Devil’s Advocate: The Black Cauldron

“Legend has it, in the mystic land of Prydain, there was once a king so cruel and so evil, that even the Gods feared him. Since no prison could hold him, he was thrown alive into a crucible of molten iron. There his demonic spirit was captured in the form of a great, black cauldron. For uncounted centuries, the black cauldron lay hidden, waiting, while evil men searched for it, knowing whoever possessed it would have the power to resurrect an army of deathless warriors… and with them, rule the world.”

As opening narrations go, it’s a fairly dark one. A man thrown into molten iron while still alive, bringing forth an army of the undead… these are not light-hearted concepts. One could easily be forgiven for thinking this was the opening to a particularly dark fantasy story for adults. As it happens, though, it’s the 25th film in the Disney Animated Canon, The Black Cauldron. Based on the first two novels of Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain, this 1985 animated feature stands apart from other Disney films in several ways. Perhaps most particularly, it was a financial failure, making only $21 million in the box office on a $25 million budget. Even more unusually, it hasn’t been vindicated by history the way Fantasia and Pinocchio were. While those are accounted as masterpieces today, The Black Cauldron‘s following is more on the lines of a cult classic.

And yet this black sheep of the Disney family has considerable merit to being more than just a cult favorite.

Devil’s Advocate: I Hate Anime

I have a confession to make, and it’s one that might not be very popular among readers and writers of movie blogs. But I’ve never shied away from making unpopular statements, and this is something I feel I should get off my chest, if for no other reason than intellectual honesty, and the integrity of the blog. You see, I hate anime. I’ve tried to be open-minded about it, tried to be tolerant. But I hate it. It’s like fingernails on a blackboard. It makes my skin crawl. I suppose it could partly be an age thing — I’m old enough to remember when anime was so uncommon in the United States that any instance of it stood out like a sore thumb. Now it’s everywhere, and still seems to be growing every day. And I, for one, can’t stand it. Try as I might to see things other peoples’ way, I just plain hate anime.

I don’t have anything against Japanese animation, mind you.

Devil’s Advocate: Adam West’s Batman

Opinions. Everyone’s got ‘em. Sometimes a lot of people have the same one, and especially when it comes to pop culture, and especially on the internet, there is often a “group mind” effect. A collective opinion forms on certain works, and woe betide the odd person who goes against the grain. Well, I’m willing to go against the grain. Sometimes I think the collective opinion is wrong — not just something I disagree with, but fundamentally wrong in some respect — and I’m willing to play Devil’s Advocate and say so. And if you agree or disagree with me? Please, say so! This blog has an equal-opportunity comments section, the more commentators the merrier.

So let’s talk about comic books, and their screen adaptations. Specifically, let’s talk about Batman. Let’s talk about the 1960s comedic, camp, “Can’t get rid of a bomb” Adam West Batman. The TV series ran from 1966 to 1968, and the spin-off movie was released in 1966 between the first and second seasons. Now, West’s Batman might not seem controversial at first; certainly a lot of the mainstream loved him and still does. A lot of us grew up on him (in re-runs in my case), and the notion that somebody might hate the Adam West Batman may seem strange. But I was a comic book fan for a number of years (technically, I still am, I just can’t afford to be; being a dedicated comic book fan is seriously much more expensive than being a movie fan). And I’d join comic book communities on the internet, just as I do with movies now (though I never had a comic book blog of my own.) And time after time, far more than I ever saw any praise for the old Batman, I saw mockery, derision, disgust and outright hatred. “Batman should be serious”, “Batman should be dark”, “Adam West ruined Batman, and it took Frank Miller and Tim Burton to repair it.” For a certain apparently-large section of the Bat-fan demographic, expressing a liking for Adam West is like going to a Metallica fan-site and asking “So, how about that brilliant Justin Bieber?”

I’m not about to tell someone that they should like Adam West’s Batman. If they don’t like camp or a comedic Batman, that’s their opinion, and welcome to it. But I do think they should at least respect it.