The Thief And The Cobbler

When I was, say, five or six, I was watching some movie (I forget what it was), when I saw, in the previews, a movie I simply had to see. It was filled with insanely bright colors and crazy backgrounds, and sure enough I got it for Christmas the next year. Not too long ago, I wondered about that movie. I wondered if I could find it, or at least some mention of this obscure cartoon, again. What I found blew my mind.

So gather round and hear a tale of woe. It is truly the saddest story I've ever heard (of all the stories I've heard surrounding a feature length animated film).

Picture this. You've worked on something your entire life, something you designed with the sole purpose of being your masterpiece. After 20 years of working alone without major support, you finally gain the money and resources necessary to finish this magnum opus. Alas, your backers get tired of waiting and decide to recoup their losses by taking creative control of the work, putting someone else in control, editing and mangling it beyond your vision and selling it off as fast as possible before Aladdin comes out.

Well, that may be slightly specific. Richard Williams, a Canadian animator and director, best known for his artistic direction on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, began his pet project, The Thief And The Cobbler, in 1964. He was forced to take on smaller directing jobs to fund his project, and so, before he got Warner Bros. funding in 1990, many people had worked with Williams or seen his storyboards and sketches. Many of these people went on to work at Disney, where Aladdin (a movie with similar themes, motifs, settings and art direction) was beginning production. Long story short, Warner backed out and the film was passed from low-budget studio to low-budget studio before finally being picked up by Completion Bond Company, a studio that no one has ever heard of, EVER. They hired Thai animators to fill in sequences that were never in the original workprint (many of them musical scenes, to compete with Aladdin), and hired voice actors to fill in voices for the two eponymous characters, who were originally silent, their roles being originally displayed mostly through facial expressions and body language. Post-Williams scenes in the final cut are often compared to Saturday morning cartoons from Korea. A sad and ignoble end for a movie.

I couldn't find Richard Williams' response to all this, but I did find that in 1984 (before it was puked upon), he referenced the film as his "reason for living." Moreover, the original art and sketches he had kept were sent to Thailand for reference, and were likely thrown out. It's all just... heartbreaking, just plain heartbreaking. There is a moderately happy ending, however. There have been many fan edits of this film, the most recent and famous of which is the "Recobbled" edit, found freely here on Google Video. Keep in mind, it has been patched together from many different editions, so don't expect top-shelf quality here.

Watching it for the first time in over a decade, the movie itself was kinda... disappointing. It's definitely the best looking animated movie I've ever seen, but I was let down a little, probably because the nostalgia of it vastly outweighed how good it actually was. By far, the best scene is at the end, when a single cobbler's tack brings down a city-sized war machine in a series of unlikely but visually enthralling events. And so, I leave you with the knowledge that The Thief And The Cobbler has the record for production time, being in active production from 1964 to 1993. I'll also leave you with a M.C. Escher-inspired chase scene from the beginning of the film.