Helping him on his journey is a dragon named Elliott (voiced by Charlie Callas). The central premise of Pete’s Dragon involves the titular character escaping from the Gogans, a group of cruel, extremely dirty farm folk who are led by matriarch Lena and who have purchased Pete for use on their farm – there’s even a song about it (“Bill of Sale”). Yet, it’s the other value that I found particularly shocking upon rewatching the film for this feature. Pete (Sean Marshall), the lively redheaded boy who is taken in by lighthouse keepers Nora (Helen Reddy) and Lampie (Mickey Rooney) gets his fair share of moments to remind the adults around him that what he thinks does matter – though other adults, such as the strict and draconian schoolteacher, Miss Taylor (Jane Kean), find little of value in the words of children. Something like “hey, we should listen to kids because what they have to say matters,” for example. Value would normally have an obvious meaning here. It’s a film about a little boy and his magical dragon, about a small New England seaside town, about larger-than-life hillbilly villains, and about familiar Disney things like the power of family (even found family) and even the “value” of children. That describes much of my early experiences with Pete’s Dragon (1977), which saw Disney attempting to recreate the live-action-and-cartoon musical magic some thirteen years after Mary Poppins. It’s all about the anthropomorphic Robin Hood figures, talking parrots and genies, flying beds and walking suits of armor, an astronomically large collection of Dalmatians, or a magical cartoon dragon who roasts apples for his child companion. When you’re a kid, you don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about the historical basis for the narratives in the fantasy films you grew to love.
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