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This movie is surely my favourite of all time. Some discuss if it is or is not an anime, but that's not really important. It's a kind of fairy tale, based on a book of the same name. Movie versions of books generally become "weak shadows" of their originals. This one is an exception. The magic in the book assumed another shape, but is still the same, wonderful and powerful. This movie changed my life, the way I see the world and my interaction with it.
"The Last Unicorn" is an American-Japanese co-production. The American staff was responsible for the script and the sound, while the Japanese made the animation.
I have watched the movie again, a few weeks before writing this Page, which has been "under contruction" for years. It was so long since I last watched it that I had forgotten most of it. The first time I watched it, the TV tuning was terrible, so I could barely see anything. This time, I could really appreciate it, in all details. Having already read the book, I can also compare them. If you don't know any of them, it's better to watch the movie first, then read the book (in my opinion). The images of the movie are really powerful and can make the reading even more exciting.
Some things in the movie are not exactly as the original story describes them. If you already know both the book and the movie, following is a personal comparision table, that is, it presents my opinions. Not all elements of the comparison are present both in the book and in the movie and they are in order of appearance in the book and in the script. If no comment is made, it means that the element is as good in the movie as in the book.
| Element | Present In | Comments |
| Introduction | book | Some movies have a narrative introduction to explain "obscure subjects", but this is not the case. |
| Opening | movie | This is a very fast sequence, essentially visual, something no book can reproduce. It instantly captures the audience's attention, a wonderful attempt t ocompensate the lack of the book's introduction. |
| Music | movie | Again, this is another element no book can have (not a "common" book, at least). |
| Sounds | BOTH | Yes, of course, both the book and the movie contain sounds, the difference is that in the movie they can be heard and in the book, read. The sounds in the book have one great advantage, they can be "explained", it is not ever possible to reproduce them as audible sounds. |
| The hunters | BOTH | The hunters are perfectly adapted to the movie and make a wonderful prelude to the adventure to come. |
| The Last Unicorn | BOTH | I think the book and the movie are complementary here. The book contains her psychological portrait, the magic in her motion, but the movie gives her a physical appearance and more to her behaviour. |
| Unicorn's Forest | BOTH | The movie is better in this item. Although the book describes the feeling of the Unicorn about her home, the image of her looking back at it and her little friends is heartbreaking. |
| Butterfly | BOTH | Again, the movie is better. It is a simple insect in the book, but received a personality of its own in the movie, very charismatic. |
| World Run | BOTH | This is a scene in which the last Unicorn runs around the world in search for any clue about the other unicorns. Both the book and the movie present it wonderfully. |
| Horses | book | The last Unicorn finds some horses in her search. It helps to describe her loneliness in the book. |
| The Man | BOTH | He cannot see the Unicorn as what she really is, but as a common mare. The movie presents him as a farmer, like for the butterfly, giving him a personality, but the book has one thing that is essential and is not presented in the movie, the Unicorn's thoughts and considerations about the encouter. |
| Mommy Fortuna | BOTH | This is difficult to judge. The movie gives her more "life" and personality, but also removes some important dialogues. Like the last Unicorn, the book's Mommy Fortuna is complemented by the movie's. |
| Rukh | BOTH | The movie gives him more personality, what in his case means he becomes more "unimportant", not to the story, but as a person. |
| Schmendrick | BOTH | Once more, the book and the movie are complementary. The movie gives him an "appearance", something that makes him more human than presented in the book, but some of his speeches and thoughts have been removed. |
| Midnight Carnival | BOTH | The sad dog/Cerberus, the boa/Ragnarok, the ape/satyr, the crocodile/dragon and the lion/manticore are far better described in the book than in the movie. The movie gives the Midnight Carnival a more decadent look, "grayish", but fails to describe the emotions of the last Unicorn about it. It also fails to show the role of Schmendrick in it. |
| The Cage | BOTH | The cage in the movie is merely a prison to the last Unicorn, while in the book it is an enemy, with its evil enchantment to keep her in. |
| Spider/Arachne of Lydia | book, movie? | I cannot remember having seen the spider in the movie. In the book, it has a very important role. |
| Harpy | BOTH | The movie fails, unfortunatelly, to express the horror of this character. |
| Blue Jays | book | Not very important characters, but those birds help to describe the scenario in the book. |
| Town | book | Unfortunately, the movie removes this scene, not really important, but that helps to describe the psychology of Schmendrick and Captain Cully's group. |
| Jack Jingly | book, movie? | I cannot identify him in the movie, but he probably is there. |
| Captain Cully | BOTH | This character lost a lot of his personality in the movie, due to cuts in his dialogues. |
| Molly Grue | BOTH | She is better in the movie, more real, human. As most characters, she also has some of her dialogues removed, but reading the book can compensate that. |
| Willie Gentle | BOTH | The Bard, his role in the movie is very shortened, but that's not important. |
| Robin Hood | BOTH | The movie makes the magic really flow. |
| The Tree | BOTH | The tree is more alive than ever in the movie. |
| The Princess | book | A decadent princess in a decadent land, she appears by the side of prince Lír, in the book, helping to describe the world. |
| Prince Lír | BOTH | He is different in the book and in the movie. In the original story, he is "gray", as everything else, becoming more colourful as he falls in love for Lady Amalthea. In the movie, it is as if he had been sleeping until he has known her. I like more the movie version. |
| Haggard's Castle | BOTH | The book describes it far better than the movie. |
| Hagsgate | book | The movie removes this whole scene, one of the most important, in my opinion. In the book, Hagsgate is made of people that know the evil, have the power to stop it, but do nothing, because they share the profits brought by the evil. The witch that raised Haggard's castle, her curse upon Hagsgate, Drinn and Drinn's men, they all have also been removed in the movie. |
| The Red Bull | BOTH | The movie makes the Red Bull a really terrible looking enemy, but can't describe the fear that it brings into the Unicorn's being. |
| First Confrontation | BOTH | The book's description of the first fight between the last Unicorn and the Red Bull is better, because the movie cannot express their thoughts as images, at least not breaking the action sequence. This problem is bigger in the end of the confrontation, when Schmendrick casts his spell. |
| Lady Amalthea | BOTH | In the book, Lady Amalthea slowly fades away, becoming almost "not present", a shadow in the story, when the group is already in the castle. The movie couldn't capture this transformation, mostly because of the cuts in the story. The description of Lady Amalthea, made by Prince Lír, has been shortened in the movie, making his character lose importance. |
| Haggard | BOTH | This character becomes stronger in the movie. |
| Amalthea's Eyes | BOTH | This scene is wonderfully transcripted from the book to the movie, becoming more emotional. |
| Mabruk | BOTH | Better in the movie, it gives him a personality. |
| Human Eyes | BOTH | It's difficult to put emotions into images, the book does it much better. |
| Cat | BOTH | Once again, the movie gives a personality to this character, a simple cat in the book (one could even argue about it not being proper to give a cat so much personality, but that's another matter...) |
| Skull/Skeleton | BOTH | In the book it is just an old human skull, but in the movie it is a skeleton, what helps to develop its personality. |
| Clock | BOTH | The book and the movie are complementary. In the book it's more like an icon, in the movie it is a solid object, strange, somehow... |
| Metamorphosis | BOTH | The movie, of course, is better at showing the transformation of Lady Amalthea. |
| Last Confrontation | BOTH | The book, again, is more successful at describing the battle, because it can show the thoughts that are not "printable" in a visual medium. |
| The Tide/The Fall | BOTH | The movie is more expressive than the book. |
| Resurrection | BOTH | The Unicorn touches him only once in the movie. |
| The Kingdom | book | Only the book shows the renewed kingdom. |
| The Dream | BOTH | Schmendrick, Molly and Lír dream about the Unicorn, each one a different dream. In the movie, only the story of Schmendrick is presented and not as a dream. |
| Fairy Tale | book | There is a complement about Lír's life after meeting Lady Amalthea. |
| Finale | BOTH | The book and the movie differ in the ending. In the book, the Unicorn disappears after meeting her friends in their dreams, then it ends with Schmendrick and Molly Grue travelling away together. The movie focus on the Unicorn, showing her trip back to her forest. The book says that the adventure changed her forever, I haven't realized it at first, but the change is also present in the movie, shown on her behaviour in her journey back home... |
The book and the movie are complementary in some points and divergent in others. The movie is simplified, in some parts that it shouldn't, sometimes just a missing line makes all the difference. But the movie is wonderful nonetheless, and the characters gain a life that is somehow difficult to feel in the book. I have seen the movie first and then read the book. I think it is the best way, because you can recall the visual of the movie while reading and that's wonderful. This movie surely deserves a remake, with a more complete script and about half an hour longer to fit it (well, for a faithful version, maybe even three hours of movie wouldn't be enough...)
The following data are a compilation from several sources, including, but not exclusively, from the Internet Movie Database. The names here have been verified with the movie credits (IMDb credits were all wrong at the time I checked).
Movie Title: "The Last Unicorn"Page last modified on 2005-July-06 Wednesday.
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