chronicles of prydain the black cauldron

WDAS has turned out some great films over the years that haven't been reliant on musical numbers, but the lack of music and whimsy here does the already lackluster Black Cauldron no favors. It's all so insubstantial.Īnd there aren't any songs either. The villain's goal, once achieved, is undone almost immediately. There's supposed to be a romance brewing between the male protagonist and the princess, but their interactions are completely devoid of chemistry. There's a magic sword, but we're never told of its nature or its origin. Yet it's boring and unengaging from beginning to end no highs and lows to remark on, just one long, flat line of blah. I mean, it's not as if the people at Disney didn't understand how to craft an effective narrative. They're just there because the story requires them to be there.Īnd as for the story, it's astonishingly bland for a Disney movie. They don't deal with personal conflicts and grow into better people.

And none of them are endowed with interesting personalities or histories. There's the farm boy who wants to be a mighty warrior there's a tagalong princess who isn't really good for anything there's a comedy relief minstrel and there's a weird, furry mascot who's strikingly similar to Gollum. Most of them are just generic cliches from the fantasy genre. To start off, none of the characters are interesting or even particularly likable. Inspired loosely by The Chronicles of Prydain, a series of fantasy novels by Lloyd Alexander, it was possibly the studio's greatest misfire, and its expensive, spectacular failure actually cast doubt on the future of Disney animated films.įrankly, it's not difficult to see why The Black Cauldron failed to resonate with audiences. Of all the ranging and diverse movies turned out by Walt Disney Animation Studios over almost a century now, The Black Cauldron is probably the most obscure the least beloved.

Chronicles of prydain the black cauldron