The Road to El Dorado

***The Road to El Dorado*** is a 2000 American animated adventure-musical comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and released by DreamWorks Pictures. It was directed by Eric "Bibo" Bergeron and Don Paul; Will Finn and David Silverman directed additional sequences. The film stars Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Rosie Perez, Armand Assante, and Edward James Olmos. The soundtrack features songs by Elton John and Tim Rice, as well as composers Hans Zimmer and John Powell.

The film follows two con artists who, after winning the map to El Dorado, escape from Spain. After washing ashore in the New World, they use the map to lead them to the city of El Dorado, where its inhabitants mistake them for gods. Released on March 31, 2000, *The Road to El Dorado* grossed $76.4 million worldwide on a $95 million budget and received mixed reviews.

The plot is loosely based on *The Man Who Would Be King*, a book by Rudyard Kipling.

## Plot

In 1519 Spain, two con artists, Miguel and Tulio, win a map to the legendary City of Gold, El Dorado, in a rigged dice gamble (though they ironically win the map fairly). After their con is exposed, the two evade the guards and hide inside barrels, which are then loaded into one of the ships to be led by conquistador Hernán Cortés for the New World. During the voyage, they are caught as stowaways and imprisoned, but break free and take a rowboat with the help of Cortés' horse, Altivo.

Their boat reaches land, where Miguel begins to recognize landmarks from the map, leading them to a totem marker near a waterfall that Tulio believes is a dead end. As they prepare to leave, they encounter a native woman, Chel, being chased by guards. When the guards see Tulio and Miguel riding Altivo as depicted on the totem, they escort them and Chel to a secret entrance behind the falls, into El Dorado. They are brought to the city's elders, kindhearted Chief Tannabok and wicked high priest Tzekel-Kan. The pair are mistaken for gods and are given luxurious quarters, along with the charge of Chel. She discovers that the two are conning the people but promises to remain quiet if they take her with them when they leave the city. The two are showered with gifts of gold from Tannabok but disapprove of Tzekel-Kan attempting to sacrifice a civilian as the gods' ritual.

Tulio and Miguel instruct Tannabok to build them a boat so that they can leave the city with all the gifts they have been given. During the three days this will take, Miguel explores the city, and Chel gets romantically close to Tulio. Miguel comes to appreciate the peaceful life embraced by the citizens; by then, he reconsiders leaving, especially after overhearing Tulio telling Chel that he'd like her to come with them to Spain, before adding he'd like her to come with *him* and to forget Miguel – straining the relationship between the two.

When Tzekel-Kan sees Miguel playing a ball game with people, he insists the "gods" demonstrate their powers against the city's best players in the same game. Tulio and Miguel are outmatched, but Chel is able to substitute the ball with an armadillo, allowing them to win. Miguel spares the ritual of sacrificing the losing team and chastises Tzekel-Kan, much to the crowd's approval. Tzekel-Kan notices Miguel received a small cut and realizes the two are not gods, since gods do not bleed. He soon conjures a giant stone jaguar to chase them throughout the city. Tulio and Miguel manage to outwit the jaguar, causing it and Tzekel-Kan to fall into a giant whirlpool, thought by the natives to be the entrance to Xibalba, the spirit world. Tzekel-Kan then surfaces in the jungle, where he encounters Cortés and his men. Thinking Cortés is a god, he offers to lead them to El Dorado.

With the boat completed, Miguel decides to stay in the city. As Tulio and Chel board the boat, they see smoke on the horizon and realize Cortés is close. Knowing what will happen if Cortés discovers the city, Tulio suggests using the boat to ram rock pillars under the waterfall and block the main entrance to the city. The plan succeeds with the citizens pulling over a statue in the boat's wake to give it enough speed. As the statue starts to fall too quickly, Tulio has difficulty in preparing the boat's sail. Giving up on staying in the city, Miguel and Altivo jump onto the boat to unfurl the sails, assuring the boat clears the statue in time. The group successfully crashes against the pillars, causing a cave-in but losing all their gifts in the process. They hide near the totem just as Cortés' men and Tzekel-Kan arrive. When they find the entrance blocked, Cortés brands Tzekel-Kan a liar and takes him prisoner as they leave.

Tulio and Miguel, though disappointed they lost the gold (unaware that Altivo still wears the golden horseshoes with which he was outfitted in El Dorado), head in a different direction for a new adventure with Chel.

## Voice cast

* Kevin Kline as Tulio, one of the con artists who pretend to be gods so they can get gold. He is the strategic planner, often becoming anxious and overthinking things.
* Kenneth Branagh as Miguel, one of the con artists who pretend to be gods so they can get gold. He is more relaxed and easygoing than his con-partner Tulio.
* Rosie Perez as Chel, a beautiful native woman from El Dorado who discovers Tulio and Miguel's con and decides to play along in an effort to get out from El Dorado.
* Armand Assante as Tzekel-Kan, the fanatically vicious high priest who has a religious fixation for human sacrifices.
* Edward James Olmos as Chief Tannabok, the kind chief of El Dorado who believes that Tulio and Miguel are gods, though he at one point implies that he has figured out Miguel is not actually a god, though only after Miguel demonstrates kindness to his people.
* Jim Cummings as Hernán Cortés, the merciless and ambitious conquistador leader of the expedition to find the empires of the New World.
	+ Cummings also voices the cook on Cortés's ship, a warrior who gets stepped on by Tzekel Kan's stone jaguar, and the native who warns Chief Tannabok about Cortés.
* Frank Welker as Altivo, Cortés' horse who befriends Tulio and Miguel.
* Tobin Bell as Zaragoza, a sailor on the voyage to the New World of El Dorado and the original owner of the map, which he loses to Tulio and Miguel after a game of dice.
* Elton John as The Singing Narrator.

## Production

### Development

Shortly before the public announcement of DreamWorks SKG in October 1994, former Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg had met with screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio and gave them a copy of Hugh Thomas's book, *Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes and the Fall of Old Mexico*, desiring to make an animated film set in the Age of Discovery. By the spring of 1995, Elliott and Rossio devised a story treatment inspired by the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby *Road to ...* films with self-interested, comedic anti-heroes who would set out to find the Lost City of Gold after acquiring a map to its location. Will Finn and David Silverman were originally the film's directors with a tentative release scheduled for fall 1999. Originally, the story was conceived as a dramatic film due to Katzenberg's penchant for large-scale animated films, which conflicted with the film's lighthearted elements. This version of the story had Miguel initially conceived as a raunchy Sancho Panza-like character who died, but came back to life so much that the natives assumed he was a god, as well as steamier love sequences and scantly clothing designed for Chel. In Elliott and Rossio's treatment, the film was meant to end with Miguel and Tulio saving the Mayan people from Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés who would abandon their civilization to live in the nearby jungle amidst the tragic backdrop of the destruction of their culture.

However, while *The Prince of Egypt* was in production, Katzenberg decided that their next animated project should be a departure from its serious, adult approach, and desired for the film to be an adventure comedy. Because of this, the film was put on hold, where it was jokingly referred to as *El Dorado: The Lost City on Hold* due to several rewrites. Miguel and Tulio were rewritten as petty swindlers, and the setting of the film was changed to a more luscious paradise. Additionally, the romance was toned down, and new clothing was designed for Chel. Producer Bonnie Radford explained, "We originally thought it would be rated PG-13 and so we skewed it to that group...But then we thought we could not exclude the younger kids so we had to tone the romance down." Finn and Silverman left the project in 1998 following disputes over the film's creative direction and were replaced by Don Paul and Eric "Bibo" Bergeron. Additionally, Katzenberg himself reportedly co-directed the film albeit uncredited.

### Casting

On August 15, 1998, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, and Rosie Perez had signed onto the film. Because the characters and film drew from the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby *Road to ...* films, producer Bonne Radford remarked that "[t]he buddy relationship [between the duo] is the very heart of the story. They need each other because they're both pretty inept. They're opposites — Tulio is the schemer and Miguel is the dreamer. Their camaraderie adds to the adventure; you almost don't need to know where they're going or what they're after, because the fun is in the journey." Unusual for an animated film, Kline and Branagh recorded their lines in the same studio room together, in order for the two to achieve more realistic chemistry. This resulted in a good deal of improvised dialogue, some of which ended up in the film.

### Animation

Early into production, a team of designers, animators, producers, and Katzenberg embarked on research trips to Mexico where they studied ancient Mayan cities of Tulum, Chichen Itza, and Uxmal in hopes of making the film's architecture look authentic. By January 1997, one hundred animators were assigned onto the project. However, because the animation department was occupied with *The Prince of Egypt*, the studio devoted more animators and resources on the film than on *Road to El Dorado*.

## Music

Marylata Jacob, who started DreamWorks' music department in 1995, became the film's music supervisor before the script was completed. Consulting with Katzenberg, Jacob decided the musical approach to the film would be world music. In late 1996, Tim Rice and Elton John were asked to compose seven songs, which they immediately worked on. Their musical process began with Rice first writing the song lyrics, and giving them to John to compose the music. John then recorded a demo, which was given to the animators whom storyboarded to the demo, as the tempo and vocals would remain intact. Eventually, the filmmakers decided not to follow the traditional musical approach by having the characters sing. Co-producer Bonne Radford explained, "We were trying to break free of that pattern that had been kind of adhered to in animation and really put a song where we thought it would be great...and get us through some story points." On February 20, 1999, before the release of *Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida*, it was announced that ten songs had been composed for *El Dorado*, and that the release date had been pushed to March 2000.

## Soundtrack

*Main article: The Road to El Dorado/Soundtrack*
## Release

### Marketing

The film was first revealed in a double trailer with fellow DreamWorks animated feature *Chicken Run* on the home video of *The Prince of Egypt*. It was accompanied by a promotional campaign by Burger King.

### Home media

*Main article: The Road to El Dorado/Home media*
*The Road to El Dorado* was released on DVD and VHS on December 12, 2000. The DVD release includes an audio commentary, behind-the-scenes featurettes, music video of "Someday Out of Blue", production notes, interactive games, and trailers and television spots. In July 2014, the film's distribution rights were purchased by DreamWorks Animation from Paramount Pictures (owners of the pre-2005 DreamWorks Pictures catalog) and transferred to 20th Century Fox before reverting to Universal Studios in 2018. Because of this, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment subsequently released the film on Blu-ray on January 22, 2019.

## Reception

### Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 48% based on 104 reviews and an average rating of 5.5/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Predictable story and thin characters made the movie flat." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 51 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Reviewing for the *Chicago Tribune*, Michael Wilmington summarized that "This movie is fun to watch in ways that most recent cartoons aren't. It's also more adult, though it's the same cartoonish sensuality as the original "Road" movies, with their heavily coded prurience. It's a high-spirited movie, though it's not for all tastes. The John-Rice score isn't as rousingly on-target as *The Lion King.* The script, while clever, often seems too cute and show-biz snazzy, not emotional enough." Lisa Schwarzbaum, reviewing for *Entertainment Weekly*, remarked that "this trip down *The Road to El Dorado* proceeds under the speed limit all the way. Our Tulio and Miguel aren't big enough, nor strong enough, nor funny enough to buckle any swashes. They're as lost to us as the lost city into which they stumble." Similarly, animation historian Charles Solomon remarked on the lack of character development writing "Tulio and Miguel move nicely, but the animators don't seem to have any more idea who they are than the audience does. Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh supply their voices, but the characters say and do similar things in similar ways. Who can tell them apart?" Paul Clinton of CNN wrote, "The animation is uninspiring and brings nothing new to the table of animation magic," praising the Elton John/Tim Rice songs, but noting the weak plot.

Roger Ebert of the *Chicago Sun-Times* gave the film three stars out of four and commented that although it wasn't "as quirky as *Antz* or as grown up as *The Prince of Egypt*", it was "bright and has good energy, and the kinds of witty asides that entertain the adults in between the margins of the stuff for the kids." Joel Siegel, reviewing on the television program *Good Morning America*, called it "solid gold," claiming the film was "paved with laughs." Jay Boyar of the *Orlando Sentinel* stated "*The Road to El Dorado* is borderline entertaining, I suppose, with animation that is, at times, truly impressive. And if the six Elton John/Tim Rice songs are thoroughly forgettable, they lack sufficient distinction to actually become annoying."

### Box office

The film grossed $12.9 million on opening weekend ranking second behind *Erin Brockovich*Template:'s third weekend. The film closed on June 29, 2000, after earning $50.9 million in the United States and Canada and $25.5 million overseas for a worldwide total of $76.4 million. Based on its total gross, *The Road to El Dorado* was a box-office bomb, unable to recoup its $95 million budget.

## Video game

*Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado* was the video game tie-in, developed by Revolution Software, released on PlayStation, Game Boy Color, and Microsoft Windows.

The PlayStation and Microsoft Windows version of the game is drastically different from the Game Boy Color version. The main difference between the two games is that the PlayStation and Microsoft Windows version is a 3D adventure game, while the Game Boy Color version is a more traditional 2D side-scrolling platformer.

Versions of the game were intended to be released for the PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast but were eventually cancelled.

The PlayStation version received "unfavourable" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.

### Game Boy Color version

This version of the game is an 8-bit 2D side-scrolling platformer, where the player takes control of either Tulio or Miguel. The main objective in the first part of the game is to find nine separate map pieces that will eventually lead to the lost city of El Dorado. The player explores many settings in each different level such as a Spanish town, a ship, jungles, caves or the city of El Dorado. During the gameplay, = there are two choices for weapons, a sword, a close-range option, or bags, which can be thrown at enemies from a distance. Throughout each level, there are many bags which can be picked up, and replenish the "ammunition" count of the player. While moving through the different settings, you must fight off animals, plants, human enemies, or evading natural dangers. Inside each level there are many things to collect such as extra lives, or coins, which help boost the player's score.

## Notes

1. ↑ In July 2014, the film's distribution rights were purchased by DreamWorks Animation and transferred to Universal Pictures.