‘Gargoyles’ could be released today and maintain its relevance

I was a huge fan of the Disney Afternoon. Sadly, my hour-long bus ride home after school limited my viewing to the last cartoon of the block most days, but for two glorious seasons from 1994-1996, that cartoon was “Gargoyles.”

An action-packed 22 minutes, “Gargoyles” tells the tale of mighty warriors who protect a Scottish castle by night but turn to stone by day. After a betrayal from one of their most-trusted allies, all but six are destroyed by invading Vikings.

The six who remain are cursed by the clan mage to remain stone “until the castle rises above the clouds” after he believes the princess has been killed. Once she’s found alive, the mage is unable to reverse the spell as that page has been removed from his spell book. The leader of the gargoyles, named Goliath by the humans (voiced perfectly by Keith David, or as Disney fans would recognize him, the voice of the Shadow Man in “Princess and the Frog”), is the only one left and begs the mage to cast the spell on him as well.

A thousand years later, a construction crew is dismantling the castle and loading the eternal stone gargoyles onto helicopters. Then we see the Manhattan skyline and a helicopter carrying Goliath up through the clouds to the top of a massive skyscraper topped with — you guessed it — the reconstructed castle. Placed on the top parapet, a goateed and ponytailed man admires his trophy with an untrustworthy grin as the sun dips below the horizon.

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