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Link to original post: [drupal=1120]Movie Review: The Black Cauldron[/drupal]
The Black Cauldron is an obscure animated Disney movie that I received as a gift from a relative at Christmas, it wasn't until today that I actually popped it in and watched it. I like this movie, not because it's good, because it's bad. It's so bad that I can't recommend it to anyone. And this movie fills in the check list of what not to do with a fantasy story so perfect. I liked it because it was so bad that I could spent the next twenty or so minuets writing a wall of text talking about how bad it is.
It's as if the writers of the film have a general idea of what fantasy is, may have even seen the covers of a few fantasy books too, but can't quite grasp it. All of the characters are the most cookie-cuter-est of all of the cookie-cuter characters in the world and are just so **** unlikeable. The main character is a whiny annoying little whip who really needs to shut up. You have this old bard guy who just popped up out of nowhere with no back-story... actually that's another thing that this movie does wrong; the character's aren't developed in the least bit. Take the main villain, the Horned King. Apparently he's supposed to be this evil overlord living in seclusion that everyone knows and fears. But there's absolutely no evidence of this anywhere in the film. Yeah, he has an evil castle and is dark and scary and all of that stuff but the don't show any evidence of him being well known and having apparently done something that makes people afraid of him. Then again, everything appears to be within walking distance of his castle so that might be how he's so well known. They also show lack of evidence when the lead female, Princess such-and-such, just kind of pops out of nowhere and says that she been captured by the evil King for... some reason. Well, you only have her word for it that she's a princess and if she is it would seem that her country is mostly swampland. Characters also appear and disappear with no reasoning. In one part you have this old Fairy who enters the film and somehow magically knows where the all-might evil Black Cauldron is so he takes them to it and then after they get it from these annoying witches he just says that he's done and pops out of the film. There's also an annoying dog-like thing in the movie that talks like Gollum and is really annoying.
This movie has a lot of consistency problems too, like how the main character's hair color starts as red and then is a shade of dark brown at the end of the film. And they also have a lot of obvious mistakes in the film, like how at one part the main character takes the chains off a gate but then the chains magically appear back on in the next scene. The character's have magical color-changing clothes too and can some how be right-handed in one scene and then left-handed in the next.
It just occurred to me that I haven't even talked about the plot yet, so now I will spend a paragraph on that. Okay, so there this kid who lives on the world's smallest farm (and has a suspicious resemblance to Link) and he lives with this old man. The kid's main job is to take care of this pig, who can stick it's snout in water in order to create visions of the future. Turns out that the Horned King knows about this pig's power... some how.... and wants it to find where the Black Cauldron is. The Black Cauldron is this evil Cauldron (duh) that has the soul of an evil king fused into it, although there is no evidence of this we just have the narrator's word for it. Anyway, so whoever has the Cauldron can do... evil... stuff...? So then the old dude sends the hero to a near-by town (which we never see, actually, there are no towns in this movie, seriously!) where the pig is somehow safe. But along the way, some Wyvrns (I don't remember how to spell it) steal the pig, hero peruses, gets captured by evil dude, meets princess, ect. ect. ect. up until the very anti-climatic ending in which the Horned King summons an evil army of the dead to take over the world but are destroyed when the dog-thing jumps into the cauldron. Horned King tries to re-summon them, but gets sucked into the Cauldron and dies. The end.
This movie bombed at the theaters because it sucked. This movie was so bad that it didn't even achieve status as "cult-classic." This film was Disney's attempt to try and appeal to an older crowd with an animated movie. That's bound to fail, that's like Family Guy trying to do a dead-serious episode. And yes, before you ask how different from the average Disney movie it is I'll let you know that there is blood, sex and no musical numbers. So, Black Cauldron; a terrible failed attempt that should be burred along with the E.T. game and the Eragon movie.
2/10, on reflection the zombies were kind of cool.
The Black Cauldron is an obscure animated Disney movie that I received as a gift from a relative at Christmas, it wasn't until today that I actually popped it in and watched it. I like this movie, not because it's good, because it's bad. It's so bad that I can't recommend it to anyone. And this movie fills in the check list of what not to do with a fantasy story so perfect. I liked it because it was so bad that I could spent the next twenty or so minuets writing a wall of text talking about how bad it is.
It's as if the writers of the film have a general idea of what fantasy is, may have even seen the covers of a few fantasy books too, but can't quite grasp it. All of the characters are the most cookie-cuter-est of all of the cookie-cuter characters in the world and are just so **** unlikeable. The main character is a whiny annoying little whip who really needs to shut up. You have this old bard guy who just popped up out of nowhere with no back-story... actually that's another thing that this movie does wrong; the character's aren't developed in the least bit. Take the main villain, the Horned King. Apparently he's supposed to be this evil overlord living in seclusion that everyone knows and fears. But there's absolutely no evidence of this anywhere in the film. Yeah, he has an evil castle and is dark and scary and all of that stuff but the don't show any evidence of him being well known and having apparently done something that makes people afraid of him. Then again, everything appears to be within walking distance of his castle so that might be how he's so well known. They also show lack of evidence when the lead female, Princess such-and-such, just kind of pops out of nowhere and says that she been captured by the evil King for... some reason. Well, you only have her word for it that she's a princess and if she is it would seem that her country is mostly swampland. Characters also appear and disappear with no reasoning. In one part you have this old Fairy who enters the film and somehow magically knows where the all-might evil Black Cauldron is so he takes them to it and then after they get it from these annoying witches he just says that he's done and pops out of the film. There's also an annoying dog-like thing in the movie that talks like Gollum and is really annoying.
This movie has a lot of consistency problems too, like how the main character's hair color starts as red and then is a shade of dark brown at the end of the film. And they also have a lot of obvious mistakes in the film, like how at one part the main character takes the chains off a gate but then the chains magically appear back on in the next scene. The character's have magical color-changing clothes too and can some how be right-handed in one scene and then left-handed in the next.
It just occurred to me that I haven't even talked about the plot yet, so now I will spend a paragraph on that. Okay, so there this kid who lives on the world's smallest farm (and has a suspicious resemblance to Link) and he lives with this old man. The kid's main job is to take care of this pig, who can stick it's snout in water in order to create visions of the future. Turns out that the Horned King knows about this pig's power... some how.... and wants it to find where the Black Cauldron is. The Black Cauldron is this evil Cauldron (duh) that has the soul of an evil king fused into it, although there is no evidence of this we just have the narrator's word for it. Anyway, so whoever has the Cauldron can do... evil... stuff...? So then the old dude sends the hero to a near-by town (which we never see, actually, there are no towns in this movie, seriously!) where the pig is somehow safe. But along the way, some Wyvrns (I don't remember how to spell it) steal the pig, hero peruses, gets captured by evil dude, meets princess, ect. ect. ect. up until the very anti-climatic ending in which the Horned King summons an evil army of the dead to take over the world but are destroyed when the dog-thing jumps into the cauldron. Horned King tries to re-summon them, but gets sucked into the Cauldron and dies. The end.
This movie bombed at the theaters because it sucked. This movie was so bad that it didn't even achieve status as "cult-classic." This film was Disney's attempt to try and appeal to an older crowd with an animated movie. That's bound to fail, that's like Family Guy trying to do a dead-serious episode. And yes, before you ask how different from the average Disney movie it is I'll let you know that there is blood, sex and no musical numbers. So, Black Cauldron; a terrible failed attempt that should be burred along with the E.T. game and the Eragon movie.
2/10, on reflection the zombies were kind of cool.
