Mel Gibson Month: Pocahontas
It’s been like 2 weeks.
Here’s Pocahontas.
I already wrote a bit on why I really enjoyed the ending to Pocahontas, and unfortunately I feel like I look back on the film with rose-tinted shades, because I watched it again and I don’t feel like it should be my number 1 Disney film.
Right from the start, there was trouble, because I had to watch the film online, which was five seconds out of sync and, man, let me tell you, it really makes a difference. All the tremendously dramatic moments are seen before any audio shows up, so you see people getting blasted by muskets before you hear the blood-curdling shrieks.
Let’s hand out some grades. Pocahontas gets a solid E for historical accuracy and realism. It gets like a 35% because at least it was correctly noted that the English / American-Indian conflict centered primarily on North America, so there’s some partial credit there. The rest goes out the fucking window.
As previously detailed on the Menken entry, the movie is just fantastic when it comes to music - it gets like an A, like a solid 94.4%. Similarly, the colors are really appropriate, with a fuck ton of purple, pink, and orange that meshes so well. Everything is really great. Almost all the songs, even the one where the fat villain sings and then so does Mel Gibson.
That’s the thing, Mel Gibson actually sings and acts in this movie. In The Road Warrior and Lethal Weapon, Mel Gibson’s characters approach levels of insanity that imply he really isn’t acting. Disney did a really great job with preventing this from happening by taking all the visual acting out of his hands and placing it in the hands of the animators. Also they made him sing which is pretty cool.
Also, the villain - man, this villain is really just a sad pathetic fat asshole.
I mean, look at that guy - did he really stand a chance at being anybody except for a villain prick? There’s meant to be a slight backstory to the character about his utter failures in the upper crust society in England, but all I can focus on is the fact that he’s fat, ugly, and has pigtails.
And then there’s the whole Kocoum thing - this guy really gets the short end of the stick. He’s the jock of the Indians in this film, but I’m not sure if he quite deserved to be shot to death by Batman. The whole confrontation that leads to his death and the eventual clusterfuck at the end of the film just makes you cringe because of the lack of evil parties involved and also the clear avoidability of the situation.
Then Batman shoots Kocoum in the face and grey matter flies everywhere.
For whatever reason, Batman ditches Mel Gibson to be captured by the Native Americans. There’s a really good song about savages and mutual distrust of outsiders (that I was unable to screencap because the video quality was dog shit) and then Mel Gibson does the bodyguard dive and saves Chief Powhatan from getting shot by Fatty McVillain up there.
They kind of yada-yada past the part where John Smith surviving a gunshot wound and making it all the way back to England is ridiculous, and cue the perfect ending.
I could’ve gone for more Mel Gibson singing - they didn’t really do too many vocal acrobatics with his parts, so it was good.
