War Horse/Tear Jerker

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Joey being sold to the military.
  • Topthorn's death.
  • Joey getting entangled by barbed wire. Seriously, without a doubt, it is the most powerful and incredible scene in the movie. Watching a panicked, terrified animal caught in the machinations of war bolt through trenches and explosions is War Is Hell personified.
  • Captain Nicholls' death was made quite heartbreaking with slow motion and the noise of the war being deadened.... not to mention his expression of knowing that he was going to die and being terrified of the certainty of it.
    • Hiddleston describes the direction he was given for the look on that face in that scene (in the film) as everything else peeled away and Nicholls being like a boy of nine again. It's not even fear, it's wide-eyed horror as he realizes exactly what's happened.
  • Emilie's grandfather giving away the last remnant of his granddaughter (Joey) to his original owner.
    • When the soldiers are basically looting Emilie's home and they take her grandfather's pot he uses to make jams. They almost take Emilie's medicines, too, but they settle for later taking Joey and Topthorn from her.
  • The German brothers being shot at dawn, especially after the eldest had tried so hard to protect his younger brother.
  • When Albert receives Nicholls' journal, out in the fields, and excitedly opens the letter to read it aloud in a glad voice. Within the first sentence is the news Nicholl has been killed in action, and the journal is full of drawings he was doing for him of Joey.