The Last Unicorn is an animated 1982 fantasy movie about a unicorn who, knowing that he is the last species in the world, goes on a quest to find out what has happened to another of its kind. Based on The Last Unicorn's novel written by Peter S. Beagle, who also wrote the screenplay, the film was directed and produced by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass. It's produced by Rankin/Bass Productions for ITC Entertainment and animated by Topcraft.
The film includes the sounds of Alan Arkin, Jeff Bridges, Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury, and Christopher Lee. The music and song scores were composed and composed by Jimmy Webb, and performed by the American group and the London Symphony Orchestra, with additional vocals provided by Lucy Mitchell. The film earned $ 2.25 million on its opening weekend and grossed $ 6,455,330 domestically.
Video The Last Unicorn (film)
Plot
In the magical forest, a unicorn who is talking learns that he is the most recent of its kind. A butterfly reveals that a terrible animal named Red Bull herds its kind to the ends of the earth. Starting a foreign territory outside the security of his home, the Unicorn travels to find them and bring them all back.
After his journey, the Unicorn was captured by the demon of the witch Mommy Fortuna and displayed at Mommy Fortuna Midnight Carnival. Since most attractions are common animals with illusion spells placed on them (for wit, toothless lions for Manticore, crippled parrots for Satyr, and monster for Midgard Serpent), Fortuna uses spells to create another horn in the unicorn's visible head by visitors of a non-magical carnival, because they can not see its original form. Fortuna also keeps Celaeno's illegitimate bird as a perpetual prisoner and recognizes the danger of gnawing such monsters, but considers the risk as a result of the recognition and prestige of the deed. While being held hostage, the unicorn is friends with Schmendrick, an incompetent magician in the service of Mommy Fortuna. With Schmendrick's help, the Unicorn escapes, in the process of freeing the Celaeno, who killed Fortuna and his men Ruhk. The Unicorn and Schmendrick then get a second travel companion Molly Grue, Careworn's lover from Captain Cully (the "reality" that disappoints behind the legend of Robin Hood).
As the Unicorn approaches King Haggard's seaside castle, the Red Bull guard, he meets the beast, which turns out to be a terrible element of fire. At the last moment before his capture, Schmendrick used his unexpected magic and turned him into a human woman with white knee hair. With him in this guise, Red Bull is not interested and leaves. The Unicorn suffered a tremendous shock to the feelings of mortality in his body. While Molly wraps the Unicorn human form in a blanket, Schmendrick states that the magic, not her, chooses the form, and promises that she will return it to normal once the quest is over.
Schmendrick, Molly Grue, and the now-human Unicorn proceed to King Haggard's castle. Haggard was initially disliked, and Schmendrick introduced the Unicorn as his niece, Lady Amalthea. Schmendrick requested that the three of them stay there as members of Haggard's court, only to be told that the only residents of the castle were Haggard, his adopted son, Prince LÃÆ'r, and four ancient men. Nevertheless, Haggard agreed to file a trio, replacing his more competent on-call wizard, Mabruk, with Schmendrick, and arranging Molly Grue to work in his fishing kitchen. Mabruk himself goes away when he recognizes "Amalthea" for what he really is, and scoffs it by letting him into his castle Haggard has invited his own destruction.
Amalthea begins to forget his identity and his reasons for coming to the castle and falling in love with Prince LÃÆ'r as a result of the death of his current form. Caught in his new emotions, he struggles with the thought of abandoning his quest for mortal love. Haggard confronts Amalthea in a private conversation, hinting at the location of the unicorn, but from the faded magic in his eyes, he has doubts about his earlier suspicions that he is more than seen. Meanwhile, Molly was able to study the location of Red Bull's nest from the talking cat.
Molly, Schmendrick, and Amalthea joined LÃÆ'r as they entered the bull's nest, but Haggard tried to trap them by destroying the way they entered. Schmendrick revealed Amalthea's true identity to LÃÆ'r after explaining what they were looking for. Lag does not move and says that he loves her. This makes Amalthea want to leave the quest and marry LÃÆ'r, but LÃÆ'rr keeps her away. Red Bull appears, but is no longer deceived by Amalthea's human form and pursuing it. When LÃÆ'rr fought to protect him, Schmendrick turned Amalthea back to the Unicorn, but he did not want to leave the LÃÆ'rr side. The Bull pushes him toward the ocean just as he earlier drove all the other unicorns, but he manages to escape and Red Bull chases. LÃÆ'r tries to defend it, but is killed by a bull. Angry, the Unicorn turns on the Bull and forces him into the sea. Brought to the surf of white surf, other unicorns appeared massively from the water, causing Haggard's castle to collapse into the sea as they passed, with Haggard falling to his death laughing.
Peter S. Beagle stated that there is interest in making films based on the book "from an early age". Those expressed interest include Lee Mendelson and Bill Meléndez, although Beagle has been convinced by one of their spouse's wives that they are "not good enough", as well as former 20th Century Fox animator Les Goldman. At the time, Beagle believed that "animation was the only way to go" with respect to movies, and never thought of making it into a live action film. Rankin/Bass was the last studio to be attended by film producer Michael Chase Walker and Beagle "horrified" when told that they had made a deal with Walker. Beagle stated that he had "... felt that the film was really much more than I originally believed," and then said "There are some beautiful design works - Japanese artists who do concept and coloring are very good. voices do a tremendous job in animating my character... "
While Rankin/Bass provides dialogue and movie stories based on Beagle's work, animation is done by Topcraft studios. The studio was then hired by Hayao Miyazaki to work on the animated film 1984 NausicaÃÆ'¤ of the Valley of the Wind , and their core members eventually went on to form Studio Ghibli. According to Beagle, the last film eventually became "very close" to the original script, although one scene at the end involving an encounter with a princess was "animated but ultimately cut."
Maps The Last Unicorn (film)
Soundtrack
The music and song scores were composed and composed by Jimmy Webb, and performed by the American group and the London Symphony Orchestra, with additional vocals provided by Lucy Mitchell. The Last Unicorn soundtrack was recorded at De Lane Lea Studios in Wimbley, England in 1982. The album was released in Germany in 1983 by Virgin Records, but has not been released in the United States; it includes a symphonic piece of film score. In his review for AllMusic, James Christopher Monger called it, "a mixture of very dark and sentimental and dark, fairy tales, Wagnerian cues".
Release
The Last Unicorn aired in 648 theaters in the United States on November 19, 1982, and earned $ 2.25 million on its opening weekend.
The film was released on VHS by CBS/Fox Video in 1983, Playhouse Video in 1985, J2 Communications/ITC Home Video in 1988, and Family Home Entertainment in 1994.
The first US DVD, released by Lionsgate on March 16, 2004, was made from a low-quality master pan-and-scan. After the release of this DVD, Conlan Press lobbied Lionsgate "to do something." Lionsgate licensed the mixed German video and audio masters and appeared with the DVD "25th Anniversary Edition" released in North America on February 6, 2007. It has audio and visual quality that is superior to the original US release, and is at 16: 9 widescreen format, but has some edited fonts, and as a result of being taken from the PAL master, playing 4% faster than the original movie, producing a slightly higher-than-usual audio tone. New DVD editions include featurette with interview with author, as well as original set-top games, picture galleries and theater trailers. As of October 2011, more than 2,500,000 copies of DVDs have been sold.
On February 11, 2011, Lionsgate released The Last Unicorn on the Blu-ray/DVD combo package, which returned unreleased original audio tracks with harsh words retained as in a US theater release. Edited audio tracks (from DVD "25th Anniversary Edition" before) are also included as an optional audio track.
On June 9, 2015, Shout! Factory released the latest Blu-ray and DVD version of The Last Unicorn entitled "The Enchanted Edition". This edition was moved from a new 2k widescreen digital master; including original uncensored audio and commentary tracks with Peter S. Beagle, associate producer Michael Chase Walker, tour producer Connor Freff Cochran, and a member of the Conlan Press team; highlights from the Worldwide Screening Tour; a True Magic: The Story of the Last Unicorn featurette; storyboard animation; and original theater trailers.
Reception
In a review of the New York Times, Janet Maslin calls Unicorn's "The Last Unicorn" of unusual children's films in many ways, most of all being that the movie is amazingly good. [...] featuring actors who will make live action films proud, a very different visual style from other children's dances, and stories filled with genuine sweetness and mystery. "and said that" no one of any age who will be immune to sentiments from the last moments of the film, which are really touching and unexpected impressive ". Beagle himself called the film "extraordinary" compared to J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings , where he also writes scenarios. In 2017, the film has a 63% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Review 1982 Variety praised the script and voice acting but was not impressed with the animation of the movie. "But the bland unicorn may be visible to the eye, Mia Farrow's voice carries a quality that almost touches on the character." This review also praised the vocal talents of Arkin, Lee, and Frees.
References
External links
- The Last Unicorn in IMDb
- The Last Unicorn in The Big Cartoon DataBase
- The Last Unicorn in the TCM Movie Database
- The Last Unicorn in Box Office Mojo
- Last Unicorn at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Last Unicorn FAQ
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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