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Hey, me at three years old! I got you a movie at the movie store! Aren't you excited? Yeah, it's a cartoon movie about a bunch of cute fluffy rabbits! It's called Watership Down! You're going to sit here quietly and watch it while all us grownups are off in the other room right? Yeah, true story that. Haven't seen it since, though, so, let's find out how traumatizing it was. Oh hey, it's one of those movies that starts itself if you leave it on the menu screen too long. I hate those. Anyway, we start out with the Bunny Creation Myth, presented in the official Creation Myth Animation Style. Where does that come from anyway? There's this very specific sort of weird vaguely tribal feeling art style where you fill areas with triangles and lines. You know what I'm talking about right? It is absolutely ubiquitous and international. So anyway, the Ur-Rabbit was an arrogant jerk, so all of the other Ur-animals were given sharp teeth and a desire to murder rabbits by Flip the sun god. Cue slaughter of stylized rabbits. Ur-Rabbit was all @#$% THIS and trying to hide, so all that could really be blessed with awesome was the back legs. Plus, you know, Flip's kind of a psycho and wants to see this whole race constantly running and hiding while all of creation tries to kill them.
Now we transition over to the really really peaceful, pleasant, and kid friendly art style we're really using. Oh, and at least for the opening credits here, this is really freaking impressive. We have all these watercolored pastoral scenes with great perspective and parallax stuff going on. Actually, wow, is this whole movie going to be detailed watercolors except for the things that need a lot of motion? That's actually kinda trippy. So anyway, here's all our happy fluffy rabbits who really aren't very anthropomorphized at all. They also have the sort of voices that aren't QUITE all the same, but are close enough as to be more or less indistiguishable. Like only one guy is doing all the voices, and he's not a voice actor. Anyway, Fiver, our main character bunny who has a decidedly harrowed expression just had a horrifying psychic vision of the fields running red with blood. I'm not exaggerating. This is frelling Watership Down. It is an incredibly dark and grim movie about death and suffering, which through some sick cosmic joke looks like it's freaking Bambi or something. Anyway, Fiver freaks out to his brother Hazel, who goes to consult the bunny elder, who looks pretty darn decrepit and lives underground. Elder doesn't want to skip town because it's mating season, despite the fact that Fiver's horrifying portents of doom apparently have an actual well established track record of coming true. By the way, this is actually a really good how to guide on fantasy names. The vast majority and named after various plants nuts and herbs. Real life human type names traditionally follow the same pattern. It's just that most never got translated out of their original languages as they were passed down, so common English names SEEM meaningless.
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And it begins. So yeah, at least our core party of rabbits are out of here. Which is good, because there are human type plans to pave the whole whole field over. There's an encounter with a rival bunny gang on the way which involves someone ripping all the fur off someone's throat with their teeth. It's a warning shot sort of thing, but it's still pretty freaking visceral visually. Anyway though yeah, some but not all of the rabbits, mainly the youngest generation, are heading Fiver's warning and fleeing, the rest are freaking doomed. So they run through the woods at night, passing various predators with blood-flecked lips, which thankfully means they're too lazy to hunt. Eventually they come to a river crossing, too exhausted to swim... and there's a dog coming. Fortunately they find a bit of bark that'll potentially work as a raft for the two who really just don't have the energy, so nobody's getting ripped to shreds by Lassie.
Seriously, it's amazing how FREAKED OUT Fiver looks at all times. Eventually they find a road, with splattered roadkill on it, and discuss cars briefly, or "vroodoodoos" as they call them. Odd how cars and only cars get an invented bunny language name. I mean, if they were calling dogs "barks" and owls "screees" that'd be fine, but we aren't being consistent here. Aaand Violet just got snatched by a hawk. BAM. Dead bunny! Everyone else just keeps moving. Granted, only about three of these rabbits have really been properly established as characters, but being cannon fodder does not effect how traumatizing it is for little kids to see you killed. Anyway, they spend the next knight in an abandoned storage shed, so fight scene! Yeah, this scene right here is a great example of why Bunnies & Burrows exists.
Later, they end up stuck in the rain, doubting their exodus. Some random rabbit from another tribe offers to let them stay in their spare burrow, but Fiver thinks something doesn't add up. Nobody listens, but yeah, something doesn't add up here. The whole place is pretty much abandoned, and they're getting free food, apparently left by a human. "There's something unnatural and evil and twisted about this place" says Fiver. Word for word. Oh hey. Their host is an atheist. He doesn't believe in Rabbit Jesus. I'm so not making any of this up. He's some creepy nihilist who doesn't believe in the Ur-Rabbit from the earlier creation myth and has a morbid fascination with death. At about this time, Fiver is all FRELL THIS, I'm going back outside! The muscle of the group comes to chew him out, but gets his throat caught in a snare.They get the rest of the party to help fine where it's pinned down and HOLY FRELL BIGWIG HAS BLOOD POURING OUT HIS NOSE AND MOUTH! He's apparently dead, so they say a quick prayer and debate whether they should murder the local psychos for not warning them and taking the place over, or if they should just get the hell out. Bigwig actually isn't quite dead it turns out, and votes to kill'em, but no, we're going with the continued flight plan.
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Later, camping out near the local farm, Hazel proposes a daring two-man raid to Fiver, who is, as it turns out, easy to peer pressure. Aha. The local farmer is catching and breeding rabbits from the local population, so, there's local chicks to flirt with. Fiver's standing guard, but he kinda sucks at it, and suddenly they're being chased b a cat. This doesn't really go anywhere though, and comes off as a pointless scene. Also, may I add, inaccurate. A well-fed cat isn't likely to do all that much to an adult rabbit. Try to play maybe, sure, but they're of roughly the same size, so they aren't going to accidentally kill them, and probably not intentionally either.
Next we have one of the old rabbits from back home showing up, a bit of a scarred mess, telling a rather disturbing story about how humans started tearing up the fields for construction, blocking off tunnels, cutting off oxygen, tunnels getting clogged with dead bodies as everyone tries to escape at once, tunnels collapsing, heavy machinery cuttings swaths through everything, it's pretty nightmarish. Then they kind of try and tack on this environmental message that the humans aren't actively trying to kill them, they're just blithely destroying the world for their own selfish reasons. It's hard to absorb a message like that IMMEDIATELY after a detailed description of a terrible mass death though.
Time for a happy scene next! Here's everyone finding a nice hill with a great view and some natural tunnels. Also a large injured uh... seagull? He has a weird maybe-Russian accent and speaks broken English, or Bunnese I guess. Hazel points out that while they did find a pretty cool place to live, it's something of a sausage fest here. The only girl they maybe had was Violet who got picked off. They talk their seagull friend they nursed back to health into maybe trying to find some girls and send them back this way, but apparently he spaces out and just returns to his "Big Vater" home. So heck with it says Hazel, I'm freeing those slave girls we passed a couple random encounters back. He takes a couple of the other cannon fodder characters to chew the door open, but they make enough noise to wake up the cat, and chained up dog, and hunter packing a shotgun. OK, that's awesome. The farmer and his friend speak British Farmer. Technically everything they say is in English, but it's essentially all rendered gibberish by excessive "wot'sallthisthen?" and "oy blimey" talk. Anyway, Hazel gets shot, and the other two come back to tell Fiver how "the black rabbit serves Lord Flip and come comes for all of us in our time" or something like that. Cue... totally inappropriate sappy musical number? While following the visible specter of death back to see your brother's corpse? It actually IS pretty freaking depressing despite being weird though. And... yeah, eventually he finds the trail of blood leading to where... oh, Hazel's NOT dead, just mortally wounded by a handful of birdshot embedded in his hip. Cool. Why the morbid song then?
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Anyway, yeah, he lives, and the bird comes back to show them how to pull the shot out. OK, next girl recruitment plan. The old mangled survivor of the old warren spent some time in this freaky fascist rabbit society that savagely maims dissidents, escaping only by the luck of a train nailing the guards who came after him when he made a break for it. You know, honestly, as an adult? This isn't that bad of a movie at all. Horrifically traumatic for little kids, but for adults? All well and good. Anyway, I'm just going to call the psycho bunnies orcs, because, seriously, that's how they come off. Bigwig goes to meet the lone eyed leader of the orcs, offering to join up, so he can do some recon. He gets his ritual scarring to designate his foraging shift, and finds out who those who disobey the high council are made examples of. Eventually he finds a girl who helped their war vet make it out, and discusses his plan to sneak some girls out to help found their new paradisal civilization. Birdy strikes me as something of a weak link in the plan though. Also, does girly here have eyeshadow? What the hell? Oh, it's natural markings. All the orcs have blue eyeshadow.
The orc leader thinks something doesn't add up, and sticks Bigwig on patrol duty with some trusted generals, so, they decide to make the break that day. So yeah, they, it seems, succeed in stealing the orc women and heading for the bridge that marks the boundaries of Bunny-Mordor. Bird's supposed to meet them there, but being a bird, is waiting on top of the bridge, not below. Oh, and Bigwig grabbed the maimed example the orcs use to discourage dissent too. So... him and Bigwig are getting ready to fight off as many of the orc warriors as they can before they go down, but finally Bird comes by to make a diversion. They all run for it, and get to important part of their plan. Chewing through a rope tying up a rowboat, and floating down the river to safety.
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So... that's it then it seems. Following the visions of their local doomsayer, the younger generation escape disaster, find a new home, and score some hot chicks from the scary foreign country. Good for them. Oh. Until the orcs fan out and discover their home, ready to lay siege. The orcs want all their deserters back, or they're coming in to slaughter everyone. Everyone starts barricading the entryways and Fiver starts having a freaking seizure and vision that there's a loose dog. Some of the orcs hear his disturbing wailing and get superstitious, after all, they had a bird working with them and somehow managed to flee across the river, clearly they're mages. The plan is now of course to send someone out and lure the dogs back, meanwhile everyone's setting up ambushes and such in the tunnels and WOW that was a gory death. Anyway, a prayer is also made to Flip, asking to save everyone's life in exchange for that of whoever it was that was praying. Flip actually uh... answers this. We show the sun, it goes back into creation myth vision, and the voice of freaking god says "bah, people ask that all the time, and basically goes screw you, solve your own problems. Wow. I kinda like Flip here. He's a total jerk god, but at least he's honest and up front about it.
Now here's Bigwig and the orc leader fighting to the death. Both are gorey messes, but they're still snapping off the witty dialog. And dear frelling Flip there's pink foam in their mouths and everything. But oh hey! Here comes the dog finally to freaking DROP some orcs. After, you know, chomping down and shaking them to death. "General Woundworth's body was never found" says the narrator. Time passes, said orc leader becomes something of a boogieman to future generations, and Hazel, who I guess was our main character officially, dies a peaceful death in his sleep, his spirit flying off with the black rabbit to the sun god. And that's it.
Oh hey, there actually was a different voice actor for everyone, they just all sound the same... and apparently the rabbits' god was actually called Frith, my mistake. Anyway though, again, that was actually really surprisingly impressive visually, and does a pretty good job of showing life and hardship from a rabbity perspective, which is what you get from a really good kid's movie (see: Finding Nemo), and there isn't actually THAT much death and gore, but they REALLY make up in quality what they lack in quantity. Seriously, why the hell was this marketed for children? And it's rated... PG. Seriously? PG? I just watched a bunch of cute little cartoon rabbits ripping each other's throats out in a gorey mess of the sort that would run the risk of going over an R in a live action movie for adults, and that got a PG? In 1979 for what it's worth, but that's not quite old enough to really be THAT lax with this stuff. Seriously, the gorey scenes in this movie are brutal enough that my standards won't let me screen cap them here. At least not without sticking it behind a link, and that's to one of the tamer scenes. What the hell ratings board? Also, now of course I want in on a game of Bunnies & Burrows, but that's a given.
