I've noticed that in a lot of Disney movies (and other movies, but I'll focus on Disney's for now) that there is that moment where the writers are trying to convince you that main character or main love interest or comedic relief or whoever is going to die/is dead and the other characters mourn their loss before POOF! they're alive and fine!
The reason this part of the Disney Death trope is on the mind is because I just saw Frozen and one of the characters has this happen to them. Since it's still in theaters, I won't spoil who it is, but because of the prevalence of preemptive mourning in fiction, my predicting that it would happen and then seeing it happen made me cringe a bit.
It seems that the Disney motto for its writers is to put in as much (mostly clean) angst as you want as long as it ends unambiguously happy. It's as old as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs where said dwarfs and the animal friends are at Snow's funeral and the princes kisses her and everyone bows down sadly--but oh! Show wakes up! Cue the joyous dancing and kisses for all!
It just gets on my nerves that after the triumph over all the other obstacles, writers decide that characters need to weep over loss that isn't really a loss--especially if no one did anything to spur the return to life, and it was a matter of waiting long enough for it to happen. I mean, seriously, in Robin Hood did they have Little John and the rabbit kid all teary after seeing an arrow through Robin's hat? It just feels so artificial that it would be better to think that the real ending was a bad one and the storyteller edited the ending so kids wouldn't complain.
It is better when the mourning period is nonexistent or at least downplayed. For instance, that the True Love's Kiss Wakes Dead People thing is instantaneous in Sleeping Beauty. Phillip just slayed a dragon, there doesn't need to be any post-climax angst, just the "okay, there's just one more thing we need to do" look by the horse.
Another example is in Finding Nemo. Marlin sees Nemo belly-up and is traumatized, but he doesn't find out that his son is fine until several movie-minutes later. The movie doesn't try to get the viewer to be all "Poor dead Nemo!" but, instead, uses dramatic irony: the viewer knows that Nemo is fine, but we feel empathy for a father's grief, not the object of grief itself.
Then again, there can be a mourning period for characters that legitimately could have died in a storytelling sense, but simply managed to live. In Toy Story 2 Belt!Buzz mourns Zurg after he falls through the elevator shaft (albeit in a short scene that is played for laughs) but he shows up later, uninjured. A straighter example would be after Chief falls in Fox and the Hound and Copper finds him. In fact, in the original book, Chief was actually supposed to have died, but because of the sadness that is Bambi, the writers left him alive.
We don't need all of our movies from Disney become Bambi and The Lion King where good characters actually die and we are so sad. Just don't expect us to believe that a main character is actually going to bite the dust, especially ten minutes before the end.
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