![]() ![]() Bittersweet Ending: John Henry wins the challenge but the physical toll on it means that he dies shortly thereafter.While this is obviously a tall tale, it WOULD take a ton of food to fuel someone of John's size and strength, even if it's never shown on screen. Big Eater: One of the songs about John's childhood mentions that it "took a lot of cookin' to keep John fed", and his massive breakfast alone included 10 dozen (120!) eggs and 8 loaves of bread.The battle with the steam drill in the tunnel was entirely 3-D. Art Shift: The main action is done in a rough, sketchy style reminiscent of a woodcut print, but the segments illustrating the backstory and the tall tales told about John are drawn as animated quilt patches.The short cuts out most of these elements, largely for reasons of making the animation work-instead, John Henry is shown simply using his hammer to smash through the stone. The process of digging through stone in those days would have been done using charges of explosive black powder-a steel-driving man's job was to make a hole for the black powder to go into, with the aid of another man using a drill. Artistic License – History: This version heavily simplifies the actual process of steel-driving.This version adds on the idea of him being a freed slave whose motivation is to help both his wife and his fellow workers. In fact, some interpretations of the legend claim it started as a cautionary tale-that is to say, it was advising rail workers to not try to do what he did, for fear that it would kill them. Adaptational Heroism: In the most common telling of the John Henry legend, he seems to want to face the steam hammer out of a sense of destiny or a desire to prove himself.And as noted under Artistic License – History, this feat is all the more impressive when you recall that he did it with just a hammer, as opposed to the explosive charges that would have been used in the era. This version ups it to him making it all the way through the mountain in a single night, with the steam hammer only giving out shortly behind him. Adaptational Badass: In the original story, John Henry makes it fourteen feet into the mountain, beating the steam hammer's nine feet. ![]() 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The steam hammer is animated in 3-D, to emphasize the Man Versus Machine theme of the story.And so, the ultimate contest of Man Versus Machine is about to begin. With the workers close to open revolt over this treachery, John Henry instead lays down a challenge: if he can outperform the steam hammer, the workers will be given the land they were promised. However, the greedy railroad tycoons have no intention of paying their workers if they can get away with it, and bring automatization to the construction in the form of a steam hammer. The mighty John Henry joins one of the railroad crews, and his near-superhuman strength and stamina inspires the other workers and makes him a legend in his own time. At the same time, the transcontinental railroad is slowly being built across the U.S, but progress is slow, and the workers run the risk of losing their promised wages and land if they can't meet the railroad companies' hard deadlines. Shortly after the American Civil War and the resulting Emancipation of the Black slaves, John Henry and his wife Polly set out to find work and a place of their own. Part of the 2002 Disney anthology Disney's American Legends, hosted by James Earl Jones, though unlike the other shorts, Paul Bunyan, The Brave Engineer and Johnny Appleseed (originally part of Melody Time), this short was a contemporary animation created in 2000, while the others were created in the 1940's and 1950's. ![]()
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