Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World
Short description
Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World continues the story of the Powhatan woman introduced in Disney's 1995 animated feature. Word reaches America that John Smith has died, and Pocahontas travels to England with the Englishman John Rolfe, hoping to keep peace between her people and the settlers. London's customs and court life are unfamiliar to her, and a formal occasion becomes her chance to make her case to the King. Governor Ratcliffe, still scheming, works to undermine her and to return to Jamestown. The film is a direct-to-video sequel released in 1998, running 72 minutes, made by Disney Television Animation.
Bradley Raymond directed, sharing the credit with Tom Ellery; the screenplay is by Flip Kobler, Cindy Marcus and Allen Estrin. Irene Bedard returns as the speaking voice of Pocahontas, with Judy Kuhn providing the singing voice, and the cast includes Billy Zane as John Rolfe, Jim Cummings as King James, David Ogden Stiers as Ratcliffe and Linda Hunt as Grandmother Willow, among 20 credited performers. The film sits first in Raymond's directing credits, ahead of Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas and later sequels such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame II and The Lion King 1½.
Reception has been modest: on IMDb it holds 4.8/10 from around 19,000 votes, and on TMDB 5.6/10 from roughly 1,500 votes. A critics' rating of 5.2/10 from 8 reviews places it near the audience scores, indicating a lukewarm response across groups.
What's left behind the scenes
- John Rolfe was actually a tobacco plantation owner, not a diplomat.
- Mrs. Jenkins is a great tea lover, but at the time of the film's action (somewhere between 1609 and 1616) tea had not yet become popular in England. This would happen later, during the reign of Charles II, thanks to his wife Catherine of Braganza.
- In the scene “What a Day in London,” Pocahontas gives Shakespeare a hint to write the tragedy of Hamlet (“To be or not to be?”). From this, we can conclude that the events of the cartoon take place in 1600 (the year Hamlet was written). At that time, England was ruled not by a king, but by Queen Elizabeth I.
- The film is based on the biography of the Native American princess Pocahontas.
- Pocahontas did meet her former lover, John Smith, in London, but she was very angry with him for breaking off the almost family-like relationship that had developed between them in the New World.
- During the performance of Pocahontas’s song “What a Wonderful World!”, William Shakespeare appears as one of the townspeople, and the line “To be or not to be…” comes to his mind. However, the playwright actually died two months before the Indian princess’s visit, and “Hamlet” was not written until 1600–1601.
- John Ratcliffe, the film's main antagonist, actually died seven years before Pocahontas's visit to England with her family.
- Princess Pocahontas did indeed visit England in 1616, causing a real sensation among the local nobility. However, by that time she had already been married to John Rolfe for a year, and they were accompanied by their one-year-old son Thomas, the shaman Tomocomo, and a retinue of Native American women. Furthermore, Pocahontas had converted to Christianity before the wedding, and her new name was Rebecca. According to the plot of the cartoon, she stayed in London for a week or two, but in reality she lived there for almost a year. She set off on her return journey, but was forced to turn back because she and her son contracted smallpox. She soon died from it on English soil at the age of 22, while two-year-old Thomas survived and lived to be 65. Correspondence makes it clear that Rolfe truly loved his wife, but Pocahontas’s true feelings for him are unknown: it is possible that her marriage was dictated solely by economic and political reasons.
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