Disney 1985 film The Black Cauldron was an experiment that failed (bbc.com)

As far as I know The Black Cauldron is not referenced in their parks and if anything some fantasy land (outside say the princess castle and sword in the stone) would be great.

I actually think it was a good movie. The airy, strange, but very capable princess seemed like an interesting change from the typical Disney princess.

Granted I get it, people had expectations of Disney movies and that one was not it.

> The Black Cauldron also had a PG rating, a first for Disney

If you ignore 1979's The Black Hole (another flop)

For a second my brain was mixing this up with The Dark Crystal.

Sierra made an adventure game of it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cauldron_(video_ga...

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Black_Cauldron_The_1986

I loved that movie as a kid and after re-watching as an adult I still do.

First movie I ever saw when my parents brought me to the theater. I was a little kid. Haven't seen it since and still remember the awful skeletons parade.

They mentioned The Little Mermaid. Divine was slated to voice Ursula ... I wonder how that would have changed the legacy. Ursula was designed after Divine but that was fairly insider knowledge.

Having the John Waters drag queen actually voice her, it might have made a lot of people not consider it a family film in 1989.

Disney has a long history of gay-coded characters that the mainstream doesn't really pick up on and just reads as wacky or eccentric, such as here, in 1941: https://youtu.be/H2iT9kfsMKU?si=-5Z6_qgaUyucDJXg&t=82

The article claims it failed because it was too dark, my recollection is that felt stiff and klunky.

It's got some incredible animation. The story and studio infighting was what hurt the film, but it's still worth a watch if you haven't seen it. It really should have been a better movie. Targeting older audiences was a good idea and fantasy was a big genre. On the animation side The Last Unicorn was a recent success that was also darker fantasy than what disney was offering (fire and ice too, although that didn't get as wide an audience) and in live action Legend released that same year and Willow came after and both attracted a lot of fans. I really wonder what that movie might have been if Disney had been fully committed to the idea.

Competing against National Lampoon's European Vacation, a re-release of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and Back to the Future?

Ouch...that's tough sledding.

If you're interested in the "dark age" of Disney history, I recommend the book After Disney by Neil O'Brien - https://amzn.to/4mvMxgX

The Taran books hold a special place in my heart. I read the first one when I was 12 and I immediately identified with the protagonist.

I read the last one last year for the first time aged 40, and like me the character had changed. I doubt I would have understood the message of that last book of the series when I was a kid, a message of the futility of violence and the importance of people.

There are so many beautiful things in that book, what touched me most is: The epitaph on the tombstone of their greatest warrior is: “Here lies Coll, grower of turnips”, since he himself considered growing things his greatest achievement.

Surprised there’s no mention of how they chickened out and butchered the ending.

(mild spoilers)

Someone needs to sacrifice themselves to destroy the great evil. The book has one of the human champions die, but Disney decided one of the non-human fantastic creatures would do the deed instead.

I actually never saw the movie but I had a comic version of it as a kid and liked it.

Gosh, I remember my family renting this and the VHS player to watch it as a kid. I remember nothing about the plot. Only pizza, soda, VHS rental, and this title specifically.