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The original “Bambi”

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Re: The original “Bambi”

#21

Post by lm28469 »

sentrysapper wrote: post #5
brobdingnagians wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been split on this. On the one hand it is a bit unpleasant and can be traumatizing, and we tend to shy away from unpleasant things, but on the other hand lots of generations grew up on Grimm's Fairy Tales and Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales and learned a bit about how difficult life can be and the consequences of moral failings or lack of hard work. It is important to prepare children for the fact that life…

Life will give those hard lessons out for free - why build a curriculum for it?

Because you can go decades without any kind of serious events in your life, living in a perfect bubble until shit hits the fan. That's when you learn nothing prepared you for that and no one cares or knows how to behave.

That's kind of the main reason we started to write stuff down, to learn things from the past through other's experiences, so that you don't have to feel alone going through every traumatising events as if you were the first human to do so.

We have empathy, better use it than wait for the hardest part of life to "give us a lesson", most of the really hard parts only happen once so you won't learn much, but you'll suffer a lot.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#22

Post by mbreese »

onei wrote: post #16
kstenerud wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watership Down and the Secret of Nimh were my two favorite movies as a young child in the early 80s, followed closely by the Dark Crystal and maybe Aristocats and the Black Hole. Other movies of the time like the Rescuers and the Fox and the Hound and Labyrinth and such were a disappointment compared to these...

I've been curious about the Dark Crystal - was it particularly groundbreaking when it came out? I watched it after watching the more recent Netflix series and found the story pretty dreary. Similarly, I've heard Tron was almost revolutionary by the standards of the day, but the CGI is almost comical to watch now.

(Not the OP)

I can’t say it was ground breaking, as I was a kid at the time, but it was one of the great movies of my childhood. I remember watching it many times over. I do remember the characters seeming less real, and I still knew they were puppets. But this was also the era of Sesame Street, so a movie by Jim Henson that had puppets was kinda normal. I think the fact that my parents talked about it so highly probably answers your question more — it was something adults appreciated. Ultimately, to me, the Dark Crystal wasn’t a great movie because I feel the story was there to service the technique, even if the technique was masterfully used. Maybe I was too young to fully appreciate it.

Tron was much the same. At the time, you knew it wasn’t great, but it was still new. Like the targeting computer CGI for the Star Wars trench run, the effects weren’t great. Even at the time, it was a little spartan. But the effects moved the story, and worked well enough to not be a distraction (and you had never seen anything like it before). Tron was just as much about what it foretold as much as the CGI that was available at the time. But in contrast to the Dark Crystal, I liked the story behind Tron more.

I would say that both were groundbreaking for how they pushed techniques of movie making forward. The world creation in both were amazing and they both set a new bar for future movies to meet.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#23

Post by Semaphor »

senko wrote: post #6

Yes, Bambi is an utterly depressing story. Most original material Disney adapted was bleakier and more grisly than the adaptation. Most of the tales collected by brothers Grimm would today be horror stories. (Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters had their toes and heels cut off so they could fit in the slippers? Or that the ravens pecked their eyes as punishment? Or that Maleficent ends up in a boiling cau…

The Brothers Grimm already toned the horror down. Sleeping Beauty was based on a tale called Sun, Moon, and Talia [0] which has the prince having sex and impregnating her while she sleeps, and she only wakes up from her newborns sucking the splint out of her finger when she can’t find the breast.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun,_Moon,_and_Talia

Re: The original “Bambi”

#24

Post by fennecfoxen »

If we're talking about bleaker topics in older Disney works, I'll ask you to take a moment and consider the entire premise of _Dumbo_ (1939). Why are the other elephants scandalized by the baby elephant with the big ears, asking what Mr. Jumbo would think? Why did they mean, just a few moments earlier when they said elephants are "a proud race"? Why would they shun him, declaring that he is not one of their kind? ... What kind of elephant has big ears?

Re: The original “Bambi”

#25

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Ralfp wrote: post #2

I’ve grown watching „The Animals of Farthing Wood” (1993 cartoon). It has episode showing family of mice struggling to survive and worried about future for their babies. In following episode we get shot of same mice family impaled on needles by birds going to eat them. https://www.wykop.pl/cdn/c3201142/comment_EkpfJKfyX8WRKQnr7H... Entire story is told around forest dying out and animals struggling to survive in it.…

I loved a cartoon growing up as a child, called Alfred J. Kwak [0], a Dutch / Japanese series about a duck and his adventures; I believe a lot of it is on youtube if you want.

The first two episodes are about two anthropomorphised ducks that meet, fall in love, move into a clog and have a spawn of babies, happily ever after until the whole family but Alfred get killed by a car. That was err. a pretty brutal thing for a four year old to see.

The show goes on to depict things like nazis, racism (waterfowl aren't real birds like us!), apartheid, classism, alcoholism, even transgenderism / gender fluidity (the stork Ollie), etc. In hindsight, it was A Lot, and most of it probably escaped me.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_J._Kwak

Re: The original “Bambi”

#26

Post by masklinn »

spanktheuser wrote: post #20

It wasn't the first horror film my children saw (they watched Jaws, Alien, and Stranger Things) but the most terrifying and traumatic experience they've seen was the shipwreck scene in the Black Stallion. If you want to frighten children, murder what they love while they watch: their parents and animals. Coincidence both Bambi and the Black Stallion were written during or in the immediate aftermath of world wars?

> Coincidence both Bambi and the Black Stallion were written during or in the immediate aftermath of world wars?

Meh. Every generation has its angsts, and writers putting it down to paper.

Watership down was written in the very late 60s / very early 70s.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#27

Post by Cthulhu_ »

spanktheuser wrote: post #20

It wasn't the first horror film my children saw (they watched Jaws, Alien, and Stranger Things) but the most terrifying and traumatic experience they've seen was the shipwreck scene in the Black Stallion. If you want to frighten children, murder what they love while they watch: their parents and animals. Coincidence both Bambi and the Black Stallion were written during or in the immediate aftermath of world wars?

One thing I've really noticed is that a lot of people - children and adults both - have no qualms about depictions of violence and murder of people in media, but they get really squeamish when it's (cute) animals. I wonder what causes that, is it just a kind of desensitization? Or a built-in kind of justice that bad people dying is fine but innocent animals isn't?

Re: The original “Bambi”

#28

Post by tut-urut-utut »

senko wrote: post #6

Yes, Bambi is an utterly depressing story. Most original material Disney adapted was bleakier and more grisly than the adaptation. Most of the tales collected by brothers Grimm would today be horror stories. (Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters had their toes and heels cut off so they could fit in the slippers? Or that the ravens pecked their eyes as punishment? Or that Maleficent ends up in a boiling cau…

That's why Germans refuse to refer to Disney movies by the names of the original Grimm stories.

Disney/Hollywood version is always Cinderella, and German that closely adheres to the original is called Aschenputtel. The same goes for Snowwhite and Schneewitchen, Sleeping Beauty and Dornröschen.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#29

Post by BeFlatXIII »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #3
Ralfp wrote: post #2

I’ve grown watching „The Animals of Farthing Wood” (1993 cartoon). It has episode showing family of mice struggling to survive and worried about future for their babies. In following episode we get shot of same mice family impaled on needles by birds going to eat them. https://www.wykop.pl/cdn/c3201142/comment_EkpfJKfyX8WRKQnr7H... Entire story is told around forest dying out and animals struggling to survive in it.…

I've been split on this. On the one hand it is a bit unpleasant and can be traumatizing, and we tend to shy away from unpleasant things, but on the other hand lots of generations grew up on Grimm's Fairy Tales and Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales and learned a bit about how difficult life can be and the consequences of moral failings or lack of hard work. It is important to prepare children for the fact that life…

IIRC, many of the most popular fairy tales give happy endings by pure luck and happenstance. Catch a fish with a magic ring, etc…. The ones with moral lessons are too on-the-nose to be enjoyable.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#30

Post by mattl »

senko wrote: post #6

Yes, Bambi is an utterly depressing story. Most original material Disney adapted was bleakier and more grisly than the adaptation. Most of the tales collected by brothers Grimm would today be horror stories. (Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters had their toes and heels cut off so they could fit in the slippers? Or that the ravens pecked their eyes as punishment? Or that Maleficent ends up in a boiling cau…

I prefer the sequel, “Bambi Goes Crazy Ape Bonkers With His Drill and Sex”
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