Ah, the sequel.

There are people who liked this movie, and I respect that. Opinions differ, that's simply the way life is. You have the right to enjoy whatever movies you like, just as I have the right to enjoy whatever I like.

Pocahontas 2: Journey to a New World is the straight-to-video sequel to Disney's 1996 Pocahontas movie.

I loved the original with a passion. (Yes, I know, I'm a dork, tell me something I don't know.) Pocahontas affected me in a way I tried to explain here, so it was destined that the sequel would affect me just as strongly. Whether positively or negatively, we'll get into that in a moment.

I watched the sequel already knowing what the ending would be. It didn't help.

I don't hate this movie. Not as much as I used to, anyway. I'm just deeply disappointed with it and various things they decided to do with it. I'll try and explain. Sit back and get some popcorn, because this is sure gonna take a while.
 

More than once while watching this movie I found myself thinking, "Pocahontas/John Smith/Grandmother Willow wouldn't do that!"

Some examples? Pocahontas, laughing like a maniac after throwing a snowball at Nakoma. Pocahontas, getting irritated when she can't listen to the spirits. Grandmother Willow, saying some pretty dodgy dialogue that made me cringe repeatedly. Chief Powhatan, becoming the comic relief.

Then there's John Smith. Ohhhhhh where to begin. This is not the adventurous captain I fell in love with in the original Pocahontas. The only explanation I can think of is that when he fell off the building in the beginning of the movie, he hit his head and totally lost all remnants of his personality.

In Pocahontas, John Smith had his whole world turned around. He learnt about love, life and understanding. He listened intently to Pocahontas as she explained her world to him. He gave up his shallow English beliefs for her. His last words to her were, "But I can't leave you." And her last words to him were, "You never will. No matter what happens, I'll always be with you, forever."

John Smith's life changed when he was in Virginia. His opened his eyes to see the world for what it really was. He became a better man. You do NOT walk away from an experience like that and come back a chirpy shallow chap who looks like he'd enjoy drinking a pint and shooting some game. I dare you to watch Journey to a New World and try to picture THAT John Smith discussing earth spirits with a Native American princess. It doesn't work.
 

By far the best character of Journey to a New World is John Rolfe. He's a bright shining beacon of wonderfulness in this movie.

Anyway, they decided to have Pocahontas end up with John Rolfe because that's what happened historically. Okay, I can buy that. A person's heart is big enough to love more than one person, obviously.

What irritates me is not what they did, but how they did it.

In order to make the new couple "official", they have to discredit the old couple. You see, it's not enough to create a wonderful new bond between Pocahontas and John Rolfe (which they did quite nicely). They also have to destroy everything that made the old bond between Pocahontas and John Smith good. They killed John Smith's character. They totally forgot all the promises, spoken and unspoken, that Pocahontas and John Smith made to each other.

The competition between John Smith and John Rolfe had the potential to have been this wonderful thing. Smith and Pocahontas had an intense first meeting that bloomed immediately into world-changing passion. Rolfe and Pocahontas didn't like each other at first but built an awkward friendship that eventually turned into love. So right there you have two very different types of love, contrasted so sharply against one another. Can you imagine Pocahontas having to choose for real?

But instead of there being any real competition, the filmmakers chose to pretend as though what Pocahontas and John Smith had just never existed. As though Pocahontas and John Smith hadn't once been willing to DIE for each other.

From what I see, it means that they're saying that the love story of the original Pocahontas never meant anything. The fact remains that John Smith sacrificed himself and Pocahontas stopped the war because they found a world-changing love despite the wide gap that existed between their two cultures. If Journey to a New World's saying that they didn't really love each other in the first place, then their sacrifice doesn't mean anything anymore.

The thing is, this conflict could have been done convincingly, and without bringing down either Smith or Rolfe. Terrence Mallick's The New World, for all the problems I've had with it, did that one thing right.
 

Do you know why they gave the original Pocahontas a sad ending? Because history just doesn't have happy endings. Pocahontas, the historical Pocahontas, did play a pivotal role as ambassador of her people, but she did suffer a lot, as did her people. Peace was their goal, but they never got it, not the way they wanted.

So for Disney's adaptation of Pocahontas' story, though they did romanticize a number of facts of what happened, they knew that to have a happy ending with the Natives and the English holding hands and skipping off into the sunset together would have been outright disrespectful.

That in mind, take look at Journey to a New World.

The best scene that illustrates Pocahontas' hardships and the barrier between the two peoples was the ballroom scene, which was absolutely brilliant. But after that... You just don't feel it anymore. You don't feel what's truly at stake, which is a world of people whose land has been breached by the arrogant English. Sure, they stormed the parliament house, waved John Smith in their face and stopped an armada. Does it really mean anything, like the way it meant when Pocahontas threw herself over John Smith to save his life? Journey to a New World has forsaken the bigger picture for something much more shallow.
 

In Journey to a New World, Pocahontas ends up with John Rolfe, because that's what happened historically. It's a logical reason, but it just rubs me the wrong way.

Disney’s Pocahontas took the names and casual events of history and created a whole new world. The characters of Pocahontas and John Smith are merely pale imitations of their historical counterparts, but these pale imitations came to vibrant life on the silver screen. They discovered love in a way that makes us (okay, maybe just me) believe that it can truly happen. It’s an illusion, but a beautiful one nonetheless. The sequel may have been more “true” to history, but it betrayed the truth of the silver-screen magic of the original Disney’s Pocahontas.

How do you go from Pocahontas telling John Smith, “No matter what happens, I'll always be with you, forever” to her telling him, “We walked the same path once” then parting ways without a second glance?

While they're at it, they might as well have made The Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea feature Ariel's suicide, because that's more true to the original story, isn't it?

In short, the Pocahontas sequel was trying to fix something they thought was wrong with the original movie, and they used the excuse that they were being true to history. You want true to history? Then tell me why the final scene has Pocahontas sailing off into the sunset back to Virginia with her man. It's a happy ending where there should have been none.
 

So there it is. Journey to a New World has some wonderful moments, yes, but on the whole it's something that I can't treasure, simply because of the lack of respect it gave to the original. I don't hate it. I'm just sad that they didn't make it as awesome as it could have been.