The Black Cauldron

As the 25^th animated Disney film, The Black Cauldron is definitely the least known film of Disney’s Bronze Age.  It was also the first Disney movie to use CGI animation (or computer- generated imagery) and the first ever Disney movie to be rated PG.  When the film was released (after a complicated production process), it was not received well by critics as they thought the movie’s tone was too dark and the script was bad; and though the animation voice acting and score received praise, the film also did poorly financially, grossing 21 million but costing 44 million to make.  And to add insult to injury, it was outgrossed by its rival movie The Care Bears Movie.  Despite its reputation, it has a small cult following today.  This movie is definitely the strangest movie I’ve reviewed so far, and I actually had plans to skip this one; but after learning the movie’s history (it almost bankrupted Disney’s animation department), I decided that it played too important a part to skip.  I would love to hear your thoughts on this relatively unknown Disney film!

The Black Cauldron (loosely based on the book series The Chronicles of Prydain) is about a young assistant pig keeper, Taran, who wants to be a warrior.  Soon into the movie, he finds out that the pig he takes care of, Hen-Wen, has the power to see into the future; and Hen-Wen then has a vision that the Horned King is after her so that the King can use her to find the Black Cauldron (so that he can resurrect his army of the dead and destroy Prydain).  What a guy!  Taran’s mentor/boss sends Taran off with Hen-Wen to protect them both but Hen-Wen gets captured anyway due to Taran’s foolishness.  Taran then goes on a quest to find her and to defeat the Horned King once and for all (while meeting some interesting characters along the way).  This is quite the movie and does surprisingly have some nice parts (like how very adorable Hen Wen is!); and on some level, I can appreciate parts of it since it reminds me of the fantasy books that I like to read.  But, it’s hard to know what morals it’s trying to send out to watchers, as this movie is the darkest out of all the Disney movies I’ve reviewed and is extremely flawed in other ways too.  First of all, the Horned King is super dark and could definitely give young kids (or just about anyone) nightmares; second of all, I didn’t like the main character, Taran, at all, as he is very rude to Princess Eilonwy, a girl he “befriends” when captured by The Horned King.  Taran  says that she can’t do anything heroic cause she’s a girl, so I do hope they didn’t end up together because Eilonwy deserved better than that jerk!  He is very rude also to Gurgi a most adorable character that he meets, calling him a coward for being scared of The Horned King.  Speaking of Gurgi, there is a disturbing scene regarding him; when Taran and crew (minus Gurgi) are captured, Gurgi feels that everything is his fault so he jumps into the Black Cauldron and dies.  This scene seems to imply that he took his own life because he felt as if he had no friends.  Overall, I would strongly caution parents of any kid due to the violent scenes in this film, the rudeness of Taran and, most importantly of all, the death of Gurgi.  I really do hate that Gurgi took his own life because he felt so very, very alone.  I wish he knew that life does get better, whether he could see it or not in the moment he was in.  Even when life here is really tough, there is always hope that it will not always be so.

“What does a girl know about swords, anyway?” (Taran)

“’Girl’?  ‘Girl’?  If it wasn’t for this girl, you would still be in the Horned King’s dungeon.” (Princess Eilonwy)