Western Animation / The Adventures of Mark Twain

"Can't you see it? Tom Sawyer -Aeronort- saves airborne friends from madman's death wish!"

Once every seventy-five years, Halley's comet pays its cosmic visit. In 1835, the comet returned and America's most famous author was born.

Mark Twain, "the most conspicuous man on the planet," believed his destiny was linked to the comet.

He wrote: "The Almighty has said, no doubt, 'There go those two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'"

In 1910, as Halley's comet glowed again in the night sky, Twain wrote: "It is the final chapter," and he never wrote again. On April 21, 1910, he died.

— Opening Scroll

Attempting to describe The Adventures of Mark Twain in any sane fashion is probably an exercise in futility. But what the heck. We'll give it a shot.

First of all, discard any historical knowledge you might have of Samuel Clemens, because in this world, he doesn't exist. But his nom de plume, Mark Twain, is real, and so are Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher. Yeah, we know. Just roll with it. In this world, Mark Twain also has a Cool Steampunk Airship, which he intends to ride into outer space to chase Halley's comet. Tom, Huck, and Becky catch word of his balloon and sneak onboard, joining Mr. Twain on a journey beyond the stratosphere to chase the comet. How do they pass time onboard the airship? By telling (and living) stories, of course. Famous Mark Twain stories. Like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. (We know. Again.) And The Diary of Adam and Eve. And The Mysterious Stranger.

This 1985 movie is known for being absolutely gorgeously rendered in Claymation by Will Vinton Studios^note Vinton himself coined the term "claymation." This was his only theatrically-released feature.. It's also known for being creepy as hell. Literally. It's sometimes considered a "children's movie," but this isn't strictly the case — it's probably too scary for some kids, but anyone who likes animation will probably enjoy the lush visuals. All in all, it's a fascinating and loving Deconstruction of the man and a number of his stories — particularly his later ones which caused many to label him a Nietzsche Wannabe.

---

This film contains examples of:

• Adam and Eve Plot: ...The Diary of Adam and Eve.
• Adaptation Distillation: The short based on The Mysterious Stranger manages to cram most of the essentials into 5 minutes of film, much to the terror of its audience.
• Adaptational Ugliness: In The Mysterious Stranger, Satan is described as a very handsome and charming young man. Here, he's a creepy Humanoid Abomination composed of a red suit of armor with no head fused to the earth of his miniature island. He speaks in a male and female voice that overlap each other through a masquerade mask held on a stick.
• Affably Evil: Of sorts. Satan kills the little clay village that he tasks the kids with making, and generally talks about how humans mean nothing in his eyes. At the same time, not only is he very cordial to the children, going so far as to offer their favorite fruit, but at no point does he try harming them, even telling them to step aside as he smites the clay village because they might get hurt.
• Ambiguous Innocence: Invoked by Satan when he claims "I can do no wrong, for I do not know what it is." as he annihilates the clay town he created not moments ago.
• Animated Armor: Satan is depicted as an empty suit of red plate armor fused to the ground of his island home, holding an animate masquerade-style mask on a stick where the suit's head should be.
• Apple of Discord: During the Mysterious Stranger segment, Becky makes a cow for the tiny people. Two villagers begin fighting over it the minute it enters the scene.
• Armor-Piercing Question: "What happened to Livy, Mr Twain?"
• Baby Planet: Satan dwells on one situated in an empty black void (made of clay, of course).
• Babies Ever After: Adam and Eve eventually sire a huge number of children, though only Cain and Abel are mentioned by name.
• Bittersweet Ending: The ending to "The Diary of Adam and Eve". The titular couple have lost Paradise, but with the end of their innocence comes love, along with the ability to grow and learn. Both of them consider themselves better off at the end of their lives.
  • The movie itself has Twain reaching the comet and "dying" as he hoped, but the two halves of his personality - the light and the dark - are able to reconcile and merge together before doing so, and Twain becomes one with Halley's Comet as well. Taken together with Adam and Eve's ending, it's implied he's with his lost wife Livy, together in Eden with her.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Satan is either this, or Above Good and Evil, depending on how you interpret his comment of how he "can do no wrong, for I do not know what it is."
• Bookends: Twain merges with his dark side and fuses with Halley's Comet, and with the comet, he returns to Eden, where the story once started
  Becky: Mr. Twain, where is the comet going now?
  Twain: To Eden, Angelfish. Back to Eden.
• Cain and Abel: The brothers make a brief appearance near the end of the Adam and Eve story. True to form, Abel is a Boy Scout while Cain is a leather-dressed biker.
• Call-Back: At the very end of the movie, Tom gives Becky the heart shaped leaf from Eden hidden inside Adam's diary, which Adam had saved and given to Eve at the end of their lives as a token of his love. Huck also found Adam's Groucho Marx Glasses.
• Cool Airship: The one Twain uses to catch Halley's Comet runs on Rule of Cool; he and the kids can travel throughout it via the "Indexivator", venturing between the main and hurricaine decks, Twain's lounge, and interactive versions of Twain's stories.
• Cool Gate: Twain's airship is in possession of such a gate dubbed the "Indexivator", which leads into all of his stories and the different parts of the ship. It can simply appear out of nowhere on the ship deck as well.
• Cosmic Horror Story: With the assistance of the kids, Satan creates a miniature civilization out of clay figures and bestows life on them, only so he can snatch it away again. He points out that he doesn't do this out of malice, as he has no concept of "right" or "wrong". Though he might be lying, being Satan and all.
  Satan: I can do no wrong, for I do not know what it is.
• Creator Cameo: Satan's voice is a combination of Becky's voice actress, Michele Mariana, and Will Vinton himself speaking simultaneously.
• Deadpan Snarker: True to real life, Twain is a fountain of endless quips, both on Tom and Huck's antics and on human nature itself.
  • Most of these quips are taken from real life, as the film's screenplay was written by Vinton's wife, a Mark Twain scholar.
• Death Seeker: Mark Twain, hence why he's chasing after the comet.
  Mark Twain: I am old, and tired. I wish to be with my Livy...
• Died Happily Ever After: Twain merges with his dark side and the two fade into a bright light, becoming part of Halley's Comet. If that isn't a cool way to go out, nothing is.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Satan's hatred towards humanity doesn't prevent him from advising the kids to stand clear so they aren't struck by his lightning.
• Evil Twin: "Dark Twain" is constantly stalking around the airship, until "Light Twain" and the kids finally meet up with the Comet. However, Dark Twain isn't so much evil as he is melancholy and weary of life, and as Light Twain notes, he's not whole without him.
• The Fool: Adam is much more dense than Eve, even after he ate the forbidden fruit himself.
  Adam: (snoring)
  God: Adam.
  Adam: (snoring)
  God: Adam.
  Adam: (snoring)
  God: Adam! (pokes him)
  Adam: What?
  God: It's... for you.
  Adam: (grabs a banana and holds it to his ear) Hello?
  God: Oh, no...
• Foregone Conclusion: It's a fairly famous bit of trivia that Mark Twain "came in with Halley's Comet, and went out with it", so it's no surprise what happens to him at the end of the movie.
• Fluffy Cloud Heaven: Twain's Deconstruction of it is demonstrated during "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven", where the humble, early 20th century captain is accidentally sent to the Heaven of a species of three-headed, slug-like aliens, portrayed as a loud and hedonistic nightclub.
  Captain Stormfield: I begin to see that a man's got to be in his own Heaven to be happy.
  • When the Captain ends up at mankind's heaven, he finds that things aren't necessarily so great there, either.
• Fully-Clothed Nudity: Adam and Eve are depicted as wearing colored underwear, given the film's PG rating. After Adam eats the apple, he suddenly realizes his nudity and covers himself up.
• Girlish Pigtails: Becky.
• Going Cosmic: Following The Mysterious Stranger, the rest of the film takes on a more philosophical tone..
• The Hand Is God: In the Adam and Eve segment, God is depicted as a live-action hand in an otherwise entirely claymation world.
• Humanoid Abomination: Satan, of the highest degree. As mentioned above, this version of him is an empty suit of red armor fused to the ground itself, whose face is a masquerade mask held in one hand. His voice is a mixture of at least two different voices, one masculine, the other feminine. When asked what he is, he says he's an angel.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Satan (and by extension, Mark Twain's dark side) is under this impression.
• I Should Write a Book About This: At the end of the film, Huck decides to write a book on their adventure.
• It Runs on Nonsensoleum: Twain's airship, as noted above.
• Leitmotif: Halley's Comet has one. It even gets an 80's-tastic synth-heavy Epic Reprise during the credits.
• Manchild: Adam. It's not surprising, considering he was "born" into adulthood, and had no experience or understanding of the world until Eve showed up.
• Market-Based Title: Called Comet Quest in the UK, perhaps because Mark Twain doesn't hold quite the same, seminal place in the UK mindset as he does in the American one, being a distinctly American author.
• Misanthrope Supreme: Satan has a demonstrably low opinion of mankind, viewing our existence as utterly pointless in the grand scheme of things.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Quite obviously, Satan.
  Huck: It sure is a really sorry name for an angel.
  Satan: (takes the apperance of Twain's face, beckoning the children to his miniature world) Please come in.
  Tom: C'mon, you guys!
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Nice job sabotaging the airship, Tom.
• Nightmare Face:
  • Injun Joe, as he nearly stabs Huck in the back.
  • Satan gets one too, as he grows annoyed with the clay people fighting over the cow.
• No Antagonist: Ultimately, the film has no villain. Satan is terrifying, but he makes no move against the children. Injun Joe makes a cameo, but nothing comes of it, and while it's implied that Mark Twain's dark side summoned the storm that damaged the airship, he helps reactivate the power and goes along with regular Twain without much fuss.
• Non-Human Sidekick: Huck's frog, Homer.
• Non-Serial Movie: When you get down to it, this movie is essentially a Framing Device strung together by Big Lipped Alligator Moments of varying length. The Mysterious Stranger is probably the worst offender, but it's still amusing, though.
• Not So Above It All: Eve is depicted as much smarter than Adam, even before she ate from the Tree of Knowledge, but she does manage to confuse her reflection in a stream for another person, and falls in trying to greet her new friend. After getting "strangled" by the water, Eve finds a number of fish in the stream, thinking that they're uncomfortable and taking them to her hut. As Adam notes, the fish aren't much happier on dry land, "only quieter."
• Oh, Crap!: Tom, Huck, and Becky have this reaction when they realize they're face-to-face with Satan.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: Played by Twain's dark side.
• Only Sane Man: Poor Becky Thatcher, who spends the whole movie trying to talk Tom and Huck out of their crazy schemes.
• Rage Against the Heavens: The miniature clay king does this while Satan is causing his kingdom to crumble... and promptly gets a lightning bolt to the face.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Some details of Mark Twain's historical life do make it in to the film, and there's one scene in which he quietly mourns for his departed wife.
  Becky Thatcher: That's really why you want to meet up with the comet, isn't it, Mr. Twain?
  • A portrait of Twain and his wife Livy is shown just after the poignant ending of the "The Diary of Adam and Eve", adding extra poignancy by revealing that Twain has been mentally imaging himself and his wife as the titular couple. Like Eve, Olivia died first, leaving Twain alone for the final years of his life.
  Twain: Wherever she was, there was Eden.
  • Samuel Clemens was born in 1835, and died in 1910, both years where Halley's Comet visited the Earth. This film was released in 1985, the next year the comet came to Earth, when Clemens would have been 150 years old. In the film's story, Twain said that if he missed Halley's Comet, he'd have to wait until he was 150 (in 1985) to catch it again.
• Satan: He's The Mysterious Stranger.
• Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: Satan lives on a small chunk of earth in a black void, which he has total control over.
• Something-Nauts: Tom, Huck, and Becky stow away on Twain's airship. Tom calls themselves "aeronorts", with Becky correcting him as "aeronauts".
• Split-Personality Merge: "Light" Twain and "Dark" Twain come together at the end of the film, just before Twain merges with Halley's Comet.
• Steampunk: Twain's airship.
• Sugar Bowl: The Garden of Eden is depicted this way in the "Diary of Adam and Eve" segments.
• Tag Along Kid: All three of the kids, who sneak aboard the airship. Tom and Huck do so for the adventure, while Becky does so in trying to stop them.
• Verbal Tic: Tom keeps saying "aeronort" instead of "aeronaut".
• Wham Line:
  Dark! Twain: Do you remember your old friend: Injun Joe?
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • During The Mysterious Stranger sequence, Huck's not afraid to call Satan out for murdering the clay people he and the other kids made for him.
  • Right after this, Becky also calls out Dark Twain for opening the gate to Injun Joe's lair, which almost got Huck killed.
• Watch Out for That Tree!: Adam attempts to imitate a monkey swinging on a vine through the treetops, but he ends up crashing into a tree trunk.
• The Wonka: Mark Twain, especially with his airship.
• Women Are Wiser: Adam didn't really seem to grasp the facts of life until around middle-age or so. In fact, when Cain and Abel were children, he operated under the assumption that they were some odd breed of fish or bear. In Eve's words; "He is self-educated and really knows a multitude of things, but none of them are true".
  • Unusually for this story, Adam doesn't actually eat the apple until after he and Eve are banished from the Garden. If Eve hadn't offered the fruit to him, he very likely would have starved to death in the wasteland.

---