Time for a history lesson?
Following the legacy that kicked off Disney’s line of direct to video sequels, “Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World” comes off the heels of the market saturated cash cow that is the Disney Renaissance, serving as a follow up to an age of Disney films that saw lavish production and garnered critical acclaim after a less than profitable but creatively admirable period of experimentation brought about by the death of Walt and the swan songs of his original team.
Where “Pocohontas II” manages to trailblaze with regard to the problematic padding resulting in the “Aladdin” and “Beauty and the Beast” trilogies however, is that the film’s predecessor is one of 2 Renaissance entries that are flat out bad.
The remaining entry will receive its appropriate roasting in due time but for more reasons than one, 1995’s “Pocahontas” is a bit of a black sheep for the company at a time of high and almost unparalleled success.
Telling the story of the famous young Native American girl responsible for smoothing over early tensions between the indigenous people of North America and its European settlers at Jamestown, “Pocahontas” focuses on the whirlwind romance between its titular character and English Captain John Smith. For the sake of brevity, I will be avoiding the easy Mel Gibson jokes regarding racial comments and relationships.
Then again, if your knowledge of operating Google is even passable, you should probably be able to point out a major source of the film’s fundamental errors that would make an in depth breakdown rather redundant; namely, that this is a historic period piece assembled by people that appear to have not quite worked past 7th grad US History.
Historical errors are abound from start to finish, with dates not matching up, the bizarre criminalization Virginia Governor John Ratcliffe for the sake of crafting one of the weakest Disney antagonists ever, right down to the core conceit of the film, rewriting the actual history of two real people that would never have been involved in a romance because the title character would have been over a decade and a half younger than her lover in question, who was at least 27 at the time.
I digress however. Picking apart the films flagrant disregard for reality that would even make the modern laughing stock of a tagline “inspired by true events” blush, would take all day and the whether or not the bizarre attempts to weave inauthentic Powhatan mysticism into the narrative directly qualify as cultural sensitivity can open the doors to a discussion that I am far from passably equipped for.
So instead, I’ll simply summarize the first “Pocahontas” for what it is; a bizarre and awkward snooze fest that is occasionally pretty to look at.
Setting all issues of historical and cultural representation aside, the primary narrative of the film is just flat and lacking. John Smith’s ingrained racism appear to be brought up as an arc of some sort but never really goes anywhere, nor does Pocahontas learn anything new or develop, yet their relationship is somehow inspirational enough to inspire “peace” between the natives and settlers.
Even the soundtrack isn’t particularly memorable. The Performances are certainly passionate but the compositions themselves are just Alan Menken 101.
So with such little beyond its own admittedly impressive technical aspects going for, you’d think that perhaps “Pocahontas II” at least has the opportunity to be the first direct to video sequel to improve upon its predecessor, right?
To be fair, “Journey to the New World” does take a couple of steps in the right direction with regard to the original film, and the direct to video sequels in general.
The film follows Pocahontas on a journey to England accompanied by settler John Rolfe to convince the Royalty that her people are civilized and stave off a potential war that could result in the wipe out of her people.
From a technical standpoint the “Journey to the New World” features some of the most consistent animation from a DisneyToon Studios production up to that point. The film wasn’t bogged down by some of the more experimental choices regarding primitive CGI and Flash animation that other entries would have to contend with and while it was never going to look quite as good as the lavishly produced original, its still more than solid.
In focusing on diplomacy between 2 separate parties, the film also requires Pocahontas to be more of a fish out of water which, learning to reconcile the difference between the people of two very different lands, does make for a more involving and dynamic plot.
With many of the films structural flaws fixed however, “Journey to the New World” suffers a fate that at this point would seem to be the best case scenario regarding these films; it becomes unremarkably dull.
While I do have to applaud the effort and near success at improvement, the end result draws attention to the reality that just about the only thing that “Pocahontas” had going for it was the theatrical quality of its own production.
The story, once more removed from historical context, comes across more as meandering and scattershot but the notion that they actually may have tried to be more respectful to the subject matter’s history becomes downright hilarious when you factor in that this is still a movie featuring a Pocahontas much older than she would have been, doing things in places that she wouldn’t be visiting yet with her future husband who is much younger than he was, while John Smith attempts to sink a British Armada bent on Native American Genocide through the power of swashbuckling.
I feel as though “Pocahontas,” as a cultural artifact, is destined to sit forever in the category of “Why?” Not in a malicious “What were you smoking” kind of way but simply trying to decipher what factors brought it into fruition.
A historical adventure or drama set during colonial times could have worked just fine. It even could have worked if you want to root aspects of it in Amerindian culture and folklore, something that Disney had even tried to take a second pass at with “Brother Bear.”
But for the specific effect that these films were aiming to achieve, what made them think using real historical figures regarding events of great impact upon an actual racial minority that still exists today, was even a remotely plausible approach to a franchise
“Pocahontas II: Journey to the New World” as a film is probably one of the better DTV sequels of the Disney Cannon for better or worse but the well of questions regarding why it and its predecessor exist just doesn’t seem to end the deeper I descend down it.
No surprises provided with this one. Will that be the case upon stepping back into the Circle of Life?
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