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duckyworth · 4 years

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I finally managed to make a piece of fanart for The Adventures of Mark Twain, a film that I saw last month that became one of my new favourite films. So here is Mark Twain piloting his awesome airship towards Halley's Comet with Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Becky Thatcher and Huck's pet frog Homer - as Twain’s darker self broods and laments the perceived pointlessness of it all down below. :( I also wanted to use this opportunity to write a little mini review of the film. :D

As iconic as the 'The Mysterious Stranger' segment is, I wanted to draw something based on the film that wasn't that bit, as I feel this film is one of those films that gets mainly remembered for one scene in particular, even though I think there are many more scenes that are just as worthy of being remembered. The film follows Mark Twain trying to use his cool airship to catch up with Halley's Comet, as Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and Becky Thatcher have snuck aboard and he allows them to help, but upon learning that Mark Twain is catching up with the comet due to a death wish and find a version of him that is much more nihilistic and bitter than the kindly and optimistic man they meet, they try to sabotage the voyage, before they learn the truth why he wants to be reunited with Halley's Comet. (Mark Twain said - '“I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.”' He was born in 1835, when the comet appeared in the sky, and he passed away in 1910, just as the comet passed close to Earth again. And this film came out in 1985, when the comet passed by AGAIN. One reason why I absolutely LOVE the film is due to not just the fantastic and beautiful claymation animation courtesy of the late great Will Vinton and his crew (who I recently discovered became LAIKA Studios ) - despite a few strings being present here and there when characters jump and them not being able to walk properly, I think the detail and care put into the clay characters is brilliant, and for the first feature length claymation film, it's really impressive - or the charmingly weird renditions of many of Mark Twain's stories like The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, The Diary of Adam and Eve and Captain Stormfield's Visit To Heaven), but because it's a sweet and heartwarming tribute to Samuel Clemens himself. Before I saw this film, I did some research on him (I didn't know that much about Samuel Clemens as he doesn't have as much prevalence over here in the UK as he does in the USA - I didn't even know he wrote The Prince and the Pauper - and when this film came out in the UK, it was simply named Comet Quest ), and I think his life story is FASCINATING. As well as becoming known as the father of American Literature, I found it really interesting learning about his various beliefs and life experiences that is reflected in his work, and to be honest, I find the themes this film tackles are actually pretty prevalent to a lot of content creators today. Early in his works, Mark Twain was known as having a great sense of humour, and a lot of his early works would be considered standup comedy today (and upon looking up some of his quotes and his works, I can believe it - he is a GREAT snarker And a lot of his quotes even had him say that 'humour is mankind's greatest blessing' and 'kindness is the language which the death can hear and the blind can see' - it also helps that the film uses a lot of the quotes he himself said in life ). And seen as his first few years before he became a writer had him work as a riverboat pilot in Missouri and he was born a son of Missouri slave owners (even though he was an abolitionist), I can see how some of his experiences would inspire his most famous works like Tom Sawyer. With him also keeping a dream journal for a large part of his life, I can also see that very well being something that inspired some of the more weird visuals in this film. Sadly, late in his life, he not only started suffering from losing most of his hard earned fortune to bad business investments, but his younger brothers, wife Olivia and three of their four children lost their lives, and he blamed himself for all of them, which led him to become extremely jaded and disillusioned with mankind and the idea of a God later in his life, but when viewing his later works which delved into him discussing these ideologies of his, I've seen that a lot of his critics passed him off as a sad and pathetic old man by this point, even though he had been affected by his misfortunes and believed the fame he's received didn't mean anything in the end when he had lost all that was near and dear to him. And a lot of his nihilism he developed later in life led to him writing things like The Mysterious Stranger when he became disillusioned with humanity and some of it's darker aspects. (But I do like the joke in the film that when they're losing dead weight to catch up with Halley's Comet, Mark stops The Mysterious Stranger being tossed out as he says it'll be finished in a few years - a reference to the fact the book wasn't finished and published until years after Mark Twain passed away. ) Which is where I think the themes of the film comes into play - Mark Twain is split in the film into a light and dark side, the light side being his comical and optimistic self, and his dark side being his jaded and pessimistic side, but as the dark side says later in the film 'Every man is a moon, and has a dark side that he keeps hidden from everybody, if he can help it.', and the light side tells Tom Sawyer that he's not whole without his more dark personality traits. And a big reason why he wants to chase the comet in the first place is to be reunited with his late wife Olivia (I think the Adam and Eve segment in the film, as well as starting off pretty hilarious with rather goofy renditions of Genesis - Adam and Eve are both rather eccentric and goofy individuals who have pretty great chemistry with each other leading to them falling in love - leading to what happened with Adam and Eve after they left the Garden of Eden, becomes really sad at the end when Adam is alone after Eve has passed away and he writes 'Wherever she was, there was Eden' - and Twain wrote The Diary of Eve as a posthumous love letter to Olivia. ) I think there are a lot of times nowadays when a content creator is judged by only one or two elements of their perceived image without receiving the full picture, and it is unfair to judge ANYONE without knowing the full picture - there's no such thing as a completely perfect person, after all - no matter how altruistic or kind hearted someone may be, everyone has their flaws or inner demons that help shape them as an individual (I speak from experience, having experienced some myself that I'm having to cope with) - as the end credits song says 'You have to know their dreams, The devils and the gods, Before you know the man.' And one scene I absolutely love at the end is the light and dark sides of Mark Twain giving advice to the three children - the light side imparting them, and the dark side giving the snarky humour that Mark Twain was known for in life. (And of course, the part when the two Mark Twains fuse and become one with the comet was absolutely GORGEOUS animation. ) All I can say at this point is that I'm really glad I managed to come across a Blu Ray of the film on Amazon, and if you have a chance to watch the film, I highly recommend it. And I hope you enjoy my fanart I drew of the film. :)

#mark twain #the adventures of mark twain #duckyworth's art #tom sawyer #will vinton #film #art #huckleberry finn #becky thatcher #animation

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