Watership Down

[Deledrius]

I wouldn't say that. More British willingness not to sugar-coat stuff like the Americans do, of which Disney and such are the most extreme versions. That especially to me comes up with the more keen awareness of how much it sucks to be a prey animal due to hunting past of the British compared to Americans that includes things like fox hunting and ferreting.

Bambi and The Fox and the Hound (among others) don't really suger-coat it, though. Contemporary Disney is perhaps skittish about this, but for most of its existence (up until the 1990s) not as much.

[Wargriffin]

... Poor dumb Rabbit Harry

Escapes the council, only to foolishly pick a fight with the guy he knows will kill him.

[AlucardNoir]

Small rodents escaping a flood... isn't that the NIMH2?

[Durandal_1707]

Rabbits are lagomorphs, not rodents.

[ChrisTheLovableJerk]

Bambi and The Fox and the Hound (among others) don't really suger-coat it, though. Contemporary Disney is perhaps skittish about this, but for most of its existence (up until the 1990s) not as much.

Well, those films are somewhat sugarcoated compared to their respective source materials.

Bambi loses some darker elements like Bambi's mom being standoffish when mating time comes around, the animals always referring to humans as 'Man' or 'He', as if man is some sort of omnipotent being, Bambi's cousin getting shot but nursed back to health by a huntsman who felt bad about shooting a young deer, only to later get get killed by the same hunter when he sees him again and approaches, thinking the man can tell he is the same deer. Probably darkest of all is Bambi's father showing him the corpse of a hunter (heavily implied to have been impaled by Bambi's father's antlers) to show him humans aren't invincible

As for The Fox and The Hound... that novel is so dark and bleak that one has to wonder why Disney even wanted to adapt it into a family film. Same with Hunchback of Notre Dame but less changed there compared to Fox and the Hound.

[Durandal_1707]

^ Wait, you're saying that they changed more than in Hunchback?

Is that even possible?

[ChrisTheLovableJerk]

^ Wait, you're saying that they changed more than in Hunchback?

Is that even possible?

Well for one, the fox and the hound are never friends in the book. Copper is the old dog while Chief is his replacement. The old lady is a hunter who adopts the fox after she kills his mother, mostly out of guilt and lets him go because of his mating urges. The bear scene happens much earlier and Chief defends the hunter while the aging Copper is too afraid, making him feel very insecure about his fading abilities and being replaced. The fox first meets the dogs after the female hunter releases him (Which isn't a sad moment as it is in the film) and begins taunting them by getting close enough to send them into a barking frenzy but far enough so they can't reach him due to them being chained until Chief breaks free and chases Todd onto a railroad bridge where Chief is killed (like he was meant to in the film) and the death is deliberate, as Todd waits until the last second to jump off, letting Chief get run over by the train.

Yes, Todd intentionally kills Copper in the novel. Technically, given the name switch.

The hunter becomes obsessed with killing the fox for revenge and trains Copper to only hunt that fox in particular. The fox has several relationships with different vixens in the book while its only one in the movie. The first vixen, an older female fox, gives birth to a litter of kittens, but they are all killed by the hunter who gasses them to death and the vixen is killed that winter when she falls into one of the hunter's many traps.

Todd gets a new mate and has new children, but the master uses the 'Still' hunting technique and a rabbit call to lure them out and kill them and then uses a 'wounded kit's call' to lure out the second vixen and kill her.

As time goes on the wild and farmlands are bought out and urbanized, forcing the farmers and animals alike to seek new homes, but Todd, Copper (Chief) and the Hunter stay behind and the other foxes who remain become skinny scavengers whose mate-for-life bonds are replaced by promiscuity. The hunter sells off most of his land and most of his friends either pass away or move away so the hunt for the fox, his dog, and booze is all he has in his lonely life and people in town try convincing him to move into a nursing home, where dogs aren't allowed.

One summer there's a rabies outbreak and many of the remaining foxes are infected and one attacks a group of children, so the townspeople hire the hunter to kill all of the foxes. He uses poison, common when trying to eliminate a large amount of animals, but dogs and cats end up getting poisoned and even a child, who dies from it. So they drop the poison angle, go into the remaining woods, and flush out and shoot all the remaining foxes, but the aging Todd manages to escape.

The Hunter sends Copper out after Todd and the old dog chases the old fox all day, all night, and into the next morning, where Todd's heart gives out and he dies of exhaustion and Copper collapses on top of him, close to death as well.

The hunter nurses Copper back to health and for a while he and the dog are town heroes, but it soon dies down, he goes back to getting drunk, and the concerned neighbors talk him into going to the nursing home.

He agrees, so he takes his rifle off the mantle, sobbing as he takes Copper outside, gives him some loving pats on the head, orders him to lay down. As the clueless old dog trustingly licks his master's hand, the old man brings the gun up to the dog's head and... Boom.

Yeah...

[J!!]

Feel-good book of the year

[Durandal_1707]

.........

Jesus.

[Robovski]

A family picture!