And, it has to be said parenthetically, a ripping good version this is too pacy, sophisticated and unexpectedly funny.īut what's most striking about this transformation is how comprehensively - and surprisingly consistently - the film has been Hellenised. Sinbad is a recognisable part of what we might call a Hollywood pantheon, and there's no need to get po-faced about new uses of what was already a fantastical, and well assimilated, story. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas is a kid's film, with no particular pretensions to literary-historical accuracy, and in any case people have always messed about with the tales of the Arabian Nights, not least the many authors of the tales themselves.
There is action and romance, but at its core is a tale of friendship based on the Greek fable of Damon and Pythius, about one friend who is willing to sacrifice his life for the other." "We started with the Sinbad legend and then brought in different elements of mythology that we felt worked with the story. The film's producer Mireille Soria puts it like this. Every Arab reference has been removed, and replaced with something vaguely Greek.
His estranged best friend is Proteus, the son of King Daimas, and his most dangerous enemy is Eris, the goddess of chaos. The love of his life, Marina, is a noblewoman of Thebes. Except that, in this version, Sinbad is from Syracuse (in Sicily, as opposed to New York State). Enter Hollywood, in the redoubtable shape of producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, setting out to make a new animated version of the Sinbad legend, complete with some of its most exciting episodes: the deserted island that turns out to be a sleeping fish, and an attack from the angry roc - a fearsome giant bird.