even a full TV show. You could do a really faithful adaptation these days.
the Horned King's voice equal parts melliferous and malevolent a highlight of the film for me
Well, they did get John Hurt for it...
@@Carabas72And getting Hurt... never does!
As a matter of fact, the movie was somehow succesful in Germany and got an "FSK 6" release (meaning it was for age 6 and over). There were even follow up comics in the style of the "Find your Fate" adventures printed in the German Mickey Mouse Magazine.
I cannot express how delighted I am by the possibility of Dom reviewing The Little Mermaid. I've loved the fairy tale and film version for years. I think it was the first film I saw,
I loved the Black Cauldron movie growing up, it's still one of my favorite movies to pop on. But I think that's because the twisted side of me loved the Horned King. His presence was unnerving and uncomfortable. That creepy raspy voice was so perfect for his design. It was a risky move to basically make him a corpse, but he was a villain that always stood out amongst the amazing selection of villains we do have.
Wow. Dom has some serious Frozen PTSD...
Anyone who had young girls in their lives, whether they're your children, niblings, or children of friends, has some too
He should really let it go.
One day we'll all be able to let it go, let it go!
Right? He really should take a step inton the unknown and let it go 😂 @@garoutail
We all do...
What’s interesting to note is Disney decided to renew their holding rights to “The Chronicles of Prydain” book series. As Disney continues to be on this remake kick, I think a proper adaptation of “The Chronicles of Prydain” that is more faithful to the source material with some nods to the animated film could do quite well with the right cast and crew.
My mom read me the book as a kid. I forgot so much of it. This was truly a treat of a trip down memory lane.
Chronicles of Prydain is what got me into reading as a kid, could never bring myself to watch the movie
I wish I could say the same. Sadly, I watched the movie.
An important thing to remember about why this film nearly killed the animation department is that Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg had just joined Disney and were looking to cut costs where possible. Eisner came from working at Paramount where he had a strong philosophy of “singles and doubles” (ie: producing a bunch of mid-budget features) and the animation department toiling away on a film that was taking way too long was not ideal in their eyes.
The Black Cauldron was my favorite movie as a child, but I was banned from watching it with my friends, after a couple of them had nightmares after seeing it and called my mom to complain :(
This is one of the few Disney animated movies that could actually be improved by a life action version.
I would love to see a Lost in Adaptation of The Great Mouse Detective. Considered your earlier Sherlock Holmes videos and the fact that Basil of Baker Street is itself something of an adaptation, I think it would be perfect for you, Dom.
The fact we live in an artistic world where safe and easy investments mean the stuff that will get remade is stuff that is already loved and popular and not stuff that actually deserves a second chance frusturates me.
I think an animated series based on the Chronicles of Prydain can be absolutely amazing.
For years I remembered a line "It's not good" as being spoken by the Horned King. Turns out that's from Owl in Pooh's Grand Adventure, a film which terrified me so much I confused it with The Black Cauldron!
I remember that line. XD Owl super hams it up and goes: "On a scale of ONE to TEEEENNNN!!! (shuts out all the lights) It's. not! GOOD!"
Don Bluth: "I'll start my own animation company! With Black Jack! And hookers!" Thank you so much for that! Dom, you really know how to [NOTICE TWO THINGS].
If this is the beginning of a Disney classics marathon I'm here for it. But you can't leave it at The Little Mermaid, We need The Rescuers, The Great Mouse Detective and The Fox And The Hound added to the lineup.
This was actually one of my favourite movies growing up. Every weekend when I went to my dad's, we went to the video shop to rent some movies, and one of them would always be The Black Cauldron. He got annoyed that it was all I wanted to watch, but I was an undiagnosed autistic kid that had found a special interest.
Minor correction.
The Disney dark age is usually considered to have begun with Walt's death and the subsequent Free Fall the company was in. Roy took over but after he died, other companies smelled blood in the water. They spent the first few years of the '70s fending off corporate raiders and producing mostly live action movies.
The black cauldron was just the nadir of the dark age, not its cause.
Just want to plug some other Lloyd Alexander properties like the Arkadians where he switches from ripping off Welsh Tolkien to riffing on Greek drama and makes his hero a Ancient Greek accountant-as Dom says, Alexander can really write!
I've never clicked so fast 😲 this was one of my all time favourite Disney movies and because i stupidly bought the second book first i've not read the series yet
The Black Cauldron is my fave Disney cartoon movie. Its one of those ones thats objectively not a good adaptation but i think is highly entertaining in its own right.
Eilonwy swiftly joined Téa Gardner, Misty, and Kiki as "characters 8-11 year old me had a major crush on" before I even watched the film. Thanks, previews.
I rather enjoyed the film when I finally saw it, and I rather enjoyed the actual chronicles, though I found it rather difficult to follow at times and even now I forgot a lot of the content of the series. Maybe one day I'll re-read it.
I know the feeling, crushing on Eilonwy as a kid 😅 Also different Tia (from the Witch Mountain movie adaptations!)
I have always felt that if Disney was going to do live action remakes the should have done ones from the Dark ages like Black Cauldron or the Sword in the Stone. They are ones that could be greatly improved thanks to hindsight and could look amazing in live action. Though with the Black Cauldron being a book series, maybe a movie wouldn't be the best way to go with it. Anyways, Another great video. Keep it going.
21:00 I was hoping he was hinting at The Great Mouse Detective and then the music started 😂
But seriously while The Little Mermaid kicked off the Disney renaissance, The Great Mouse Detective is the movie that saved Disney’s animation department from going under and it is based on a book series, so hey how about some love 😊
I was always excited as a small kid when this movie was being showed on TV. It is probably responsible, at least in part, for my love of Celtic folklore, languages, etc. and I really really hope that one day we'll get the Extended Cut that traumatized those little shites.
Also, I'm pretty sure that it's not the Welsh that makes it impossible to read the bard's name, because that's now how you would spell it in Welsh. I couldn't tell you how to spell it without digging up a guide, but I do know it's anglicized because I at least remember that "fllew" should be spelled "lluegh."
As a bit of a bonus, the way his name is spelled means that everyone is mispronouncing his name; a ""dd" in Welsh is pronounced like a soft "v."
@@KayWhyCommando I had a feeling the double d had a different pronunciation, but I wasn't sure what it was. I thought it might be a soft th, but it seems I was wrong
@@cheezemonkeyeaterYou're right.
Dd (w) = hard Th (e)
Th (w) = soft Th (e)
F (w)= V (e)
Ff (w) = F (e)
So Fflewddur is like Flehoo-thir.
@@gota7738 I stand corrected. I'm only learning Welsh, so to me the "th" sound made by the "DD" sounds very similar to a soft "v."
Either way, though, still not a hard "D" sound.
@KayWhyCommando I totally mixed up the two in another comment and I've been speaking it in since a kid!
Da iawn am dysgu!
I do want to note how *gorgeous* the movie is even to this very day.
Bringing up Richard Rich and not making a single Swan Princess or Mormon joke? I'm very disappointed, Dom. lol.
Yeah, he skipped on gold here
I was expecting at least a reference to the comic/cartoon about the wealthy kid!
I loved reading the Lloyd Alexander books as a kid, that movie is like if they tried combining the first two books and throwing in elements of the other 3
My grandpa owned one of the original animation frames from the movie and hung it above the bed in his guest room. That thing scared the shit out of me as a kid
5:51 I have never related to a TH-camr more than this moment.
Bonus points if you are forced to replay the Frozen level in KH3 as well
Omg that level was the most ridiculous thing I have ever scene.
This is one of the very few Disney Classics I never got around to watching. Thank you for the episode, Dominic! And that teaser has me tantalised, I'd love to see you do the first Disney classic i ever saw ❤
The movie trailers were all over the Disney VHS tapes. My mom of course fast forwarded that because scary (she wasn’t wrong)
Eventually she got me to read the books. I loved them.
Never have seen the movie, never want to because of how they changed how the Black Caldron is dealt with.
Also, loved the giant cat that shows up later in the books. She is just, so cool
Honestly the movie is a good time. It’s not the books obviously, but is a fun supplement. I highly recommend it.
I have never been this early. I love that you're doing one of my favorite childhood movies!
Actually, the editors didn't want to touch it, they thought it was good as is. Jeffry Katzenberg, Petty Asshole, did the re-edits himself.
Having seen everything that can be found on what was cut, whether it be test footage, or story boards . . . well, the ending was a bit more coherent in that you could actually tell what was going on and there were a few additional character beats of the bard stoking Tarran's ego, which explains why he was suddenly so aggressive towards the princess when she questioned him, and it had a stronger opening . . . but I honestly don't think the original cut would have been any more successful. It still would have had to compete with expectations of the time, it still had numerous plot and character issues, the Horned King is still a boring villain, so it had a lot working against its success.
I have never clicked on an alert so fast.
Saaaaaame
I was a little late to actually watching, but you'd better believe I clicked as soon as I saw it too!
My grandmother was welsh and I used to love to visit north wales as a kid. Lots of fond memories visiting Conway Castle.
"I can only assume that the people involved had never met or even been a teenager!"
I am convinced that business, economics, and politics majors, upon graduation, undergo a procedure to have the bone removed from their brains that lets them remember what it was like to be a teenager.
Honestly I have no hatred for this film. It got me into the books in the first place. Was my favorite movie as a kid, it’s a guilty pleasure nowadays.
I want to see a video of Dom singing "Let it go".
That skit at 18:30 is PERFECTION.
Since Disney insists on badly remaking their classic films in lousy CGI augmented live action, I wish they'd go back and revisit some of their less successful films. Top of my list is "The Black Cauldron". 1) Broaden it to AT LEAST a trilogy, or maybe a miniseries. 2) Give this thing the full "Labyrinth" treatment. Human cast with people either in monster suits, or straight-up puppets. Think "Jim Henson's: The Storyteller". I also feel like "The Aristocats" could be given the live-action "101 Dalmatians" treatment. It's time all the cat people got a movie too, right?
“Less subtle about Tolkien’s influence” proceeds to list a bunch of extremely common fairy tale tropes (if not straight out of the Mabinogion). If two authors have the same influences, that doesn’t mean one ripped off the other.
I mean, both authors are Welsh influenced, so i image the fanasty and the likes would be very similar. Kinda like how 2 authors from Japan make a story based on their native folklore would be quite similar
Yeah, he's made the mistake of thinking these tropes originated with JRRT when they were almost directly pulled from the Mabinogion, which itself is drawn from IRON AGE oral legends.
It's not for nothing that Tolkien is called the father of fantasy. He created and/or codified several tropes
To be fair I'm not sure if the tropes he listed do turn up in the Mabinogi or other older Welsh myths.
I can't really recall a story where there's a McGuffin that tempts people to evil, a story about an unassuming young man from the countryside, seemingly small acts of kindness that come back around, and not really conveniently outcold characters to avoid graphic descriptions of violence.
Perhaps a side-character of ambiguous loyalty like Efnisien or Gwydion, but those guys cause a lot more trouble I'd argue.
There's a very different feel to Welsh legends that later "mythic" storytelling doesn't quite fall in line with.
@@gota7738 All of the tropes he listed show up (at latest) in Grimm, which are a collection of German folk tales, if not much older (the “annoying” or creepy “Gollum-esque” character and the item that corrupts otherwise good characters both show up in the Ring of the Nibelungen), and the “casual act of mercy that eventually pays back manifold” (especially to birds) is nearly a human universal tale.
"...it would only be fair if I have a look at the adaptation that ended [the Disney Dark Age] and saved the animation department."
The Great Mouse Detective Hype!
(I know, I know, it's really The Little Mermaid, but a guy can dream, can't he?)
Richy Rich - His parents were fans of Archie Comics.
Harvey Comics. Richie Rich, Casper the Friendly Ghost, etc.
The best thing about this movie was getting people like me to watch it young and eventually getting us to check out the excellent books later in life.
I watched this in France when I was a kid. I loved it so much. Kids can love dark movies. Just like adults can love horror. Same reason too.
I did rewatch it decades later and the decision to cast John Hurt will be echoed by Hasbro casting Orson Welles. A genius gift to the audience, moreso than to the actor. And also, still so much darker than you'd expect from the people making it.
This movie most definitely traumatised a lot of children with it's blood and gore.
Me at the age of 3 or 4: "OOOOH, YES THE HORNED KING DIES! YEEEEEEEEESSSSS!!!!! (also I like how taran looks ngl but I'll realise why in about 12-14 years)"
9:04 This story alone makes me want to see a "making of movie" treatment for the Black Cauldron like Saving Mr Banks, but less sanitized!
As a small child, I watched this on VHS over and over again without ever understanding what was going on lol. I just liked the animated undead and watched it for that.
I didn't know what a terrible adaptation this was, but the movie holds a strange 'could have been' sort of nostalgia for folks of a certain generation. Kid me would love to have seen the original, un-chopped-up version of this movie
The Little Mermaid did usher in the Disney Renaissance, but the movie that actually saved the animation studio was The Great Mouse Detective. They wouldn't have been given the green light to adapt Little Mermaid if Great Mouse Detective hadn't done so well.
I love this series, I first read it when I was 10 and it jump started my love of fantasy that endures to this day. I also like the Disney movie too despite it's flaws.
Considering that I know who the "nameless" Disney execs at the start of this are actually, just makes this funnier. Here's a hint: one of them would make fun of the other in the film version of Shrek.
I love the Prydain series. Disney made the mistake of trying to combine everything together. It ruined the story. They could have had a great series of movies and blew it. It's been decades, and I'm still angry over Disney's treatment. The least Disney could do since the own the movie rights is give this a live action treatment and finally do justice to it.
ETA: I loved this series so much (yes, I am old af) that I dragged my now husband to the movie when it was released. It says a lot about his tolerance that we stayed together. Utter trash (the movie, not him).
I read the Chronicles of Prydain at least once a year from fourth grade until high school. If I were to ever realize my filmmaking dreams, it would be to adapt the Chronicles of Prydain Peter Jackson LOTR style.
Dom, I always forget you're from the Wirral and it shocks me every time 😂
I'm from the Port and unfortunately, I still have the accent.
I am also now a proud member of the Wirral Beautiful Watchers; I just moved to Eastham.
Eastham's lovely! An actual village as opposed to an industrial shithole 😂
As an American in a large area of the US with very little accent differences, it amazes me that someone can grow up across a River from Wales and not sound a little welsh.
Alexander and Tolkien were both pulling from the same sources of inspiration: Welsh Mythology, particularly the Mabinogion. Though Tolkien also added Scandinavian and Wagner's Ring Cycle as influences on him as well, while Alexander was more straight up just sticking to purely Welsh mythology alone.
He slso borrowed from Finnish mythology ^^
Tolkien himself allegedly denounced any influence by Wagner's works. They were both harping on the original Germanic myths, and Wagner's adaption comes across as an early example of disneyfication.
I haven't seen it in a long time, but the movie was honestly one of my favourites as a kid. When I got to college, my Film Studies teacher had the same moustache, and haircut, as Gurgi and it always made me smile.
You know it's bad when the movie lost out in the box office to the Care Bears when that movie was already out for several weeks back in the 80s!
Still waiting for something simialr to happen with the love qctiom Disney movies.
Having lived through that time period, cutesy and pink ALWAYS won out over dark and cool....it was MADDENING!
@starmaker75 Maybe it'll finally happen with that Snow White film.
As a woman closely named to Henwig/Hedwig, this movie is forever cursed in my mind and I even glossed it over when me and my husband were watching all the disney movies. ("No no darling. Disney didn't release any movies in 80s before Great mouse detective. REALLY BAD TIME!") You can't imagind how much grief I got from my bullies because my name was sounding like a pig's.
10:58 - point of order, the letter ‘Dd’/‘dd’ is not pronounced as ‘d’. Yes you read that right, it’s a single letter, not two sequential ds. The closest way I can think to transcribe it is its close to, but not quite, how you pronounce ‘th’ in English (which side note, used to be itself by a single letter, represented by the thorn, but that was lost over time, largely due to it being omitted from printing presses for resembling a Y too closely). I’d peg it as about halfway between a ‘th’ and a ‘v’.
Similarly, if you see a ‘Ll’/‘ll’ in a Welsh word it’s approximately pronounced as a combination between a ‘th’ and a ‘L’ in English.
A welsh Ll doesn't really have a close approximation I don't think. I hear people use Ch as a substitute but it's still not really close.
The best instruction I've known for it is to keep your mouth in an L shape, with your tongue on your hard palate, and exhale hard, pushing the breath around your tongue and between your teeth.
Live action remake. This deserve the live action remake. With the darker elements used in Malefecent.
No CGI unless absolutely necessary EXCEPT the Horned King and keep John Hurts recorded lines.
Film it in New Zealand, in case anyone misses the LOTR refrences. (Bonus points for the confused Narina fans)
Honestly it’s disappointing just how much was left out, because some of that stuff could have made for prime cartoony humor. Like when the evil sorceress captured Taran and Gwydion she tries to intimidate them by casually breaking Gwydion’s sword, only to fail multiple times and hurt herself in the attempt that did eventually work.
if it wasn't Frozen, it was probably going to be Trolls that you have to sing over and over again.
Also this sounds like an DnD campaign gone wrong in both versions lol
Explaining Black Cauldron like it was a DnD Campaign:
DM: Then the NPC Gurgi sacrifices himself to the black to save everyone
Players: No we love him don't kill him
DM: But this the climax of the story
Players: But we got to know him so well, we want to adventure more with him
DM: If you guys hadn't taken so long with Fairfolk you would meet Ellidyr but I had to cut him out
Players: Pretty please
DM: Fine... but I'm adding an horrifying death scene for the Horned King enjoy~
Players: AHHHHH!! ☠
has i said before on a previous comment section of Lost in Adaptation episode this movie is a freaking disaster of adaptation smashing the first two books in the series together and changing the characters for for no reason you better off reading the comic book adaptation by Saeriellyn online
Definitely not. I remember just pausing mentally when I saw Disney cut most of Taran’s journey through the forest. That(And his meeting with a legendary hero) is where a lot of his character development is set in motion, the atmosphere would’ve been prime for some of Disney’s darker animation, and it was where the film pretty much died for me. Taran suddenly having the selflessness to make any sort of heroic sacrifice rings hollow when we don’t see what put him on that path.