'The Black Cauldron' retro movie review (1985)

 

Before Games of Thrones and after Lord of the Rings where was The Chronicles of Prydain. Every Nerd in the seventies read this series before Lord of the Rings. Following the rise of Taran, the lowly pig keeper, In to the Chaos of the princesses, wizards, swords and the horned King. Disney purchased the rights fairly quickly. Then used that carrot to hire the next generation animation talent. Which they did, should have set up Disney for domination for the next generation.

 Unfortunately, with Walt Disney’s passing The Nine Old Men were left running the show. Walt was the visionary, extremely talented, and driving force that was Disney. The Nine Old Men were his minions, carrying out the creative out pouring. Talented in their own right but they weren’t the Disney magic. They also were used to having a wonderful advantage of being the only game in town in several ways. Not much competition for animation movies, children’s entertainment or color. Where else could one see vibrant colors? By the time work started on The Black Caldron they were well aged. The Nine Old men notably all worked on ‘Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs’ 1937. Fast forward 50 years they were past their creative prime. It might be unfair and even blasphemy to say such things. But they didn’t grow up with Black Caldron and by all accounts the attempts at bringing the characters to animation life were subpar to the next generation that was brought in to work on this movie. In reality no one was running the show over the course of almost twenty years on this project, all sorts of people were signing off on stories, character development, ideas, technology, what format to use that made little sense. And no one seemed to remember why or who made these decisions.

Don Bluth left due to creative signation, taking a number of animators with him, had a string of hits like The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, The Land Before time before having financial problems do to several distributors and financial backers pulling out at the worst moment. John Lasseter was let go from Disney for pushing computer Animation. He ended up over at Pixar, directing Toy Story. Tim Burton who creating some amazing artwork that was turned down also left, ending up a house hold name just a few years later.

The Black Cauldron Trailer

This movie sort of became the changing of the guard at Disney. In came Michael Eisner and Roy E Disney changing the random decisions being made by anyone that walked by, lifted the ban on sequels, having screen plays written instead of a couple vague story boards (worked with simple fairy tales) less so with a movie spanning over 5 books with a cast of 30 characters, focusing on more grown-up entertainment.

Troubled History short video

The Black Cauldron is an enjoyable movie. Stripped down to a few characters, having a boy, girl, black caldron and the Horned King. The animation is very Disney, the story moves quickly due to trying to fit so many elements of the first two books. While it fails to capture the saga, it does unfold a good little movie. If marketed better and released in the mid seventies instead of a decade late it could have been a decent hit. Being stuck in development and trying to use outdated format with several methods that didn’t add much or work out that added to a ballooned budget of 44 million. The Great Mouse Detective that was release one year later had a budget of 14 million was considered a hit with a million less dollar opening weekend.