Fan Rant: Why Do the Animals Always Die?

ugh, i agree. Too often used as a cheap device to generate some kind of emotion from the audience. When they killed Mad Max's dog, I was pretty pissed.

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I just watched Wendy and Lucy this morning, and while I didn't really care for it, I think you might appreciate the dog's fate.

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TV Tropes has a page on this. They call it "Death by Newbery Medal."

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Yes, it is a cheap device and a very unfortunate one. I have vivid childhood memories of being devastated at the death of Bambi's mother... which led to unreasonable fears over being separated from my mother. I was 6 or 7 when I saw it, and missed out on some cool stuff, like going away to camp and sleeping over at friend's homes. It took me years to realize what was driving the irrational separation complex I'd developed because of that damned movie scene.

Death and fear don't have to be part of children's movies, whether about animals or humans.

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You know honestly I'd rather watch a person die in a movie any time than watch an animal die, unless of course it was like Cujo or something. Animal deaths always seem so pointless to me and they don't really seem to advance the plot; unless you're talking about a serial killer and the rise from killing pets to ppl, I just don't see the point in killing a poor innocent animal. As of matter of fact, that's generally the point that I turn the movie off.

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There are a few movies where an animal's injury or death does advance the story, but you are right, most of them are just intended to manipulate the viewer's emotions. To be fair to Akiva Goldsman's screenplay for *I Am Legend*, I do think Sam's death was intended as a catalyst for the finale. (I have not read the Matheson story.) I found the buildup to her death very upsetting however. Probably intended to be suspenseful (as in an earlier scene when both four-legged and two-legged protagonists escaped unharmed), but just plain gut-wrenching, no suspense as the writing was on the wall in the scene. (Although credit where due to Will Smith, whose character's response to her death finally did justice to the grief we feel when we lose one of our four-legged companions.) Another that comes to mind is the *Horse Whisperer*, where the horrible accident is pivotal to the story. I cannot watch that scene, however, with the sound on, and can barely watch it visually as well. Contrast that to the (IMHO) superfluous livestock death in "O Brother Where Art Thou," where the Babyface Nelson character could've expressed his hatred of cows without us having to watch it. But then again, it is the Coen Brothers, of woodchipper fame. The latter is also disturbing as so many animal deaths are, as if the four-leggeds are disposable, and the human characters just carry on without a thought. (With the occasional sad, crying child as the stand-in for grief at the death of a four-legged.) That bugs me. It's bad enough that we desensitize ourselves with the deaths of humans in action films as if they are cartoons, but to treat deaths of four-leggeds so cavalierly in a society already too cavalier about four-leggeds is especially disturbing. And, BTW, my own film initiation to hating the deaths of non-humans on film began at age four when I started screaming at the death of the original King Kong. Not the destruction before his death, mind you, even then I understood a creature out of his element would not understand his behavior to be destructive. I was furious that people killed Kong. And that movie actually tried to convey a moral message about humans messing around with nature! I guess it took with me.

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Wow,

I had to think about this one for a while before commenting. It really summed up exactly how I feel about animal death in movies. And all the comments were a great comfort to me. I'm glad to know there are a lot of people out there who find animal death upsetting the way I do. Monika -- you're my new favorite movie critic. Can I subscribe to an rss feed of all your posts? :)

Regards,
Emily

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