The Sword in the Stone (1963)


Here's our last remaining Silver Age film, The Sword in the Stone.

The Movie:

 The Sword in the Stone is the 18th film in the Disney Animated Canon and the 7th of Disney's Silver Age.  It was a box-office success despite receiving mixed reviews from critics.  It did earn one Oscar nomination for its musical score.

The Sword in the Stone is based on the book of the same name by T. H. White, which tells the story of a young future King Arthur before the legends as told by Sir Thomas Malory.  (White would later write three other books based on the Arthurian legend and combine them into the work The Once and Future King.)  In this tale young Arthur is known as Wart, a ward of Sir Ector and the squire of Ector's son Kay.  While the two boys are out hunting, Wart goes into the woods to retrieve and arrow and meets the magician Merlin and his talking owl Archimedes.  Merlin, knowing Wart is destined for greatness, travels with him back to Ector's castle to become Arthur's tutor, beginning the training of the future king.

This one was never a favorite of mine as a child, and it's hard to sit through today.  While the idea of taking the grand spectacle of the legend of King Arthur and essentially writing a prequel seems like an interesting concept, the execution in the Disney film is rather disjointed.  Like several other Disney films the plot is episodic, with each lesson following the same formula - Arthur turns Wart into an animal, hi-jinx ensue, Archimedes tries to help, Merlin returns Wart to human.  One of these episodes would have been just fine, but there are three.  (Of course the original novel has six such transformations but also other plot lines that were also left out.)  The villain of the movie, if you could call her that, is Madam Mim, and we don't see her and her grand duel with Merlin until the last 20 minutes.  The scene that everybody knows - Arthur pulling the sword from the stone, you know, the title of the movie, happens with just 7 minutes of run time left!  That part of the movie is actually interesting.  Merlin and Archimedes are fun characters, but the story just needed a bit more plot.  Also, like the other late Silver Age films, the animation quality is not always great.

The music is also fairly weak in The Sword in the Stone.  Once again George Bruns does the score.  The opening music over the credits is nice, but otherwise nothing really stands out.  The usually wonderful Sherman Brothers wrote the songs, but these are not among their best work.  "Higitus Figitus" and "That's What Makes the World Go Round" are usually cited as the signature tracks, but when that's the cream of the crop, you know you're in trouble.

Presence in the Parks:

 Despite being one of the lesser known films of the Silver Age, The Sword in the Stone gets some pretty good love in the parks.

First up, the carousel at Disneyland is King Arthur's Carrousel, which was an opening day attraction in 1955.  Note that this is 8 years before the movie came out.  However, Disney had obtained the book rights as far back as 1939, so it's possible that the ride was given its name either out of anticipation of a movie or because Disney liked the story of King Arthur.  Either way, other than the name, the ride doesn't really reference the movie much.  That honor goes to the object directly in front of it.


Fantasyland, Disneyland, July 1988
(King Arthur's Carrousel is in the background)

That object is the actual sword in the stone.  This item is found in front of the various carousels at the castle parks around the world.  At one point in time, there was an actually ceremony held several times a day, in which Merlin would have a child pull the sword and become the ruler of Fantasyland for a day.  (This was actually a plot point for an episode of the sitcom Full House.)  From what I have found on the internet, the show was a regular thing from 1983 to around 2006, though supposedly the sword will sometimes still lift by chance with the help of a nearby hidden cast member.


Sword in the Stone, Magic Kingdom, July 2002


Sword in the Stone, Magic Kingdom, May 2015

I've already mentioned the Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom several times, but it definitely needs mentioning here, given that Merlin is the character behind the activity's plot, being the one requesting recruits to participate.  Merlin also gets a card in the game.

(I will note that this seems like an unlikely movie to have a newer attraction based on it debut, but then you see that another nearby park has new attractions based around a magical story, and it becomes a bit more clear.)

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