The Thief and the Cobbler - The Recobbled Cut

The Thief and the Cobbler - The Recobbled Cut is a Canadian/British/American fanedit of the 1993 fantasy animated film, The Thief and the Cobbler, which was directed, co-written and co-produced by late Canadian animator Richard Williams (Who Framed Roger Rabbit). The editing project began in 2006 by Garrett Gilchrist, a filmmaker, artist, and fan of Williams' work.

The edit was made in as high quality as possible by combining different sources that were available at the time, such as a heavily compressed copy of Williams' workprint and better-quality footage from the Japanese DVD of Arabian Knight (the name Miramax released the film under). It garnered support from different people who worked on the film (with the exception of Williams himself). This included Roy Naisbitt, Alex Williams, Andreas Wessel-Therhorn, Tony White, Holger Leihe, Simon Maddocks, Neil Boyle, and Steve Evangelatos. Many of these people lent rare material for the project. Minor changes were made to "make it feel more like a finished film", such as adding more music and replacing some of the storyboards with some of the animation under Fred Calvert. Some scenes, such as the wedding ending, had to be redrawn frame by frame by Gilchrist due to flaws in the footage. Gilchrist described this as the most complex independent restoration of a film ever undertaken.

Plot
When Tack the Cobbler upsets Zigzag the Vizier, the wizard drags him off to the royal palace, where Princess Yum Yum falls for the bashful boy and saves him from execution. Unfortunately, Zigzag plans to marry the princess in order to succeed her father, King Nod. The Thief, meanwhile, is more interested in gold than love and takes off with the three protective orbs topping the palace. Together, Tack and Yum Yum attempt to retrieve them in order to prevent Zigzag and the One-Eyed army from destroying the city.

Changes in story made in The Recobbled Cut
Garrett Gilchrist's fan restorations mostly follow the workprint very closely, at least in their intent, using most of its original audio track and editing structure. In order to present a more complete film, Gilchrist added additional music (some from the released versions) and sound effects, and also included finished footage that does not appear in a finished state in the workprint, whether taken from the released versions or from other rare sources. Most of the story changes made by Fred Calvert and Miramax are not present, but it does include a few minor Calvert-only scenes or alterations, either as a side effect of using Calvert's footage as replacements for unfinished scenes in the workprint or because Gilchrist felt these scenes were useful to the plot.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) First and Foremost: This movie is, absolutely and unquestionably, a HUGE improvement over the original release of the movie. As it makes it abundantly clear that it's following the workprint of what Garrett Gilchrist intended for the movie to be as much as it possibly can. This is made abundantly clear by the fact that it uses both the original track and editing structure. As well as featuring additional sound effects and music added in by Gilchrist himself. The film doesn't have celebrities being snagged in for no other reason than attracting people to watch the film and they're aren't a trace of pop culture references in sight.
 * 2) Amazing animation for its time. The characters' movements are realistically smooth, they work so well with the backgrounds animation that they end up creating optical illusions, there's a great amount of different kinds of animation in the film, and every scene in the entire movie is absolutely bursting with amazing detail.
 * 3) Good voice acting (albeit the limited voice acting that's present in the movie due to most of the story being told via the animation, but whatever vocal performances there are in the film are still great).
 * 4) The plot (about a princess and a shoemaker uniting in order to save Baghdad by restoring three gold balls to the tallest minaret) is very decent for its time, and appealing to those who like tight plots. Not to mention how it's nowhere near the shameless and unoriginal story that the theatrical version shoved into the movie.
 * 5) The soundtrack matches the film perfectly since it takes place in Saudi Arabia. And none of the terrible songs introduced in the Miramax version like "It's So Amazing" and "Am I Feeling Love?" are present here.
 * 6) The film has almost absolutely no dialogue at all. And while that, at first, might sound like it makes it very hard to understand the overall plot of the film and what's exactly happening in it. But it not just makes the movie all the more capable of standing out from the crowd, but the story itself is very well portrayed by the animation and what occurs within it. And so that's the film's primary storytelling method. And the fact that it doesn't bait famous people into the cast for the sake of attracting moviegoers, but instead uses it's animation to convey the plot to the audience and use it as it's main storytelling method is simply no short of absolutely unique (yes, you're gonna be hearing us say that word a bunch of times here). Not to mention how the animation itself is more expressive in terms of expanding and explaining the story than the pointless dialogue shoved in for no reason in the theatrical version could ever dream to be.
 * 7) The characters are pretty likable. In spite of how simple their personalities are (e.g., Tac is the hero and main protagonist who finds himself in the palace and falls for the princess, Princess Yum Yum is the love interest who later demonstrates that she's willing to go out in order to save her city and it's civilians, King Nog is constantly presented as being tired during the beginning but later goes into non-stop panic mode when he fears that his city is in danger, Zigzag is the King's Grand Vizier as well as the film's main antagonist who plans to conquer the Golden City and marry Princess Yum Yum) none of them are unlikable and they all have enjoyable personas that are easy to comprehend and aren't exaggerated or overdone.
 * 8) While a majority of the film looks rather outdated, it's justified as the production of the film started at 1964. And given how it's incomplete and a fan-edited version of the original film (a spectacular one, but still), you can't go into it expecting absolutely phenomenal cinema-level content when it comes to the animation.
 * 9) The backgrounds also match the film perfectly. As previously mentioned, they feature a huge amounts of different styles as well as colors.
 * 10) Even the unfinished scenes look awesome due to the sheer effort and complexity of their animation.
 * 11) In spite of the enormous amount of things that occur in every scene, the story is actually a surprisingly simple and easy to follow one about. Because the story itself is very simple and easy to tell and for the audience to follow, along with the fact that there isn't any filler or exaggeration/overanalyzing of any scenes or events. The film also holds on to the scenes long enough to keep the audience's attention.
 * 12) Overall, unlike it's Miramax version which tries so ridiculously hard to appeal to all of it's possible audiences that it ends up appealing to no one and being an unpleasant and annoying mess, this movie knows and strives at being exactly what it wants to be; an artistic, fantasy adventure that uses limited dialogue to tell it's story.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The characters, while likable, are still pretty basic in terms of personality and their roles in the story and therefore aren't exactly complex.
 * 2) Due to being a fan-edited version of the original film, the animation (while fantastic) can sometimes end up switching into a rougher style out of no where in certain scenes.
 * 3) A few of the problems from the Miramax version were carried over here (i.e., the odd names for the characters). Though thankfully, most of the other ones were removed here.

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