The Road to El Dorado (film)
The Road to El Dorado is an animated comedy film by DreamWorks SKG released in 2000. The soundtrack features songs by Elton John and Tim Rice.
The movie begins in 16th century (1519) Catalonia (where Spain and France meet) and tells about two men named Tulio and Miguel. During a dice game using loaded dice, they win a map that purportedly shows the location of the legendary city of gold in the New World. However, their cheating is soon discovered and as a result, they end up as stowaways on Hernán Cortés' fleet to conquer Mexico. They are discovered, but manage to escape in a boat with Cortés' prize war horse and eventually discover the hidden city of El Dorado where they are mistaken for gods.
El Dorado is portrayed as a Utopian civilization that combines facets of the Aztecs, Maya, Incas, and Atlantis.
The soundtrack was released as the album The Road to El Dorado,
and the computer adventure game was named Gold & Glory: The Road to El Dorado.
Tagline: They came for the gold... they stayed for the adventure
Cast
Kevin Kline ... Tulio
Kenneth Branagh ... Miguel
Rosie Perez ... Chel
Armand Assante ... Tzekel-Kan
Edward James Olmos
... Chief
Jim Cummings ... Cortes / others
Frank Welker
... Altivo / Various others
Tobin Bell ... Zaragoza
Duncan Marjoribanks ... Acolyte
Elijah Chiang ... Kid
#1
Cyrus Shaki-Khan ... Kid #2
Elton
John ... Narrator
Plot
El Dorado's opening includes a song telling the legend of El Dorado. According to the legend, El Dorado was built by two gods, 1000 years ago.
It then cuts to 1519 Spain, where Hernán Cortés is leaving with his troops for the New World. Miguel (Kenneth Branagh) and Tulio (Kevin Kline), two wanted conmen, are nearby swindling sailors with loaded dice. After the sailors run out of money, one insists on a last bet, staking his map portraying El Dorado in the New World. Miguel wants the map and convinces Tulio to go for it. The sailor insists using his own dice. Surprisingly, Miguel and Tulio win; as Tulio is gathering his winnings, the loaded dice fall out of his vest and the sailors discover the con. They begin an improvisational argument where Tulio blames Miguel for giving him loaded dice and Miguel insists that Tulio was the real thief. As their acting escalates, they grab swords and begin a duel which takes them to the top of a nearby building, at which point they jump down to the ground on the other side of the building, effectively escaping. An angry bull takes them by surprise; therefore Tulio and Miguel become the objects of a chase scene which ends at the docks, where they jump in barrels which are loaded onto Cortés' ship.
On the ship, they are discovered and mistaken for stowaways. Cortés will not tolerate stowaways and therefore has them locked in the brig. After failed attempts to break out, Tulio decides their best chance of escape is to steal a longboat and try rowing back to Spain, but is unable to come up with a plan by which to escape their cell. Fortunately, a sailor drops an apple by accident, and Miguel uses it to bribe Cortés' horse (named Altivo, meaning "haughty" in Spanish), who is standing near by, to fetch a pry bar. The horse returns with keys instead. In the night, the duo leave the cell and load up a longboat, but as they lower themselves into the water Altivo neighs for the apple he was promised. Tulio tosses Altivo his apple, but it bounces off various objects on the ship and ends up in the ocean, where the horse follows. Miguel attempts to save him; the boat heels, spilling all of their supplies. After a storm and many famished days, they finally reach the shores of the New World.
Miguel, Tulio, and Altivo are overjoyed until they see skeletons impaled on swords, prompting them to leave. While leaving, Miguel notices a rock having the shape of an eagle and recognizes it as a landmark from the map he had won. He convinces Tulio to go to El Dorado, intending to loot it; therefore they begin their trip through the jungle. After many small adventures, they wander onto the last part of the map, where they find only a rock on which is a picture carved depicting the legendary gods. Mistakenly thinking the rock is El Dorado, they begin to leave when a woman who is being chased by a group of tribal warriors for stealing a golden object emerges from behind the rock and runs into them. The whole group sees Tulio and Miguel - who, mounted on Altivo, resemble the two gods on the rock - and take them through the watery tunnel passage into El Dorado.
There, some of the soldiers notify Chief Tannabok (Edward James Olmos) and high priest Tzekel-Kan (Armand Assante) of the arrival. Tulio and Miguel are led to a large courtyard where Tzekel-Kan addresses a crowd, telling them the gods have arrived. The pair realize that they have been mistaken for deities, and encourage the ruse. Chief Tannabok asks them why they have chosen now to arrive and Tzekel-Kan warns him not to question the gods. Miguel warns that he will unleash his power if they do. Taking Miguel aside, Tulio scolds him for pushing their luck, and they begin to argue over how to get out of the situation. As Tulio gets angrier and talks faster, a volcano begins to erupt, coincidentally stopping when Tulio yells "stop". The city accepts them as gods and they are taken to a temple, where they are offered a feast that night and a ceremony at dawn.
The pair begin celebrating that they have found this "whole city of suckers" and plan how to loot it. The woman they saw by the rock overhears them, and she, Chel (Rosie Perez), says she wants to join the con. She offers to help them pretend to be gods. The men are hesitant, but have little choice but to accept, as they do not know the customs of the city. After she leaves, Tulio and Miguel agree that Chel is sexually off limits; that neither should attempt to seduce her, as it interrupts their plan. Afterward they have fun at the feast, singing "It's Tough To Be a God", which is the only song in the movie that is not sung by Elton John. The next dawn, when Tzekel-Kan offers a human sacrifice, they are quick to stop the killing, instead accepting the Chief's tribute of gold. Hoping to leave with the loot, they ask the Chief to build them a boat, but are told that the construction will require three days. Meanwhile, Cortés lands on the beach and begins to follow the pair's trail to El Dorado.
Worried that they will be unable to keep up the falsehood, Tulio tells Miguel to lie low, but Chel persuades him to explore the city so that she can seduce Tulio in his absence. Miguel has fun teaching the locals to play the mandolin and learning their version of a Mesoamerican ballgame. Tzekel-Kan, unhappy that the gods are not as violent and destructive as he had foretold, goes to the temple to convince Tulio of the importance of human sacrifice; when Tulio hears that Miguel is playing with the locals they both leave to find him. Tzekel-Kan initiates a much more serious Mesoamerican ballgame, pitting the protagonists against a team of bulky warriors. Tulio and Miguel barely win by using, against the rules, an armadillo as a ball. Miguel objects to sacrificing the losing team, thus disobeying Tzekel-Kan; but Tzekel-Kan, seeing blood seep from a small cut above Miguel's right eyebrow, realizes that Miguel and Tulio are mortals. He then cuts himself sayng 'Gods don't bleed' then healing, revealing he's a sorcerer/magician.
Soon after, Tulio admits to Chel that he wants her to come back to Spain with him and that they should 'forget Miguel'; Miguel, overhearing this, is furious. As the night's celebrations begin, Tzekel-Kan magically brings a gigantic stone statue of a jaguar to life and uses it as a weapon by having its actions correspond to his own. Miguel and Tulio are chased to the edge of a whirlpool, and, seeming to argue as in the beginning of the movie, manage to knock both priest and statue into the whirlpool. It quickly becomes apparent to both that this argument was very real; as a result, Miguel decides to stay in El Dorado while Tulio leaves with Chel for Spain. Tzekel-Kan, who somehow survived the whirlpool, is found by Cortés, whose appearance and behavior remind the priest of the bloodthirsty gods he desired to meet. Believing he has found his true gods, Tzekel-Kan begins to lead Cortés to El Dorado.
As
Tulio and Chel board the boat, Altivo sees smoke rising over the horizon and warns
Miguel, and a scout returns to tell the Chief that Tzekel-Kan guides Cortés.
Miguel insists that the native warriors cannot fight the invaders; Tulio, by a
stroke of luck, comes up with a plan to stop them. Fulfilling this plan, they
cause the tunnel entrance to the city to cave in by smashing their boat into the
pillars that support it. As they put this plan into action, the boat's sail becomes
stuck. Seeing that his friend is in danger, Miguel jumps onto the boat, opening
the sail as he lands and thereby making a decision to come with Tulio rather than
stay in the city forever. They (Miguel, Tulio, and Chel) succeed in crashing the
boat into the pillars and cutting off the city from the outside world; in the
process, they lose their ship and all the gold in it. Cortés approaches
at that moment; seeing no entrance, he dismisses Tzekel-Kan as a liar and leaves,
taking the priest with him. Miguel and Tulio reconcile, and the three of them
hop on Altivo (who is wearing golden horseshoes) to set off for the adventure
they expect to be awaiting them
Trivia
When
Tzekel-Kan (the priest) is flipping through the pages of a spell book one of the
illustrations resembles the DreamWorks logo of a boy sitting in the arc of a crescent
moon fishing.
The name of the armadillo that is seen throughout the film (and
used in the game that Miguel and Tulio play) is Bibo. Bibo is actually the nickname
of Eric Bergeron, the French director of the movie.
The film is an homage
to the classic "buddy" films of the 1940s starring Bing Crosby and Bob
Hope. Those films were always titled "The Road to..." (Morocco, Utopia,
Zanzibar, etc.), involved two friends who accidentally find themselves en route
to an exotic location, and a highly sexualized love interest (usually played by
Dorothy Lamour). At one point in The Road to El Dorado, the reflections of Tulio
and Miguel in running water briefly form caricatures of Crosby and Hope.
Originally
in the script, the relationship between the main characters (Tulio and Miguel)
was supposed to have more of an implication, with each calling the other by pet
names like "darling." This would have heightened the tension when Chel
came between them and when they argued about splitting up. The producers and other
executives had the pet names and other references cut, but in some versions of
the subtitles (which are often taken from original scripts), the pet names can
still be seen.
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