#I THOUGHT IT WSD A REAL PERSON

[h-f-k]

Holy fuck i almost hAD A HEART ATTACK with that fucking doll in indycar, oh my god

[weaselbeaselpants]

Stuff that gets me mad: Watership Down 1978 is overrated

NOTE: Me not liking it doesn’t make it a horrible movie. It’s not horrible. It’s not even bad. But I don’t like it and it irks me that there are three levels of overreactions to this film.

Overreaction 1: “OMG THIS IS THE MOST DISTURBING KIDS MOVIE EVER BUNNIES DON’T DO THIS”

Watership Down is not and never was a kids movie or kids book. If you accidentally watched it as a kid it’s because whoever showed it to you thought “well, it’s animated so it’s a kid’s film”. It’s not a kids film. My grandma left my sister and I alone with Princess Mononoke when I was 6. Good film, but even at that age we knew this wasn’t a kids film. Don Bluth films are kids or family films with dark themes. Disney’s Hunchback, Black Cauldron, Coraline, and ParaNorman are dark, sometimes violent kid-family films. Watership Down was made for adults.

Also rabbits aren’t nice. Anyone whose ever had or has been around rabbits know how mean they are. The brutal stuff the characters do to each other in WSD is accurate to actual rabbit behavior and extermination methods in the past. The biggest inaccuracies in the WSD franchise are wild rabbit group behavior and patriarchal stuff. The rest is pretty damn close to what rabbits have to go through and what they do to each other.

Overreaction 2: OMG THE VIOLENCE IN THIS IS AWESOME

No. It’s really not. It’s not fare to fault this film for being violent but I’m tired of people thinking that the dark parts of this movie make it ‘deep’ or ‘provocative’. Don’t forget this was a 70s film. 70s were really into making their adult animated films as adult as possible to justify the fact that they were adult and could do adult things. In Fritz the Cat and Ralph Bakshi you had a lot of pointless nudity or gore for the sake of gore. In WSD 1978, you have the axing of a doe at the beginning and Blakavaar’s gruesome death because “this needs to be shocking and violent, so make this scene shocking and violent”. That isn’t to say ALL the violence used in the film isn’t effective, but the aforementioned irk me especially cause it’s irrelevant to the story, beyond adaptation to screen. They added those parts in cause they wanted the movie to be more groundbreakingly shocking. Which hey, in theory they could be very groundbreaking scenes...except...

Overreaction 3: THIS MOVIE IS ONE OF THE BEST ANIMATED FILMS EVER CAUSE IT’S SO DEEP AND POWERFUL UUUUGGGGGH

I’m sorry but...this movie is badly paced and it’s characters are boring and nowhere near as interesting as the book. The only character that has a real personality in the film is Bigwig. Everyone else is just a one-dimensional rehash of their book selves. Especially Fiver. HOW DARE YOU MAKE FIVER INTO THAT! He’s supposed to grow but he sounds looks and feels like a weakling throughout. Jerks.

The problem with adapting Watership Down to film is the book is very much an Odyssey story. It’s a journey with a bunch of turns and plot points that make the adventure seem big and give our characters growth as they go through every obstacle. WSD 78 is technically accurate to the book in most respects...but it lacks the detail or the characterization to make what our main cast goes through feel like a full story or an indepth experience. As a short and sweet (ha) adventure film it’s pretty good. But then I hear people say that because it is an adult animated film and has all it’s themes and mood and crap, it’s AMAZING.

Plague Dogs, which I’m also sure is different enough from it’s book counterpart, was a far more moving film cause you only follow about 3 characters and theirs is less of an Odyssey than a straight up survival tale. It’s more intimate. It’s more interesting. It’s waaaaaaaay more shocking and upsetting when bad things happen in Plague Dogs because you get to know and care for everyone in it.

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I love the book WSD. I haven’t watched the new show but I like the concept of WSD being a series much better than a film. Whether or not they’re better then the film is up to you. To me, this movie is overrated as some masterpiece or exploitation horror film when I just don’t think it is. I knew about the book since I was 7 and didn’t watch the film until I was 12. It’s not the most violent or effectively gruesome animated film out there and it’s far from the best epic or journey film I’ve ever seen.

Rant done.