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 Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 2:21 pm
Salutations fellow viewers and reviewers. Some background info for the reason I am doing this. I love movies, especially animated ones, when I watch a movie the first time, I look for entertainment and a fun movie, if I like it enough, I'll watch it again and this is when the fun begins.
These reviews are meant to be fun, on no account do I think you should skip a movie because of my reviews and oftentimes just because I beat the living daylights out of a movie, that doesn't mean I don't love to watch it. And so, begins the animated movie reviews, starting with The Black Cauldron!!
I wanted to start with this movie because this was one of Disney's worst flops, and despite the overload of problems with this movie, it was still quite enjoyable for me to go see!
If you haven't seen the movie, forewarning, this contains...SPOILERS!! Oh noes!
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Lets get some background first. Now, during the 1980's an onslaught of darker style animated cartoons came to town, such as the Secret of Nimh, these cartoons often had a magical but sinister feel to it, something that was new, and they were a hit! And so, it was time for Disney to cash in on this success and bring forth their darkest piece of work, the Black Cauldron!
Lets begin.
So as the movie begins, we receive some information on the black cauldron and how an evil king was so extraordinarily evil that he was turned into a pot, meanwhile the audience is thinking, "man it'd suck to be turned into kitchenware." But unlike your average cooking utensils, this pot serves up a helping of doom and the undead! And so, the story is already trying to instill vibes of creepiness and spookiness into their audience.
So after that fun little tidbit, we enter upon the happy little forest with cute wittle squiwwels and aminals to meet an old fart named Dallben, who is...some sort of wizard...of sorts, the movie never really explains, and his whiny little farm bra-I mean boy, named Taran who can only think of going out and fighting, even though he'd probably be more useful as a flag pole than a fighter.
Dallben is concerned that an evil person named the horned king is out to do something inexplicably evil, meanwhile Taran continues to be a broken record and repeat his desire to go fight in the war, which begs the question if Dallben has the mystical ability to make mouths disappear, oh, I wish he did.
So then we then meet a magical pig named Hen Wen who Taran has to keep an eye after and whom Taran complains about having to watch. But just then, Hen Wen starts having a mental breakdown as little children in the audience begin to tear up wondering why the cute little piggy is squealing so painfully, why whyyy?!
So it turns out that Hen Wen is an oracular pig ((I'm not joking)) who has seen that the Horned King is looking for the black cauldron (bum bum buuuum) and so Dallben fears that the Horned King might find Henwen and use her powers to find the cauldron. In order to prevent such a fate for da cute wittle piggy, he sends out the whimpy little child to guard the guard the pig and go into hiding, nice move Dallben, put the fate of the world in the hands of a whiny little boy!
So then we come upon the horned king a living skeleton with fearsome red eyes and horns! ((makes more sense now)) So the horned King is talking to a bunch of dead people about how he'll raise them up and then he'll be an evil on par with a god, yatta yatta yatta, same old story, right?
So as we return to Taran and Hen Wen, it take like only two minutes for him to lose Hen Wen ((THANKS A LOT DALLBEN!)) so when Taran goes to find her, he instead finds the....thing...called Gurgi, a creature that looks like the evolution of a cat's hairball and sounds like that evolved hairball mated with golem from Lord of the Rings, and it wants nothing more than Taran's apple ((my preeeciouuus))
After a quick little vie for the apple,Taran asks the gurgi thing if he's seen the pig as Gurgi lies that he didn't and tries to bribe Taran further for the apple with info on where Hen Wen is! BUT THEN it turns out that Hen Wen is being chased by Dragons((Or wyverns))! YAAAY DRAGONS! I mean-oh noes! Dragons! Taran fails to save Hen Wen before she is spirited away by the foul reptilians and oh my gosh!!! BLOOD! in a disney movie!? This is ludicrous!! Oh, the children will be scarred for liiiiiffe! ((its seriously, like a trickle of blood down the mouth, even though Taran got b***h-slapped in the face by a dragon's tail...yea.))
So, as Taran fights his way through a forest of thorns ((this seems vaguely familiar)) he spots the horned king's castle, which...really isn't that far from Dallben's farm, which makes you wonder why Dallben had a farm so close to the KING OF ALL EVIL!!! *cough*
As Taran resolves to go infiltrate the castle ((brilliant idea sherlock, you against an entire army and the horned king...the world can rest easy, knowing that you're on the case)) Gurgi comes to beg him not to go as it is dangerous ((as if the constant lightning strikes and red skies couldn't have told us that before)). The two argue as they continue to stand on a high rock, constantly being in risk of being struck by lightning and finally Taran takes off for the castle and Gurgi watches his next vict-I mean friend go off with sadness, daaaw.
...
To be Continued!!
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Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 4:00 pm
personally i love the black cauldren. Im not saying that its really a great movie but i love it. And i always like all the characters, except the little henchman guy.
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Queen_Awesome_Penguin Vice Captain
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Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 4:28 pm
Queen_Awesome_Penguin personally i love the black cauldren. Im not saying that its really a great movie but i love it. And i always like all the characters, except the little henchman guy. I love it too. Like I said, just because I pick at a movie as much as I do, does not mean I don't like it.
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Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2010 8:06 am
Ehh... Okay. I like MOST of this movie. But I absolutely HATE the part with the fairies. Qap is always telling me it's silly that I don't like them, because apparently they're cute... I don't know. I don't like them. I also don't like the witches. Otherwise, yeah, I like this movie. Taran is a cutie and Gurgie(or however you spell it) is awesome. Oh, and the Horned King is a beast.
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Ebil-NekoCat Vice Captain
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Queen_Awesome_Penguin Vice Captain
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Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2010 7:14 pm
Ebil-NekoCat Ehh... Okay. I like MOST of this movie. But I absolutely HATE the part with the fairies. Qap is always telling me it's silly that I don't like them, because apparently they're cute... I don't know. I don't like them. I also don't like the witches. Otherwise, yeah, I like this movie. Taran is a cutie and Gurgie(or however you spell it) is awesome. Oh, and the Horned King is a beast. What? You dont like how the guy as a frog gets stuck in the witches boobs? I honestly think we need to watch this one together so i can give you full comentary biggrin
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Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2010 5:27 pm
I think I'm just gonna wrap this one up.
This movie had a lot of potential that simply wasn't used and suffers from the fact that its just trying to ride the wake of other big animated movies that made it big off of using the dark fantasy type scenario.
Now, one thing I just love in this movie is the art. Backgrounds are gorgeous as are the effects animation, I especially love watching the water and magic effects that are animated, just because of all the color and how smooth it is, really excellent workmanship there.
Plots are made to be simple thats what makes them good, and the plot to this movie simply could've been put as 'defeat horned king' or 'destroy black cauldron' either way the movie could've worked around, but it seems the movie split its attention and so we get two separate feeling sections here, I mean, after Taran escapes, they aren't even afraid of being followed and we totally forget about the army, which really shouldn't have been the case.
One thing that irked me was how downplayed the whole undead army scene was, I mean, that was the big threat everyone was worried about, and it barely got out the front door. It would've been more effective or powerful if the army had actually gotten somewhere and destroyed some stuff, but the army moved at like 2 miles per hour and well, it just wasn't not convincing that these guys were destined to destroy the world.
The Horned King needed more screen time in my opinion and needed. We sort of had a sheer kahn approach in that there was a big build up to him by using his reputation, but the horned king didn't have enough time and didn't live up to it.
The protagonists were uninteresting and hardly worthy of being called heroes, I mean, Taran even pracitcally gave up and instead of bucking up and growing a pair of balls he instead breaks down and just admits that he is a weakling who can't do anything, 'dude, why the heck did I just watch an hour of you only to have you give up!?' and in the book series, I think he becomes a king, I don't know, maybe disney knew this movie would flop and decided to let the audience know that there would be no sequels.
There was a lot of effort in this movie, but it was lacking in the areas that needed it most, in my opinion.
I still like this movie, I still watch it. I love the horned king, I think his voice is just friggin awesome along with this design, I just wish there was more to him and more of a final battle with him cause that would've been more epic then him getting eaten by a friggin pot. ((yea I'm sore about that))
forgive me if this is rough, its my first review so, heheh, you'll have to be patient with me.
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Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2010 5:35 pm
~Advice from a Caterpillar~ A lot of content was cut from the movie; it would originally been rated R or something... that's what I heard anyway.
Apparently they are re-releasing it on DVD with the cut content included in the movie... could be quite interesting indeed.
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Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2010 7:33 pm
Azure Caterpillar ~Advice from a Caterpillar~ A lot of content was cut from the movie; it would originally been rated R or something... that's what I heard anyway.
Apparently they are re-releasing it on DVD with the cut content included in the movie... could be quite interesting indeed. 'Tis true. There was gonna be a nudity scene of the Princess and the fight scenes were going to be bloody. Fact: The Black Cauldron was Disney's first PG-rated movie.
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Ebil-NekoCat Vice Captain
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Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2010 8:36 am
eek burning_eyes No. Way. really?
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Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2010 9:26 am
DS Sailor Captain Amelia eek burning_eyes No. Way. really? Really - and Home on the Range was the 2nd, thanks to the line "yeah they're real quit staring" eek xp redface
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Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2010 11:38 am
Ebil-NekoCat Azure Caterpillar ~Advice from a Caterpillar~ A lot of content was cut from the movie; it would originally been rated R or something... that's what I heard anyway.
Apparently they are re-releasing it on DVD with the cut content included in the movie... could be quite interesting indeed. 'Tis true. There was gonna be a nudity scene of the Princess and the fight scenes were going to be bloody. Fact: The Black Cauldron was Disney's first PG-rated movie. Sounds great! Rated R or not, if that cut content is what makes this movie what its supposed to be then by all means, lets do it. Just, put the kiddies to bed first ;P Hmmm. You know, a while back, I heard an interesting rumor that disney had made a movie that was rated R that was supposedly so scary that they had get rid of it and have been trying to hide it. maybe this is what they're talking about? kukukuku or maybe I just like disney conspiracy theories.
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