I'm not going to take too seriously the review of someone whose supposed understanding of the work was based on comparing another adaptation (the miniseries) with the film and also showing that they apparently didn't read the book or, if they did, forgot to review it again. Things like believing that giving Woundwort a tragic background that doesn't really affect him later was an invention of the series and not something from the book itself (in any case, the change that was made and that is not fully explained is more worthy of criticism).
But hey, at least he has a point. Aside from exaggerating its violence and “darkness,” the film is sometimes overrated, when it is boring, crude, and its depth never really develops. And really, an average Disney movie is much better handled. (And anyone who says otherwise, please watch it again). And they don't need shocking “dark” scenes to make a real impact. (Or rather, they don't need to have scenes just for the sake of it and never do anything useful with them).
The fact that you need to read the book to be able to “enjoy” the movie because now you have context for the basics like the characters or elements of the world just shows how terrible the movie is as its own material. An ADAPTATION doesn't need its source material as a crutch for the viewer to be able to watch it. As the name suggests, it's adapting the same thing to another format and therefore should be understood on its own.
You can hate the TV series and the miniseries for whatever reason, but at least both products can be enjoyed, watched, and understood as their own.
In any case, the comment about “generations” is extremely stupid because overrating this film or crying over it is not exclusive to Gen Z; it has been that way since the day the film came out in its time. They never stopped receiving complaints from parents, and if you just search for the name on any social network, you'll find thousands of people, from millennials to people born in the 70s, who only remember the film because of how traumatic it was in their childhoods.
It's true that nowadays there are a lot of people who like to call everything that's even moderately “dark” in a work as if it were the most terrifying, mature, and profound piece of shit in the universe, to the point where you don't understand whether it's adult or childish, according to them. But don't lie and say that calling Watership Down the most violent and terrifying film of all time is something unique to this current generation.
I would say that I have even seen more people of my generation recognizing that the film should have a different reputation or that they have understood the work better than older people who are supposedly fans of it.
Anyway, I don't know how much I should praise the soundtrack and visuals by saying that they are supposedly “mature” or that they tell a story.
In a way, yes, I agree that they are probably the best thing the film has to offer if you decide to turn off your brain. Which doesn't help either.
Because Watership Down is not Fantasia, it's not Flow or The Thief and the Cobbler. These are films that had little or no dialogue and, in the case of the latter two, no “story” per se (or at least not a very developed one), but are mostly experiences meant to be followed visually, with the music serving as a support that connects them so that the viewer can follow along.
Watership Down doesn't work that way because it's a story where dialogue is extremely crucial. Watching the movie without voices will make you understand less of what you're supposed to know and certainly decharacterize characters, make them empty, or insert comedy scenes where they shouldn't be, and then eliminating the real parts where there is “tranquility” and laughter emphasizes how chaotic it is.
"Oh, let's put in a joke about Keehar being stupid right in the tense scene where Bigwig is waiting for the blow to flee. Oh sure, let's throw in a funny chase scene with the dog getting distracted when it should emphasize the danger of sending such an animal into a war zone," and then let's throw in scenes of rabbits dying so the characters don't react to it at all, as if they don't even care.
It's not that it's a simple story. I would say that it even mocks the watcher's intelligence (which is pretty bad for a film that was supposedly made for adults) because it literally involves watching a bunch of rocks that talk without personality, development, or real action moving from one place to another for the sake of the plot, supposedly trying to achieve something. Everything is strangely convenient, with slow scenes where nothing happens, followed by scenes where something should have happened but was left out.
If you take away the blood, it would be a very boring film that would end up on that list of animal films that no one remembers and that surely only a very specific handful of people would watch.
I don't blame people who have this stigma, to be honest. It's very difficult to remember anything else from here other than the bloody scenes or Bright Eyes.
