Remembering The Final Unicorn: Rankin/Bass’ Cult Traditional

Welcome to The Queue — your each day distraction of curated video content material sourced from throughout the net. At present, we’re watching a video essay that appears at Rankin & Bass’ brilliantly ingenious cult animated movie The Final Unicorn.

Once I take into consideration Rankin/Bass, the New York Metropolis-based manufacturing firm, the very first thing I consider isn’t 2-D animation. Like a lot of you — the primary pictures that pop into my head once I see that blobby, soothing blue title card are stop-motion vacation specials: Rudolph the Purple-Nosed Reindeer, The Little Drummer Boy, Santa Claus is Comin’ To City. You already know: round-edged, utlra tactile Animagic.

A few of chances are you’ll be yelling “hey, what about 1977’s The Hobbit? That was performed with conventional cel animation!” You’re proper. However immediately I’m right here to proselytize a few totally different Rankin/Bass fantasy function: 1982’s The Final Unicorn. That includes a frankly sarcastically proficient voice forged (Alan Arkin! Jeff Bridges! Christopher Lee! Mia Farrow!), the movie adapts Peter S. Beagle’s insanely well-liked 1968 novel of the identical identify (Beagle additionally wrote the movie’s screenplay). Should you’ve by no means heard of the movie earlier than — otherwise you’ve solely glimpsed passing stills in your on-line travels — the movie follows the titular legendary creature, who units out to find why she is the final of her species.

The movie is notable for being one of many extra clearly “made in Japan” merchandise to return out of Rankin/Bass. Toei Animation — which had beforehand labored on The Hobbit, amongst different Rankin/Bass cel-based initiatives — was employed to animate The Final Unicorn, and their home type positively bleeds by way of (and is glimpsed extra vibrantly two years later in Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind).

The video essay under sings the movie’s praises and underlines the core thematic attraction of the story: a life-affirming message that doubles down on development and perseverance.

Watch “The Final Unicorn – Creating Common Fantasy”

Who made this?

This video essay on why The Final Unicorn guidelines is by You Have Been Watching Movies. United Kingdom-based author Oliver Bagshaw produces the channel, creating video essays on an assortment of films, from cult to traditional strains of cinema historical past. You may subscribe to their YouTube channel right here.

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Associated Subjects: Animation, The Queue

Meg Shields is the standard farm boy of your goals and a senior contributor at Movie College Rejects. She presently runs three columns at FSR: The Queue, How’d They Do That?, and Horrorscope. She can be a curator for One Good Shot and a contract author for rent. Meg may be discovered screaming about John Boorman’s ‘Excalibur’ on Twitter right here: @TheWorstNun. (She/Her).