YMMV / The Black Cauldron

• Adaptation Displacement: There's a book. That's right, there is a book called The Black Cauldron. And its author actually enjoyed the movie, albeit in a So Bad, It's Good sort of way. While the books aren't totally obscure (especially for fans of High Fantasy and Welsh mythology) and did pretty well when they were first published in The '60s, they're not as well known among the general populace as the animated film (and the movie might be known more from the infamy surrounding it).
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Most fans who hated Gurgi still ended up feeling bad for him when he sacrificed himself to the Cauldron to stop its rampage, admitting that he has no actual friends and is the best person for a sacrifice.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Despite all the build up the character had, the Horned King doesn't put up much of a fight before he is sucked into the cauldron: he lunges unarmed at Taran and grabs him, showing no display of powers or fighting abilities whatsoever, and is killed when Taran pushes him in the general direction of the cauldron.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: The film's darker story was this for some viewers, having less of Disney's trademark lightheartedness or kid-friendly moments with which to balance it out. Tellingly, it would be years before Disney would try again for an older audience, again to a similarly mixed response.
• Bile Fascination: Its status as the black sheep of the Disney Animated Canon continues to draw newcomers who are curious as to how it gained its reputation and whether or not it deserves it.
• Catharsis Factor: Being a savage overlord willing to turn his own men into an army of the undead, the Horned King getting destroyed up the cauldron is a savage and fitting fate for him in the end.
• Common Knowledge: Jeffery Katzenberg did not edit the film so that it wouldn’t receive an R rating. The misconception comes from the fact that Jeffery Katzenberg edited the movie due to it being “too dark” for the test screen audience due to the "cauldron born" sequence containing a violent scene of a man dissolving graphically. Considering the kinds of films that got rated PG at the same time (not even PG-13), it's pretty likely the film would still have been a high PG at most.
• Complete Monster: The Horned King is an evil, sorcerous lich who wants to use the Black Cauldron to conquer the world with his army of the undead, the Cauldron-Born. Stopping at nothing to achieve his goal, he's willing to kill innocents, has his loyal henchmen killed to create more skeleton warriors, and tries to sacrifice his own servant, Creeper, to power the Cauldron. Desiring to be seen as a god-like figure by what's left of the Earth, the Horned King remains one of the darkest villains in a Disney movie to date.
• Creator's Pet: Disney CEO, Michael Eisner, was in love with the character of Gurgi so much that he basically started putting expies of him in other Disney films around the same time as this film premiered. This is despite the fact that his high-pitched voice and obnoxious behavior alienated a large percentage of the general audience.
• Crossover Ship:
  • People have taken to like the potential crossover ship of the Horned King with the Lady Amalthea. The parallels to Hades and Persephone (lord of the dead, beautiful spring maiden) are what people find appealing about the ship. The two of them coming from Cult Classic 80s animated fantasy films just adds more fuel to the fire. Oh, and they're both horned.
  • Although it's not on the same level of popularity as Jafar, Chernabog, or Hades, Maleficent and the Horned King have developed a small following as well... Why wouldn't the Mistress of all Evil take a certain fancy toward one of Disney's darker villains? And, much like with Amalthea, they're also horned.
  • Taran is often seen shipped with Kayley from Quest for Camelot, due to the two both being Heroic Wannabes in a High Fantasy setting.
• Cult Classic: One of the few films in Disney Animated Canon to become this. While it's widely thought the movie has a lot of issues and is far from a faithful adaptation of The Chronicles of Prydain, it's garned a few fans who appreciate Disney at least having a crack at Dark Fantasy; fans believe that some of the darker moments are pulled off quite well and are worth checking out.
• Evil Is Cool: Again, the Horned King. If there's one part of the film that's well-regarded, or even well-remembered, it's because of him, probably because he's a goddamned horned-skeleton-wizard-king with the voice of John Hurt, and because he's one of the most aggressively un-comedic and ruthless Disney villains of all time.
• Genre Turning Point: The film was meant to be this for animated Disney movies in general, an attempt to darken and "modernize" the studio's feature film output while also proving that Walt Disney's one-vision method of filmmaking was still viable in the 1980s. And it was a turning point... just not in the way that the filmmakers had hoped; its massive box office failure not only led to a trend of lighter Disney animated films (which culminated with their "true" turning point in 1989, The Little Mermaid), but also ended (most of) Walt Disney's methods as solid company policy in favor of a more "Hollywood" style of movie-making (stricter deadlines, tighter budgets, more committee meetings, more executive influence, attempts on franchise integration, etc.).
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The Horned King has had plenty of attention in Japan. This may have had to do with the extinct attraction in Tokyo Disneyland.
    • Mickey Mouse on the Game Boy in 1989 has him as the final boss.
    • Mickey Mouse II on the same system two years later again has him as the final boss. Although both this and the first game replaced him with Witch Hazel when they were converted to the Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle games.
    • Mickey Mouse III: Dream Balloon in 1992 again puts him as the final boss, only to be replaced by Night Mayor when it was converted to Kid Klown in Night Mayor World.
    • Finally appeared without alterations in Land of Illusion on the Game Gear and Sega Master System in 1993, except this time colored from older concept art and given the name of "The Phantom." And this was the only time that he appeared in North America and Europe in a Japanese produced game.
  • Or rather, Brits Love The Black Cauldron. Despite The Horned King being an Evil Brit, the UK was the only market where The Black Cauldron was in any way a hit (likely due to the Welsh names and background). It helps that a lot of the more heroic characters were voiced by Brits too. And it has become an important marker of childhood for British people of a certain age.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Tim Burton would do preliminary character design work on The Black Cauldron before being fired and leaving Disney. One of the films that would outperform Cauldron at the box office was Pee-wee's Big Adventure, the film Burton would make after being fired from Disney.
  • The Gypsy who briefly appears to entertain the Horned King's henchmen during his introductory scene resembles a fat, ugly, old Esmeralda.
  • Due to the movie's failure, it wasn't released onto home video until 1998, 10 years later, when Mulan was released, making it the first time anyone since then has remembered Princess Eilonwy. Go on. Guess which heroine ended up becoming an official Disney Princess and which one gets ignored again...
• Jerkass Woobie: Creeper is a nasty little sycophant who nearly shoves embers in Hen Wen's face and takes delight in the prospect of Taran being killed in the climax. However, his master often blames him whenever something goes wrong and throttles him, even when it's not his fault (the collapse of the undead army being the most notable example). He dreads having to inform the Horned King of the prisoners' escape, expecting to be choked before they've escaped as shown with the way he clutches his throat in response to Taran breaking the chain of the drawbridge.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Admit it, if you want to watch it, it’s just to see the Horned King in action.
• Mis-blamed: Gurgi's mannerisms were not, in fact, Disney putting in an obvious Plucky Comic Relief — things like talking in the third-person, speaking in redundant phrases, referring to Taran as a lord, and "Munchies and crunchies" are in fact in the books, and Gurgi still does play somewhat of a comic relief character. Disney's main change was just to make him a small, cute dog-like creature instead of a human-sized Sasquatch-like creature.
• Moe: Though she has a bit of a rebellious streak, Eilonwy is a sweet, kind, optimistic girl with a cute appearance and voice.
• Nightmare Retardant: When the Horned King's eyes suddenly turn red, he might look too cartoonish to be truly menacing.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Everyone seems to think The Little Mermaid's Ariel started the trend of assertive Disney heroines — see the Rebellious Princess entry. But it started with Eilonwy here. Glen Keane, who later made Ariel, even designed her.
  • Same with Taran and three-dimensional Disney characters; he has a very flawed personality, but because of that, a very human one.
• Once Original, Now Common:
  • For the Disney version, this movie actually predated The Great Mouse Detective in the animated canon's use of CGI. These days, it's very obvious to see the moment it's used, and it borders upon Special Effect Failure. But back in the 80s, that wasn't done before.
  • Towards the book series it was based off of, it reads almost like a shopping list of cliches. Except one has to consider that the series was originally published in the sixties — Taran predates Luke Skywalker in the "Farm-boy turned hero who befriends a princess".
  • The film being rated PG was a big deal in its time, and seen as a huge sign of its attempts to be Darker and Edgier. Since The New '10s, it has been the standard rating for big-budget animated films. Of course, the film is still a fair bit nastier than a lot of its successors—when the film was in production, the next highest rating above PG was R, and PG films were seen as "anything that you wouldn't necessarily ban a kid from being able to watch".
• The Scrappy:
  • Many viewers could not stand Taran for his whiny, complaining, and entitled ways. Especially since all he amounts to in this Dark Fantasy adaptation is a Failure Hero who's completely out of their depth. Even though he gets better by the end and accepts he's no warrior, his overall performance still leaves a lasting negative impression.
  • Gurgi has been widely criticized for his annoying voice, tendency to abandon his own friends in the face of danger, and lacking his more engaging traits from the books like fighting alongside Taran and the others.
  • Creeper, given his tendency to break the mood during some of the Horned King's more genuinely frightening scenes.
• So Okay, It's Average: The wider consensus of the film, which agrees that while it's far from the worst animated movie and actually has a few good points, its story and characters are thoroughly underwhelming with few of the traditional Disney elements to compensate for it.
• Spiritual Successor: The film has often been called the closest Disney would ever be to making a Dungeons & Dragons animated movie.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Despite his incredibly intimidating performance, design, and direction, the Horned King feels very visibly underutilized. We're given little explanation as to who he is, what he is, what he wants, and what his abilities are, and he rarely gets to stretch his legs as a villain. Though this was likely intended to build suspense and mystery, the fact that he doesn't do anything that couldn't be done by a regular person causes a lot of that buildup to go to waste.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Who else is disappointed Taran had to give up the awesome magical sword midway through, instead of maybe using it on The Horned King?
  • The fact that Eilonwy is called a scullery maid only gets mentioned in passing. In the books though, she really is a princess - kind of. We also never find out why she has that bauble and what it is^note In the books, Eilonwy is a descendant of an ancient line of magic wielders, and the bauble is actually the Golden Pelydryn, an heirloom of her house that can be used to reveal the words in their book of spells. What doesn't help is the last time it's seen is in Morva.
  • At the beginning of the movie Taran mentions that there's a war going on, this is never elaborated on and we never see anyone who is not part of the main group fighting the Horned King.
• Ugly Cute: Creeper, even though he's a sadistic and evil helper to the Horned King, but he's oddly adorable and being the very abused underling, earns some sympathetic points.
• Uncertain Audience: One of the main reasons the movie didn't do well was its uncertainty over who it was trying to appeal to; they couldn't seem to decide between making a more serious dark fantasy film that stuck closer to the source material or a more whimsical and lighthearted fantasy film geared towards children. The film incorporated kid-appeal elements like the changes made to Gurgi and the addition of the Fair Folk. However, many deemed certain aspects of the film, like the Horned King and the Cauldron Born, too intense for young children, resulting in it being Disney's first animated film to receive a PG rating. This trope likely contributed to the film's commercial failure. Nowadays, most people agree the movie would probably have been better if they'd gone full Darker and Edgier, as these tend to be the parts people enjoy most.
• Vindicated by History: Its noticeably darker tone, new animation format, Executive Meddling and a lot of bad luck made 1985 viewers see the film as a train wreck; modern viewers can appreciate it more.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: For all the film's problems, its animation stands out as one of its more polished elements and really lends itself to the dark tone and atmosphere of the story. Its budget truly does show here, as it's exceptionally fluid and rich in its dark palette colors when it gets to those scenes, and gets quite some wonderfully dark imagery in there like the movement of the undead army and the Horned King himself looking visually threatening, like he himself was a demon right from hell.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Adverts lured kids in with a light-hearted fantasy adventure of wonder and magic. The actual work is nothing like that, in which the film itself contains some Nightmare Fuel content (some of which was toned down due to Executive Meddling). It still didn't stop it from getting a Universal — a "suitable for everyone" rating in the UK, due to some mild Values Dissonance on the subject of scary imagery.
• The Woobie: Gurgi, despite being a nuisance, is a rather sad and lonely being with a Friendless Background who's overly eager to become the friend of Taran, only to get constantly rejected. Before his Heroic Sacrifice, he states he's ready to die because he doesn't have any friends.

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