Disney’s worst fantasy movie deserves a remake

According to Jonathan Klotz
| Updated 9 seconds ago

Disney is working its way through their entire slate of animated classics and giving us live action versions Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Little Mermaidand even Moanabut all these movies were record breaking hits. If Disney had any guts, they would have gone in the opposite direction and made a live-action remake Black cauldron. The 1985 film is awful, but the source material, Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain, is full of untapped potential and the five-book series should have been adapted years ago.

Chronicles of Prydain

During the 1960s, Lloyd Alexander was able to publish the entire pentalogy in five years, between them Book Three in 1964 and Supreme King in 1968. He joined Black cauldron (1965), Full castle (1966) a Taran Wanderer (1967), the saga tells the story of Taran, an assistant pig farmer in charge of Hen-Wen, a pig who can tell the future, on his journey to save the earth from the Lord of Death and his right-hand man The. The Horned King. Being written for children, the Chronicles of Prydain are one of the best entry points into high fantasy, so it’s a shame that Disney he butchered it so badly.

Black cauldron adapts the first two novels, but calling it a loose adaptation is going too far, it’s more of a hatchet. Although the film features most of the same characters, the gentle but fierce Eilonwy, the bard Fflewddur Fflam, and Gurgi, a strange ape-like hybrid of man and beast, it also adds the Horned King, leaving out the novel’s villain, Morgant the Dark Warrior. Worse is the ending, which eschews the novel’s theme of sacrifice for a more optimistic victory.

The movie that almost killed Disney

Despite the change from the novel, Black cauldron was considered too dark for a children’s film, especially a Disney animated one. Disney’s first PG cartoon and the first to feature CGI, it was also the most expensive animated feature ever made at $44 million. Of course, it was also a box office failure, with the company losing so much money that it almost ruined Disneyore The Little Mermaid he started the Disney Renaissance and saved the company.

Ambitious but flawed Black cauldron may have failed as a film, but the richness of Lloyd Alexander’s world-building manages to peak beyond borders. If every book was adapted as a live-action film, then the rise of taran would be a hit from the world of discovery v Book Three to investigate his past Taran Wandererthe foundations of the next great fantasy franchise are right here. Yet, after Disney’s failure, no one touched the property for nearly 40 years.

That’s not fair, especially not in a world with many adaptations The Chronicles of Narnianext series Hollywood never seems to get it right, so why not give The Chronicles of Prydain a second chance? No one ever asked for a Mufasa or live action Lion King prequel Moanabut a new all-ages fantasy series that brings some of the most underrated novels to life, why not? Black cauldron was a historic failure, but The Chronicles of Prydain is a hit waiting to be discovered.