While Tentacolino, and the other animated Titanic movies, are overdone topics, I feel that I can bring something new to the table by going over whatever trivia I could find, and theories as to why these films came out the way they did.
The North Korea Thing
The animation was outsourced to SEK Studio, based in Pyongyang. While the studio had recently expanded to Beijing and had done work with China previously, and it makes sense as China is North Korea's closest ally, they obviously have a bigger foothold in their homebase. SEK, obviously, produced a hell of a lot in North Korea, they were behind Squirrel and Hedgehog, one of few North Korean cartoons to be covered by someone on YouTube, and I bring them up as a point of reference on the overall art direction.
You may expect SEK to remain within North Korea, given their militance, and you'd be wrong. As a matter of fact, animation is the closest anyone has to a stable interaction to the country. In addition to domestic work, they also aided in animation services. For notable examples, they aided in the production of The Simpsons Movie, and that favor even extended to Futurama, where they aided on Bender's Big Score. In addition, they did an episode of the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, and an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
One of their biggest contractors happen to be Mondo TV, the producer behind The Legend of the Titanic and Tentacolino. I'd just like to get this out of the way, if you want to contact the founder of this company, Orlando Corradi, who also helped produce those movies, he died in 2018.
To get the elephant out of the room, a lot of their works parallel those by Disney. But hold up, they're protected by the Goodtimes principal. While these are similar properties, they all go by the fairy tale, itself not protected by copyright. If these were illegal, then New Line Cinema would've been rendered bankrupt for distributing their take on Pinocchio.
Then there's Simba the King Lion, which people would complain about regardless of the explanation I gave above. Now yes, that came out in 1996 while The Lion King came out in 1994, but then, oh yeah, Kimba the White Lion. I don't care what technicalities you bring up to me here, they're both guilty.
Mondo TV primarily produced content that had a Japanese influence, this was implied in the company's history section on Wikipedia. The first thing I saw on their take on Cinderella was an anime-esque poster. If I were to look into all of their works, we'd be here all day.
Why did the animated Titanic movie suck?
First off, I'm not gonna compare this to the James Cameron film, I want to look at the film on its own merits, and Titanic: Legend Goes On is more worthy of that comparison. Second, I'm gonna refrain from senseless bitching, I am trying to find something new to say about these films and in a new way.
Remember the Japanese influence I mentioned? I think what they were going for with the moonbeam stuff was some typical magic schtick associated with more fantasy-oriented anime, or perhaps they wanted to incorporate fairy tale aspects, given they spearheaded cartoons with this schtick. The big issue is that while it's easy to piece together why the heroes can do this, it's not as easy to do the same for the bad guys. If I had to guess, I imagine the evil ones were able to get the magic going a different way. Maybe one of them spat into the ocean, and it had the same effect as a tear.
But whatever the case, even by fairy-tale and Eastern-influence standards, this comes off as incredibly forced. Like they hammered in every single cliche from both influences they could. Speaking of fairy tales, that's also why we have a focus on talking mice. To close off on the fantasy aspect, I'd chalk it up to Top Conners trying to tell a crazy story to keep his kids entertained, screwing with them by claiming the story was entirely rooted in truth.
That isn't to say it's entirely forgivable. It feels like a tale someone tells to their kids to prevent them from getting traumatized over the events. Come to think of it, I think the writers made this as a coping mechanism, hence nobody dying in the end, and a giant octopus, and talking animals, and surprising reliance on whales. I would try to explain why they glorify whales, but I imagine they were just along to help, only to get over-promoted for no reason.
So overall, this movie is essentially like a watered down retelling of what happened on the Titanic, from the perspective of someone who's scared to death of telling them the truth, less they want the listeners to get traumatized. If they changed the whale to a government allegory, this would pass for entertainment in North Korea.
Why did Tentacolino suck?
Just to make this clear, I still hate these movies. I just want people to sleep easy knowing there might be a reason why these movies are ass.
I think the biggest issue behind this film is its anachronisms, i.e. the bathysphere used at the start, even though it still would've been a few years before they became widely used. There's a big chance these people weren't history buffs, but to save trouble, look for historical context based on what's used to make sure what you put in fits the period.
Also, I have nothing to say about the batshit insanity that occurs throughout the movie. They just fucked up. As for why most characters were suddenly altered out of nowhere, I've yet to see the original Italian cut. Maybe it was because the English cast received a bad translation of the script? It would make sense, but we had some mainstays from The Legend of the Titanic, you'd think someone would've said something before getting into it, but I imagine they just wanted a paycheck, so they wanted to get done with this as soon as possible.
I think it's here where the North Korea aspects really come to shine. Firstly, the director, Kim J. Ok, I know nothing about him, but every major North Korean I've ever heard of, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jung Il, Kim Jung-Un, Mr. Kim, had Kim incorporated into the name, plus it's a typical Korean name structure. Case closed.
Then there're the bad guys. Since I've got North Korea on the brain, these make sense. In Squirrel and Hedgehog, they use specific depictions of countries they're against. Just the fact they go by stereotypical depictions may suggest a geopolitical slant, but then again, I know of a Sweedish cartoon that got away with a point-blank stereotypical depiction of an Asian girl. Then we have the escape party, which may be a stab at people who want to disobey the government, with our heroes being unconditional supporters of said government, getting inducted without a second thought.
Think about it.
As for the ending being a proverbial bird to what happened in the first film, I think I have an idea. They actually died while in the bathysphere, with the Atlantians actually being angels to take them into the afterlife, Atlantis being it. The rat army are actually various depictions of Lucifer, marking his departure as one of God's angels and evolving into the devil.
But that gets fucked over by the humans above and the sharks, so there goes that theory. Then again, I think we all would've wanted these schmoes to be dead.
I do have one last theory. They realized that Titanic: Legend Goes On was actually better than their previous movie and tried to cash in on it however they could. How else can you explain the radical tone shift between those movies.
All else I can say is, "Pick up those bits of broken china at once." If I can understand what that wicked stepmother said in Legend Goes On, maybe that's why I understood why these movies sucked so hard.
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