The Sword in the Stone (1963)
While not quite as highly regarded as the Disney Renaissance period of the 1990s, it is hard to find many stretches of Disney features as iconic as the studio's output in the 1950s and 1960s. With releases including Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, and The Jungle Book, even the films that didn't find audiences on release grew in popularity to become some of the studio's most popular features that many immediately associate with the studio's name. In this incredible stretch, there is but one film that has yet to find that true elevation in status, Wolfgang Reitherman's The Sword in the Stone. Often overlooked within Disney's filmography, the film adapts the titular 1938 novel by T. H. White that tells the story of a young and innocent Arthur, voiced here by Rickie Sorensen, Richard Reitherman, and Robert Reitherman, who meets the eccentric wizard named Merlin, voiced in this version by Karl Swenson, and begins to train and learn about the world on his path to becoming King. While it might be easy to suspect that The Sword in the Stone might be a hidden gem from the studio due to the output around it, the disappointing fate for the film feels quite deserving as the feature is easily one of the biggest misses of Disney's entire history.
The questionable execution of the film is fundamental on a level rarely seen in any Disney project. Even aspects as fundamental as voice performances are strangely bad with the character of Arthur nearly being ruined by the film's forced adjustment as original lead Rickie Sorensen entered puberty causing the director's own two sons to step up into the role giving a new meaning to the term Nepo baby. While none of these three children are truly bad, the switching between their voices is jarring and completely ruins any sense of coherent character within the most important character of the entire film. While some might claim this is unavoidable due to the real world events, the refusal to re-record certain lines to make them flow together is simply lazy. In a single dialogue scene, the voices can switch in a way that feels amateur and should be unthinkable for the powerhouse that is Disney who had decades of experience under their belt by this point.
The animation is equally lackluster. While the actual style of layering animation with more sketchy line-work is nothing new for Disney and something that was overall successful at multiple points for the studio during this time, the artwork of The Sword in the Stone is genuinely embarrassing at points. Even though the popularity of the film is rather low, there is a reason so many memes have been born from the film. The facial expressions are often uncanny and the designs all around leave plenty to be desired. While there are some fun visual ideas such as Merlin's belongings all coming to life to fit inside his bag for transport, these are few and far between with much of the film's iconography ranging from passable to poor.
It doesn't help that even past the technical status of the film, there are numerous flaws within the project. The narrative is strangely boring. For a film with magical powers and the endless possibilities of animation, the feature does very little with its potential with the magical sequences including inspired segments such as the kid and old man transforming into squirrels getting seduced by squirrels who then have to watch in horror as they realize they realize they really were trying to seduce humans. Clearly, some questionable logic was used when deciding what to focus on. The rest of the film bounces between basic conflicts and educational segments of Arthur learning incredibly simple things about the world with nothing clicking to be engaging or rewarding. Even with the shorter runtime of just 79-minutes, the film feels like a slog and it is hard to imagine many audiences, both young and old, making it through the entire film when there are so many other options.
While Disney has had some misses, few are as obvious and consistent as The Sword in the Stone. When one looks to tally all the successes of the film, it is a struggle to find anything of true note. Every technical piece of filmmaking is done badly while the narrative and story offer equally little of value. Even most bad Disney films will deliver something interesting to think about or analyze when it comes to a bold stylistic choice that failed or a laughably bad emotional beat, but the failures of The Sword in the Stone just feel boring and lifeless. Considering the film is entirely a collection of failures, the same can be said about the film overall.
The questionable execution of the film is fundamental on a level rarely seen in any Disney project. Even aspects as fundamental as voice performances are strangely bad with the character of Arthur nearly being ruined by the film's forced adjustment as original lead Rickie Sorensen entered puberty causing the director's own two sons to step up into the role giving a new meaning to the term Nepo baby. While none of these three children are truly bad, the switching between their voices is jarring and completely ruins any sense of coherent character within the most important character of the entire film. While some might claim this is unavoidable due to the real world events, the refusal to re-record certain lines to make them flow together is simply lazy. In a single dialogue scene, the voices can switch in a way that feels amateur and should be unthinkable for the powerhouse that is Disney who had decades of experience under their belt by this point.
The animation is equally lackluster. While the actual style of layering animation with more sketchy line-work is nothing new for Disney and something that was overall successful at multiple points for the studio during this time, the artwork of The Sword in the Stone is genuinely embarrassing at points. Even though the popularity of the film is rather low, there is a reason so many memes have been born from the film. The facial expressions are often uncanny and the designs all around leave plenty to be desired. While there are some fun visual ideas such as Merlin's belongings all coming to life to fit inside his bag for transport, these are few and far between with much of the film's iconography ranging from passable to poor.
It doesn't help that even past the technical status of the film, there are numerous flaws within the project. The narrative is strangely boring. For a film with magical powers and the endless possibilities of animation, the feature does very little with its potential with the magical sequences including inspired segments such as the kid and old man transforming into squirrels getting seduced by squirrels who then have to watch in horror as they realize they realize they really were trying to seduce humans. Clearly, some questionable logic was used when deciding what to focus on. The rest of the film bounces between basic conflicts and educational segments of Arthur learning incredibly simple things about the world with nothing clicking to be engaging or rewarding. Even with the shorter runtime of just 79-minutes, the film feels like a slog and it is hard to imagine many audiences, both young and old, making it through the entire film when there are so many other options.
While Disney has had some misses, few are as obvious and consistent as The Sword in the Stone. When one looks to tally all the successes of the film, it is a struggle to find anything of true note. Every technical piece of filmmaking is done badly while the narrative and story offer equally little of value. Even most bad Disney films will deliver something interesting to think about or analyze when it comes to a bold stylistic choice that failed or a laughably bad emotional beat, but the failures of The Sword in the Stone just feel boring and lifeless. Considering the film is entirely a collection of failures, the same can be said about the film overall.