The Black Cauldron is probably the most non-Disney animated Disney movie I have ever seen. It's dark, it's atmospheric and the story is pretty epic. However, it's execution isn't great. Particularly when it comes to the kind of character development that Disney has always been known for. I know it's an odd pick for my first Disney animated movie review for this segment, but that's exactly why I decided to review it today, because it's not just a review of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or any of the other classic Disney movies that one would think of to review in a segment called Disney Reviews.
This movie came out at a strange time for Disney. 1984 had seen the arrival of new CEO, Michael Eisner, who replaced Ron Miller, who had stepped in following Roy O. Disney's death in the '70s, and studio executive, Jeffrey Katzenberg, who inherited this movie from the previous studio head. Neither Eisner nor Katzenberg knew anything about animation and Katzenberg was not happy about the animation studio in general and this film in particular. The Black Cauldron had been in development at Disney since 1973, which probably freaked Katzenberg out since he and Eisner had come from Paramount, where there were more stricter deadlines when it came to producing movies. And while The Fox and the Hound is considered to be the last movie that Walt's core group of animators, the Nine Old Men, worked on, The Black Cauldron is actually that movie because some members of the Nine Old Men worked on the film at different stages of development.
The studio was in limbo because on the animation side, the movies produced since Walt's death hadn't done as well financially as the movies Walt had made from 1937 to 1967. And despite Katzenberg's best efforts, the movie bombed at the box office. And it did so because it's a really dark movie and Disney, especially at the time had made movies that everyone could watch. There are dark/scary moments in movies like Snow White, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, but none of those films are so dark that children can't watch them. This is a movie that children probably shouldn't watch if they're under a certain age. Because it is pretty scary at certain points. Which is a shame because the story the movie is based on is actually pretty amazing.
I actually read The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander about ten years ago or so when I borrowed it from the library because I wanted to read as many of the stories that the Disney movies were based on. It's been a while, but I remember the book is much better than the movie. Partly because the main protagonist, Taran, isn't completely useless as he is in the movie. Also the book had more wit and charm to it than the Disney animated adaptation does.
Normally I try to give movies the benefit of the doubt, especially if they're adaptations of a book or comic where not everything can or should be translated to the screen from the page. In this case I'm making an exception because, having read the source material, I know Disney could've done a lot better with this material than they did. So to have a movie that has no substance or point to the main character, while giving the promise of something epic is worse than if it was just a bad movie created without having source material to pull from. Normally Disney is really good at making movie adaptations of books. I mean they've been doing it since 1921 (when it was known as Laugh-O-Gram Studios). But this time around it just didn't work.
My biggest problem with this movie is that Taran is useless. He's supposed to be the hero, but he doesn't actually do anything the whole movie. Princess Eilonwy rescues him from the Horned King's dungeon, he fails to protect Hen Wen, resulting in both of them getting captured, and he doesn't even defeat the Horned King. Gurgi does. In other words, apart from being the main protagonist of the original books, Taran is unnecessary in this movie. He doesn't grow, he doesn't learn, he's stagnate. And that's because Disney made the mistake of focusing on the first two books, when it's really all five books of The Chronicles of Prydain that shapes and molds Taran from what he was in the first book, to what he becomes by the end of the final book. Plus he's so arrogant and whiny that I couldn't stand him the entire movie. Why Disney? Why did you do this?
The Black Cauldron is pretty strange when it comes to how Disney regards it. Following it's initial failure at the box office in 1985, Disney did it's best to bury the film. Yet, by 1998 they released it on VHS as part of the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection. It was one of the last animated Disney movies, that wasn't the package films, to have a home video release. What's odd is that while it was one of the last animated movie to come out on VHS, it was one of the first Disney movies to get a DVD release, when it came out as part of the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection. It got a DVD release before Snow White and Beauty and the Beast did. Then it got another DVD release ten years ago in 2010. I never owned this movie on any home media platform. I've only seen it on Disney+. But unless I was trying to have a complete collection of the VHS releases in the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection line, I probably wouldn't pick up The Black Cauldron on DVD or VHS just because it's not that good of a movie.
Overall, this could've been an epic movie. But the characters leave much to be desired and the inability to tell a coherent story severely hampers this movie. I know it has it's fans, though I don't know how much of a fanbase it has or whether the people who like it only like it because it's a fascinating movie given it's troubled production and how badly it did for Disney back in the mid-'80s. Because it is a fascinating movie to look at. Not just because of it's troubled production but because visually it is a gorgeous, albeit outdated, movie. And the score, by Elmer Bernstein, who was responsible for the score for the 1984 film, Ghostbusters, is amazing too. It's just the story and the characters that aren't good. I'm giving The Black Cauldron 4/10 stars.
Links
Disney Wiki: https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/The_Black_Cauldron
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