Amun: For a change of pace as we start off our summer season, Firechick takes a quick trip back to the 80s with The Golden Bird.
Huh, now this is a movie I didn’t expect to readily find. The Golden Bird is a short film running just under an hour, made and completed in 1984 but not released publicly until 1987. Based on the Brothers’ Grimm fairy tale of the same name, the story goes as follows: Every night, a golden apple is stolen from a tree in the palace grounds. The king is furious and enlists his three sons to find the culprit. But his two oldest sons are lazy and have no interest in following his orders, while his youngest son Hans is the only one actually willing to take the job seriously, which is easy enough since his brothers prefer to foist all their responsibilities on him anyway. Hans manages to unveil the identity of the thief: A mysterious golden bird. While he’s unable to catch it, he does manage to get one of its feathers to present as proof. Upon learning this, the king sends all three of his sons out into the world to bring the bird back. But Hans finds himself wrapped up in an adventure involving pink foxes, a gold hoarding queen, and a princess who really wants to find her older brother.
I’m not sure why this movie got shelved for three years, and there isn’t much information on its production history beyond that. Plus, it only just recently received a high quality fan sub by Orphan Fansubs, which is how I learned about it. I haven’t read the original fairy tale myself, even though I own a big, heavy Brothers’ Grimm fairy tale book, so I can’t comment on The Golden Bird’s fidelity to it. I can say that the animation for its time is pretty good, a few scenes notwithstanding. But for the most part, the movie definitely nails the fairy tale atmosphere and tone. Starting off, the animation for its time is pretty good, save for some heavy usage of still shots at times. The character designs are distinct and full of personality, the backgrounds are detailed and fit the fairy tale atmosphere perfectly, and the actual motion is kinetic and lively. It did have to deal with some limitations because of the 80s tech used for the animation, but on the whole, the animation is a definite high point for The Golden Bird as a whole.
The music, not so much. The background music is okay, but the actual songs are kind of generic and haven’t aged well in terms of sound. Plus, the musical sequences in which they’re used are mostly there to just pad out the movie and don’t really add anything to the narrative, especially the song/sequence that plays when Hans meets the princess for the first time. I’m also not a huge fan of the characters, as they’re all pretty generic stock fairy tale archetypes, like the kid hero, the tomboyish princess, the evil queen who wants riches, the irresponsible older brothers who can’t be bothered to take responsibility for their mistakes, so on and so forth. Plus, as nice as Hans starts out initially, he makes some pretty sexist remarks towards the princess later in the movie, and it’s played off as “Oh, boys will be boys!” Yeah, the eighties were rough in terms of enforcing gender norms. Honestly, the only characters that really stand out are the queen, though that’s because she owns her villainy and is hammier than Owain from Fire Emblem Awakening, and the drunk pink bird that helps Hans and Lulu get out of a ravine.
The story of The Golden Bird itself is mainly just a typical “save the princess and defeat the evil overlord” story, with nothing that really makes it stand out amongst other fairy tales that have done similar premises. I could predict every single story beat coming from a mile away, and for a character whose species is literally the movie’s title, the golden bird itself is reduced to little more than an afterthought once Hans finds it. The golden bird just serves as the catalyst for Hans to go on his journey, and for Hans to get caught by the queen because of his inability to follow basic directions, that’s it. The Golden Bird as a movie doesn’t really have much going for it by itself, but the creativity and storyboarding that went into it, along with the fun action scenes really make it a feast for the eyes, so you can’t say the staff behind it didn’t put some degree of effort into its production. Oh, and the evil queen and her massive Ursula energy. Anybody who likes their hammy evil villains will probably stick around because she’s just fun to watch.
In the end, The Golden Bird is just really pretty babysitting fodder that you can use to placate your kids for an hour. It’s not a bad movie, nor does it really stand out amongst its contemporaries. It’s a largely inoffensive, interesting little bauble in animation history, but nothing more.
