Watership Down: Difference between revisions

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[[File:watership_down.jpg|frame|[http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/movies-dumbed-down.php?page=9 I Just Wanted A Movie About Bunnies]<ref>This poster [[Nightmare Fuel|should give you an idea on how dark the movie really is]]. [[Genre Blind|Too bad that it is not enough to stop]] [[Animation Age Ghetto]], [[Captain Obvious|and as a result]], [[What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?|it traumatized a lot of children]].</ref>]]

 

An '''epic''' [[Low Fantasy]] adventure by Richard Adams.

 

 

[[Rascally Rabbit|Yes, rabbits]]. [[Better Than It Sounds|Bear with us]] for a moment. They're not [[Most Writers Are Human|humans in rabbit form]]. Caution is a way of life because [[Everything Trying to Kill You|death is a moment-to-moment possibility]]. They [[Xenofiction|can't count past four]] because they only have four paws (Fiver, the runt of a five-kit litter, gets his name from the Lapine word ''hrair'', [[Translation Convention|meaning "a thousand", but generally just meaning "lots"]], which is usually translated as just "five"). They think ''hrududil'' (cars and other large machinery) are some type of animal.

[[Watership Down/Recap|Plot Synopsis]] (spoilers)

 

 

Also notable is the [[Animated Adaptation|animated feature film]] based upon the book. It's a very well-done [[Adaptation Distillation]], and while it is no excuse at all for not reading the novel, it's well worth watching. As a matter of fact, reading the novel first enhances the film. The [[Studio Ghibli]]-style insanely detailed animation fits the story perfectly, and real effort is made to respect the seriousness with which the rabbits take their quest. (As an aside, it's really hard to imagine a film version working any other way; if you'd like an idea of how Narm-ful a live-action version might have been, look for [[The Film of the Book]] ''Jonathan Livingston Seagull''.) The film is also notable for its voice cast, consisting of some of the best British actors of the day, including John Hurt as Hazel, Ralph Richardson as the Threarah, Nigel Hawthorne as Campion, Richard Briers as Fiver and Zero Mostel as Kehaar.

The thing is, the film is notorious in Internet culture for one simple reason: the [[Animation Age Ghetto]] affects it like almost no other movie. Certainly, DVD cover art like [http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1780259072/tt0078480 this] doesn't help, but what gets us here at TV Tropes is that you'd think more people would have heard of the book. Parents of bunny-obsessed children, please do ''not'' subject your four-year-olds to such [[Nightmare Fuel]] as Bigwig's brush with death and his battle with General Woundwort, General Woundwort ''himself'', the awfully long scene (scored to ''Bright Eyes'') where Hazel is almost certainly dead and Fiver is lost without him, Blackavar's story, or Holly recounting how he barely escaped the destruction of Sandleford Warren. On the off chance you need further convincing, please note that the latter sequence, faithful to the novel, is a semi-hallucinatory depiction of ''cute bunnies clawing out the throats of other cute bunnies as they all slowly suffocate.'' ''[[What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?|Not For Little Kids]]''.

 

 

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** In the novel, Hazel encourages the other rabbits to help out non-aggressive animals, in case they ever need help, which starts with a mouse. It pays off with the mouse telling the rabbits about a good feeding place, Kehaar acting as their scout and air support, {{spoiler|and the mouse giving them advance warning of the Efrafan attack, which likely saved the warren}}.

** "The Fox in the Water" has El-ahrairah wandering and offering advice, which pays off when a snake he helped, who had heard of his good deeds, grants him temporary hypnotic power to defeat the foxes plaguing the warren.

* [[Angry Guard Dog]]: And imagine ''that'' when you're a fraction of its size.

* [[Anyone Can Die]]

*** Dogs aren't dangerous!

* [[Badass Army]]: The Efrafan Owsla.

** Although if it is a fable or an allegorical tale, it is not at all [[Anvilicious]]. It stands on its own as adventure [[Xenofiction]].

* [[Because Destiny Says So]]

* [[Crystal Dragon Jesus]]: Averted for the most part with El-ahrairah, as he differs from [[Jesus]] in many ways, but the comparison is inevitable.

* [[Death Trap]]: {{spoiler|Cowslip's warren, indirectly}}.

* [[Deus Ex Machina]]: {{spoiler|The farmer's daughter rescuing Hazel from the cat and taking him home.}} The chapter [[Lampshade Hanging|is even called "Dea ex Machina"]].

** Also, during one chase scene, the good guys are saved when {{spoiler|their pursuers are killed by a convenient train}}. Appropriately, they take this for an act of Frith.

* [[Doomed Hometown]]: Sandleford Warren.

* [[Dreaming of Things to Come]]: Several of the characters have dreams loaded with foreshadowing.

* [[Heterosexual Life Partners]]: Rabscuttle and El-ahrairah are never, ever, not together.

* [[Honorifics]]: The Lapine language has its own, though only two are mentioned; -roo is an affectionate diminutive (similar to [[Japanese Honorifics|-chan]]), and -rah means "king" or "lord" (usually used to refer to chief rabbits).

** This is subverted at the end of the novel {{spoiler|when a little girl from the farm rescues the wounded Hazel and takes him to a doctor, and later sets him free}}. This somewhat changes Hazel's opinions of humans. The construction workers {{spoiler|shooting the rabbits from Sandleford}} as they try to escape, though, definitely is playing this trope straight.

* [[Humans Are Cthulhu]]: Subverted... maybe. They're generally regarded as just one more of the elil, but some of their stories treat them as elil [[Bigger Bad|above the other elil]], which is also borne out by Cowslip's warren. Still, Hazel does get an excellent demonstration that we aren't [[Exclusively Evil]].

* [[Killer Rabbit]]: Woundwort is psychotic even by ''human'' standards.

* [[Last Stand]]: Bigwig, against {{spoiler|General Woundwort}}.

* [[Meaningful Echo]]: ''"There's a large dog loose in the wood."''

* [[Moon Rabbit]]: The [[The Grim Reaper|Black Rabbit of Inlé]].

* [[Rascally Rabbit]]: El-ahrairah, the rabbits' own mythological/folkloric trickster figure. During their journey the rabbits tell several tales of El-ahrairah's trickster abilities.

* [[R-Rated Opening]]

* [[Safe Zone Hope Spot]]: {{spoiler|Cowslip's Warren.}}

* [[Scarecrow Solution]]: Kehaar.

* [[Sedgwick Speech]]: {{spoiler|Woundwort}}'s [[Famous Last Words]].

* [[Shown Their Work]]: One of the biggest examples is the geography. Every little detail noted in the book was present in the location's real life counterpart.

* [[The Smart Guy]]: Blackberry, an innovative-engineer type (who rather unnervingly becomes the Smart ''Girl'' in the TV series).

* [[Spoony Bard]]: Dandelion (also a [[Fragile Speedster]]).

* [[True Companions]]: The eight main rabbits' relationships are based on Adams' [[World War II|WWII]] unit buddies.

* [[Truth in Television]]: People more familiar with cuddly cartoons than wild rabbits are surprised how viciously they can and do attack each other, due to their extreme territoriality. Adams researched most of his protagonists' behaviors in ''The Private Life of the Rabbit'', by naturalist Ronald Lockley.

* [[Utopia Justifies the Means]]: {{spoiler|Efrafa. It was designed to be completely and utterly safe from humans. Before that, Cowslip's warren is seen as a perfect utopia for rabbits... [[Town with a Dark Secret|provided you never ask where anybody is]]}}.

* [[Waif Prophet]]: Fiver.

* [[Elemental Powers|The Four Elements]]: Silverweed's poem, which has verses about wind, streams, leaves falling to earth, and Frith (the sun). Too bad all four verses are {{spoiler|really about death.}}

* [[Elephant in the Living Room]]: Everyone in Cowslip's warren knows about {{spoiler|the snares}}, but they pretend they don't.

'''[[The Cassandra|Cassandra]]:''' The house reeks of [[Foreshadowing|death and dripping blood]]. }}

* [[Evil Counterpart]]: Silverweed is the prophet and poet of Cowslip's warren.

* [[Freudian Excuse]]: Holly and Silver observe, on separate occasions, that Efrafa's greatest fear is men and that Woundwort felt safer fighting than running. Woundwort's father was killed by a farmer and his mother and siblings were killed running from the farmer and a weasel.

* [[Funetik Aksent]]: Kehaar the gull. In the novel this is clearly the result of his having to fall back on a sort of interspecies pidgin to communicate with rabbits (''Peeg vater''!) The film makes the unfortunate decision of translating this phonetic speech literally, so that he ends up speaking in [[Star Wars|JarJar-level]] [[You No Take Candle]], and the animated series follows that convention.

* [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]]: See [[Pardon My Klingon]] below.

* [[I Was Just Passing Through]]: In the story "Hyzenthlay in Action", Bigwig objects to newly-appointed Chief Rabbit Hyzenthlay going off on her own to look for some missing does; she pulls rank on him and does so anyway. The next day, he goes out for a stroll and [[Sarcasm Mode|just happens]] to run into Hyzenthlay and the wounded doe she stayed behind to protect.

* [[Art Shift]]: The opening myth of El-Ahrairah was animated in the Aboriginesque style of the late John Hubley, the legendary founder of [[Limited Animation]]. The main film is ultra-detailed naturalistic animation... and then you have the rabbits' horrific visions and recollections, animated by Martin Rosen in a similarly abstract style, but with gradual [[Sanity Slippage|transitions from the real]].

* [[Award Bait Song]]: "Bright Eyes" was a chart-topper performed by Art Garfunkel. The music, lyrics, and scene in which it is featured make it a [[Tear Jerker]].

** Though to be fair, the eye colour is strictly limited to the rabbits' origins, and not their positions in the story. As seen by e.g. Blackavar and Hyzenthlay, who are blue-eyed Efrafans but the protagonist's allies. Alternately, Captain Holly and the late chief rabbit of Sandleford Warren, red-eyed, yet menacing antagonists (at least at first).

* [[Compressed Adaptation]]: The animated movie had to streamline quite a bit of the story, otherwise it'd be hours long.

* [[Friend to All Living Things]]: Pipkin.

* [[Heel Face Turn]]: {{spoiler|Silverweed, Spartina.}}

* [[Holding Back the Phlebotinum]]: The magic subplot.

* [[If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him]]

 

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[[Category:Literature]]