The Black Cauldron

The Black Cauldron (1985)

If Disney’s popularity and financial success had already begun waning a little in the 70’s, then this is where they truly hit rock bottom – The Black Cauldron was a financial and critical disaster for Disney and suddenly, the possibility of shutting down the animation department entirely became very real. The Black Cauldron’s failure to perform at the box office is likely due to the fact that Disney tried to take things in a different direction here, with a much darker tone than previous efforts – indeed, it was the first of their films to receive a PG rating in the US. Though this new direction did not impress audiences or most critics and I agree that it doesn’t quite work perfectly, I have a certain admiration for this different approach and, while a lot of The Black Cauldron is rather average, it can at times be very fun.

Disney slipped back into use the xerography process of animation for one last time and while it’s disappointing to see them kind of take a step back from The Fox and The Hound, the animation in The Black Cauldron is good enough that you can rarely see the problems of the xerography style; the only time things really become a problem is with some of the close-ups of the Horned King and notably in the character of Fflewddur Flam, who bizarrely is the only character who frequently appears with scratchy outlines and rough animation. Otherwise, the animation is really quite good, it’s not some of Disney’s best and only rarely demonstrates their traditional passion and energy, but it’s fun to watch and there are some really creative and interesting things they can do with the film’s unique (for Disney anyway) dark fantasy setting. Appropriately for the film’s darker tone, the film also has a darker look, with less bright and vibrant colours and a sort of dark fog covering the environment at all times; the film is still relatively colourful, but it plays this down and uses a lot of darker shades to better suit the style of the film. The character designs are done in a traditional Disney style, if a little less exaggerated, again to fit the film’s more mature tone, they are most reminiscent of those from The Sword in the Stone – logically enough, considering they are both set in medieval fantasy worlds – but some characters, such as the Horned King and Creeper, are pretty unique and interesting in their design. The backgrounds are mostly very good, the forests are surprisingly bland for a Disney film – though again, this suits the film, as here the forest is a dark and dangerous place, not a beautiful, pastoral landscape – but areas like the Horned King’s castle and the mountains approaching it are very well drawn. These backgrounds are often reminiscent of Maleficent’s castle in the feeling of emptiness, ruin and death they create; the Horned King’s castle is large and full of people, yet it is does not feel alive, but rather an old, decrepit shell of its former self, full of cracked stone, torn banners, cobwebs and skeletons, it’s as if the royal castle from Sleeping Beauty had been abandoned for many years and left to rot. Though The Black Cauldron sometimes stumbles in its attempts to reach a darker feel, I think the visual style and animation is the one aspect of the film where it truly captures that feeling it was going for.

The story is clear and consistent from the start and never really goes off track or devolves into filler, which is pretty unique for a Disney film at this point in the canon; that’s not to say the story is great or anything and it’s rather simplistic really, just a very traditional hero’s journey, but it mostly works for what it is. Our hero Taran must take his psychic pig (yeah psychic pig) Hen Wen to a safe house, but when she is captured along the way he must break into the castle of the dreaded Horned King in order to save her; finally, after escaping the castle, Taran and his new friends embark on a quest to find and destroy the Black Cauldron before the Horned King can use its powers for evil. It’s a standard, but enjoyable adventure with a logical plot line that runs all the way through; there’s not much to say about it really, there aren’t really any problems with pacing, or with character motivations or conflict, it’s just a perfectly good story. Again, it’s hardly unique, the whole film definitely feels very much like a fantasy movie from the 80’s, as this was a familiar style at the time – The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, The Neverending Story, it seems like everyone was trying to create a dark fantasy adventure and The Black Cauldron definitely fits that mould, but it is original enough in some of its interesting and surreal ideas, such as aforementioned psychic pig, that it works well on its own.

That’ll do, pig

Unfortunately, the big problem with the movie is its characters, they’re not even necessarily bad or irritating – for the most part – so much as just hollow and underutilised and though the adventure story is fun, it isn’t detailed or complex enough to hold up the film on its own, it’s the kind of story that needs to revolve around its characters, not the other way around and these rather weak and underwritten characters just cannot support the plot, leaving the whole thing to kind of come crashing down around them. As a hero, Taran is a bore, he is a character completely defined by his physical actions, rather than by his personality, intelligence or dialogue, his best moments come when he just swings around his sword laughing, which kind of says all you need to know about how interesting he is. While it is refreshing to have a Disney hero who isn’t just squeaky clean, nice and perfect, as Taran is unsatisfied, arrogant and bull-headed, he is also a little too much of these things – his overconfidence frequently causes him and others trouble and his constant whining and complaining gets annoying very fast, making Taran just come off as a bit of a twerp. While Taran does eventually become more mature and reasonable later in the film and it’s good to see some character development, this has the unfortunate side effect of turning him into that very same boring, perfect hero archetype he seemed to be avoiding; not only that, but the character development doesn’t really seem earned or natural, he’s a cocky little moaner for the first half, then he has a fight with Eilonwy, then suddenly he’s just nice and humble for the rest of the film, the sudden shift in his character doesn’t really make sense.

Princess Eilonwy is a little better, initially anyway, she is first introduced breaking Taran out of prison, showing a surprising amount of agency and headstrong determination for a Disney princess and is also willing to call Taran out when he’s getting too full of himself, quick to remind him that she saved him and not the other way around. Sadly she quickly devolves into just Taran’s love interest and, while she doesn’t become a standard damsel in distress for him to rescue, she doesn't really do much else for the rest of the film but exclaim ‘Oh, Taran!’ when something goes wrong. Fflewddur the bard is just kind of annoying, I don’t really get why he’s there, I guess for comic relief but that role is filled rather effectively by other characters and he never really does anything else important except chew out the witches at the end so I don’t really see his purpose, he just seems like kind of a waste. Gurgi is a serious contender for the Hooter of the movie – he’s small and furry and cuddly, overly cutesy and cartoony, with a silly voice and a weird way of speaking, which draws forth comparisons with the awful mice from Cinderella, he’s very clearly supposed to be the big breakout character of the film that the audience is supposed to fall in love with so Disney can sell lunchboxes and backpacks with him on it and he’s a goofball who often gets into trouble and doesn’t do anything to help his friends, running away at the first sign of danger. He’s kind of like a combination between Gollum and Jar Jar Binks; still, he’s not nearly as obnoxious as I remember him being and he does redeem himself at the end of the film, so I guess he’s not too bad really, just a bit of a pain.

‘Meesa’s precious...’

The villains are very typical villains, but have somewhat of a new spin on classic archetypes – The Horned King has a very dark and almost grotesque design and is well voiced by the great John Hurt, who brings a great sense of age and patience to the character; the Horned King has no real motivation or personality quirks, he’s just evil personified and while this isn’t done as effectively as with the Evil Queen or Maleficent, he’s still enjoyably villainous and appropriately dark and has a wonderfully gruesome death scene where his skin melts away as he sucked into the Black Cauldron. Creeper is a pretty standard evil sidekick type in the vein of Smee or Sir Hiss, but his physical comedy is taken to a much more darkly humorous level with just the sheer amount of brutality he suffers and he is a lot more resentful towards his master than previous incarnations of this character; he is also probably the best animated character in the movie, with a lot of energy and exaggerated movements and a great deal of care and attention put into his animation. There are other characters, such as the fairies/pixies/whatever, Taran’s master Dallben and the Witches, but there’s not much to really say about them; the worst thing about the characters in this movie is that, unlike say, The Aristocats or The Rescuers, the problem isn’t that they’re bland or uninteresting, as they mostly have pretty strong and defined personalities, they just aren’t given the time to show them enough, with Princess Eilonwy and Taran particularly suffering in that they both break the mould a little in terms of traditional Disney heroes and heroines and they have an interesting dynamic set up, but it never really goes anywhere. The film is bigger on spectacle and set-pieces than it is on story and substance and while this does lead to a few very good scenes, such as Hen Wen’s abduction and the escape from the castle, it means that too many other scenes are only average, because the substance and heart just isn’t there.

Continuing the trend of doing things differently, The Black Cauldron is the very first film in the Disney animated canon that isn’t a musical, there are NO songs here. This is relieving but also surpising, because as we’ve seen already, Disney had a tendency to shove songs in where they absolutely did not need to be, just because people expected them to make musicals, as that’s what they were originally known for; this was especially egregious in films such as The Rescuers and The Fox and the Hound, where the songs aren’t even presented in a traditional musical format and are just sung over the animation, feeling completely separate to the movie and totally unnecessary. This would not have worked in The Black Cauldron at all and thankfully Disney realised that, not sullying the more dark and serious tone of the film with ill-fitting and unnecessary songs; it was also pretty clear that Disney was either getting tired of doing musicals or seriously running out of ideas on how to write effective and relevant songs, so it’s nice to see them take a break and try to regroup creatively. The lack of songs in this film is more than made up for with the great musical score, which perfectly captures the sweeping sense of adventure and the dark mystery of the film’s setting; the Horned King’s theme is especially cool, even though it’s basically just re-purposed from one of the composer, Elmer Bernstein’s, pieces from Ghostbusters the year earlier.

‘Oh what a world, what a world...’

The Black Cauldron is, if nothing else, a fun adventure flick, it tried something new and, while it didn’t entirely succeed, I applaud its effort and relatively success; there really isn't anything else like it among the other Disney films, with its generally darker and more serious tone and style, effectively captured through the animation and musical score. Still, while it is darker than most of their other films, Disney don’t really quite go all the way with the darker tone, leaving the film feeling a little unfulfilled. The characters also really drag the movie down, they just aren’t given enough time for you to really care about them or get invested in their struggle and though the story is solid and well thought out, without interesting characters to drive it, it just falls apart. Though these aren’t the biggest problems and on the face of it, The Black Cauldron still seems to be much better constructed than a lot of other Disney movies, there just seems to be something missing from it; maybe the characters really do hold it back too much, maybe that attempt at a darker tone stops it from capturing any of that Disney magic, I don’t know, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something just isn’t there. Nevertheless, I admire Disney’s intentions, I’ll always respect when they try to do something different and stumble more than when they try to do the same old thing and just can’t match the first time they did it COUGHCinderella COUGH. The Black Cauldron is fresh and different and while it does do some things really well, it just doesn’t do quite enough well to be considered anything more than quite good.

Other Thoughts:

The credits look very nice indeed.