How did Disney emotionally devastate you?

Cafe Society
21

There was one of those true life adventures that featured a pair of cougar cubs growing up, a brother and sister. Grown, the brother took to attacking livestock. The hunters were after him, dogs and all. The brother is running, and his sister crosses his tracks. The dogs follow her trail and eventually, the sister leaps off a cliff trying to escape them.

As she lays dying at the bottom, her brother comes to her and starts licking her face and ears.

I was wailing aloud and shaking. What a great kids’ show.

22

The early Disney version of “The Incredible Journey”, without the gimmick of the talking animals and staying true to the book’s casting and ending, just wrecked me at the age of 10. Still generates tears today.

I cried at the opening sequence of “UP” when I was in my 50’s.

23

The Three Lives of Thomasina when the little girl is running into the rain screaming his name.

Well, yeah, I also cried when I saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and saw what a miserable mess they’d made of one of my favorite books. [/threadshit mode, w/apologies]

24

Anyone who didn’t sob through the beginning of UP has no heart. My husband must be cooking with onions…

25

Yup, Baby Mine. I put that up on my FB once and was astonished at how many of my friends said Nope, not watching, I remember, too many tears, too traumatizing.

26

Disney took all the classic fairy tales I loved and turned them into sanitized puke. Die Walt, some of us actually liked it better (it seemed like justice was better served) when the Wicked Queen is forced to dance on hot coals until she dies.

27

Or when the prince’s eyes are put out when he falls into the thorns at the bottom of the tower, trying to rescue Rapunzel.

28

Long ago, I was a substitute teacher in for a kindergarten teacher. The principal decided to show all the kids a movie as a treat. So the title comes up on the screen…Old Yeller.

None of “my” students knew what was going to happen. I don’t think any of the other kids did, either. All the teachers were exchanging horrified looks.

Yup, and then I had to lead them back to the classroom and deal with all the weeping children…I’ve never forgiven that principal.

29

The network cut for TV I saw, combined with older sisters, was worse. That cut skipped the dying part. My sisters, who knew better, then jammed the knife home the next day. It’s not all about Disney but they were certainly part of the devastation.

30

  1. Lemmings jumping off a cliff.

  2. Finding out years later they were forced off by the crew.

31

Disney actually toned down the impact of Old (not Ol’) Yeller’s death. In the book it comes almost right on the heels of Yeller saving Travis from a wild boar attack, and being badly gored to the extent that his innards are hanging out and mom had to sew him up. The rabid wolf incident happened not long after Yeller and Travis recovered enough from the boar attack to go out again. The book gave us a happy ending, then almost immediately yanked it away.

32

To quote Chandler Bing: “Yes, it was very sad when the guy stopped drawing the deer.”

Seriously, though, I don’t tend to get emotional over movies. But I somehow found myself misting up during Toy Story 3 when they were all about to be incinerated. And I was 47 years old at the time.

33

Oh sure, easy to say when you’re a twenty-something year old fictional TV character. But try using that reasoning on a 7 year old watching Mrs. Dumbo cradling her baby through jail bars crooning about how much she loves her baby soon after said 7 year old’s mother died. Go ahead. Try it!

34

I see that several people have come into this thread basically so they can post “I hate Disney.” Since the thread title is “How did Disney emotionally devastate you,” I don’t quite get that. Then again, I know that for a lot of folks out there (and apparently in here too) everything Disney ever made is by definition HORRIBLE, and I guess it is of critical importance to say so in any thread that touches on Disney in any way.

(For the record, I know some people think Disney is the Best Thing Ever, and I don’t get that either. But they don’t seem to have posted in this thread–yet–so I’m not so concerned with that just now.)

Because I like to nitpick this: it’s worth remembering that for many of the Disney movies based on “classic” fairy tales (notably Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cinderella, Tangled) there is no single “genuine” or “original” version. The Grimm brothers, who are often the main sources for these tales, did not worry overmuch about authenticity but rather combined folk elements into something they liked. They would not have passed Folklore 101.

This means that there is nothing inherently more authentic about the Grimm Snow White, say, than about the Disney Snow White–they’re both someone’s version of a tale told in many different ways by many different people over the years. It’s fine to prefer one to the other, but we are treading into tricky waters when we dis Disney for creating something that doesn’t match the Grimm version, given that the Grimm version likely won’t have matched the brothers’ own original sources.

And along the same lines, which is the “authentic” Cinderella tale or Sleeping Beauty version–the one told by the Grimms, or the one told by Charles Perrault? They’re not the same…

It’s also worth noting that many people, in the US at least, don’t actually remember the details of the Grimm/Perrault stories very well. Or they think they remember but get it wrong. The Queen in the Grimms’ Snow White does not in fact dance on red-hot coals. She is instead forced to put on iron slippers that have been heated up in the fire. Even Grimmer.

On topic: Like the OP, I find “Baby Mine” very moving, and ocasionally “emotionally devastating”–there’s the moment when the little guy starts crying helplessly that can absolutely get me when I’m in the right mood. To the OP: Sounds awful; I’m really sorry.

35

Bridge to Terabithia (or, as my wife refers to it, “THAT movie”).

See, neither of us had read the book, and the commercials made it look like a happy fantasy-land adventure. My wife has never quite forgiven me for suggesting we go see it.

36

I’ll agree with The Fox and the Hound, but add two more parts to it:

The scene at the very beginning in which Tod’s mother, running from a hunter with Tod in her mouth, sets him down near a fence post, licks him goodbye, and then runs like hell so Tod won’t be discovered with her.

The scene in which the Widow Tweed drops Tod off at the game preserve. “Goodbye May Seem Forever”.

37

IIRC, Trusty the bloodhound didn’t die in “Lady and the Tramp”.
In every version I’ve seen, Trusty walks in to visit the puppies with his leg bandaged.

38

Weird–I just looked on my shelf, and my Grimm’s is still there, untouched. Maybe he missed a copy?

39

This is going to sound dumb but when I was 9, I went to see Hercules in the theater and I fell in love with Meg hundo p. And after all the shit she put up, the shot of her turning sadly away as Herc is welcomed into Mt. Olympus, like “Why would I have ever expected someone to care that much about me?” broke my little heart and I bawled my eyes out and embarrassed the crap out of my little sister.

40

Wow. I’m glad I never saw that one, and I never want to. That would have devastated me as a kid (and probably still would).

For me, it’s Simba’s dad, and (if Pixar is allowed), the opening of “Up” and “When She Loved Me” from Toy Story 2.