Current Events > The Black Cauldron is a Disney film that could benefit from a live action remake

(+) Yeah! (+)

For those who haven't seen it the film centers around a young farm boy who sets out on a quest to stop a skeletal king from finding a magical device which could raise an army of the undead. The movie essentially has two camps: one which sees it as a dark masterpiece locked away by a corporate entity which mandates everything be bright and colorful and one which is dismayed by the annoying characters. I'm in-between. I'm not annoyed by the characters, but I'm not impressed by them either.

To me, the film plays out like a lesser version of The Sword and the Stone, but with the occasional dark imagery. It's simultaneously cool and out of place for an animated Disney movie. But in a live action version, the dark visuals wouldn't be a problem. Everyone loves Pirates of the Caribbean.

It just seems like a good concept for a film which missed its mark. The censorship could be blame for some of the problems surrounding the film's action/adventure narrative, but it's the characters who truly needed improvement. A live action adaptation could systematically improve the characters while embracing the elements of dark fantasy instead of awkwardly trying to balance between obnoxiously cute and uncomfortably dark (for a kids film).

It's a five-book series awkwardly mashed into a single movie, and most of the production staff defected over to Don Bluth (including Don Bluth) during production.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/dvdextras/2010/10/the_black_cauldron.html

It needs to be a five film franchise, somewhere in scope between Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.

Not gonna lie I didn't read OP because I don't remember literally anything about black cauldron.

Just wanna say that Atlantis should get remade tbh
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I'd be down with that. Remember really liking that movie
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I don't think the biggest problem was trying to condense everything into one film. Having never read the Chronicles of Prydain series, the film doesn't feel like it's too rushed or like it's trying to fit too much into one picture.

The problems, at least in my opinion, are two-fold: the action is uneven (which could easily be attributed to the censorship) and the characters lack the presence of any strong personality. Alonwy is the last of the Disney waifs and Taran does little besides whine. This would be fine if they had a strong supporting character like the Genie from Aladdin or Archimedes from The Sword and the Stone to counterbalance them, but they don't. Instead, they have a cowardly old minstrel and an annoying dog-thing named Gurgi.

In all honesty, the film was in production for seven years and changed teams four times. To have anything good come out of that quagmire would be quite a feat. It's one thing if you're there from the beginning and can say, "Don't include Gurgi. Include Kaw the talking crow instead." It's another if you're tasked with completing a film that's 70% finished and your artistic vision is different from that of your predecessors.

It's even worse if the whole premise of your movie is to be darker than anything seen before and the new producer is absolutely horrified and enraged at what he sees in your project.

<_<