Random Disney Thoughts

So recently I marathoned every full length Disney cartoon. These are some thoughts I needed to express:

Dumbo and Bambi are two of the oddest paced movies I’ve ever seen. They’re both only an hour long and take a lot of time with Fantasia-like sequences. In Dumbo, the entire point of the movie (a flying elephant) isn’t until the last five minutes of the movie and he starts to fly in less than three minutes. The “newsreel” of success that would normally come right before the “big crash” is the end of the movie. There’s no fall after the big high. Dumbo learns how to fly and that’s it. And in Bambi, the movie skips straight from his mother’s traumatizing death to an older Bambi. Instead of the growth we would normally see from a character losing a parent, we go straight from Bambi freaking out to Bambi completely okay. It was jarring to say the least. Maybe some music bits could have been cut for a little more character growth? Also did Bambi straight up murder another deer? The guy was a bit of a jerk but honestly, the hormones were raging through everyone that morning. It was a little ironically hilarious how each of the guys reunited after years and then immediately abandoned each other for girls. The scenes with the hunters were well done and terrifying to say the least but every climax- Bambi fighting the deer and then later with the hunter and Faline and the fire- felt like it was straight out of Lion King or the Jungle Book but not as good. So I guess I’m glad they were able to copy and then improve those scenes in later movies. It did feel a bit though like they couldn’t decide on a climax. If they’d cut some Fantasia and had more character growth, they wouldn’t need so many “final battle” scenes. If they were to ever remake Bambi, that’s what I’d want. An earlier parent death scene and then some struggling to become the prince he was always meant to be and then maybe a moment where the Great Prince dies and Bambi has to accept who he is and take his place. I guess I want Lion King but with deer and no Scar, just a Jungle Book-like fire. The ending was just like Lion King. This movie is like pre-Lion King. Also also, actually actually Flower named his child Bambi. I’m convinced. Flower is gay and in love with Bambi. I guess in my head I remember Bambi, Flower, and Thumper being best friends for their entire childhood but the reality is their interactions were basically just Flower batting his eyes at Bambi. In future live action they should gender bend Flower and have her arc be the struggle of being in love with someone she can’t have, aka a deer.

Okay, so Bambi 2 apparently is what should have been in the first movie, with Bambi getting past his mom’s death and all. I’ll watch it later, although I wasn’t planning to, now I need to. I’m in too deep.