Revisiting the Disney Vault, Part 1

We've been watching the Disney feature animation movies in order for the last few months, but for most of them the better term is likely rewatched. 

Anyway, I wrote something nearly 14 years ago that, after looking at it again, needs to be fully rewritten. At least the last half of it. Some of the movies I can't remember ever seeing, and a few I wanted to make some notes about before I get deep into the weeds.

1985's The Black Cauldron has a few things I never remembered going for it:

• The opening line spoken is by John Huston and says something like, to paraphrase, "...even the gods were afraid of this evil king, so they put him into a pit of molten iron when he burned alive, and they cast a cauldron imbued with his evil spirit..." and I'm like, Damn! This is a kids movie? We don't give enough credit to movies from the 80s;
• The tiny ball of light that follows the warrior princess around seems digital, and the smoke coming off the cauldron in a few scenes is certainly digital, one of the earliest digital flairs in animated features;
• The dragon/evil bird chase scene is very dramatic. I'd splice a clip here if I could figure out how.

2004's Home on the Range was far better than I had been willing to give credit. Likely shunned now due to Rosanne's outsized role (she's not on the Google search cast list lol), the animation style is more cartoony than most of the post-Little Mermaid fare, and the backgrounds are very reminiscent of Looney Tunes with Wiley and the Roadrunner. Unlikely heroes as a theme, turning old-west tropes on their head, very pretty animation with an albeit extended after-school episode feel and a running time under 80 minutes make it not terrible.

We just watched this for the first time last night. It was Disney's first fully digitally-animated feature (since Dinosaur had bits of live-action backgrounds and thus isn't considered fully digitally animated). I remember seeing posters and thinking "Uggh..."

I don't remember why I was thinking that, but I'm pretty sure I never gave it a chance. But it wasn't until last week that I even watched the trailer. Whoa! That trailer inspired excitement about finally getting to it on our journey.

It does not get enough credit for being as weird as it is. The animation style seemed to make sense pertaining to the limitations the animators dealt with: it's like a Silly Symphony or Looney Tunes movie come to rubbery 3D life. But it works for telling the story it's trying to tell. It's about wanting your dad's approval and getting gaslit on a huge scale. And alien invasion. It's pretty damn weird. And Gary Marshall is the dad...? That's weird, too.

I wanted to get to other films that I hadn't seen before, and I probably will. Like Brother Bear and Meet the Robinsons. How about how beautiful Paris looks in Hunchback? Or how tough that movie is to watch, as Corrie puts it, "I watch these movies to escape reality, not necessarily to have reality shoved back in my face," what with the Cardinal is a crazed murderous pervy incel, who happens to be a very powerful political figure.