Take stories from one of the world’s greatest authors, an airship, Adam and Eve, and even the Devil, mix well into a story, and you’ve got The Adventures of Mark Twain. It’s one of the more offbeat and original projects from legendary director Will Vinton, best known for his work with Claymation, the unique stop-motion animation style.
The film, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, was inspired by a statement Twain once made about his connection to Hailey’s Comet: “I came in with Hailey’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Hailey’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’”
Shortly after Hailey’s Comet appeared again, Mark Twain passed away on April 21, 1910.
For The Adventures of Mark Twain, Vinton’s wife, Susan Shadburne, crafted the screenplay after extensively researching Twain’s life and his work. The story relays a fictional journey where the author pilots an airship to meet up with Hailey’s Comet. Stowing away aboard the ship are three of Twain’s famous fictional characters: Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Becky Thatcher.
Will Vinton – with “Mark Twain”
These three discover a strange, mystical elevator that takes them to any part of the ship, which winds up taking them on peculiar adventures, all inspired by Twain’s stories, including “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” which Twain relays after seeing a frog that the boys brought on board.
They all stumble upon Adam and Eve in a segment inspired by Twain’s “Eve’s Diary” and “Extracts from Adam’s Diary.” The film spends a good segment of time here in some darkly humorous and “cartoony” segments. Eve embraces animals, feels bad for fish living in the water, brings them home, and lays them all on the bed. “I don’t see them any happier than they were before,” noted Adam, “Only quieter.” After this, one of the fish lays on its side, its tongue hanging out.
The door to the elevator then opens to reveal a scene from “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”. It’s after this brief interlude that The Adventures of Mark Twain delves into its darkest moment, inspired by Twain’s story “The Chronicles of Young Satan,” where they all meet with a character first called “The Mysterious Stranger,” (the title of the novella that includes the aforementioned story) who then reveals themselves to be Satan.
Satan is brought to the screen with some disturbing yet compelling animation designs. A shape-shifting face, resembling the theatrical masks of tragedy and comedy (mostly tragedy), and an eerie, electronic whisper of a voice. Satan demonstrates how he controls the lives of small, helpless, little humanistic characters, who he proceeds to destroy in a catastrophic earthquake.
From here, Tom, Huck, and Becky fearing for their own lives, believe that Twain is on a suicidal collision course with the comet. They decide to tie Twain up to thwart his plan, but he mysteriously escapes, and the three kids soon learn that while Twain plans on meeting up with the comet, he wants Tom, Huck, and Becky to be unharmed.
What follows is a series of events that involves meeting with Twain’s “darker side” and flying the airship through the heart of Hailey’s Comet. In the conclusion, they all make it through the comet, where Twain imparts wisdom (taken from the author’s famous quotes), and Twain dissolves, transitioning into a figure in the clouds.
Tom, Huck, and Becky pilot the airship, leading them to decide to write about their adventures, as the closing credit declares: “The Adventures of Mark Twain by Huck Finn.”
Vinton financed the film, which took three and a half years to complete, using profits from his studio’s commercial work.
The time and effort are all there on the screen. The character animation of Mark Twain (with the perfect voice of actor James Whitmore, who was filmed while performing the role, for reference by the animators) is full of personality, and the detail of the Claymation throughout the film is nothing short of a marvel.
From the comedic back-and-forth of Adam and Eve to the dynamically staged action sequence at the film’s conclusion, as well as the eerie morphing of “The Mysterious Stranger,” the hand-crafted artistry of The Adventures of Mark Twain is on full display.
Forty years after its release, the film has also become remembered for that segment that brings Satan into the story. A simple Google Search brings up a number of online discussions about the scene. While off-putting and unsettling, the sequence demonstrates how impactful animation can be when it embraces a darker tone.
It is ambitious, as is all of The Adventures of Mark Twain, taking decidedly different stories and characters and also taking some chances.
