Watership Down Retrospective #1
Released: 1978
Initial forum mini-review
Just a few hours ago, I saw Watership Down (the 1978 film) for the very first time in my life. It was recommended to me by a friend. It’s pretty good. 🙂 Quite suspenseful and gut-wrenching (and violent!) in places, but it still tells a heartfelt story. I give it an 8/10.
Forum introduction post
Heya. My name’s Ian. I’m a 31-year-old dude who comes from the land of Alberta, Canada.
I had heard of Watership Down before, but I otherwise didn’t really know anything about it, other than it was about rabbits. What eventually motivated me to check it out is because it was recommended to me by a close friend. In fact, he too has posted here before (user “Hoomandil”). Which in fact is how I knew about the forum as well. Although he’s been familiar with Watership Down for much longer than I have. (Him and I first met a couple years ago in the Land Before Time community.)
But anyway, I watched the original film for the very first time last week, and I really liked it! It’s been a long time since I watched an older animated film, but I’m happy I discovered it. Pretty suspenseful and gut-wrenching (and violent) in places, but it still tells a heartfelt story.
I also started the ’99 series and I’m enjoying that too, albeit I’m only five episodes in so far. I see the next episode is called “The Raid”. That sounds like it’ll be exciting…
What Watership Down means to me
Quote from Magic-Rabbit: The animation in the movie is breathtaking considering it was done hand-drawn on a frame by frame basis and the the colour scheme just amazing to look at.
Agreed, although I’ve always been a big fan of hand-drawn animation in general. 🙂
After so extensively covering The Land Before Time, reviewing every movie and every TV series episode, I wanted another animated franchise to get into next and so here I am with Watership Down. As mentioned in my introduction post, the film was my gateway into the franchise, as I haven’t read the novel (yet), and am still making my way through the ’99 series.
I always thought the original Land Before Time was surprisingly gritty for a children’s animated film, but this takes it to another level. Here, you could make a very valid argument that Watership Down is not a kids’ movie at all really. But regardless, it’s a great adventure. Right away I cared about the rabbits and wanted them to stay safe on their journey, and I was always curious to see what would happen next.
The whole thing of Fiver’s visions is interesting. It’s the only supernatural aspect in what’s otherwise a completely grounded story. Also interesting in that, much later on, it’s revealed that Hyzenthlay seems to get the same sort of visions as Fiver, albeit nothing further comes from it. It would’ve been neat if we’d seen her actually have a vision of her own too.
My only other real nitpick; even though I haven’t read the novel, the film still felt a bit compressed in places (albeit that’s common enough for book-to-movie adaptations so I can’t fully fault Watership Down here). I guess related to that, as user “Hyzenthlay69” said, I too wish it had been a bit longer. The ending in particular felt sudden. But all in all I really enjoyed the film.
As for what Watership Down means to me? I see it as a story of perseverance during hard times.
