The Great Mouse Detective/Awesome

• Main
• Laconic
• Trivia
• YMMV
• Headscratchers
• WMG
• Crowners
  • Awesome
  • Funny
  • Nightmare Fuel
• Wikipedia
• All Subpages
• Create New

• The moment when Basil snaps out of his Heroic BSOD and, within a few seconds, forms a plan to escape the triggered Death Trap. All the awesome of Sherlock Holmes and Batman rolled into one!
  • I might add that right after he gets out of the Death Trap, he gets out of disguise, and with great cheer says, "Thank you, Dawson."
  • "Smile everyone!"
  • Even without the context, this is still a moment of awesome, showing off just how Crazy Awesome Basil can be.
• Ratigan kills a drunk mouse for calling him a "rat."

"Oh, my dear Bartholomew, I'm afraid that you've gone and upset me. You know what happens when someone upsets me..."

• Also, Ratigan completely verbal-owning Basil, at least until Basil breaks out of his Heroic BSOD. Vincent Price's maliciously cheerful voice just makes it all the more awesome.

"Frankly, I expected you fifteen minutes earlier. Trouble with the chemistry set, old boy?" "You have no idea what a delightful dilemma it was, trying to decide on the most apporpriate method for your demise. I had so many ingenious ideas, I didn't know which to choose! So... I decided... to use them all."

• The random cameo of Bill the Lizard from Alice in Wonderland was pretty awesome.
• Dawson gets his own CMOA when he shouts at Basil and then proceeds to sulk because Basil is being an idiot, thus saving their lives by waking Basil out of his aforementioned Heroic BSOD.

"Dash it all, Basil, the Queen's in danger, Olivia's counting on us, we're about to be horribly splatted, and all you can do is lie there feeling sorry for yourself! I know you can save us. But if you've given up, then why don't we just set it off now and be done with it?!"

• • Which then gets followed up by the above CMOA for Basil.

"Heh. Set it off now." (beat) "Set it. Off. Now? Yes, we'll set the trap off now!"

• Ratigan threatens to feed Flaversham to Felicia if he doesn't finish the Queen robot in time. Flaversham then becomes so angry that he manhandles the in-progress robot in a way that causes it to squirt oil on Ratigan's coat. The following line ensues.

"You can do what you want with me! I won't be a part of this-this-this evil any longer!"

• "SEWER RAT!"
• The whole ending of the movie: not only did they play up the Reichenbach Falls story (complete with Disney Death for their Holmes stand-in), but the way the movie changes from a madcap, comedic mystery into a breathtaking chase sequence, a climactic fight inside the Clock Tower of Parliament, the Nightmare Fuel of Ratigan's evil transformation into a crazed killer rat, and finally Basil's clever usage of Big Ben striking to topple the villain to his death (all of it with a very effective musical score) is simply incredible. Most people who talk about the Disney Renaissance say it began with The Little Mermaid, but just as many contend that The Great Mouse Detective should be the real beginning, or at least that the seeds of it were planted here. (The movie, while vastly entertaining, does perhaps pale a bit compared to what followed it.) This ending sequence may be one reason why it deserves such an inclusion.
  • Plus, that sequence marked the first time CGI was used by the feature animation department. The gears were computer animated then traced by hand.
• "On the contrary...THE GAME'S NOT OVER YET."

---

Back to The Great Mouse Detective