Good story, Not enough for a whole film

A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

A young boy and a bunch of misfit friends embark on a quest to find a dark magic item of ultimate power before a diabolical tyrant can.With the budget of $44 million, it was the most expensive animated film ever made at the time. Earning $21.3 million domestically, it led to a loss for the studio, putting the future of Walt Disney Feature Animation in jeopardy. Due to its poor performance, Disney released the film for the first time on home video in 1998.Despite growing up in the 1980s, I actually never heard of this Disney film or any of its characters. Even now (2017) when I finally watched it, it seemed like a film that never existed. If Disney tried to bury it, I can understand it being forgotten throughout the 90s, especially as their second golden age was overshadowing decades of duds.The movie itself is neither good nor bad. A few repeat viewings and it would probably grow on me, but there are no really memorable characters. And there are no songs, which is what really makes a Disney cartoon immortal.

Seeing The Black Cauldron again in my 30's, and on DVD (albeit a blu-ray, or in full 70MM, would have been preferred), is a different experience than seeing it when I was 13 or 14 or whenever it was the movie first hit VHS (Disney didn't put it out when I was little, otherwise I would've seen it then). I recognize more references now - the little dog voiced by John Byner is clearly, whether it was from the book(s) or not, an homage/rip-off of Gollum (like the cuter/fluffier/Happy Meal version), and the feeling of Lord of the Rings permeates a lot here. So does the Dark Crystal. Perhaps a lot of fantasy stories feed from the same trough as Tolkien, or it goes back further (from what I've read these books are inspired by Welsh folktales or something like that), and so familiarity is inevitable. Watching it now though, as opposed to when I had less discerning taste, I wish this had a stronger story and was not cut off at the knees as an 80 minute tale (with credits).Maybe Katzenberg was right when he literally took the reels of film, which was unheard of at the time for an animated feature at Disney, and cut into it to remove however many minutes (from what I read it was between 10 and 15 minutes, as though this would make the film more palatable for audiences, though allegedly some of the cuts were to reduce it from a PG-13 or, as one might want to believe the "street cred" of this, an R). What I have is what's before me, and The Black Cauldron is a style over substance piece of fantasy cinema. It's fitting that it's the first (and since, the last) time since Sleeping Beauty that was released on 70MM, the prestige film format, since it is a spectacle to behold and full of the kind of widescreen dark sorcery that a full widescreen gives a story like that or this.It's interesting for me to see the star rating I give this and then for Sleeping Beauty as they're almost the same, but it's about expectations: SB has one of the highest pedigrees in all of Disney, so to see it and be a little let down is where that comes from. With Black Cauldron, this is one of the most ambitious films of the 1980's, animated or otherwise. The filmmakers here (the directors previously had a small success with The Fox and the Hound, the last of the "9 Old Men" animated films at Disney) are shooting for something grander and more serious-minded, at least in some spirit, than their other films; it's the first time that there are no songs to be heard (though one was animated it was cut before release); there's animation of skeletons rising from the dead, the "Cauldron Borne", that likely inspired scenes in Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness. It aims to have the scope of its spiritual influence of Lord of the Rings in its layouts and some of its character designs.But, at the end of the day, it's still a Walt Disney animated film, and it is in an uneasy area. Reading the history of how this got made is fascinating in that the connections to its production extend to Ralph Bakshi (who turned it down) and Don Bluth who was at Disney through some of its development but left the company before it really ramped up as its 25th production. By the time Black Cauldron hit theaters in the summer of 1985, it was three years after Bluth made his breakthrough with Secret of NIMH, which is a "family" film but dark as hell and maintains its tone. The animators and story people and producers of Black Cauldron can't keep a consistent tone, and that's a tricky thing to manage. Hell, Disney just barely was able to maintain it on a razor's edge with Snow White, and here the problem is that the main characters (the young man on his quest, the princess of wherever who joins up with him midway through) are really dull and not given much personality.So mostly what you're left with are some charming animated scenes, but sparingly (the little fairy characters or whoever they are are nice to see, but are a little familiar too), and then a lot of (for kids) dark stuff involving the Horn King (voiced brilliantly by John Hurt) and a character like the talking dog. Its plot is so thin, and I'm not sure if this is due to the many years of it being in production, that it was in a sort of odd slump of the end of that age of Disney animation of those left from those later days of Disney, and right as the new group would come in (I saw Don Hahn in the credits as production manager, and he'd go on to be involved/produce/direct the 90s animated films). And yet, and it's a big yet, I love the LOOK of this film (with a couple of small reservations, i.e. some character animation seeming to be too pencil-drawn like it's still Sword in the Stone, but whatever).This has a ridiculous budget, a lot of imagination in its design, and the money seems to be mostly up there on the screen. The ambition to translate an (sort of, maybe not) unique world from those books to screen is commendable, and near the end the filmmakers do try to make some emotional stakes matter with one character. The Black Cauldron is a miss, but it's a wonderful miss, and I'm glad it got finished in some form, despite its script issues and hit or miss voicework.

I was (and still am) a big fan of the books this movie is based on. Maybe that's part of the reason why I was kind of unimpressed by it.It had some good moments - the skeletal warriors were done up in a pretty cool manner, and the scene where Hen Wen is captured is rather well-done. I thought the voice acting was pretty good, for Dallben and Taran in particular. I think one major drawback of the film is that it tries to take a story that feels like a medieval legend and turn it into a typical fairytale. The animation of Doli and the Fair Folk is a prime example of this - they're turned into cute little fairies, almost like non- blue Smurfs with wings, complete with adorable child fairies - rather than the more classic kind of fair folk as being more like elves, dwarfs, or more naturalistic beings like dryads and the like. Gurgi got similar treatment. It kept Eilonwy's fiery temperament, but only at the beginning - by the end, she was just another damsel in distress relying on Taran (who, in the books, is kind of an idiot and always being told so) to pull them out of trouble. The scene in the Marshes of Morva was particularly disappointing, turning three very interesting and creepy characters into cartoonish, silly witches who somehow know of the heroes plans even though the heroes never spoke to them about it. The replacement of Arawn with the Horned King, who's done up like some kind of demonic living skeleton, is also disappointing - I guess just having a really evil guy was not good enough? They also left out major characters and plot points.Other drawbacks include sometimes-shoddy animation, and many overly drawn-out "adventure" scenes - chases around the evil castle, the wondrous but somehow boring discovery of magical fairy magicalness, the cauldron takes like 15 min or something to actually be destroyed, even them fleeing in a boat feels painfully slow.All in all, this movie has a few nice points and isn't super terrible, but it's also not particularly interesting.

I watched this movie expecting a movie for children but a while in I had to notice that it is not at all suitable for children under the age of 6 or even 10. Other than Bambi for example the unsuitable content isn't limited to one scene but is pulled through half of the movie beginning with the body and ending with the movie. The beginning is cute and the characters are nice and funny but now and then you feel a bit freaked out by some situations. The tension is built up in the body and explodes in the final leaving young minds exposed to the spooky action terror drama set up at the end. If I had seen this movie at primary school age I'd be traumatized and I would have the permanent fear of losing someone. To put it in a nutshell for me it was a big mistake and I am desperately disappointed in Disney.