The Troubled History of The Black Cauldron

when it comes to the history of disney's animated feature films there are quite a few with troubled histories whether it's the abandoned original version of beauty and the beast the cut story elements of aladdin or even the controversy surrounding the inspiration for the lion king but none of these even come close to the behind the scenes drama and chaos of the black cauldron it's a story that encompasses more than the film itself as it takes place during one of the most troubling times at the walt disney animation studio even going beyond the film's history are the many cut scenes that have yet to see the light of day which in the second half of this episode will solve once and for all so let's go back to disney's pre-renaissance sarah and take a deep dive into the history of the black cauldron disney's classic that should have been the story begins in 1971 when disney acquired the rights to lord alexander's the chronicles of perdain the five book series told the story of terran an assistant pit keeper who dreams of becoming a great warrior with each book filled with his many adventures as he and his friends fight against the forces of evil this series also drew heavily on welsh mythology and many compared its fantasy elements wide cast of characters in world building to the lord of the rings and the works of c.s lewis so the chronicles of perdain was all but destined for a film adaptation and it just so happened that a certain disney president was searching for the company's next animated feature film epic hello i'm randy cartwright and this is ron miller randy how are you good to see you this is randy great way to start the film the rights acquisition for the series was spearheaded by then disney president ron miller as he believed the stories contained a wealth of on-screen potential he even went so far as saying the series could very well be the snow white of a new generation so in the early 70s disney commissioned mel shaw one of the company's legendary storyboard artists to condense the entire five book series into a workable cinematic story the end result was nearly 250 individual pastel sketches featuring key moments of lord alexander's epic fantasy as initially envisioned the plan was to have these paintings service the foundation for the animated features visuals and story beats however even by the mid 70s aside from these conceptual paintings the project was still in pre-production limbo you see the series was acquired during a very rocky time within disney's animation department both in terms of production quality and morale the primary factor was the passing of walt disney which was still a very recent memory and his lack of guidance and influence was sorely missed in the company's animated feature film canon true movies like the aristocats and robin hood were still quality animated films but they were also criticized for leaning a bit too much in the comedy some even went so far as calling them a collection of sitcom sequences lacking the emotional depth and disney charm of those in the past however walt's passing affected more than just the animated films themselves as it led to a divisive rivalry among three primary groups or generations within walt disney feature animation but to fully understand we have to briefly cover the evolution of the animation department itself let's take a look at this film fellas i think we can learn something from it walt's original team of artists and animators were known as the nine old men and together they revolutionized the medium with their 12 key principles of animation then in the 1940s a new wave of artists joined walt disney feature animation and together with the nine old men who mentored them would be known as the disney veterans or first generation disney artists however in the 1950s walt disney's focus began to shift away from animated films to the theme parks so it was these disney veterans who took over the mantle so to speak as although walt still supervised the animated films they were given the responsibility of handling many of the creative decisions flash forward a couple decades later to the early 1970s with the second generation disney artists you see many of the disney veterans were beginning to retire or plan to do so in the very near future so these newcomers were selected to carry on their legacy one of the artists of the second generation was don bluth who was revered as the so-called future of walt disney animation part of what made him so unique is that he briefly worked as an assistant on sleeping beauty and was mentored by one of the original nine old men this put him in a position of leadership as he had both ties to the disney veterans or first generation disney artist and this younger second generation but then you had the much younger third generation artists awesome right and who are you me yes i'm john lasseter he's the cameraman he's leaving in a little while this group had received training not by the nine old men but at the disney sponsored california institute of arts or cal arts they'd been brought into disney in the mid-1970s full of energy and enthusiasm but also very inexperienced now evidently there was a lot of underlying tension between these three groups of disney artists there was the second generation who under the watch of the disney veterans felt they'd still never been given the chance to shine and the disney veterans who saw the second generation as entitled and impatient as far as the third generation cal arts team they were mostly seen as outsiders brash and overzealous although i will strongly emphasize that this is a bit of an oversimplification as the animosity between these three groups wasn't felt by everyone one example were the few remaining nine old men who welcomed this new generation of disney artists with open arms however when it came to the black cauldron ron miller strongly felt neither the second generation or third generation disney artists were up for the ambitious task you see he was determined to use melsha's bold conceptual artwork as a template which meant really pushing the bounds of disney's more conventional animation of recent years so to better prepare them for the black cauldron's artistic challenges he put the film's production on hold and instead assigned many of the newer artists to the rescuers to be overseen by the much more experienced disney veterans here is all the warmth and charm of disney animation at its best walt disney productions the rescuers at some point during production of the rescuers it seems ron miller finally felt the newer generation of disney artists were ready as the black cauldron was given a release date of 1980 one of those assigned to lead the animated feature was dawn bluth and some of the initial work on the film was even featured within a disney recruitment brochure however in 1978 it was reported that once again the animated film was put on hold this time until 1984 though a bit more dramatized in the press ron miller felt the animators still weren't ready for the complexities and scope of the black cauldron so instead they would focus on the far less ambitious fox in the hound as an effort by miller to hone their skills even further in preparation however this did not sit well with don bluth who felt the newer animators including himself were more than ready to finally tackle the black cauldron in fact he had some rather strong and very public words about disney specifically the company's animated feature films believing they were severely lacking the innovation and compelling storytelling of the past so fed up with being assigned to in his eyes less challenging films like the fox and the hound he and a team of animators began working on a project behind closed doors i heard some people talking and they said if you drop a cat off a roof it'll always land on its feet the film was banjo the wood pal cat which don bluth felt did provide the artistic challenges he and his team weren't getting from disney however ron miller eventually found out about this after hours project and wasn't too happy as even though it wasn't technically being made on company property he saw it as a sign of disloyalty there was also growing hostility towards bluth among the other disney animators as those under his leadership believed he was showing favoritism to those working on banjo many also believed he'd pushed eric larson one of the few remaining nine old men out of directing the small one so with tensions in the animation department at an all-time high and right in the middle production on the fox and the hound he left disney to start up his own animation studio he also took half of the new disney animators with him which caused quite a stir within the company it not only set back the release of the fox and the hound by six months but also mickey's christmas carol by a year however undeterred production on the black cauldron did finally commence in 1980 with the initial budget of 15 million dollars animation is a continuing process the young artists of today can draw from the wealth of past experience and bring their own contributions to new projects like the black cauldron now it's worth stressing that initially production on the black cauldron was pretty straightforward kellert's alumni john musker was chosen as the ambitious films director with long-time disney animator art stevens who co-directed the fox and the hound signed on to produce english novelist rosemary ann sisson was hired to write the script which was now to be an encapsulation of the first two books of the five book series as a way to hearken back to the glory days of disney animation ron miller made the decision to have the black cauldron filmed in 70 millimeter this hadn't been done since sleeping beauty and was a very expensive process but for such an epic story it seemed more than appropriate when it came to the film's art direction initially those assigned to the character designs were encouraged to really think outside the box this was especially true of the horn king as remember the idea was to go beyond what disney had ever done before visually tim burton batman you see his shirt he's the one who did that tim burton soon to go on black cauldron one of the artists assigned to the black cauldron was a very young tim burton whose incredibly unique designs and character creations were definitely far from anything disney had ever produced however it wasn't very far into the film's production that the behind the scenes drama and chaos really began to unfold part of this was due to the addition of not one but two new directors ted berman and rick rich who had joined john musker in leading the production team but they'd also just so happened to direct the fox and the hound alongside black cauldron producer art stevens this immediately led to friction over the story direction and character designs a tug of war between the disney veterans the few remaining second generation artists and the calarts team the drama soon got word to ron miller so he made the decision to replace art stevens as the movie's producer with layout artist joe hale who he felt was more capable in keeping everyone in line but to make things even more convoluted art stevens then joined the other disney veterans to become the black cauldron's fourth director so the term too many cooks in the creative kitchen is a pretty apt metaphor one of our problems was that there were so many characters and so much story that it was kind of a case of taking all of this material and condensing it into one story that we could put on the screen even with a new producer the younger disney artists were slowly but surely pushed away from many of the black cauldrons creative decisions one example was the rejection of every single piece of tim burton's conceptual work so he was eventually taken off the project then there was the incident when john musker came into work one day to find all of his animation sequences gone from his office so citing creative differences he left the black cauldron in favor of directing another in development project basil baker street disney legend glenn keane was another newcomer on the black cauldron but after his ideas were constantly rejected he was asked to leave and go work on something else so he joined ron clements yet another artist who'd left over creative differences to work on basil baker street which if you haven't already figured out was the original name for the great mass detective but to make matters even worse the disney veterans were really struggling to decide on what direction to take the character designs so they reached out to milk hall one of the retired members of the nine old men to redesign the majority of the characters the problem was that no one bothered to supply him with any of the film's concept art and his area of expertise had always been refining character designs not creating them from scratch this led to a horn king that resembled a sort of undead male maleficent an elanwee that was basically a mixture of tiger lily and ellis a terran that could have been mowgli's older brother and a flute or flam that could have been roger's long lost brother the team did wind up refining the horned king and flute or flam to be a bit more original but alanwi and taren remained virtually the same so island me and teres come from very very different backgrounds she's a princess and he's a farm boy he's an assistant pig keeper to this little character right here little hen win oh oh he's absolutely enchanting now who does he remind me of me when it came to the film's visual presentation as a whole the team was still pushing for a quote new generation edge one of the experiments was the use of 3d projections in which the animation team worked alongside imagineers to develop a hologram effect this would have been used during the cauldron born scene as the undead spirits would have emerged from the screen and hover over the audience however due to the cost of installing the required system in conventional movie theaters this was ultimately abandoned the one innovation that did make it into the movie was the use of cgi where were computer-generated imagery you see artist michael pereza was yet another animator who left the black cauldron for the great mouse detective but for once it wasn't over creative differences but despair had the use of this new form of technology for the sherlock holmes inspired animated film at some point producer joe hale was shown what the animators were doing and he was so impressed that several elements of the black cauldron would also utilize this bustling new technology by 1984 production on the black cauldron was still going full speed ahead but its budget had grown from the initial 15 million dollars to over 40 million part of this was due to a number of extensive rewrites and scrapped animation as again they were trying to encompass two entire books of a five book series into a 90 minute movie at one point the directors even decided to swap story sequences which resulted in more scenes being thrown out restaged and reanimated an example of this was the fair folk scene which was completely scrapped at the last minute and reanimated from scratch midway through production the black cauldron saw yet another departure but this time it was ryder rosemary and sisson over surprise surprise creative differences another departure from the animated film was co-director art stevens as he decided to retire from the disney company near the end of the film's production now if you're wondering where ron miller was during all this chaos he was dealing with his own chair problems as by this point he was now the company ceo you see in 1984 a corporate raider and disney shareholder by the name of saul steinberg threatened to buy the company in a hostile takeover attempt his plan was to then sell off the company piece by piece effectively destroying the disney empire so ron miller and the disney board of directors agreed to buy back his shares for a much higher price to avoid the takeover otherwise known as greenmail other shareholders were furious and filed lawsuits against disney with roy e disney being especially critical of ron miller's handling of the situation so despite being ceo for just a year and a half in 1984 ron miller was ousted out of the company removing him from the black cauldron's production process entirely in his place came two executives that for the very first time in the company's history were not from within disney but the film ministry michael eisner and frank wells frank hi michael to oversee production of walt disney animation which included the very troubled black cauldron was ex-paramount studios executive jeffrey katzenberg however it's important to stress that katzenberg came from the world of live-action filmmaking not animation and this led to yet another major setback for the black cauldron you see the film's incredibly dark tone was one of the few aspects of melshaw's conceptual paintings in the original vision for the film as a whole that wasn't lost in all the production changes but it also featured scenes of graphic violence that were far more intense than anything ever seen in a disney movie so as the film drew closer to its release date of christmas 1984 disney held a test screening when it came to the graphic cauldron born scene parents and children quite literally fled from the theater in horror the animated film was also screened for roy disney who was disturbed at the dark tone level of violence and had a tough time understanding the story in general first couple of weeks i was at the studio i saw the black cauldron it was a very dark movie and a very troubled movie another screening was held for jeffrey katzenberg who also agreed that some of the scenes were way too dark for disney's usual brand of family entertainment it seems he also felt that a number of scenes and sequences dragged on for way too long or was simply unnecessary as he ordered 10 minutes of the film to be completely removed initially producer joe hale rejected what he saw as a ridiculous demand as edits were always done in the storyboarder like a real stage long before the scenes have been painstakingly animated and expensively colored in however jeffrey katzenberg disagreed and took it upon himself to begin physically editing the scenes he wanted trimmed horrified joe hale went straight to michael eisner who was able to convince jeffrey katzenberg to stop but he still demanded that 10 minutes had to be cut from the black cauldron so the film was delayed until summer of 1985 to do it as delicately as possible walt disney pictures presents the black cauldron after five years of production over a decade if you count the preliminary work the black cauldron was finally released into theaters on july 26 1985. it was disney's first ever pg-rated animated film and with an estimated final cost of 44 million dollars the most expensive animated film ever made now despite popular belief the film was far from a critical disaster with many praising its animation and music even calling it a return to the disney classic tradition the rest sod is simply mediocre neither disney's best or disney's worst a solid animated film but far from the next snow white although even those who praised the film agreed with jeffrey katzenberg's sentiment that given the source material by and large it was a missed opportunity even the book's author lloyd alexander said it borne no resemblance to a series but still found it enjoyable the one thing everyone did agree upon was its grim tone with many feeling it was far too dark and scary to be considered a family film this new film is close it's called the black cauldron and i'm happy to say that i really did like this movie because one moment i was sitting there thinking profound film critic type thoughts about the future of animation and whether this would make it or not the next minute i was into the story itself and really having a good time however when it came to the film's financial success that's a whole other story as the film debuted number four at the box office and within two weeks wasn't even within the top ten ironically it was outperformed by peewee's big adventure which rose to number three and stayed there for five weeks a movie that just so happened to be directed by a certain former black cauldron artist tim burton it was even outdone by the care bears movie probably the biggest blow of them all disney was so embarrassed by how it did at the box office that it would be the only entry into their animated film canon not to be officially re-released into theaters at least not as the black cauldron disney pictures presents a brave young hero with dreams of valor on a quest to save a beautiful princess together they're on a mystical journey looking for the secret that would free them from the power of an evil king the sword walt disney's animated adventure taran and the magic cauldron you see for the summer of 1990 disney planned on releasing a new version of the film taren and the magic cauldron it was basically an attempt to rebrand the movie in which they simply used the poster and translation for its original 1985 release in germany they even had a special line of merchandise ready to release alongside this magical new ish adventure but when disney experimented with a handful of test screenings at january the results were pretty lackluster and this whole campaign was completely abandoned all through the 80s and 90s even as disney began releasing and re-re-releasing their animated films on home video the black cauldron was consistently given the cold shoulder the only way to even see the film was through bootleg vhs copies in the occasional screening but those were few and far between in fact aside from appearing within disneyland paris castle mystery tour which was designed prior to the film's release it seemed disney was all but determined to bury any evidence of the black cauldron's existence it wouldn't be until 1998 over 13 years after its original release the quote-unquote lost disney film was finally available to own on home video although let's be honest releasing it as part of the masterpiece collection was pretty darn ironic and a little hypocritical now the movie roger ebert calls a rip-roaring tale of swords sorcery and magic can be yours to own for the very first time i've got to have it the black cauldron over 5 million units were sold of the black cauldron netting disney upwards of 150 million dollars thanks to the surgeon sales the animated disaster piece found a new audience and slowly but surely evolved into the cult classic it is today the black cauldron may have been a disaster upon release but it would provide the necessary motivation and key players that led to the disney renaissance era i said look i'm here i'm not going away and i'm more than happy to learn and take the time and be educated by you after the whole film cutting incident and with the help of many of those once involved in the black cauldron katzenberg wound up becoming a major driving force behind some of disney's most beloved animated films of all time so whether you love it hate it or fall somewhere in between take a moment to give thanks to the black cauldron as the disney low that led to its mountaintop high the end or is it you see for the past two decades the vast majority of what was or wasn't cut from the original film the so-called pre-katzenberg cut has led to a lot of speculation now i won't name names but i did reach out to some of those on the black cauldron's production however they politely declined to discuss confirm or even deny what was or wasn't part of the original film so i decided to take matters into my own hands and while i won't reveal how i came into possession of what i'm about to show you i think it's about time to solve the mystery once and for all what you're about to see comes from a master copy of the finalized storyboards for the entire film the same ones that were used for the animation process just to be clear these are not from early storyboard assemblies which were altered pretty significantly during the film's troubled production these are photocopies of the actual storyboards used by the animators and layout artists for the original cut of the black cauldron to validate this even further as i wanted to make absolute sure i personally went through the film very carefully and i compared every single one of the nearly 2 000 individual panels to what appears in the final film as it turns out virtually every single storyboard matches up perfectly scene by scene shot by shot and even line by line but there's a handful of sequences or parts of sequences that don't appear in the movie and i'm confident these are the cut scenes especially since they correspond with numerous audio and visual jump cuts now for the sake of transparency it is possible some of what you're about to see was animated but never part of the infamous katzenberg cuts for instance the little mermaid's castle scene had a few additional shots and sequences that were animated but cut prior to the ink and painting process so some of these may fall into that category however since we know at least a whopping 10 to 12 minutes were cut from the final version of the movie i think the vast majority if not all these were part of the infamous katzenberg cuts so with all that being said let's dive in because there's a lot to cover in the original version of the film it seems the title of the movie came before a view of the black cauldron and this led to a mysterious figure searching for the magical object along with the fairfolk retreating into their cavern this would transition to the scene at the cottage which had taryn staring out the window in a daydream as the clouds take the shape of a great battle dolben then asked him what he was thinking about which is why in the final film taryn replies i was just thinking what if the war's over and i never had the chance to fight after teren and henwen set out for the cabin initially the film cut straight to them in the forest however in the final film a scene that was to appear much much later was put here instead as supposedly katzenberg wanted to introduce the horned king much earlier this resulted in the loss of dialogue from creeper as well as a bit of the original context and also lessened the impact of the true introduction of the horn king a bit later in the movie if you've ever been curious about this awkward edit there was initially a bit more of taryn searching for henwen in fact a few frames of this was actually featured within a tv special after hearing the cries of his precious pig it appears there was a reverse shot of gergie running away in fear but instead the film cut straight to taryn racing to help now one of the most jarring cuts in the film both in terms of audio and visuals was the removal of taryn getting smacked in the face by one of the creature's talons a glimpse of this can also be found in that tv special after taren gets smacked to the ground it appears a bit more time was spent of him laying there motionless and slowly getting back up this was more than likely cut so less time was focused on his bloody lip as in the final film there's a pretty noticeable leap in time not to mention a pretty jarring audio cut between the two shots an interesting moment that was cut entirely was taryn climbing up the castle grabbing onto a tree branch and nearly fall into his doom it's also one of the only instances of something appearing in the film that is not in the storyboards so my theory is that the sequence was altered to make it a bit less intense this would explain why in between these three shots the background of the castle changes so dramatically it's also worth mentioning that the scene is featured within the comic book adaptation which was based off an earlier cut of the film just as teren is about to enter the castle there's a group of guards walking the halls which force him to remain hidden but this was cut more than likely to improve the pacing after he does enter the castle he's once again forced to take cover only this time behind some barrels one of the lengthier cut sequences occurred after the close encounter with the vicious dog as immediately after taryn trips over some pots and pans and tumbles down the stairs the henchman and his dog hear this and race to see what's going on but just as terran is about to be discovered a mouse appears and distracts the vicious guard dog this explains why in the final film he leans against a wall then the next time we see him moments later he's in front of a completely different wall which of course has the secret passageway door oh yeah there's also a shot missing of taryn sneaking above the dining hall just before the horn king makes his appearance which was originally his first introduction to the audience quite a few additional shots are missing that built up tension in the room before the lights go out as evidenced by a pretty noticeable audio and visual jump cut the storyboards indicate the vision sequence was trimmed down a bit also going off the extended audio clip from the storybook adaptation not to mention another pretty obvious jump cut it's also evident that the scouting water hitting the horn king's face was shortened to make it a bit less graphic the next missing footage occurs a bit later once inside the burial chamber are you all right well come on then help me look around for whatever reason a shot was kind of a lawn we telling taran not to touch anything as it might have a curse on it which is a bit puzzling since it explains her overreaction a bit later in one of the most cleverly disguised cuts after discovering the magic sword terence suddenly jerks his head the way it's cut makes you think he's reacting to a noise coming from the other side of the room but in reality he was reacting to a long wee startling him by asking him whether he'd found anything we then would have cut to a long wee reaching a dead end but just as she's about to admit she hasn't found anything either suddenly they both hear noise coming from the other side of the room they both then race to the hole in the wall which is where the film cleverly picks back up now look you seem an intelligent sort of chat to me the first of many cut lines from flute or flam occurs just before he spots the skeleton along the wall with the lawn we and taran's introduction to the helpless captive also cut a bit short now we have to take a brief detour and cover one of the black cauldrons most infamously alleged cut scenes because as it turns out based on what i have it's a complete myth you see many believe when terran discovers the magic of his sword he originally murdered the guard but that the scene was reanimated for the infamous katzenberg cats they also claimed that taran jumping in the air is left over animation of taran jumping over the guard's lifeless body however based on the visual evidence the scene always played out just how it appears in the final film taryn is simply jumping for joy that's it i know what you're thinking well mark this could just be a storyboard of the revised scene and i can already hear the comment section swelling with the case of the um actually but all these storyboards come from the same set of photographs which also contain revision dates and none of the ones that are listed go further beyond july of 1983. the changes demanded by jeffrey katzenberg didn't occur until late 1984 well over a year after the last revision date and near the end of the film's production heck he wasn't even part of the company until september of 1984. this is also how it appears in the comic book adaptation which again was based off an earlier cut of the film before the drastic cuts now with that being said there was quite a bit cut from their escape of the castle quick up here the guard yelling there they are is more than just a voice in the background as it was actually the beginning of a brief chase sequence through the tunnels initially the upward shot of flute or flam being chased by the dog and swinging to the other side weren't back to back the camera continued to pan over to a guard on top of a platform holding a barrel which he would have thrown at terran who then used his magic sword to send him falling to his doom yet another cut part of the sequence took place after taryn stabs the barrels of rum to get away from the guards the bad guys of course slip and slide but one of them would have called on to his men to get taryn before being squirted in the eyes with the flowing alcohol taryn stands at the doorway laughing but he's interrupted by princess alanwe calling out to him and this is where the film picks back up as he shuts the door taryn then giddily runs towards her as he jumps up and down from all the excitement so i imagine these were cut to give the sequence higher stakes and more urgency in the continuation of fluter flam getting the shaft all but the very tail end of his melody was removed resulting in a pretty awkward cut of laundry mid-sentence in fact you can actually see her begin to say oh fluter right before the awkward edit however in a pretty seamless edit after a long week questions teren's bravery he and fluter flam originally had quite a bit more dialogue so it seems katzenberg really had it in for the old bard after the end of the scene which contained even more cut dialogue there was a brief sequence of taryn staring at his reflection in the water in my opinion this was supposed to serve as a contrast to a previous scene in which he stares into a pond and sees himself as a brave knight but is now struggling with his confidence before leaving the forest in search of henwen the scene wasn't supposed to end with a dissolve from gergion to the bridge instead the original version continued with even more dialogue from fluter flam and as you'll continue to see the poor guy just cannot catch a break who are you who am i more to the point who are you now for the record i'm not including the alternate version of the fairfolk scene because as previously mentioned this was a story changed by the directors much earlier in development that being said aside from a brief exchange and possible alternate dialogue the revised version of the scene appears to have been left intact the trip to morva seems to have been cut down a tiny bit with a few additional shots missing establishing his dreary environment after fluter flame falls down the cliff surprise surprise yet another one of his reactions was left on the cutting room floor but poor fluter flam had even more of his dialogue cut as before he's turned into a frog the banter between him and the love stricken witch went on a bit longer after he offers his magnificent harp for a trade even more of this running joke was cut but i suppose if you had to lose something it makes the most amount of sense however a baffling removal was a long wii offering her precious bauble as a trade only for the witch to then use her magic to make a bunch of her own much like she does with the others in the group its removal gives the impression that alongwii is the only one to not offer up something which makes her appear a bit selfish but this does explain the awkward edit between the witch releasing the birds and the jump cut of gergie chasing her down after having walked away from milanwii this leads to the only real instance of the storyboard showing a sequence that is in the movie but with an obvious revision as instead of an apple they show gergie handing the witch would appear to be insects but minus a reaction shot and some additional dialogue it plays out identically there was also more to the sequence of the onslaught of cauldrons after taren yells for them to duck it's a pretty seamless edit and was just a little more chaos of the cauldrons flying around but it did result in yet another cut reaction from flute or flam it's ours one of the longest parts cut from the film and by far the most puzzling was the group's efforts to finally destroy the black cauldron you know the whole reason they set out to find the magical object in the first place so they could stop the horn king from using it this sequence was so important to the plot that it's present in both the film's storybook and comic book adaptation but for whatever reason this was deemed as unnecessary and its absence results in a pretty major jump cut as well as a rather confusing line from the witch if you didn't know the context it also appears there was another cut line from the scene but since it's a bit redundant i can see why it was cut i guess once dolly disappears flute or flam and gergie yell at the fairy and throw him a few insults this explains another awkward cut as in the final film the two were standing up and appeared to have just finished speaking moments later taryn tells the group he can't ask them to make any more sacrifices but why this was removed to save a whopping 2-3 seconds at the cost of an obvious jump cut is beyond me the dungeon scene solidifies katzenberg's apparent determination to make fluter flam's presence in the film almost pointless as yet another one of his quips was left on the cutting room floor however this leads to by far the most infamous cuts of the black cauldron the graphic shots of the cauldron born scene now this one features more than just cuts but obvious manipulation and possible reanimation which makes this sequence a little tricky to decipher but my interpretation based off the storyboards is that the first of the cauldron born rises up from the goo which we do see in the film next would have been a reaction shot of the guy who burst the bubble which cuts to the emergence of a second undead warrior as also seen in the final film then the cauldron born would have completely devoured the bubble burster which is more than likely the one shot that is in the movie but with the compositional changes after that we see the emergence of yet another cauldron born which if you ever saw the original vhs release of pinocchio there's a brief shot of this one in the teaser trailer the same one then singles out another guard which is part of the infamous and rather gruesome disintegration sequence and is without a doubt the most violent imagery to ever be in a disney movie if it wasn't cut that is there was also more to the march of the deathless warriors as the horn king tells them to spare no one before creeper admires what he sees as a truly beautiful sight but contrary to popular belief based on the evidence in my possession no other guards were killed and the shot of them running away was always part of the original film taryn also apparently had an additional sentiment to a lonewee that was cut and to the surprise of no one there was another quip from flooder flam no you can't my mind is made up if you've always wondered why fluter flam seemingly had no problem with taran jumping into the cauldron i'll give you one guess as to why gergie self-sacrifice also had a bit more additional dialogue which made the scene far more emotional but this was more than likely cut to make his apparent death a little less devastating for the children watching also just to clear up another myth the horn king's demise wasn't any more graphic than how it appears in the final film although it does seem there was a moment in which alanway and fluter think teren has been killed the escape from the castle was also trimmed down in which the death of the horned king's dragon was a bit longer as well as a few additional shots of the group avoiding the destruction although this does result in a pretty obvious jump kite one of the most baffling scenes that was cut down came at the end as teren's sorrow and pain over the loss of gergie was far more dramatic it even gave old fluter flam a nice moment of his own telling taryn not to blame himself a literal frame of this was capped in as a shot cuts away right before he falls to his knees now it appears there was quite a bit cut of the final encounter with the witches but since many of the panels are scribbled out it's possible this may have been removed during the animation process however some of the ones with the scribbles do appear in the final version of the movie so my conclusion is that these were part of the original cut but were highlighted because of dialogue and compositional alterations and that ladies and gentlemen is what i believe to be all the cut scenes and sequences of the black cauldron now personally my biggest takeaway is that even if the film had been released without all these slices and dices by and large i don't think it would have had a tremendous impact on the film's reception or box office performance i realize that's blasphemy as over the years many have contended that it was the cut scenes that were to blame and the sole reason for its fall into obscurity among the disney animated feature film canon now obviously it would have given the characters a bit more depth and several scenes would have had a much better emotional payoff and of course less awkward jump cuts however i think there were simply far too many issues at the core of the film's production which in turn led to the film's narrative problems and questionable creative choices and the cut scenes would not have just magically made that all go away but hey i could be wrong so here's hoping disney one day decides to reach into their archives grab the master negative and produce a restored version of the original vision more or less of the black cauldron

Channel: Yesterworld Entertainment

Views: 947,223

Keywords: Yesterworld: The Troubled History of The Black Cauldron & The Lost Cut Scenes, the history of the black cauldron, the black cauldron deleted scenes, the black cauldron cut scenes, the black cauldron history, disney the black cauldron, the black cauldron bluray, the black cauldron disney animation, disney animated feature film, disney film history, disney history, the black cauldron lost scenes, the black cauldron making of, the black cauldron bts

Id: mIuK4OZCWbU

Length: 39min 13sec (2353 seconds)

Published: Mon May 17 2021