User:Khanassassin/sandbox/Sales

The Road to El Dorado is a 2000 animated musical adventure comedy film produced by DreamWorks. The soundtrack features songs by Elton John and Tim Rice, the music team from Disney's The Lion King.

The movie begins in 16th century (1519) Seville (in the south of Spain) and tells about two men named Tulio and Miguel. During a dice game using loaded dice, they win a map that purportedly shows the location of El Dorado, the legendary city of gold in the New World. However, their cheating is soon discovered and as a result, they end up as stowaways on Hernán Cortés' fleet to conquer Mexico. They are discovered, but manage to escape in a boat with Cortés' prize war horse and eventually discover the hidden city of El Dorado where they are mistaken for gods. It is inspired by Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King.

Plot
In Spain 1519, two con artists, Tulio (Kevin Kline) and Miguel (Kenneth Branagh) win a map to the legendary City of Gold, El Dorado, in a rigged gambling match (though ironically they end up winning the map fairly). After being accused of cheating with loaded dice, the two evade capture while being chased by a bull and hide in barrels, which are shortly loaded onto one of the ships to be led by Hernán Cortés (Jim Cummings) to the New World. During the trip, they are caught as stowaways, but manage to break free and take a rowboat with the help of Cortés' horse, Altivo (Frank Welker). They land at an unknown shore at the edge of South America, and Miguel begins to recognize landmarks stated on the map. The map leads them to a totem marker outside of a waterfall where a young woman approaches them, chased by a number of guards. The guards see the image of Tulio and Miguel riding Altivo as the same on the totem, and believing them to be gods, escort them and the woman under the falls and into El Dorado, truly a city made of gold.

Tulio and Miguel are brought to the city's elders, Chief Tannabok (Edward James Olmos) and wicked high priest Tzekel-Kan (Armand Assante). While Tannabok warmly welcomes them to the city, Tzekel-Kan mainly sees them as a way to enhance his own standing. Tulio and Miguel begin to argue on what to do. Everyone is convinced they are gods when as a volcano is beginning to erupt, Tulio yells at Miguel to "stop!" and the volcano suddenly stops. After celebrations offered by both Tannabok and Tzekel-Kan, the two are taken to private quarters along with the woman they met earlier, Chel (Rosie Perez), who has seen through their ploy but offers to help maintain it as long as they take her with them when they leave. Tulio tells Tannabok the next day that they are only here for a visit, but will need a boat to leave the city with the gifts the city has showered upon them. Tannabok says it will take them at least three days to construct a vessel to carry both them and the gifts given to them by the people of El Dorado.

Chel encourages Miguel to continue to explore the city, allowing her to become closer to Tulio. When Tzekel-Kan sees Miguel playing a ball game with children, he demands that the gods play against the city's best players. During the match, Tulio and Miguel are clearly over-matched, but Chel replaces the ball with a rolled-up armadillo, allowing the two to cheat and win the game. However, when Tzekel-Kan offers to have the defeated players put to death, Miguel orders him to leave the city. As he is leaving, Tzekel-Kan sees a small cut on Miguel's forehead, and realizes that they are not gods because gods do not bleed. Tzekel-Kan conjures a giant stone jaguar to chase them through the city. Tulio and Miguel manage to outwit the stone jaguar, causing both it and Tzekel-Kan to fall into a giant whirlpool, thought to be the entrance to Xibalba, the spirit world. Tzekel-Kan comes to outside El Dorado, where Cortés and his men are searching for gold. Thinking Cortés is a true god, Tzekel-Kan quickly offers to lead them to El Dorado.

With their boat completed and loaded with treasures, Tulio is ready to leave but Miguel announces that he will be staying because he finds the city peaceful. As Tulio and Chel start to leave, they spot smoke on the horizon, realizing that Cortés and his men are approaching the city with the help from Tzekel-Kan. To protect the city from the Spanish troops, Tulio determines they can use the boat to slam against rock formations under the waterfall path that will cave in and block access to the city. The city residents pull down a large statue to create a wave to propel the boat, but Tulio cannot get the sails up to give the boat enough speed to avoid the statue. Miguel forgoes his chance to stay in the city and jumps into the boat with Altivo to finish hoisting the sails. The boat clears the statue in time, and Tulio's plan is successful; though the boat and its treasures are lost, the entrance to El Dorado is sealed for good. Tulio, Miguel, Chel, and Altivo hide as Tzekel-Kan brings Cortés and his men towards the waterfall. Once Tzekal-Kan finds out that the entrance has been blocked, an angry Cortés takes this as a lie. Cortés and his men then march away with a humiliated Tzekel-Kan in their hands. Tulio, Miguel, and Chel, though disappointed they lost their treasure, take off in a different direction for a new adventure, unaware that Altivo still wears the golden horseshoes he was outfitted with in the city.

Cast

 * Kevin Kline as Tulio, one of the con artists who pretend to be gods so they can get gold. He is the planner who wanted to leave El Dorado with the treasure. He also falls in love with Chel.
 * Kenneth Branagh as Miguel, one of the con artists who pretend to be gods so they can get gold. He is the fun-loving one who wants to stay in El Dorado.
 * Rosie Perez as Chel, a beautiful young native from El Dorado who discovers Tulio and Miguel's con and decides to play along. In exchange, she will return to Spain with them and get some of the gold. She falls in love with Tulio.
 * Armand Assante as Tzekel-Kan, the fanatically insane high priest who has a religious fixation for human sacrifices.
 * Edward James Olmos as Chief Tannabok, the kind chief who welcomes Tulio and Miguel.
 * Jim Cummings as Hernán Cortés, the merciless and ambitious leader of the expedition to find the ancient South American empires.
 * Tobin Bell as Zaragoza, the original owner of the map, which he loses to Tulio and Miguel when gambling with them.
 * Frank Welker as Altivo, Cortés' horse who ends up teaming up with Tulio and Miguel.
 * Elton John as the Narrator

Production
The creation of The Road to El Dorado was a challenge for the studio because DreamWorks Animation had devoted most of its creative efforts to its previous animated film, The Prince of Egypt.

Critical reception
The film received generally mixed reviews. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 49% of 103 professional critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 5.5 out of 10. Among Rotten Tomatoes' top critics, who are popular and notable critics from the top newspapers, websites, television and radio programs, the film holds an overall approval rating of 37%, based on a total of 27 reviews. The site's consensus is that "Pridictable story and thin characters made the movie flat." On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 reviews from film critics, the film has a rating score of 51 based on 29 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". CinemaScore polls revealed that, on an A+ to F scale, the average grade cinemagoers gave The Road To El Dorado was from B- to A-.

Box office
The Road to El Dorado's opening weekend box office figures were $12,846,652, placing it as the second highest grossing movie that week to Erin Brockovich, which was in its third weekend. It went on to make $$50,863,742 domestically and $25,568,985 overseas for a worldwide total of $76,432,727, placing it the fifth highest DreamWorks film of the year out of nine, and the 58th highest of the year overall. Produced on a $95 million budget, the film is considered a box office bomb.

Soundtrack
The original score was composed by Hans Zimmer and John Powell and performed by Zimmer, whilst the original songs were written by Tim Rice and Elton John and performed by Elton John. The song "It's Tough to be a God" is a duet performed between John and Randy Newman. Its soundtrack was released as an album with the same name; however, in some instances (such as "The Trail We Blaze"), the songs have been altered musically and vocally from the way they appeared in the film. The soundtrack is available for purchase at the iTunes Store.

Video game
The video game tie-in, titled Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado was developed by Revolution Software (as Revolution Kids) for the PlayStation (December 19, 2000) Windows (June 30, 2001), and by Planet Interactive for the Game Boy Color (April 30, 2000). Like the film, the game received generally mixed reviews from critics, with average ratings of 51.89% for the PlayStation version, 60.40% for the Windows version, and  for the Game Boy Color 59.20% version, at the review aggregator GameRankings.