POLL: How did you first consume the story _Watership Down_, about a warren of rabbits finding a new home in the Hampshire countryside?
The print novel (1972)
44%
1978 film (with the Art Garfunkel song)
25.6%
1999 UK TV series
2%
2018 Netflix TV series (with the awful CGI)
0.7%
Audiobook of the novel (various)
0.7%
Audio dramatization (various)
0.2%
Other (graphic novel, The Goodies, etc.)
2.9%
I don’t know the story
23.8%
Poll ended at .

@futzle

✋ Another victim of television station deciding to screen film in a kids' schedule. 😱

Parents, please don't show this to kids! It's for teenagers and adults, it's not a kids' story!

@futzle

p.s. Astonished to find that critics at the time apparently all dismissed concerns about the film version's effect on small children:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watership_Down_(film)#Effects_on_children_and_BBFC_classification

...the critics really dropped the ball on this one! 😬

Watership Down (film) - Wikipedia

@FediThing “Not as bad as the scene with Bambi’s mother” 😧

@futzle

Interesting to hear the classification board saying "Animation removes the realistic gory horror", as if an animation simply is not capable of being traumatising.

Maybe a generational thing where adults had only ever seen deliberately unrealistic cartoons like Tom & Jerry, and had trouble taking any animation seriously? Whereas children were taking it very seriously without the adults realising?

@futzle

Made the mistake of watching the relevant scenes to compare them after all these years... oh heck. 😞

"Bambi's mother"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTZPMJj-X9M

"Watership Down's deaths" (Warning: shows horrifying deaths of animals although uploader has added a comedy element to it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1dHLS7ocpw

...just cannot see where the critics are coming from. The fates of the rabbits are depicted in a far, far more disturbing manner.

Disney's Bambi - Mother's Death

YouTube