The Black Cauldron - The Film and the DVD **Warning Complete Story Spoilers** (1 Viewer)

[MatthewLouwrens]

Good point.

My other problem with Fantasia 2000 is that the images are unrelated to the music.

Look at Fantasia:
* Toccata and Fugue - Abstract animation for an abstract piece.
* Nutcracker - Animation of nature, but chosen to resemble the piece. Russian-looking thistles for the Russian Dance, Chinese-looking toadstools for the Chinese Dance, etc.
* Sorcerer's Apprentice - A retelling of the standard legend intended by the music, only with Mickey.
* Rite of Spring - The ballet piece was set in prehistoric times, the animation expands on that idea to chart all of prehistory.
* Pastoral Symphony - The animation resembles Beethoven's descriptions - just relocated to Mt Olympus.
* Dance of the Hours - Composed as a ballet that moves through morning, afternoon, evening and night, the animation does this but adds ostriches, hippos, elephants and alligators.
* Night on Bald Mountain - Intended to accompany a scene in a play of witches in a black mass, the animated scene of a giant devil surrounded by dancing spirits is pretty similar.
* Ave Maria - A religious piece accompanying images of believers going to church.

So the animation is close to the music's images - just amplified or with cartoony elements added.

Contrast that with Fantasia 2000:
* Beethoven's 5th - Again, abstract to abstract.
* Pines of Rome - Whatever Respighi imagined (something to do with pine trees in Rome, perhaps) it wasn't flying whales. Great animation though.
* Rhapsody In Blue - My favourite segment - they chose an animation style and plot that reflected the time that Gershwin was writing in.
* Piano Concerto No 2 - Great segment, but again, Shostakovich was not imagining The Steadfast Tin Soldier.
* Carnival of the Animals - A silly segment, but at least it had animals. Much much too short though.
* Pomp and Circumstance - Donald Duck? Noah's Ark? To Pomp and Circumstance? It's like they animated it and then chose music to fit the animation.
* Firebird - I don't know much about Firebird, so I won't comment on Stravinsky's idea when composing the piece.

You see? The cartoons and music choice in Fantasia seemed considered - they made sense. In 2000, it seemed much more random - the animation matched the music but not the ideas of the music.

Lets not mention the fact that Fantasia had eight pieces, was 2 hours long, and had a complete Beethoven symphony. Fantasia 2000 had eight pieces (including a recycled Sorcerer's Apprentice), is less than 80 minutes long, and had a single movement from a Beethoven symphony. I felt shortchanged.

 

[Ernest Rister]

"* Piano Concerto No 2 - Great segment, but again, Shostakovich was not imagining The Steadfast Tin Soldier."

That's my least favorite segment of F2K -- the music is made up of sharp staccato piano beats, and the animation doesn't reflect the nature of the music at all. One of the animators - memory fails me at present - said he "had to find his own beats" in the sequence, and to my mind, that's a serious violation of the Fantasia experiment. The music becomes nothing more than an underscore to an animated cartoon. The same critcism was made (with justification) of the "Pastorale" in the original Fantasia.

I sometimes think I'm too hard on F2K, because Roy Disney was obviously trying to make a version of Fantasia that would be accessible to a wide family audience. It may be unfair to say that F2K isn't the equal of Walt's Fantasia, because the original is such a milestone in film history and such a masterwork of animation, made by a brilliant team at the height of their powers...how could the modern crew possibly hope to live up to it? It's like trying to make a sequel to Citizen Kane. There is some outstanding work in F2K -- "Pines of Rome", "Rhapsody in Blue" and "The Firebird" in particular. In the context of the modern Disney animation model, Roy's F2K is perhaps better than we had a right to expect.

Still, there is no getting around it -- the 1940 film dwarfs the year-2000 follow up in every respect except accessibility to young children. In fact, the best sequence in F2K is Walt's own "Sorcerer's Apprentice" from the 1940 original.

 

[Edwin-S]

That was the main problem with the film. It doesn't adhere to the heritage displayed in the original FANTASIA.

FANTASIA was an experimental film; while I'm sure Walt Disney wanted the film to be a commercial success that wasn't the main focus for the film's creation. The primary focus for FANTASIA 2 seemed to be its accessibility to a wide audience, therefore, allowing it to recoup what it cost to make. If they weren't willing to maintain the experimental nature of the first film then they shouldn't have bothered making the second one.

Like you pointed out there were some nice sequences. To tell the truth, the sequence I enjoyed most in FANTASIA 2 was the yo-yo playing flamingo. That sequence came the closest to re-capturing some of the playfulness that was amply on display in the "Dance of the Hours" sequence in the original FANTASIA.

The "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Firebird" sequences were good too. While I found the Pines of Rome sequence to be visually striking, I thought the choice of music was sort of so-so.

The least impressive sequence was "The Noah's Ark" sequence. Donald Duck is my favourite character both in animation and the comics, but he was entirely wasted in FANTASIA 2. He never got to do anything except get stepped on, and the sequence had the most banal music of the entire film. Pomp and Circumstance was pedestrian in the extreme. It didn't deserve to be on the same soundtrack with the other music in the film.

 

[Nicholas Vargo]

Bumping this old thread (was going to post a new one because I came across something that peaked my interest).

I was on Ultimate Disney looking around in the Animated Classics section when I noticed some mention about a Special Edition release coming for this film. I also saw a date with June 2009 as well. Anyone know what's going on or am I just seeing things?

 

[Dick]

Never saw TEN WHO DARED, did you?

 

[zackscott5]

My problem with F2K was the fact that it didn't use music that was more modern.

In Fantasia, Walt and Stokowski (sp?) chose some safe pieces (Dance of the Hours, one that almost didn't make it because WAlt or Stokowski said that it was too popular,) but also chose some modern pieces like Stravinski's The Rite of Spring and of course BAch's Tocatta and Fuge.

In F2K, the most modern piece was the Gershwin number yet it was highly accessible. Yet Music had really evolved since 1940. Pieces from composers like Glass, Zappa (even though Di$ney would never get the rights) and VArase would have been a geat inclusion and probably would have said that Di$ney still had some creativity left in them.

But we have A whole lotta segments where if they didn't star Mickey or DOnald, All that you saw was a whole lotta flying stuff.

 

[Brian Borst]

Well, it's a little vague. It's not been announced officially (I think) but supposedly it has deleted scenes (always a good thing) and it's anamorphic with a DD 5.1 track. I don't know if any of it is true, but it would be great to finally have a decent version of the film. We were hoping for a stacked 2-disc, but it's still Disney, of course.

 

[WadeM]

I'm only buying this one once. Too bad it's not Blu-ray.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

The problems with the movie's story are about as pure an example of poor adaptation as one is likely to find. The ending being the cherry on top of the bad decision sundae. The adapters worried more about including all of the best-liked characters and biggest set-pieces than about what actually made the story work. With no proper analog to the Ellidyr character, the whole enterprise is undermined. The idea of combining the first two books in an adaptation of Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain series makes sense since the first book was a bit weak and surprisingly little happens beyond introductions to the characters and their world. Unfortunately the execution was terrible.

On the positive side it would be hard to imagine a new DVD not easily bettering the old one.

Regards,

 

[Mark_TS]

it was the 'cute robot' -a bone thrown in for the kids-and a STAR WARS rip off-that killed it for me; Add that to all the others and it was a dealbreaker.
The context of STAR WARS was fun adventure. This was dead serious-and had a cute robot arggggggg no match -
Good reviews

 

[SilverWook]

The Black Hole was in development for a long time at Disney, several years before Star Wars even.
There was once a great fan site devoted to the film that had images of all sort of pre-production artwork. Many of them were dated pre-1977. Vincent was more mechanical and not cute in those. Obviously Star Wars was the catalyst that finally got the film into production.

I loved it when Sealab 2021 had a robot that looked a lot like Vincent tormenting Captain Murphy!

 

[Greg_S_H]

I loved it as a kid--The Black Hole. I may hate it now, but this thread makes me want to buy it.

I was a fan of the first Black Cauldron book (the only one I read) and loved the Sierra game, but it wasn't until last year that I saw the movie. I hated it.

 

[Edwin-S]

This is twice that I have been asked this question in this thread. I had to look up the film on ImDB in order to see if I might have seen it. There wasn't much information, but from what there was I'm pretty sure I've never seen it.

Truth is that I really didn't like very many of Walt Disney's live action films. There are some I liked such as 20,000 leagues..., The Absent Minded Professor, That Darn Cat, and Herbie The Love Bug, but I generally avoided Disney live action films as much as possible.

 

[Rodney]

In MattH's review of BOLT, he states that:

The disc contains previews (some in widescreen, some in full frame) of Monsters, Inc, Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Princess and the Frog, The Black Cauldron, Lilo & Stitch, Schoolhouse Rock: Earth, and Bedtime Stories.

This could be interesting!