FernGully: The Last Rainforest
FernGully: The Last Rainforest is a 1992 animated musical fantasy film directed by Bill Kroyer in his feature directorial debut. Scripted by Jim Cox and adapted from the "FernGully" stories by Diana Young, the film is an Australian and American venture produced by Kroyer Films, Inc., Youngheart Productions, and FAI Films, and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It stars the voices of Samantha Mathis, Christian Slater, Jonathan Ward, Robin Williams, Tim Curry, and Grace Zabriskie.
The film is set in an Australian rainforest inhabited by fairies, including Crysta, who accidentally shrinks a young logger named Zak to the size of a fairy. Together, they rally the fairies and the animals of the rainforest to protect their home from the loggers and Hexxus, a malevolent pollution entity. Wayne Young, the film's producer, said that the film was "blatantly environmental", although he made an effort to avoid "preaching".
FernGully was released in North America on April 10, 1992, to mainly positive reviews, and was generally considered a moderate financial success at both the box office and in home video sales. In 1998, it was followed by a direct-to-video sequel, FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue, although none of the original voice cast reprised their roles.
Plot
Crysta is a curious young fairy who lives in FernGully, a secluded rainforest east of Mount Warning. The fairies of FernGully once lived in harmony with humans, who are believed to be extinct after having been driven away by the evil spirit of destruction, Hexxus. Crysta is the apprentice of Magi Lune, the fairy tribe's leader, who ended Hexxus' reign by sealing him inside a tree. One day, Crysta explores a new part of the forest and meets Batty Koda, a bat who was experimented on by humans, giving him a manic and deluded personality, and an electric device sticking out of his head. Crysta accompanies Batty to investigate the humans' potential return. She meets Zak, a young teenage logger whom she inadvertently shrinks when she tries saving him from being crushed by a falling tree, although she does not know how to restore him to normal size. After she rescues him from being eaten by Lou, a hungry goanna, Zak gains Crysta's trust and agrees to go with her to FernGully so Magi can unshrink him. Along the way, they bond by talking about their lives, but Zak hides the true reason for the humans' return.Meanwhile, the tree containing Hexxus, which Zak accidentally marked while using his spray can against a fly, is cut down and processed by his supervisors, Tony and Ralph, using a mobile sawmill. Freed from his imprisonment, Hexxus quickly regains his powers by consuming the machine's polluting elements, and tricks Tony and Ralph into driving to FernGully. In FernGully, Crysta and Zak fall in love, to the envy of her friend Pips, but they soon discover the forest's destruction by Hexxus and the machine, exposing Zak's lie about the humans' intentions. Feeling betrayed, Crysta runs off as Zak comes clean. Magi sacrifices herself to give the fairies a chance to fight back, telling Crysta to remember what she has learned.
The next morning, Hexxus and the machine arrive in FernGully. Knowing the fairies' fight is hopeless, Zak convinces Batty to help him stop the machine before it destroys them. Hexxus seemingly kills Batty and scares Tony and Ralph away, but Zak, with Pips' help, manages to access the machine's cab and disable it, cutting Hexxus off from the emissions he drew upon. With Hexxus still manifesting via the oil in the machine, Crysta takes a seed and allows him to devour her, causing a tree to start growing from inside of him. Pips and the other fairies use the powers Magi bestowed them with to re-imprison Hexxus, along with the machine, within the new tree at FernGully's border. With FernGully saved, Crysta reunites with Zak and succeeds Magi as head of the fairy clan. She gives Zak a seed, asking him to remember his adventure and its lessons, before solemnly restoring him to his human size. Zak finds and revives Batty, reunites with Tony and Ralph, and plants the seed as Crysta looks on. As the humans leave the forest, Crysta helps the seed sprout new growth for FernGully before playfully chasing Pips, with Batty following.
Voice cast
- Samantha Mathis as Crysta
- Christian Slater as Pips
- Jonathan Ward as Zak
- Robin Williams as Batty Koda
- Tim Curry as Hexxus
- Grace Zabriskie as Narrator/Magi Lune
- Douglas Seale as Crysta's Father
- Geoffrey Blake as Ralph
- Robert Pastorelli as Tony
- Cheech Marin as Stump
- Tommy Chong as Root
- Tone Lōc as Lou
- Townsend Coleman as Knotty
- Brian Cummings as Ock
Themes
In the book, Eco-Impacts and the Greening of Postmodernity, Tom Jagtenberg and David McKie comment that radical views of ecology flourished in the film, perhaps because it was "aimed at a younger generation... and belong to relatively discredited genres". As Zak is shrunk to fairy size and integrated into the fairy world, more similarities rather than differences are implied with the nonhuman characters. Crysta is said to defeat the evil Hexxus "in the manner of classic western genre heroes", although with the key difference that her weapon is a seed rather than a revolver, allowing the produce of nature to share the heroic role with her.
Production
Producer Wayne Young said that his passion for the environment was his motivation for making the film, saying that the film was "blatantly environmental, although we have gone to a lot of trouble to avoid preaching. We also want it to be viewed as entertainment." The inspiration for FernGully came from stories written by his former wife, Diana Young. Diana first wrote the story of FernGully fifteen years before the film's release. Wayne said that the couple planned a film adaptation for five years, then spent "seven years of dreaming and hustling, followed by another three years of production". Wayne stated that their dream was not possible until the success of Walt Disney Feature Animation's 1989 film, The Little Mermaid, which helped bring popularity back to animation. Hand-drawn scenes in the film were complemented by computer animation, which was used to create elements, such as flocks of birds that would have taken much longer to traditionally animate. Kroyer stated that 40,000 frames of computer-generated graphics were used in the film, and that the use of such animation halved the production time. Most of the film's $24 million budget was spent on the animation and the soundtrack.The film marked Robin Williams's first animation role, with the character Batty Koda being created specifically for him. Williams provided fourteen hours of improvised lines for the part, which had been originally conceived as an eight-minute role. Director Bill Kroyer was so impressed with the voice work that he ended up tripling the screen time given to the character. Williams would provide the voice of the Genie in Disney's Aladdin later in the year, receiving critical acclaim. Williams had already agreed to voice Batty Koda before being approached to do Aladdin. Jeffrey Katzenberg, then-chairman of Walt Disney Studios, tried to force Williams to withdraw from FernGully, on the grounds that he did not want him voicing two animated characters around the same time, but Williams refused. According to Wayne Young, Disney repeatedly interfered with the production of FernGully, twice taking over spaces that the producers had rented, by offering to pay more. When the producers eventually set up a studio in a former brewery in the San Fernando Valley, Disney attempted to purchase it. Katzenberg declined to comment on the issue when approached by Vanity Fair in 2017. The voice cast of FernGully agreed with the film's message, and worked for scale wages. The film marked the first time that both members of Cheech & Chong had worked together in six years, with the two voicing beetle brothers, Stump and Root. Cheech Marin said that "it was just like old times, but we only worked for two or three hours, had a pizza and split".