Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas - 2003

This is one of my childhood memory, despite the low rating the cartoon got. It was a combination of hand drawn and CGI animated movie. The very last hand drawn movie DreamWorks produced. It was not well received, made DreamWorks suffered 125 million dollars loss, and nearly bankrupted the company. From this moment on, DreamWorks would only make CGI cartoons, and Sinbad became the infamous turning point in cartoon history.

Nonetheless, as a kid and later a teenager, I find the movie fun to watch and its characters, though not very well voiced, noble and heroic. The protagonist, Sinbad, is a pirate who's bound to make his money by attacking and stealing from merchant/transport ships. Somewhat overly macho, with flashy, over the top fighting moves that suit him well, Sinbad sounds like a who-give-a-damn, I-do-what-I-want person in the start.

Like most children cartoons, later development shows that he was not always that way. You would get your typical jerk boy with a heart of gold story plot. Eventually, he wins the bet against a Goddess, wins the deal against his death, and also wins the heart of his long time crush.

Magical, but rather quite bland, to be honest. Don't get me wrong, as a kid, I love seeing Sinbad win. However, as an adult, I love the intricacy of individual character. Marina is Sinbad's young love. During one of the more serene scenes, he would reveal that he had a massive crush the moment he set eyes on her. She was destined to marry his best friend Proteus and that made Sinbad ran away. I like the little snippets from their past which would reveal the difference in social caste between Sinbad and Proteus.

"I was never jealous of him though until one morning..."

Proteus, despite being a prince, has always considered Sinbad a friend after the fated fight that connected them together. Sinbad also admits that he has never let social status come between him and Proteus. At least not until he sees Marina. That moment strikes him like this movie strikes DreamWorks, setting Sinbad down a path that he could never return. (Upvote for bad analogy?)

To me, that moment of seeing Marina and knowing she will always be out of his reach make Sinbad understands his place in the big picture. No matter how talented or hard working he is, he will never be able to match against Proteus with his upbringing. "I jumped on the first outbound ship and never looked back".

The frustration, anger, disappointment with society and then himself must have been enormous. It would take an extremely well adjusted person not to be envious, I'm sure as hell that I'll leave too if it was me. Maybe Sinbad should have been happy for Proteus but it's always hard watching your crush with someone else. You'd doubt your own worth, then you'd frantically think what could you do to change it, then finally you let it be and decide to work on yourself. Sinbad probably takes adventures to fill that void in his heart, hoping to push away the negative emotions until it becomes a memory.

Just that tiny fragment of history is enough to weave an image of a man. Quite cliche, yet also quite common. A man of action rarely expresses himself but once he does, it is usually sincere and touching. This type of character would always have a place in story telling because it relates to us. Often time we would find plenty of words for frivolous small talk but when it truly matters, honest thoughts are much harder to convey.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of this except for the work that I put in writing this post. Everything else belongs to DreamWorks and their respective owners.

Also, I might or might not have spin this out of context, but I believe it is congruent with the story line.