The Road to El Dorado - A Match Made in Heaven

[Music] the year is 1994 Tonya Harding just won and promptly lost her USN FSC title my dad slept through a six point seven magnitude earthquake in the San Fernando Valley and seeing Star Trek generations with him is runnin and non-existent me about four dollars and eight cents a ticket Netscape Navigator boys to men and Ford Tauruses are all meteoric successes and earthworm jim just crashed landed on SNES 'as all around the world and in the midst of all of this unbeknownst to anyone even the company who has given it life a once in a decade pop-culture defining holy [ __ ] moment has just been assured into the waking world leaving only the vacuum of space in its wake as it begins its ascent into the cultural lexicon of days yet to come like combat Evolved or the Voyager two [Music] chills every time anyway ten minutes down the streets in a little back lot called Universal Studios a David is soon to rise to the long throne down now revitalize gauntlet of the animation world's Mouse eared Goliath forged in the glowing ire of Disney's recently dismissed chairman DreamWorks son of Jesse who was from Bethlehem and Judah is about to embark on a voyage lasting for toilsome years the destination their debut two months two features in 389 million the box office later suffice to say things pretty much work out for them in 1998 but it won't be until y2k and their greatest failure that the studio finally strikes gold and that's what we're talking about tonight so putting your thinking caps and strap in I'm really smart and this is the road to El Dorado [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right so before DreamWorks Animation was a 36 film 7 franchise deep pillar of animated features it was DreamWorks SKG and up-and-comer named after its trio of film boy co-founders Steven Spielberg Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen long story short during his years at the house of mouse cats didn't make a whole lot of friends but worse him an extremely unfortunate enemy Roy Disney a nephew to Walt Sunda Roy senior and a force to be reckoned with on the board Katz wanted to be present even and after initially being turned down for the job the man he was campaigning to replace ended up meeting an untimely helicopter related death after years of disputes over what Roy considered to be dishonouring him in the Disney legacy though he told then CEO Michael Eisner if you make Katzenberg the president's I will start a proxy fight and Eisner Catelli meant it Katzenberg got the boot successfully sued them for over 200 big ones and hit the ground running with his revenge project modeled after in simultaneous he meant to oppose Disney a studio meant to produce widely accessible live-action features to bankroll its much less frequent much less profitable animated features in a very real way Saving Private Ryan walked so the Prince of Egypt could run and it worked the book of Exodus reloaded was the second non-disney animated feature ever to pull in over 100 million at the box office right behind the Rugrats movie is that point is DreamWorks stuck the landing and gained a formidable foothold in the animated feature world with an s' and initial B proving in the process that they can match either powerhouses style but now the time had come to create something holy their own an aesthetic or at least the framework of one back to 1994 with their dual debut projects now underway it had struck Katzenberg that their next time out couldn't be Disney goes 80 Scorsese or Manhattan as presented by Diet Pixar so he waltzed over to the first duo of screenwriters that came to mind Ted Elliott and Terry Rossi Oh fresh off a pair of back back screenplays for you guessed it Disney according to Ted and terror cats handed them an especially thick history book authored by one Hugh Thomas titled conquest Montezuma Cortez in the fall of old Mexico and said this is the setting the boys were hooked by the premise of Disney Toonami and presumably a life-changing amount of money for any normal person and they quickly got to work scribbling down the inceptive treatment of what would become the road to El Dorado so what is the road to El Dorado but simply an antihero led adventure quasi musical buddy comedy slash genre parody based on a series of films ticking the same boxes and bearing the same naming conventions beginning in 1940 with Victor Schrute singers at the road to Singapore following American sweethearts Bob Hope and Bing Crosby as a pair of lovable more stupid than they are cruel rogues with Dorothy Lamour and variably cast as the level-headed third and love interest the road to films where a collection of increasingly absurd fourth-wall breaking vaudeville channeling metal Lampoon's each adventure embracing a new set of cinematic tropes that its creators deemed either played out or actively problematic with the leads often addressing the audience making fun of their own production company or begging the Academy for nominations [Music] you must see the picture you get him or any villains we may meet we haven't any fair paramount will protect discuss were signed for five more years she's gonna sing folks now is the time to go out and get the popcorn beyond humorous the films were antagonistic the plot of the pictures so far I better hide you from the killers from the critic in fittingly the road to El Dorado eventually took shape as a medley of the series's most charming elements and as an antagonists to Disney the duo being run out of town in the road to utopia there are being mistaken as gods by the tribal leadership in Zanzibar stowaways cast adrift and Morocco the ancient beasts in the volcano in Bali the failure to avoid love in Singapore the musical numbers the progressively more grandiose set pieces the stakes the lies the leading lady in the laughs all revivified and condensed from seven films spanning two decades into one hour and 29 minutes of animation and it's fantastic so let's dive in the film opens with a classic exposition in the lyrics title sequence set to its titular theme Eldorado sung by Elton John and Co composed by Tim Rice and Hans Zimmer the same Elton John Tim Rice and Hans Zimmer responsible for The Lion King soundtrack the same year Katz was dropped from the kingdom which isn't at all bianna being an absolute banger though there's a couple pretty bold deviations from the at the time status quo taking place with this introduction first in most evidence a John's crystalline vocals aren't being delivered to us from a second or third person perspective either limited or omniscient like the majority of animated feature narrated prologue sing-alongs are the lyrics instead are coming from a first-person perspective but not from the characters leading the film either in fact the theme doesn't establish that any characters exist at all and none of our cast appears individuals which accompany is second sex is a decidedly existent thing in the world we're being transported to which is crazy for years the closest Disney ever came to sex and their animated features was this weird phallic shape my friend showed me on the cover of our family's VHS The Little Mermaid and your pic of one of the six times I can think of where Disney made an animal give another animal this look and while neither of these immediate oddities necessarily scream rebellion from the jump there are each introductions to themes which the road to El Dorado continuously iterates upon over and over again until by its end the film very much does feel like it's deliberately sailing against the wake of an incomparably large animated galleon anyways as the introduction reaches its end and Elton's voice fades from our presence we're assured into 16th century Spain in the beginning of our slap-happy adventure by the gentle hum of flowing water brilliant blue inviting agua mmm as the camera begins to panel a a hand clutching a silver goblet plummets through the frame into the fountain where the stream ends and as its pulled back to meet its owner's face we come with it introducing us to the film's first character the resounding voice of Jim Cummings pierces through the wave of growing applause and trumpet tree as the date card fades the grim steel clad figure sat imposingly above us as he announces to the crowd that today he sails to conquer the new worlds for Spain already this introduction is super solid like the way it cuts from this really high angle shots to one where we've been cast to the back of the crowd and right before cutting and close again his eyes briefly rest on us or the classic staring at the object you're holding while you say something menacing thing that villains like to do or the soldiers surrounding I got a little ahead of myself there this guy's a villain the villain the film opens on an introduction of its antagonist after a ballad from the perspective of someone living in the world he's setting off to destroy and adding a great deal to this gravitas this particular villain isn't the product of anyone's imagination either it's Hernan Cortez one of the worst of the worst people to have ever drawn breath most well-known for leading the genocide of the Aztec empire resulting in its total decimation this guy was so evil that one of the defining moments of Arthas Menethil is descent into insanity in Warcraft 3 reign of chaos itself based on fan ores burning of the tulare swan ships in laws gar and tool kins the silmarillion is something that Cortez actually did so determined in his zeal to kill natives instead of return home and give his men no other choice but to help him do it that he cast his ships aflame or ran them aground nobody really knows for sure trapping them and himself in the Americas within these first few shots directors Don Paul and Erik Bergeron subvert the accepted order in which Disney and Disney adjacent had customarily introduced their cast protagonist appears first in the film or in its book Reedy overture and convinces us of our villains villainy mostly through composition and his interactions with his horse speaking of his horse altivo this also marks the introduction to our first supporting character his horse altivo will circle back to him in a minute after Cortez throws his now half empty chalice behind him the camera once again accompanying it we're introduced to our protagonists after a match fade through their wanted poster as they're throwing dice in an alley TNM have cleaned house and are about to bounce when it the man they were gambling with offers that insists on a final bet a map to the wonders of the new world that they win and the forfeit of all their winnings if they lose the first scene in every road to film is dedicated to establishing the duo's contrasting demeanors Crosby as the callous Plan maker who gets the girl and hope as the dopey bright-eyed adventurer and Tulio and Miguel's in first reactions as the map is revealed to them serves as a much more effective much snappier version of this a map map a map of the wonders of the new establishing their dynamic in like 30 seconds instead of 4 to 600 the boys except curly forces them to use a different pair of dice and they miraculously still win as luck would have it though the loaded dice from just a moment ago fall out of Tulio's shirt huh this sort of balancing act between divine luck in consummate failure is what the road to Films relied on for subduing a team of characters with unethical ends in transmitting normally sharp-edged devious remarks or actions into things we can laugh at or feel engaged with in a cautiously optimistic way their plans either don't work which we expect or do and we get to laugh at the absurdity of it anyways having now been found out for the swindlers they are our dysfunctional duos fight or flight triggers and without skipping a beat they spring to life a variation on hope and Crosby's patty-cake routine Giulio and Miguel both respond to the revelation that they're cheating as if neither of them knew they were cheating one reaches for our guards rape here than the other but he misses we laugh everyone aside summer frozen the back and forth accelerates threatened hi parry hi we chased them across tables threatened Lowe dodge hi then up to the rooftops the threatened hi Perry hi threatened lo Perry lo they're revoking Captain Blood scaramouche at the court jester and of the Indies the duo are fling as if the film's core elements were not archaic enough the second our characters turn on to begin channeling Errol Flynn across Basil Rathbone and their conclusion of the bits having successfully evaded the now enthralled mob bears a striking resemblance to the end of Cleavon little self hostage routine and Blazing Saddles a few seconds into their back patting they realize they've landed in a pen with what looks like Toro the bull from Looney Tunes a brilliantly animated chase ensues seriously it is one of my favorite chases in film and at its climax the two leap in the barrels are lifted under Cortez's ship in our heroes if we can call them that Evan locked in quite literally to the adventure we're about to share yes finally I can talk about the horse I watched every road to film for this video at least twice Singapore Zanzibar Morocco utopia Rio Bali Hong Kong 21 hours and 7 minutes 76040 seconds in total not counting the third watches of the first three of my life spent absorbing this series and as I came out of my multiple day long binge and finally watched through the road to El Dorado again now intimately familiar with its roots something began to kind of gnaw at me there were barely any fourth wall breaks and I missed them every road to film plays like an elevated caricature of the last as their humor became more abstract and self referential the cast began yelling at the special effects team taking shots at other actors Bob Hope literally forces the endcard out of frame as the credits roll in Bali in demands to see is agent because he loses l'amour to Crosby again but in the road to El Dorado the one solid moments of fourth-wall breaking dialogue I could put my finger on felt damningly faint in a film which in all other aspects was an exhilarating take on the series's form and then I hit play again but this time I tried not to focus on Tulio and Miguel and it clicked the fourth wall is broken constantly in the film it's just not from the characters who can speak altivo rolls his eyes to us as Tulio and Miguel melodramatically lament their untimely deaths he dances to the non-diegetic music of Elton John he expresses to the camera as if he has a headache when Cortes speaks he questions how to Leo's voice can echo so much at the entrance to LD he's even the subject of the only other spoken fourth wall break in the film in exchange between Miguel and Chell that seems totally innocuous in passing but is actually an acknowledgment of a continuity lapse when you're paying attention to the horse the most consistently motive the most sincerely reactive character in our ragtag team of rapscallions isn't the only one that never has to hide how they feel about the situation lest they give up the con and they're almost always just to the side of our focus delegating these bits to a nonverbal steed slash sidekick tremendously expedited the payoff of the road to 'the trademark riffs without ever suspending the development of the film's story to reach them it's ingenious up speaking of gel after the boys plus one survived their escape by sea beautiful sublime we finally get to meet shell are a second supporting character and the love interest of the film rounding out our party for the remainder of the ride [Music] just like her timeless counterpart Dorothy Lamour the manner with which were introduced to Chell is specifically meant to frame her as a helpless victim of circumstance driven to hitting licks or scamming or whatever by forces external from her and beyond control so helpless in fact that our soft-hearted duo invariably follow her back through whichever threshold she's just emerged from and therein lies the brilliance of gels character before we ever learned why she's running or in what context she left the place she's running from the wounded disposition that she so naturally leads with instantly subdues her audience making it all the more endearing when it's revealed soon after that she's actually a con artist to a vastly superior one to either protagonist wielding the male gaze as a weapon countering their objectification of her with her own of them bending anyone who fell for her axe to her will and maintaining that leverage for the remainder of the film dorothy was always the steel in the walls of the road two's dynamic and structure the point of the duo being so intrepid yet so bizarre simultaneously so gifted and so stupid isn't just slapstick it is that left to their own devices death by their own hands is an inevitability they can never decide their own fates no matter what so what better means of making sure they can't then preying on their greatest weaknesses simultaneously parroting and very earnestly criticizing the way film has treated women especially women of color and it still as topical as ever in El Dorado since its adversarial Marc Disney was still in the midst of super hot water for their portrayals of jasmine Pocahontas and Esmeralda being way more sexualized in their Caucasian counterparts all within the span of like five years again not petty at all what's so interesting about El Dorado though is that it was criticized for many of the same things but if you'll allow me to reach just a tiny bit I think in this instance it was due to how the Phil marketed in the obscurity of its spirits not necessarily the contents of the work itself an expectation of honesty where there never was much the road to El Dorado is a ton of things but one thing it is not at least not fully is honest deliberately so there's a whole lot of responsibility that inherently comes with portraying a society or a people or a collection of either especially when they were grievously irreparable harmed especially when your ancestors perpetuated or profited from that harm so although the rough outline of the antagonists and locations and the fauna and the architecture are like basically accurate ish everything between those lines is a jumbled mess of different time periods different cultures and just plain old characters being wrong so here's a list of mostly everything the movie goofed up and then we'll talk about why Tulio Betts Miguel to pesetas that they won't survive their jump but pesetas weren't used as a form of currency for another three hundred and fifty years after this he should have said to real the thin rapiers the conquistadors wield art cub hilted in our blades are ductile developments which didn't exist especially not commonly until the early 17th century similarly more Ian Hamilton warmer the Spanish until after Cortez and Bizarros tandem conquests Cortes certain students save Tulio and Miguel on the sugar plantations of Cuba but Spain didn't plant sugarcane in Cuba for another four years and it wasn't cultivated regularly or prosperously for another like two hundred Cortes mrs. Cruz is carefully chosen as the disciples of Christ but Christ just asked some people to follow him up a mountain and then pick twelve Cortez a ship has a telescope a telescope weren't recorded as an invention until 1608 somewhere in the Netherlands the city of Eldorado itself is a confused mixture of Aztec Incan and Mayan cultures almost solely through the lens of confused and self-organized Europeans she baba is the underworld of keychain Mohammed ology in the architecture mostly adheres to Mayan culture as well but Iran Cortes pursued the Aztecs and the story of Spaniard invaders being falsely welcomed as returning gods was popularized by a priest recounting Francisco Pizarro reception by the Incan Emperor the same thing was alleged to have happened with Cortes but it was much less discussed in in both cases they were just wrong both are myths devised to mask in measurable wrongdoings Pizarro wasn't thought of as a returning God he lured a tow Alba to a feast in his honor and then massacred 5000 of his soldiers when he refused to accept Charles 2/5 as sovereign then hung him to death after lying to him that he would be spared if he converted to Christianity I think another fantasy tentpole took inspiration from his brand of cruelty what I'm getting at here is that's the point El Dorado in reality was a phantom a fabrication continuously exaggerated and one-upped by Europeans over centuries to rationalize and actually existent culture the moist cos vastly superior metalworking and reverence for gold as a religious votive offering instead of an arbitrary point system that everyone should kill each other over forever and ever El Dorado doesn't even mean city of gold it means the golden one a term the Spanish coined to refer to the southern music's leader the zippa who as an initiation rite was said to have been covered in gold dust and submerged in one of their secret lakes most commonly thought to be lake guatavita over time at the legend changed from a fabled man to a city to a kingdom to an empire but they were all an illusion it's like a game of telephone that got really out of hand and then a disney competitor in Verner herzog both made films about it so when Tullio and miguel reached the entrance believing it to be a dead end and Tulio yells at El Dorado must mean great big rock that is the filmmakers making fun of how unreliable the history is because most of it was written by the bad guys Tulio and Miguel are Spanish and don't know the Spanish title for the Spanish myth that they know about this is tonal necessity because like we talked about earlier the most effective way to blunt the impact of terrible people who did terrible things is to make fun of them to SAP them of whatever divinity or intellect they or their followers or the ones taught by their writings were deluded into believing they had the Spaniards are supposed to be the butt of the joke but when the film's marketing run began works having already struggled with its production for years initially planning for it to be a pg-13 release and later ascending it cutting most of the relationship between shale and Tullio forcing a multitude of rewrites as well as nearly the entire film's soundtrack to be scrapped and replaced the film eventually earning the nickname the lost city on hold the press that they drummed up for El Dorado could not have been more out of sync with what the film was the few interviews I could find the profiles the snippets carried this kind of self serious almost righteous tone as if because the animation team had visited ruins and pawns had used geographically appropriate instruments and the writers did their research on the region's history that the film would be putting integrity on the same pedestal as comedy by the time DreamWorks pivoted to posing the film as a fantasy goof fest which they should have done from the jump it was already too late it is a baffling case of total disconnect and the initial wave of completely justified backlash considering its presentation irreparably harmed the film's performance and critical reception it's the only animated film the company ever lost money on I mean it didn't even get a blu-ray release until like this year and a great deal of writing even fairly recent writing criticizes the film from that same perspective but within the frame of reference that was meant to be seen through and should have been promoted through from the beginning the road to El Dorado is just like its predecessors criticizing the genre and its competitors most prolifically problematic tropes with its tongue firmly in its cheek like I said Tulio and Miguel have no control over their own destiny and the reason for that is because they're an abject criticism of tired white Savior ISM finally made aware of the damage they actually caused like 47 minutes into the film there on the surface the embodiment of the trope while simultaneously stumbling through the plots and being shoved in different directions by everyone they attempt to con even altivo he's the reason they don't have Asians in nearly starved tall dark and handsome here is the reason they flee Spain in the first place Cortez the reason they flee the ship Chell is the reason they barely evade execution the reason their friendship fractures then reforms and the reason they win the ballgame subsequently revealing their mortality to cecal con chief Tana bach instantly sees through their facade and allows them to live out of sympathy plus he literally saves them from enceladus their attempt to save el dorado because to leo the galaxy brain tactician 'he's plan doesn't go as planned even the reason to Leo and Miguel are con men and thieves in the first place is divulged to us in the most on-the-nose way possible within the first seven minutes of runtime the entire intro sequence from our introduction to Cortes to Miguel and Tulio's escape from his ship is a poignant illustration of the way imperialist states in the rich within them inherently stand opposed to and criminalize their poor while simultaneously perpetuating the callousness required to justify let alone personally amass that level of wealth what literally dooms them to torture followed by forever slavery is being crushed literally by the riches of those above them the only meaningful decision tool you and Miguel ever make on their own is to be pretty ok guys actually and to sing which is good because the music in the road to El Dorado goes crazy it's soul musical number what in any other road to film would be one of at least four or five is in a word euphoric it is what I would argue to be the centerpiece of the whole film its booming percussion the triumphant brass that comes in for the chorus the fact that it is the film's only in universe music featuring lyrics yet it shows zero interest in serving as an I want song or any other type of song that could push the story forward in any way instead electing to be an I guess we should justify committing to the bizarre situation we've fallen into song are enough by themselves to make me fall in love with the film and that isn't even considering the beauty of the visuals accompanying it elevating el dorado is already extremely vibrant color palette and stinked art direction into an almost hallucinogenic state not dissimilar from Dumbo's pink elephants on parade by the time it reaches its end but with an unparalleled unbridled energy which kevin kline and kenneth branagh maintained from the first to last note but what is perhaps most impressive to me about the road to el Dorados soundtrack is that the rest of the songs managed to not fall short of the bar that it's tough to be a god sets it's not another tarzan where most of the music while solid on its own that feels clumsily laid over the film and doesn't land on the emotional beats it seems to be trying to another cool YouTube boy sideways has an excellent Vuitton this that you should check out but it's like if Tarzan was done right every song is written from the perspective of the main characters with the exception of its introduction in the film directly interacts with the sentiments they express either through overt visual cues or characters outright responding to what the song is saying as is the case with friends never say it by when the pair take a pause for the titular line to play once more before it Miguel says well good luck instead of goodbye because they still love each other and I cry or the glistening choir in the beginning of wonders of the new world swelling into the foreground when the elder audience Alda writes when the elder i'ts heave a waterfall of gold over the to and into jeeb Alba the trail we blazed is maybe the perfect tone center for adventurers setting off into the great unknown and without question could have topped charts if they released it as an alternative rock single speaking of charts the Backstreet Boys did the backing vocals on friends never say goodbye they weren't credited do allegedly to label issues but the Backstreet stamped by itself is maybe the biggest cinematic flex from the turn of the millennium that I have ever heard more than just the road to el Dorados music though I adore its musicality from the moment were introduced to the pair the film hardly ceases its breakneck charge into the unknown and the few moments which do offer some repose feel almost exactly like the moment Ennio Morricone 'is the ecstasy of gold like a minute and forty seconds in where everything falls silent but then you hear the strings start to pick up and you're like oh it's about to go off the boys are trapped in a cell but Tulio responds to the brief stagnation by hitting his head against a wall and sink to the strums of guitar he is the grounded percussive constant that holds the excited plucks and strums of Miguel's lute in time their interdependence is expressed just like crosby and hopes always was through the music they make just as the string section rises back up from the silence in ecstasy of gold so too does the banter in Eldorado becoming more and more hurried until full lines begin to spill over one another as they argue in front of an audience of strangers and the film cuts between them the erupting volcano and the armadillo and the butterfly it endlessly pursues at their feet to accentuate the atmosphere of just barely composed chaos until it erupts [Music] [Applause] that's why there's such excellent flinters a style of exchanging not impressive swordplay but impressive wordplay that demands a very specific sense of rhythm that just wasn't common anymore it's why their arguments never aren't funny because every aspect of the film especially its editing ignores many of the trappings of animated features up to that point nothing lingers if not for the emphasis of a pause between two unconvincingly delivered lines like Miguel's slinking out of frame only to jolt back in and double down on his lie about the position of the stars every cut feels Swift and deliberate an accoutrement to either the jokes being delivered or the power of each character within their dynamic the film never once takes an impeded step into the next location one of my favorite exchanges in the film when Tulio and Miguel argue about how much they should be worrying feels closer to the climax of Adam Sandler and Philip Seymour Hoffman's phone argument and punch-drunk love than it does to any scene I can think of an an animated feature until the years following l DS release cuts on the synchronized action of one in speech of the other like when that miguel falls in time with two Leos impatiently growling yes to him three days yes in tandem with the relentless use of sound bites from slapstick cartoons for even the most blase of actions like peaking to see if the shadow priest noticed you definitely giving your fake God slash boyfriend a blow job give Eldorado and even more infectious and charming comedic cadence than its predecessors so much of this film is lightning in a bottle I mean speaking of lightning its visuals in no way fall short of the beauty of its music its sound design or its impeccably casted performances their choice to color-code characters by demeanor whether they lead with emotion or rationale by the color of their line art Chell sharing a blue outline with Tulio and chief Tana Bach while Miguel altivo and tzekel-kan share the red and Cortez alone beset on all sides by black an extension of his did attachment from humanity the ability to believably replicate expressions of confusion embarrassment and restrained laughter like when Miguel nearly breaks character while Tulio is trying to explain why lobby ascending horizontally at first el Dorados lavish forests and the diversity of its fantastically imagined wildlife I mean the road to El Dorado perfected the stylized angular character design that DreamWorks initially made their mark with in the Prince of Egypt their masterfully blended through digital animation giving cities the tremendous populations they should reasonably have but without obscuring any for more faced with broad strokes simulated focus or bizarre relative distance as well as their ability to so vividly depict the properties of gold at a time where no other studio had enhanced what would already be a breathtaking film into one that was a technical benchmark for its time its water the witching the water is insane it's mechanically probably the best part of the entire film DreamWorks developed an all-new program specifically to replicate massive bodies of realistically moving and animated water called sprite achill where each sprites and every frame of each cycle could be multiplied onto points and a mesh replicating a body of waters greater movements so in scenes like the climax of the film when Tulio Miguel altivo and she'll crash their boat into the pillars propelled by the force of a tremendous violent wave they're being carried by thousands upon thousands of duplications of a handful of splashes harmonizing into what is still some of the most convincingly Restless and beautiful water in animation the film's intro ends on a shot of flowing water for no other reason than to flex because they knew it was that good I just wish more people had seen it in the same light this is the film that gave DreamWorks its entire aesthetic formula paving the way for all of its future successes I mean think about it the protagonist with questionable motives in demeanor the sardonic usually animal sidekick who constantly questions these inclinations the love interest who usually starts out as a begrudging support character whose unconventional personality and abilities are masked beneath a thin veneer of uniformity until the opportunity arises or is forced upon them the non-diegetic soundtracks littered with charting artists flagrant celebrity castings shrek wouldn't exist without the road to el dorado ants might have given them the more profitable production model but you couldn't pay kid bread to sit through an hour and a half of Zach Braff the ogre meekly pining for the hustle and bustle of far far away over a soundtrack of indistinct nasally trumpets in one keyboard the road to El Dorado is DreamWorks at least the elements most crucial to it but I don't think of it as a match made in heaven just because it was the perfect foundation for DreamWorks to build multiple billion-dollar ip's off of nor do I think it just because the characters and their castings fit one another immaculately I think of it as a perfect match for me it's a security blanket one that I've held onto since my parents brought it home to my sister and I when I was five or six Tulio Miguel altivo chell chief Tana Bock every moment of this film feels like the warmth that washes over you when you hear the voice of an old friend or the login screen of your favorite Wow expansion or the drums from your favorite Kanye song or the laughter from your favorite let's play it was there for me when I was nine and afraid of the dark bouncing its vibrant colors off my popcorn ceiling and it's here for me now when I'm 23 overwhelmed burnt-out anxious and constantly tired I only actively watched the road to El Dorado a handful of times before deciding to write about it but I've listened to it hundreds more and I think in a lot of ways the awkward place that it holds in DreamWorks as history is an apt reflection of the kids who grew up watching it I mean its own creators Elliott and Rossi Oh ripped it apart in interviews because of how disappointed they were with the way it turned out it's misleading marketing felt like when you met an old friend of your mom or something and you're like twelve or fourteen and you're getting groceries and so you're on your way back and you're in the car and the only thought your brain can put together is like why did it feel like you were apologizing for me I didn't even know those people yet it's a film centering poor 20-somethings released in a period of massive economic growth for the country that it was made in but by the time the kids who watched it became 20-somethings we had already weathered a major recession and are on the brink of another one it's a film in many ways more concerned with its niche brand of comedy and obscure and secreted references than it is with placating the taste of the audience given to it and the film's conclusion concedes that the return home is kind of [ __ ] now it doesn't matter because in their case in increasingly more in ours the home that we remember isn't really there anymore to come back to even if we did have some magnificent elixir or vast riches to show the characters in El Dorado itself are simultaneously more and less developed than who and what came before them constantly grappling with their own cynicism and clumsily falling through life the films run time seeking refuge in places or people that they fear deep down are ephemeral the greater conflict is never even resolved but it's in the wake of our groups flat on their face failure but the warmest hues of the film's light begin to shine through they might not have a and they might not have a plan but that's what makes it interesting maybe some of us feel like half functioning maladjusted people like them only truly confident in their abilities when they feel like they've conned people into thinking they're talented or smart or likeable maybe it's just me but it's ending electing to close on such a hopeful sanguine tone begs nothing of its audience but to heed their words to never let failure suspend us from brazenly charging into our futures eagerly awaiting whatever the next uncalculated blunder riddled adventure will be I don't know it might be tough to be a god but it's tougher still to be human and I think that's the point have a good night you think that money is everything and get it anybody's spray go make a fortune become a king and still it's anybody's spring flash a bankroll do you suppose the brook would care hey thanks for watching big big big thank you to my patrons for making this video possible especially these guys in a very special thank you to Eric usin Alexi rol avi Alfie ex asked for seconds avid Blake Tim beat Brian Phillips butter shield Charles J boil chase FC Diego Aras dr. trike Eli sellers Evan gavin miller goebbels jack gran shock trooper Henry R Anderson Ocean I am badgers I've indulge from jagged alliance to Jacob knew Joe pets Joshua Coto mall Cain King killer space lay we long Hyun Luigi Marie Marwan Muhammad maximum crash max aren't Michelle when Mohammad Elsa furry Nick Bell Robert Whaley Rory Strickler Shane be no Simon Riley Rafa Nathan Travis Osbourne and Tristan Marino let me know what you thought about what I thought down below make sure to LIKE and subscribe if you feel like seeing more sick 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 I'll see you next time [Music] you [Applause]

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Views: 789,445

Rating: 4.9344273 out of 5

Keywords: The Road to El Dorado, Dreamworks video essay, Dreamworks analysis, The Road to El Dorado video essay, The Road to El Dorado analysis, The Road to El Dorado review, Disney video essay, BREADSWORD, breadsword el dorado, the road to el dorado full movie, the road to el dorado trailer, the road to el dorado ending, the road to el dorado opening, dreamworks movie review, the road to el dorado soundtrack

Id: Jz6nPSZmd14

Length: 42min 51sec (2571 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 26 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/TheBuggaWump]

I love his videos, but the borderline whiny and lazy voice he puts on at points (especially near the end of this one) is too much sometimes

[u/Undedmekko]

That was great

[u/Nawpo]

I love it, but I wish he would let the clips speak for themselves more.

[u/magimack]

Oh yeah, the movie that made me mad as a kid because the two guys didn‘t end up a couple which confused little me somehow because that couldn’t happen because they‘re both guys. But somehow I felt like it was leading up to this. As it turns out the movie was one step of many on my road to self-discovery. Great movie. Still mad they weren’t a couple though.

[u/LunchboxRadio]

Love my boy Breadsword. Glad to see his reach is growing. Also love this movie.

[u/magvadis]

This movie and Moses I thought were the same movie for the longest time...didn't really think either were that special at the time, I don't get the hype.