Yellow Submarine

Why I Like It

The Beatles have always been my favorite band- they're my dad's favorite band, so I grew up with them. While I think A Hard Day's Night (1964) is probably technically their best movie, Yellow Submarine has always been my favorite. I love the art style of this movie! The color palettes and character designs have always been very inspiring to me. It's such a unique movie in every way- the plot, the characters, the pacing.

I even like the soundtrack. I know a lot of these songs were rejects from other albums but I would geuinely put Hey Bulldog and Only a Northern Song on my top 20 Beatles songs list. The blue meanies are super fun villains and I love how both they and Jeremy are so incredibly fluffy... Overall this is just a nostalgic feel-good movie for me. I've seen it dozens of times since I was a kid. I could probably quote the whole thing!

The Beatles' Involvement

Despite being the "stars" of the movie, The Beatles themselves actually had very little to do with the making of the film, essentially only providing their likenesses and some previously unreleased songs. They didn't even voice themselves!

The Beatles' previously signed contract with UA called for them to star in three films for the company. The first, A Hard Day's Night (1965), was successful and well-regarded not only by fans, but by the Beatles themselves, who thought that it captured the vibe of their early years well. However, the second movie, Help!, released a year later in 1966, was much longer and more chaotic. They weren't as fond of that one, and were pretty much sick of UA and movie-filming afterwards. They didn't have much interest in filming a third movie, but were contractually obligated to do so... So an animated film seemed like a good solution.

This was also the solution to another problem- Beatles Manager Brian Epstein had promised Al Brodax, the producer of the Beatles' 1965-67 animated cartoon, that if the cartoon did well he'd be allowed to produce a feature length film. However, this wasn't a perfect answer. The Beatles themselves hated their cartoon, and now several people who worked on it were making Yellow Submarine. They went into the project with a sour feeling about the whole thing. They were originally supposed to voice themselves, but got out of it. They contributed little in the way of music- Some songs that had already been released, and other songs that had been deemed "substandard" and couldn't go on their regular albums. The rest of the soundtrack was filled with instrumental orchestral pieces composed by producer George Martin (which you can hear on this page via the music player up top!).

Animators would come into the studio to observe the Beatles, which got on their nerves, especially John's. George Harrison was quoted as saying that his favorite thing about Yellow Submarine is that they had nothing to do with it. UA did insist on the Beatles filming a short live-action segment for the very tail end of the movie, in which they appear already different from their animated counterparts in terms of hairstyles (and facial hairstyles, lol, those muttonchops are crazy).

It wasn't until after the film's release that the Beatles came around and saw it in a different light. The animation was truly groundbreaking, and the movie was a hit. They expressed some regret that they hadn't been involved from the very start- although, Paul seemed to adamently want the animation to be more in the style of Disney, so I think it's probably a good thing they weren't strongly involved, lol. John later said that Yellow Submarine was his favorite film of the bunch, and that his son Sean used to watch it all the time.