Disney had a hit machine running in the early 1990s, and Pocahontas was the film the studio expected to keep it humming. Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg directed the 1995 animated musical, produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation. It runs 81 minutes. The tagline promised that “An American legend comes to life.” What actually arrives is a romance built on a real encounter, smoothed into a family adventure and sold with a Best Picture campaign behind it.
Trailer, via Kineko Video.
The Susan Constant Sails in 1607
The film opens in 1607. The Susan Constant travels from London to the New World carrying English settlers from the Virginia Company. Among them is Captain John Smith, voiced by Mel Gibson. The men talk of adventure, of finding gold, of fighting “Injuns,” and of settling the land.
A hurricane hits shortly after they set sail. A soldier named Thomas, voiced by Christian Bale, gets washed overboard while helping John with the ship’s cannons. John rappels off the ship and saves him. The rope breaks as they escape.
In Virginia, Pocahontas is the daughter of Chief Powhatan. Irene Bedard voices her, and Judy Kuhn provides her singing voice. Pocahontas fears being wed to Kocoum, a warrior she sees as “too serious” for her free-spirited personality. She dreams of a spinning arrow, then visits Grandmother Willow, a talking willow tree voiced by Linda Hunt, who alerts her to the arriving English.
Governor Ratcliffe, voiced by David Ogden Stiers, wants wealth and status. He has Jamestown built in a wooded clearing and orders the crewmen to dig for gold, which he secretly plans to use to dethrone King James.
A Romance Across Two Worlds
John leaves the digging to explore and meets Pocahontas. She first speaks to him in Powhatan, but he gains her trust. The two bond quickly, fascinated by each other’s worlds, and fall in love.
After a skirmish between the settlers and the natives, Powhatan orders his people to stay away from the Englishmen. Pocahontas disobeys and keeps meeting John. Her friend Nakoma discovers the relationship and warns Kocoum. Ratcliffe also learns of John’s encounters and warns him against sparing any natives.
John and Pocahontas meet Grandmother Willow and plan to bring peace between the colonists and the tribe. The film romanticizes Pocahontas’ encounter with John Smith and her legendary saving of his life. That last part is the hinge the whole movie swings on, and it is the part the film treats as destiny rather than decision.
Casting That Went Backwards
Disney began casting in September 1992 and told talent agents it was particularly interested in Native American actors. Kuhn was hired for the singing voice before Bedard was cast as the speaking voice.
Kuhn described the sequence plainly. “They said, ‘You are going to do the dialogue unless we find a Native American actress whose singing voice matched yours,'” she said. “I was cast before Irene, so it actually went backwards.”
Bedard was filming Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee when a casting director told her they were looking for someone to voice the title role. She took a train to Buffalo, New York, walked in wearing a sundress and a straw hat, and read for the part. She learned she had won the role back on the Lakota Woman set.
Michelle St. John also auditioned for Pocahontas and was given Nakoma after Bedard was cast. Gibson took the role of John Smith because he wanted to make “something for my kids.” Unlike most previous voice actors in Disney animated features, he also sang for his character, which he has called the most difficult part of the job.
Bale auditioned for Thomas. “The directors played with Thomas being Irish and Scottish and younger than I am, so I had to raise my voice and do different accents,” he told Disney Adventures. “But the more we did it, the more he became like me–older and English.”
Russell Means voices Powhatan. Billy Connolly voices Ben, Joe Baker voices Lon, John Kassir voices Meeko, Danny Mann voices Percy, and Frank Welker voices Flit.
What the Studio Was Chasing
Gabriel had made his directorial debut with The Rescuers Down Under in 1990 and conceived Pocahontas during a Thanksgiving weekend. Goldberg had just finished as supervising animator of the Genie in Aladdin and joined as co-director.
The project went into development alongside The Lion King, and it pulled in most of Disney’s top animators. Studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg wanted an emotional romantic epic in the vein of Beauty and the Beast, hoping it would land a Best Picture nomination the way Beauty had.
Alan Menken composed the score and wrote the songs with lyricist Stephen Schwartz. The screenplay credits are long, with Carl Binder, Susannah Grant and Philip LaZebnik named among the writers.
Where Pocahontas Sits in the Studio’s Run
Pocahontas arrived in the middle of a run that defined Disney’s second golden age. The order matters, because it shows what the studio thought it had.
| Year | Film |
|---|---|
| 1991 | Beauty and the Beast |
| 1992 | Aladdin |
| 1994 | The Lion King |
| 1995 | Pocahontas |
Ranked against that run, Pocahontas is the weakest of the four. The reasons are not hard to name.
- The Lion King built its emotional force from a story with no obligation to history.
- Beauty and the Beast earned its romance through characters who change.
- Aladdin moved fast and never stopped to explain itself.
- Pocahontas carries the weight of a real woman and a real encounter, then resolves both with a song.
- The result is a film that looks better than it argues.
What Holds Up and What Does Not
The animation is the strongest case for Pocahontas. The Virginia landscape has scale and color, and the talking willow is a confident piece of design. Menken and Schwartz wrote a score that carries the film further than its script does.
Bedard’s speaking performance is the film’s quiet center. Kuhn’s singing gives Pocahontas a voice that the dialogue alone could not supply, and the split casting is the most interesting production decision here. It also means the character is literally two performers, which is a strange thing to admit about a film selling authenticity.
The problem is Ratcliffe. A villain who digs for gold that is not there and dreams of dethroning King James is a cartoon of greed, not a portrait of a colonizer. The film wants the audience to feel the tragedy of contact while keeping the contact itself off screen. Gibson’s John Smith is charming and nothing else. Means gives Powhatan more dignity than the script gives him lines.
The romance is the load-bearing wall, and it is the thinnest part of the house. Pocahontas and John fall in love because the movie needs them to, not because the film shows the work. The legendary saving of his life lands as a set piece rather than a choice.
Pocahontas wants to be an epic about two worlds meeting. It settles for a love story about two people, and it does not earn even that. The songs are good, the animation is better, and the history is decoration.
This is the film where Disney’s second golden age started coasting on its own reputation. The studio chased a Best Picture nomination and got a movie that plays like a pitch deck for one. Its published aggregate score is 6.9/10, a TMDB audience score drawn from 6,194 votes. Thirty-one years on, that number reads about right.
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