Sinbad and the Death of Pirate Cinema

[Music] this video is brought to you by audible if there's one thing i love more than watching stories unfold it's being able to listen to them unfold and when it comes to that no one's got your back quite like audible does whether i'm editing a video or trying to walk off the burrito i just guilt-ordered you can rest assured i'm almost always listening to one of the countless audio books or audible originals they have to offer and i never run out because having an audible membership means i get a free credit to expand my library every month this week i've been listening to the arabian nights the seven voyages of sinbad the seamen by sir richard f burton and it's wonderful it's a fascinating adaptation of the original tales of sinbad and what made him such an iconic folk hero to begin with in sebastian lockwood's narration is superb to say the least another one of my favorites that i think you should check out is the men who would be king by nicole laporte an incredibly gripping tale of the rise of dreamworks as a studio narrated by stephen hoy go to audible.com breadsword click on the link in the description or text breadsword to 500-500 to start your 30-day free trial of audible now that's audible.com breadsword the link in the description or text breadsword to 500-500 to get an entire month of audible including a free audiobook and unlimited monthly audible originals on the house leave a comment below and let me know what audiobooks you're listening to and what others i should check out i met a traveler from an antique land who said two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert near them on the sand half sunk a shattered visage lies whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that it's sculpter well those passions read which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things the hand that mocked them in the heart that fed and on the pedestal these words appear my name is ozymandias king of kings look on my works ye mighty in despair nothing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck boundless in bare the lone and level sands stretch far away like what anyways i'm gonna talk about pirates now [Music] is [Music] all right certified freak seven days a week what are pirates let's start with etymology and work back from there the english word pirate comes from the latin word pirata sea robber which in turn comes from the greek word paratus meaning one who attacks ships fittingly much of the first writing regarding pirates originated in greece even though piracy as a practice has existed since humanity first took our commerce to the sea and the oldest records of piracy are from egypt it didn't come into its own as a well-documented ubiquitous profession until about the 12th century bc in the big g and for a while it was actually perfectly respectable to be a pirate within grecian culture there are tons of references to piracy at the time as like a regular person thing to do declaring you were a pirate was the same as telling someone you work as an hr file clerk or a cashier at yogurtland or something alas how the tides must turn the era of normal pirate time couldn't last forever and as greece came into its classical period public opinion in particular the opinion of high-ranking politicians and military leaders shifted to viewing piracy as a disgraceful and eventually downright evil trade which sort of worked in curbing its popularity or at least the public admittance to it but had the adverse effect of elevating pirates to an almost folk hero status in the eyes of any who had cause to detest the power structures fighting to suppress them well before pirates made their way into our fiction they'd already become conduits of the populace's resentment of the status quo a vague idol of rebellion one could honor quietly from the shore even if they were still regularly selling your neighbors into capital s for the price of a used 1992 civic eg hatchback as time went on this cognitive dissonance became easier to maintain and by the time we reached the golden age of piracy a period of time from the 17th to the 18th century wherein pirates left their greatest mark on both written history and our pop culture one thing had become abundantly clear stories about pirates are cool as [ __ ] books detailing their adventures both fiction and non-fiction began flying off the shelves in every store that could stalk them in fact our entire image of pirates the reason so many were able to ascend to a sort of sainthood within our storytelling is attributed to a single book published during this time captain charles johnson's a general history of the robberies and murders of the most notorious pirates published in 1724 at the same time this new demand for tales of roguish adventurers and far-off lands was taking the west by storm french archaeologist antoine gallon had just completed the first european translation of the most iconic collection of written tales on the planet the 1001 knights the translation did numbers so many that by the end of the century the knights could be read in german italian dutch danish russian flemish polish yiddish and english among others giallon was credited with ushering in an entire era of fantasy storytelling within france it was huge its many characters rapidly became part of the foundations of 18th century pop culture and beyond aladdin alibaba and sinbad being chiefly among them 300 years later sinbad would grace the silver screen in one of the greatest pirate movies of all time and barely anyone would see it the year is 1992 and the house of mouse just dropped their fourth film and a run of back to back bangers that would later come to be known as the disney renaissance a little gem called aladdin maybe you've heard of it on top of being the highest grossing animated film of all time upon its release aladdin was also the first disney film to cast a traditional celebrity in a starring role something that would come to cause a great deal of division between the company and robin williams because he didn't really want to be used to sell the movie and especially didn't want to be used to sell its merchandise going so far as to stipulate the limitation of the use of his likeness in his contract but disney being disney they did it anyways i have some people i want to thank like to thank jeffrey katzenbug we won't get into that here lindsay ellis has an excellent video on it that you should check out if you haven't the point is even though cats did her boy dirty there was no going back the stage had already been set gone were the days of animated features containing casts of conventional voice talent and so began the era of selling animations with star-studded billings shortly after its release the writers of aladdin ted elliott and terry rossio began scheming on a new flick for j-rock's kingdom if one adaptation from the thousand knights had worked they thought why don't we try another a decade later what they had come to write would finally see the light of day as sinbad legend of the seven seas a certified hood classic and the tremendous charm it possesses extends even to its very origins as a production see in july of that year disney under jeffrey katzenberg had announced their plans to the public to adapt the voyages of sinbad into a theatrical feature but two years later in 1994 katz was forced to resign from his seat as chairman of the company and leave immediately turning around to suit disney for 250 big ones and using the settlement to bankroll his new studio dreamworks skg basically ever since it's been a running joke within the animation community that dreamworks has lifted or at the very least taken a lot of creative inspiration from its contemporaries at disney and pixar due mostly to the inherent bitterness in its foundations and this isn't helped by the fact that katzenberg did almost nothing but make enemies at both of these companies for like 20 years straight an infamous example being when cats had allegedly heard the entire original plot and approach of an upcoming pixar film a bug's life from the at the time head of pixar's animation department and his at the time good friend john lasseter the story goes cats immediately realized its potential and hoping not to fall behind a disney allied studio sent his team to work on a dreamworks response to it right away thus we have ants even today there's still discussions being had about the many characters and plot elements dreamworks has seemingly poached from its peers but there's only one we can prove because it happened in front of us sinbad legend of the seven seas is the only film we can say irrefutably that katenburg ever sacked from another studio it began its life as a project by being stolen by its owner from himself and i can't imagine a more fitting way for it to begin so let's jump in sinbad opens with a silky smooth fade from the dreamworks logo to a fathomless blackened sea of stars the camera dolling backwards through a cluster of constellations as the title card appears the film's opening track aptly titled let the games begin composed by harry griggs and williams gently accentuating the off-kilter tone we opened on as we descend to the center of a celestial sphere as we come to a stop an ensemble of strings briefly scurry across our ears in harmony with our first character materializing into frame introducing aerys the best dreamworks villain of all time aeris introduction is really cool the decision to do away with the scheming antagonist cutaway often found within animated features choosing instead to open the film with one gives sinbad's first 10 minutes an exceptional sense of immediacy we know whatever is about to take place is the work of this character and we're informed of this in like 40 seconds before our story sets sail it establishes a pattern the film will rely on throughout the rest of its run time to develop its plot while subverting the deployment of this trope within its genre while designating our protagonist in his foil their mythological archetypes while allowing its hard opening sequence to flow seamlessly without interruption once it begins and this also tees up an audience superior position meaning we begin our story knowing more about its events than its characters which the film later utilizes to great effect against us when the truth of its emotional apex isn't made clear to its protagonist or its spectators heiress's divine gift is deception so she begins the film by instilling us with a false sense of confidence also i'm in love with how she summons cetus as a constellation and then gives him a corporeal form as a means of reflecting the transition from the ethereal to the earthly and the external to the internal forces of our story anyways let's get down there cetus splashes into the sea in sync with the low thunder of a bass drum as a ship enters frame right our noble prince immediately followed by another to its left our black-hearted thief the visual dichotomy between them is super on the nose but this lack of subtlety does nothing to impede on the quality of their imminent clash or the film in general we cut from our extreme wide of the sea to a ground level shot aboard the ladder ship's deck its small crew stood at attention as their captain cladden crimson swaggers forward with a dog at his side as a familiar voice begins to ring out across its bow cut to reverse we're still on the floor but now we get a good look at his companion this dolly shot actually does some surprisingly heavy lifting we still haven't seen our characters or heard any of their names besides the sea monster but we know whose ship we're on spike the dog is a brilliant addition to the pirate cinema form that in retrospect feels like a no-brainer rather than our first close-up being of our protagonist someone we've just been introduced to as a man without a conscience we're shown the exceedingly happy pup at his side our first moment of pushback against the way he's introduced to us and then consistently characterized by nearly everyone not a part of his crew including himself in the film a black-hearted thief cut again and we get a behind-the-shoulder shot as our mc gazes towards the sun-drenched horizon another classic adventure homily the film relies upon to communicate the intrepid nature of its leads very raiders of the lost dark jumped to our second close and we're officially introduced to the titular rap scallion of our tale with our hero acquainted and his ambitions made clear we now enter what is affectionately just seven minutes of animated flexing and it is some of the coolest [ __ ] ever the once static camera has come to life turning into another member of the ship's now exhilarated crew williams's score heaves itself into the foreground while in one motion sinbad swings to the prince's ship and sheaths his swords in the middle of a double backflip then lands to take on four soldiers single-handedly cut back to the ship by the way it's called a chimera in every sinbad book comic show movie whatever it's called the chimera cut back to the chimera and spike launches himself on a purpose-built dog-specific catapult and takes out two more before touching the floor cut again and the crew joined the assault this is sincerely one of my favorite ensemble fights ever every character's style from their weapon choice to their means of traversal throughout the environment is super unique and illustrative of their place within the crew's dynamic the first two land each holding one end of a staff they're especially unorthodox fighting style reflective of their mutual rank as the premier comic relief of the crew then kale ripping off an entire board from the ship and immediately launching a soldier out of frame with it perfectly juxtaposing sinbad's dexterity while jed plummets into frame under the board and rips the camera along with him to throw a handful of bombs at some soldier's feet cut from the explosion sinbad is balanced atop one of his swords cuts the rope in his hand to bind a soldier's ankle in place while simultaneously blocking another swing planting his sword into the deck to side flip around him forcing him to cut the other rope sending the first one flying then catching his sword as it falls and turning them into devil sticks to fend off another two this choreography is some of the most imaginative and insane that i've ever seen in a feature film this is 2008 monty ohm dead fantasy 2 [ __ ] and i love how they play on just how much of a spectacle for spectacle's sake it is moments later with kale commenting that sinbad's last move a horizontal pinwheel kick all of the matrix reloaded but with dual cutlasses instead of a pole was a bit over the top only to then catch a man's blade in his teeth and flip him overboard with nothing but his neck anyways let's speed this along a little bit only one member of the opposing crew can hold his own and sinbad knows him by name produce sinbad wants to steal the ship's treasure the book of peace which seemingly protects the entire known world but is also described as just being for 12 specific city-states i don't know it doesn't really matter how it works what matters right now is that sinbad is chasing a bag proteus demands to know where he's been because they were bffs before sinbad went mia as a kid and sinbad is doing his darndest to seem like he doesn't care but he does s p share a brief duel then cetus interrupts it with his long long hands some comedy noises occur the pair team up to defeat the beast with this particularly awesome set piece and as it slips back into the briny deep sinbad pushes proteus out of the way and is yanked into the abyss right down with it proteus only being stopped from trying to save him in turn by his soldiers given how limited our time is to develop a sense of their bond before sinbad leaves him in jail for like an hour of runtime i think the latter half of this first sequence does an excellent job of conveying how close they truly were through the same physicality it defines the rest of the crew with more than just stating they were friends once which sinbad plays down it makes it a point to show us how well coordinated and natural feeling their movements are in tandem and how similarly they fight and think also i love the guy who's spit out and then immediately charges back towards cetus some very strong extra pissed guy in the charge of the rohirum in return to the king energy anyways sin bads under the sea and aerys finally makes her formal appearance sinbad and era strike a deal stipulating he steal the book of peace and post made it to tartarus in exchange for his life and more stacks than he knows what to do with so sinbad accepts and follows proteus to syracuse with every intention of following through i like just how strongly opposed proteus's dad king dimus is to sinbad's presence at the celebration because a lot of times inter-class friendship in particular in animation is significantly downplayed in how classism both conscious and unconscious can actually affect the poor member of that friendship like princess and the frog to use a contemporary example uh it's really weird and kind of [ __ ] up that like charlotte la buff and her father are grossly wealthy specifically off of sugar plantations and the thought never once occurs to them to just early without feeling any real hit to their personal financial security cut a check to the black family who has waited on them for the duration of charlotte's life and then the film like makes it a point to frame it as virtuous on tiana's part for not feeling bitter about that about the deep southern sugar baron whose wealth is predicated on the slavery of her grandparents generation not you know helping her without demanding exorbitant labor in exchange for it then again kind of on brand anyways diamonds is mad some more comedy noises occur from the crew i adore the bit of jed just endlessly unloading weapons from nowhere proteus defends sinbad and with little time to spare we're introduced to the second lead of the film marina proteus is soon to be sinbad recognizes her too but this time the recollection is one-sided and he departs empty-handed with a frown leaving heiress to impersonate him and steal the book instead kicking off the odyssey which comprises the rest of the film speaking of odysseys we're in greece sinbad legend of the seven seas is a film about sinbad the sailor and about as liberal the sense of the word about can be used but to be clear i i don't think that's a bad thing nor is it an irregularity for sinbad the original seven voyages of sinbad the sailor are a collection of episodic tales what's called a story cycle based in baghdad during the reign of harun al-rasheed of the abbasid caliphates in around the year 790ish the first of the seven is a frame story a structural technique used throughout the thousand nights to establish an in-universe narrator to another character acting as the reader's stand-in there isn't one sinbad there are two sinbad the porter and sinbad the sailor the story goes an impoverished servant briefly rests on a bench outside of a rich merchant's home where he prays to allah about the injustice of a world which allows the rich to live in ease while he struggles endlessly but remains poor this guy gets it i just feel like big daddy labeouf could have dropped something crazy in the tip jar for the one time and fixed like most of tiana's problems patreon.com sword the merchant overhears this and sends for the man to be let inside whereupon they realize they share the same name and you'll never guess what it is sinbad the sailor tells simba the porter he came into his wealth by fortune and fate across seven magical voyages which he then tells to the porter giving him a more expensive gift at the end of each of the tales the moral of the cycle being if nobody got me i know oligami the thing is again the first translation of this the western world was introduced to was in the early 1700s we're talking real deal pirate season and a lot of the more religious aspects of the knights in general were either edited out by guillotine or sort of ignored by its readers so what we're left with is just the voyages themselves the poor sinbad is the audience so we drop him and the frame instead focusing entirely on the adventures of the other sinbad who transcended his poverty by way of sailing while the hottest book in town is our pal charles johnson's being read by a populist who idolizes pirates for doing exactly that the retwilling of sinbad into a pirate was a natural next step and his name eventually became so synonymous with piracy even some japanese pirate films that have nothing to do with sinbad have been localized in the west as sinbad movies shout outs to shiramifune i loved you in the lost world of sinbad and the next step of separation wasn't far behind sinbad began appearing in films shorts and tv shows always with a different cultural makeup age demeanor and narrative alignment the first depiction of sinbad on screen in the west was ub eworks's sinbad the sailor in 1935 and the following year he made his mainstream debut and popeye the sailor meets sinbad the sailor wherein sinbad as a bluto echo fighter wraps his introduction to the audience [Music] oh [ __ ] the tenuous connection to the original tales would continue to wax and wane with the tides of each new rendition ray harryhausen's sinbad trilogy with columbia pictures for instance portrays sinbad as hailing from baghdad and even tries to capture some of the elements of each of his voyages while richard wallace's sinbad the sailor stars douglas fairbanks across maureen o'hara in a secret eighth voyage when they discover the lost treasure of alexander the great so by the time we reach sinbad legend of the seven seas what better way to revisit the story than to not only lean all the way into him being a pirate but to begin his adventure in the same collection of sunny peninsulas that so much of our cultural conception of pirates came from and then even better why not combine the adventuring spirit of sinbad with the populism and aesthetic of pirates but the structure of a famous greek tale check this out dreamworks says sinbad is based on a greek legend written to illustrate the pythagorean ideal of friendship pethes is accused of and charged with plotting to kill dionysus the first of syracuse and requests to be allowed to travel home and settle his affairs before he's put to death believing he'd simply flee and never return dionysus refuses his request so damon his companion offers himself in his place should pethiest not return dionysus insists damon will be executed for the crimes instead dionysus is all but convinced pythius has fled and on the last day he has to return he calls for damon's execution but just as the axe is about to fall pythius comes back to stop it so astonished by the love of their friendship dionysus pardons them both and sets them free amusingly the reason pethis gives her being late is that pirates had captured his ship and thrown him overboard so this is a pretty clear analog right sinbad as pythius produces daemon daimous is dionysus the story being set in greece also allows for some pretty esoteric jokes that i really appreciate like here when aerys meets sinbad she mentions that he must have seen her likeness on the temple walls and he hesitates before giving this clearly half-hearted response this reads as him being naturally pretty confused and nervous of course but it doubles as a jab at aerys ego because historically aerys didn't have any temples and she was hardly ever portrayed in artwork at the time this radical change in structure relative to sinbad's other cinematic adaptations also allows for an audience surrogate to be reintroduced to the narrative without requiring a cumbersome framing device marina is sinbad the porter and this time what she laments is a thirst for experiences not riches marina is a fantastic proxy because not only is it most natural for her to be given exposition from sinbad and proteus as to their relationship with one another and the world as they traverse it because both of them are subjects as unfamiliar to her as they are to us but her emotional reactions to what she learns and how these characters behave provide a really comforting mirror in specific i think her reaction to sinbad failing erysis test this sort of unrefined frustrated insistence that the circumstances themselves are the problem rather than the people within them is one of the most honest responses to a plot twist i've seen a character meant to reflect us give also speaking of realistic reactions who decided to put spike whimpering at the site of sinbad about to be executed in the movie what is your [ __ ] problem bro literally every time i watch this movie i've watched this like 13 times this week it still makes me cry when he whimpers like that oh my god you're a monster for that marina's enthusiasm for the adventure they're on is unmistakable even in their greatest moments of peril and the ways in which this consistently clashes with sinbad's childish imitation of disdain towards her makes for some of the funniest and most organic back and forth found in dreamworks's catalog the apology fight she has with sinbad after she saves them from the sirens doesn't feel like animated characters bouncing off each other for a bit it feels like a regular argument that takes on the character of a bit to us which is a huge difference honestly i think most of what makes sinbad work so well as a film beyond its spectacle is how outstanding its two women characters are aerys is and you cannot argue me down from this the best character dreamworks has ever made i will die on this hill and marina is absolutely electrifying possessing more traits of an adventure protagonist than sinbad himself in acting as a perfect ballast between his and proteus's respective extremes and this extends to the film's use of color as well sinbad is cloaked in reds and browns while proteus dons blues and golds and marina is draped in all four i mentioned before that the film's lack of subtlety isn't an indication of its quality and this is sort of what i mean its structure its very foundation lies in dichotomy and the means of finding unity within that and when leaned into this elevates the work rather than harming it one of my favorite instances of this use of contrasting blues and reds in the film is at the end of their ssx tricky rescue mission when sinbad and marina crash onto the chimera and are enveloped by a sail on its deck when we cut to a shot from their side gazing into one another's eyes the sun illuminates it from behind diffusing the light into a warm peachy glow in the middle of this otherwise frigid waste of blues and whites i think this very in-your-face style of visual storytelling also does well in complementing the instances of delicacy when they are there sinbad's muffled reverence for proteus in deeply repressed love for marina causes him to interact with her physically in a really interesting way compared to most animated feature protagonists and their love interests following their initial interaction on the ship where he carries her out of his cabin as he's trying to establish his feigned contempt for her he only makes any kind of contact with her in instances of extreme danger which like yeah of course but in the moments where he is given time to choose how he does so he grabs her sleeves instead it's only after they're falling down the mountain that he realizes she'll be hurt if he doesn't let go and actually hold her this makes the following scene where he deliberately touches her hand for the first time both her reaction of shock and his reaction to it to lightly place her hand on the wheel instead of committing to holding it all the more tender i also find it really endearing that just like dreamworks last adventure film containing a love triangle legend of the seven seas is like way too horny but to allow for this precarious romantic dynamic to work all of that sexual energy had to be channeled to heiress specifically it just makes her more of a bad [ __ ] and i'm glad that that was the move the cosmic bubble bath and a snow globe transition match cut from the constellation behind it queen also this is as good as any time to mention it this film's cast is crazy brad pitt nails the precocious sarcasm and underlying sensitivity of sinbad catherine zeta-jones kills as marina her delivery from her most enchanting to her most scathing lines is so consistently on point michelle pfeiffer as heiress has got to be a top five casting decision for any animated character ever and joseph finds as proteus honestly steals the show despite how little screen time he has the way he sends that when you knew how much it meant to us lying youtube stealing the book of peace when you knew how much it meant to us brodie bro was on it also frank welker the original voice of fred jones from scooby-doo plays spike which i just really appreciate scuba lineage in your cast is always a net positive after sinbad reveals to marina that the reason he and proteus had drifted apart was because marina herself her arrival in syracuse so many years ago being what had finally afflicted him with envy for proteus's life causing him to flee they nearly share a kiss but echoing her hesitant somber response to proteus's proposal earlier in the film she stops it before it happens the soothing score underlying the moment they shared briefly recedes and then quickly returns as a frenetic collection of strings and choir vocals instantly shifting the scene's gentle and bittersweet tone to one of mischievous anxiety our adventurers have finally reached tartarus as they approach the edge of the world and what lay beyond it the string sections dashing over the now heightened crashing of the wake against the chimera continue to gain momentum as sinbad calls for rat to give him a lookout rat declares that the world just ends and that they're surely done for to which the comedic pair respond with a flat earth joke once more iterating upon the gag of their placing bets on the various circumstances they've run into over the course of the film what follows is the single coolest moment in the entirety of pirate storytelling history sinbad repeats what aerys had told him to follow the star beyond the horizon and after he repeats it a second time we cut to a wide shot of the towering water jets encompassing our world's end the score being forced out of the foreground by an explosion of wind as it returns it evolves again this time from an anxious break to an exultant reprisal of sinbad's light motif as he orders the crew to free all sheets they're not going to sail the tartarus they're going to fly to it even before the especially cool part happens you know where they sail a boat on the winds off the edge of the planet into a shimmering void of lightning towards the gate of what the greeks described as hades new game plus the care taken to show the chimera's crew actually enact all of sinbad's orders to make it possible is i think where the film shows its truest self legend of the seven seas is the most unabashed expression there is of the belief that pirates simply are cool as [ __ ] nearly all of its grandiose uses of dynamic camera work throughout it is spent following its crew in what feels like a series of assiduously rehearsed dances the way in which rats in particular is capable of navigating the ship's rigging is otherworldly what most pirate films simplify to a single line in the crest of its action if their captain even gives a specific order at all during its run time sinbad dedicates entire uninterrupted minutes to the way it frames this interaction between the chimera and its crew as a waltz rather than a cumbersome necessity is perhaps best portrayed by the torch sequence immediately following their departure from syracuse there is no dialogue and there is no focus there is only the sounds of the sea and of the ship as its crew steps swings and spins in time with the music this brief sequence is even given its own track within the score lighting lanterns anyways the chimera takes flight the sense of scale and the use of williams's fantastic theme for sinbad is rapturous to say the least marina insists that she go with sinbad and he accepts the pair holding each other in the same way they had previously to retreat from danger now willingly swinging into the heart of it together surrounded on all sides by the coalescence of their chromatic identities the pair lands in a desert mimicking the sea where aerys has been waiting she reveals the true scope of her intentions as any good adventure villain does in the third act and at the end of her you suck just as much as i do speech to sinbad she gives him a chance to prove her wrong a test of his supposedly absent heart just like daemon impetus heiress too believes that if sinbad must return to meet his death he'll choose to flee not just for his life but the woman he and his friend love sinbad declares he'll go back his theme once again swelling beneath his heroism and he takes three steps and then aerys says he's lying and the ground crumbles beneath him and he fails marina and sinbad returned to the mortal world and it's here stranded on a sandbar nestled upon the outskirts of eternity that sinbad legend of the seven seas reaches beyond itself to interrogate the once prevalent cinema of piracy and our once tremendous love for it sinbad's insistence upon his own monstrousness in spite of what we know to be his true character represents the change and cultural appetite that swept the genre away 40 years ago leaving in its place an industry almost entirely reliant upon the enemies of our former heroes as the protagonists of their stories not allowed to be too critical of even fictional versions of their dominion lest the military pull their cartoon sized checks out of the marvel cinematic universe or transformers or whatever for mentioning they are sometimes mean the remission of adoration for these now eroding monoliths of storytelling and marina's rebuke of this self-resignation her insistence that there is yet good in him is ultimately the films and its authors appeal to its audience that this genre does not have to stay deceased sinbad returns to face his death the same as pythius and the same as the colossi he's carried on his back since he first entered frame on the deck of the chimera and just like our tale from so long ago his valiance is rewarded with his life aerys is forced to return the book of peace which we still have no understanding of because he kept his word dimous apologizes for misjudging him proteus and sinbad make up and having made his peace with marina sends her with his blessings to set sail with a chimera surprising sinbad as they cheerfully embark on a new adventure into another sun-drenched horizon happy endings are always my favorite i wish i could come up with one for this i don't think that there is another screenwriter alive on the planet who wanted to see the return of pirate cinema more than a pair who toiled away at feature after feature for disney just for permission to adapt to treasure island i mean ted elliott and terry rossio are responsible for the only three major efforts to bring the pirate genre back to life in the west john logan may have written the final script for sinbad but ted and tare are the ones who handed it off to him and it didn't work treasure planet lost disney millions and spelled the end of their traditional animation and sinbad did the same for dreamworks marina sinbad proteus kale heiress daimus this is the last time we ever saw hand-drawn characters from the studio when interviewed about sinbad's performance jeffrey katzenberg said i think the idea of a traditional story being told using traditional animation is likely a thing of the past pirates of the caribbean their third effort was a brief success sure but it inspired no others and it wasn't long before the reigns were taken from them there as well by its third film at world's end it began to sink into something wholly separate from its inceptive identity disney going so far as to cut the scene where jack sparrow finally explains how he became a pirate hunted to the ends of the earth by the east india trading company in the first place we had a deal jack i contracted you to deliver cargo on my behalf you chose to liberate it people aren't cargo mate too outwardly critical of a specific government and disney didn't want to lose money i'm willing to bet whoever made that call probably didn't get captain blood what a creature must sit on the throne who lets a man like you deal out his [Music] justice practice the trait of piracy on the high seas we the hunted will now hunt even if the crescendo of the film is a deliberate reflection of bloods i love sinbad the first time i saw it as a kid i leapt to my feet and spent the rest of the day running and jumping and yelling and fashioning a stick i found into a saber imagining i too was this wondrous character who is impossible to be sailing through a world that never existed but should have and i think at their base that's what pirate stories have always been an exercise and our collective imagination one where a new adventure awaits on the edge of every horizon i love how visually captivating it is just like the road to eldorado its characters were traditionally animated while its environments and its background actors were rendered digitally what it lacks in polish relative to his older siblings though it more than makes up for in design and animation every glimpse of the sky in sinbad feels like looking up at the threshold of a dream it's pacified purples it's brilliant blues and it's halcyon oranges only matched by the wonder of the actions of the characters beneath them to so fluidly portray such grace of movement and harmony with its many independent background elements created in a completely different medium while the camera tracking around them is moving at a pace that's rarely matched to this effect even today is a herculean task to have achieved and its entire animation team deserves endless cheer for accomplishing it sinbad is a pirate film set in ancient greece with a downhill tandem snowboard chase through an ice cave and two separate skydiving sequences even if it re-used a couple of instances of animation from the studio's previous works to save money its original environments are so striking that even later pirates of the caribbean films called back to them the way sinbad launches himself with a ballista into the face of a thousand foot tall cliff with a knife held perfectly in his mouth is one of the most whimsical stunts in anything i have ever seen they had our boy finessing through environments like a breath of the wild any percent run and it's crazy i love how stupid it is i mentioned a couple times how its central plot device is literally never given any meaningful attempt at an explanation and that is fantastic a good adventure is never about understanding the mechanics of the world it takes place in a good adventure explains just enough to follow its path and then tells you to stop worrying about it and tom feinin understands this beautifully he cut it to the bone leaving out almost any chance for exposition dumps or anything else that isn't instrumental to its progression and as a result sinbad moves along at an incredibly brisk pace of 86 minutes for a tail that covers a whole shitload of ground i counted and there were only like two moments in the entire film i would cut down and it's by a second or two each its romance is rushed and shlocky but in a really endearing way half of the chimera's crew is never even given names and its score is unreasonably good arguably sinbad's weakest sequence the attack of the sirens purely because the water effects used for them look considerably worse than anything else in the film is more than made up for by this being the strongest moment in williams's compositions and the awe-inspiring design of the environment it takes place in the dragon's teeth defies all physical laws effectively being a mega ramp made of water and there's so much joy in not needing to justify its existence i love how its music synchronizes with the clashes of proteus and sinbad's blades during their introduction to further articulate the depth of their duality i love that the last lines of the film are a cheesy callback to an argument from the beginning of their voyage followed by a kiss just like the ending of against all flags and i love that they cut so many corners with its lighting that by any objective metric it is genuinely bad but it somehow manages to not be within context and actually helps to underscore its already melodramatic dreamlike aesthetic sinbad legend of the seven seas is not conventionally a great movie but it is the best pirate movie because it correctly contends that the real foundation of our love of pirates has always been the desire to encounter something new purities from perimi meaning i attempt and turn from pera to experience sinbad first acquainted himself with us in moving images as a cartoon from the same man who designed mickey mouse so if pirates had to die why not try to give them a rebirth in the medium they rightfully belong in where thought can be given form free of restriction and their titanic stature and our narrative memory can be given a new day but still it wasn't enough it ran dreamworks 60 mil to produce and it peaked at sixth place beneath legally blonde 2 and finding nemo only pulling in 7 million its opening weekend the week after its release disney's pirates of the caribbean cursed the black pearl premiered all but assuring that sinbad would sink to the box office floor an ironic twist of fate considering its genesis it eventually made back 20 million but it was just too late dreamworks's era of traditional animation had come to a close and the extraordinary world of pirate cinema took its last breath with it it sucks but that's just what happens to things we love sick transit gloria right even glory fades the pirate's gold the seahawk the black pirate the buccaneer captain blood the black swan captain kid frenchman's creek the spanish maine against all sails the pirates of pinsons all but forgotten by most our most grandiose creations and our most ubiquitous heroes will someday be lost and we will build new ones and then they will diminish in turn but the phantom pains will always remain an acute awareness that something alive was once there westerns musicals noirs pirate films were not the first genre to wither beneath the tides of time and they certainly won't be the last maybe someday you'll see a flash of a now long abandoned form and a contemporary work a one-off medium budget from some studio with money to burn it'll feel like a lightning bolt struck you in the chest and you'll go yes that's it that's what we were missing and then it too will recede the pedestal is revealed but for a moment and then is covered once more by the wax and wane of the shifting sands maybe that's why they imagined hell as a desert have a good night i've been through so much but i always found out it never hurts to try [Music] hey thanks for watching big big big thank you to my patrons for making this video possible especially these guys and a very special thank you to sam penn blade lord yuda anzu miranda shanna ethan fry sean chan sinuet dusky dancing derrick mcdonald emma brownlee carson davidson john dao exotic spoon a werewolf solar hernandez stoop andrews nicholas bloom rickard bergstrom daniel elizalde daniel martinez kevin truong rollback flapjack sandra gravdall ghostly tavion nelson nick orhuela solomon bell cody dean almighty dwarf jabiji cloudy scrubbin menu rick w raphael da silva chance thrash what's good with you chance i love you bro sham kumar unknown grady b olsen reverse polarity bean aiden sales the queen william broulon david maynard daniel dimitro sawyer coast jake pitch jordan may fox hunt jeremy wilkins cedar tyranny fognite sarah l nathan martin peyton williams ncpd medic christian wells that one french guy koala bala saint nicholas lewis ssgt snuggles dustin trees austin hart elizabeth ayushi scribe scribbles brian the epic johnny b good ryan randolph liam the child clunt senior gambino enrique gomez michock brooks zn employee preston michaelisio gregory babcock vhs daydreams holden williams gwiester aaron brannan stephanie langdue tyler eaton walter j taggart patrick foster joshua evasaker ethan boyd evan jones spencer neptonic lynch yuri voice granule lauren godoko's flag jack dixon tyra rogers presque tale amy nguyen lw uneducated and enthused benjamin reed ram leek o'grady dante cantone kinsuge mandapanda luke hudson space ghost madeline foley alex fenn the dj lakota rawls kevin thurber quinn whiteley kevin johnson diego aras simon reilly grandshock trooper ivan dolvit from dragon alliance 2 buttershield maximum crash kane king the one who memes louis erikusen i am badgers jack buckets spoons luigi murray michelle nguyen muhammad al zafri avid no community tristan vs robert whaley stratfor nathan robin amini skelly v alexi arolavi tristan mourinho joshua cotamol blake demby sergeant vr gavin miller long hyun ho shin shane vino mumblecore max yo lane jacob new rory strickler charles j boyle travis osbourne and winterfey let me know what you thought about what i thought down below make sure to like and subscribe if you feel like seeing more slick vids like the one you just watched and if you really want to help out consider becoming a patron every penny helps me try to make this thing a full-time gig anyways love you love you love you and have a good night

Channel: BREADSWORD

Views: 417,076

Keywords: Sinbad and the Death of Pirate Cinema, sinbad adn the death of pirate cinema, sinbad and teh death of pirate cinema, sinbad adn teh death of pirate cinema, sinbad legend of the seven seas review, sinbad legend of the seven seas video essay, sinbad dreamworks video essay, sinbad dreamworks review, sinbad legend of the seven seas dreamworks review, pirates of the caribbean video essay, BREADSWORD, Nightly World, dreamworks video essay, disney failure, Dreamworks failure

Id: 2CJD97srcSU

Length: 44min 21sec (2661 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/idunno--]

I love this movie so much! The tertiary characters are all so charming and likable, the art is beautiful, the sirens’ song haunting, and the main characters’ chemistry is so good!

I just needed to get that out before watching the video.

[u/gurrasicpark]

I love the content BreadSword puts out. He may be a bit melodramatic at times, but he does some amazing research into the media he appreciates and truly shows how passionate he is about it. This video made me go back and watch Sinbad and got me all nostalgic, so I consider that a success.