Richard William’s Thief and the cobbler: Disney’s Aladdin before Aladdin (sort of)
The Toronto, Ontario, born Richard Williams soon to be one of animation’s legend Richard Williams famous for creating “The animator’s survival kit.” He created recognizable commercials like PSAs using popular animated characters, diet cokes and also directed another movie: “Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure”.
Pre-production:
In the mid 1960’s Feeling nostalgic of his mother reading a Muslim folklore about Nasiruddin he was determined to make “the best animated feature ever”, inspired by the tales of Mulla Nasiruddin he worked a basic story about him and already had a lot of basic animations done ever since 1964 but some producers said that he didn't have rights to the character so he had to redo it after years of production.
Before reworking the idea, he got called by Disney to make the animation for “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and commercials. Due to the name he built on commercials and the movie, he finally got the profits to make the “Best animated feature."
Production:
The revised Movie started production in 1989 by Warner Bros to finance and distribute the film, having the movie be in 60 frames per-second rather than being in the regular 24 taking even longer. The film however was not meeting deadlines by Williams perfectionist personality towards the movie, even firing over hundreds of people, and even getting the support of Mohammed bin Faisal Al Saud after seeing the scenes he shared and liked it. He left after not meeting expectations and going over his budget of $100,000. During the same time the movie was being made, Disney was making another Arabian inspired movie “Aladdin” and that rushed but he still focused on perfecting the movie.
With 15 more minutes of the movie still unfinished after 28 years of production and bad management they feared about the competition of Disney’s “Aladdin” supposed to released on the same day but left out the original cut to be unfinished left to be re-worked by another animator Fred Calvert a few years later to work on the abandonment of the original cut to have new and cut some scenes by Korean animators. Released in 1993 re-named as: “The Princess and the Cobbler” in Australia and South Africa.
Soon after the Calvert cut got released, Miramax (owned by Disney) made a North American version of the movie renamed “Arabian Knight” which made more differences to the original cutting more scenes and adding more voices adding to re-casting most characters this version rereleased to theaters in 1995.
The Plot:
The story of the movie depends on the version you watch but it's mostly the same. A narrator that is different for each version talks about a legend on the Golden City that if the 3 Golden balls that protected said city will bring mass destruction upon the people. We get introduced to the thief who is unnamed and the cobbler named Tack and the thief tries to steal from him while sleeping. During the act, The city gets announced that the city's grand vizier Zigzag enters the city, the thief wakes up Tack and they roll down and accidentally hurting Zigzag and wants Tack to be executed. Soon Tack meets King nod’s (The king of the city) daughter Yum Yum and instantly falls in love. She gets him out of execution by breaking her shoe, after fixing her shoe, Zigzag sends Tack to the prison of the palace. After a few scenes The city gets informed that the Barbarians called The One-eyes are coming to destroy the city and soon they notice that the balls were stolen secretly by the thief and soon Zigzag who found it after the thief lost them. Zigzag wants to rule the city and tries to bribe the king after the balls “magically disappeared” to marry Yum Yum but it fails. After the failure, he resorts to help the One-eyes. Tack escapes the prison earlier in the movie and he visits back to the palace to be sent to help Yum Yum to restore the peace of the city, they find help in the desert and a witch to come back to the city to a machine by the leader of the One-eyes. Tack remembers to use one of his tacks from the witch from earlier in the journey and ricochets the tack to destroy the entire machine while the thief tries to steal the 3 balls again. After the balls are returned, Tack marries Yum Yum after saving the whole city.
Different versions:
The original version has the most scenes of William’s vision being the original cut
The Calvert cut adds a voice to the voiceless character Tack from the original and added more sound effects and re-orchestrated most of the soundtrack including iconic ones and made it into a musical
The Miramax version (Disney’s cut) recast most characters except Zigzag and added a voice to another voiceless character that was the thief and some others and added more sound effects and cutted scenes, some of them being censored and or being replaced for other scenes or skipped entire bits of the scene.
Conclusion:
The movie is interesting to say the least because of the versions of the movie and the differences made to appeal to their audience more. I really like things that have different versions that all have unique aspects that tell the same story but are a bit different.
I understand Richard a bit because of the amount of work and sacrifice he made to make it the best he could make it and animation takes a long time as well.
Although the original is still unfinished there's a fan made project to help finish the original cut called “The Thief and the Cobbler: The recobbled cut” in Youtube by Garrett Gilchrist, which he intended to have the original actually finished and still being updated today. This movie is great and you should give it a watch or two. This is truly a hidden gem…
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