Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World

In 1998, Disney furthered Pocahontas’ story with a direct-to-video sequel. Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World features most of the original voice cast, with Billy Zane, Brad Garrett, Jean Stapleton and Finola Hughes providing new voices and Donal Gibson replacing his older brother as the voice of John Smith. It was met with largely negative reviews.

The film deals with Pocahontas’ journey to England with John Rolfe to negotiate peace between the Native Americans and the English. However, Ratcliffe is still up to his scheming ways and has King James in his pocket.

A great way to describe this film is mediocre. It’s got average story, average art, average characters, average voice acting, and average music. Everything about it just completely ok.

Jamestown is now a proper settlement, but it seems the lessons of the first film have been completely forgotten by both sides. It makes sense on the part of the settlers, mainly because there’s a bunch of new people who most likely weren’t told of what happened. But for the Native
Americans, Powhatan seems to have a horrible memory.

The irony of the “new world” being flipped to mean London for Pocahontas is interesting, the fish-out-of-water story is could have been much better. Granted, seeing her explore London through song, her not understanding Victorian dress and committing numerous faux-pas at a party is interesting. The culture shock could have been much better. However, her character not being derailed is good, especially when it came to the bear baiting.

Also, it was painfully obvious that John Smith was never really dead, especially since Ratcliffe tried to kill him at the beginning of the movie. But when he shows back up, while he’s under a cloak, his face is still a visible, just darker. Also, how did news of his “death” beat Rolfe’s voyage?

Despite all that, this wasn’t terrible. In fact, it looks to be better than most of Disney’s direct to video sequels.

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