Long ago, back in the days when animated film's weren't afraid to try something new, or were really trying to move us, Dreamworks produced a little flick known as 'The Prince of Egypt'; a musical about the Biblical story of Moses. Just say that out loud. This idea was dead from the start.
But 'Prince' turned out to be not only an achievement in animation, music and film making, but what I consider to be possibly the greatest animated movie of all time. The film is beautiful with some breath-taking shots, angles and hand-drawn backgrounds. The music is spectacular and does what any musical should- move the story with music.
However, as years continue to go on, Dreamworks has tended to no longer acknowledge Prince of Egypt. I mean, it's not like it's been removed from their official cannon of film on their website or you can no longer buy it from movie services (It's on Netflix. I beg you to check it out); But just about everywhere I look, Dreamworks is putting all of their attention toward some of their more recent successes such as How to Train Your Dragon 2 and its companion films, along with Kung Fu Panda, and even some of their oldies which weren't even that great to begin with.
I am here to analyze these issues and also delve into the reasons why there seems to be a marketing prejudice to this film by it's own creators.
Reason #1- Religious Aspect
Moses in the desert in The Prince of Egypt
Moses in the desert in The Prince of Egypt
This is probably the most obvious one.
Now before I continue, I will establish that I am a follower of the religion that is portrayed in this film (Christianity). However, unlike most people, I don't get offended by films which portray Christianity in a false way. Let's admit it. This stuff happened over thousands of years ago, so you're never going to get it right if one tries to portray it in an artistic way, such as film in this case. Prince of Egypt does not get it 100% right by any means, but it shows a high level of respect to the source material and essence of the story it is portraying, which is why I like it so much.
So growing up in such an environment, I am exposed to 2 different types of Biblical entertainment-
1: VERY cheaply made animation segments about Biblical stories designed for children which only serve the purpose of communicating the story to pre-schoolers. These do their job well, but fail to do anything groundbreaking in terms of film making; Let alone they fail to hold up.
2: Big budget films based off Biblical stories which instead of telling that story, attempt to put an "ORIGINAL ADAPTATION" on the story. Such films include recent productions such as Noah(2014), Exodus: Gods and Kings(2014) and History Channel's Production "The Bible Series"(2013). Films such as these have definitely become a trend in the last half decade. Most of these however, fail to straight out tell the story, and tend to add in the most random content which has nothing to do with the original story and only serves for the purpose of entertainment, or the filmmaker's doing their original take on the Bible. The only live action film off the top of my head which does this well, would be Passion of the Christ (2004).
Passion of the Christ (2004).
Passion of the Christ (2004).
Prince would probably fall into the latter category, because Dreamworks is a big budget company; so it is odd given that they were able to accomplish 1- A mostly faithful adaptation to the story with almost zero changes which people would consider "offensive"; And 2- They were able to do it in an age where Biblical films (and even Christian-made films for that matter) crash and burn and that 'Prince' was able to rise to a level of quality that very few films manage to achieve.
Now why Dreamworks would ignore this film out of all their others because of religion (sort of) doesn't make much sense on it's own. In an age where society tends to censor media to not offend varying groups, I have read dozens of comments from non-religious individuals (atheists) who say they love this film, despite not following any religion at all.
Heck, you can ask just about any movie buff nowadays about Prince, they're familiar with this and love it to death. So despite so many people loving it, Dreamworks still cuts their acknowledgement from it-- I have a piece of evidence to hammer this home.
Last year, Dreamworks celebrated their 20th anniversary by re-releasing all of their films on newly formatted DVDs and Blu-Rays. I went to Target and I was able to find every film they made EXCEPT Prince of Egypt. They even had a triple-feature DVD of Dreamworks' 2D movies: Road to El Dorado, Sinbad of the Seven Seas, and Joseph: King of Dreams.Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, their other 2-D film (which for some reason a lot of people like) was of course sold as it's own DVD. They even had a re-released version of Antz, their first film. So why this Triple-Feature contained the Direct-To-DVD "prequel" to Prince ('Joseph'