Are there any disney movies where a the parent figure of a child does not die?

j.k.m

j.k.m

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The worst fear to suggest to a child, is the death of their parents what should be a carefree time. ( however sublte, no matter the ending, the seed is sewn) As a parent, I wonder where Mr. Disney's heart is.
 
It's a common theme throughout stories for children, though, isn't it? It's what makes the world a dangerous (=exciting) place, when you don't have anyone to make decisions for you/ look after you and keep you safe.

And: Mulan. Her parents are fine. And so's her grandmother. She goes off to war as another way of upping the excitement :)

(also: Howl's Moving Castle, where Sophie's step-mother is fine, but distracted, and the Narnia films, and 101 Dalmatians)
 
Peter Pan - the Darlings are all alive at the end
101 Dalmatians - all parents/owners survive
Sleeping Beauty - all wake up at the end, I think
Finding Nemo - Dad comes through in the end (although Mum copped it early)
Lady and the Tramp - everyone makes it through
Little Mermaid - again no mum, but dad makes it (should we be exploring Matricide because...)
Snow White - no mum! Again....(lord, I'm scared to be a mum... )
Brave - many people survive, including the parents I think (although there is the bear incident. With the fecking Mum....)
The Lion King - Mum survives! Huzzah. Pity for Dad...
The Incredibles! (Is that disney? I think so...) all alive! Resulllllltttt....


So, yeah, a lot of dead parents, but not exclusively so. :) (15 years of parenting well spent, as evidenced by this thread)
 
Generally speaking what they aim to do is what Pixar also does which is within the opening part of the film they establish a "good" moment. Everything is going well, the characters are happy and life is generally on the up.

Then a disaster strikes - this can come in many different forms and the death/loss of parental figures is an often chosen mechanic for this. It's not only very emotional, but its also something that easily identifies with the majority of the audience. Most people don't want their parents dead/gone and thus its a very easy heart-string to pull that they know will resonate with the audience at large.

If you make the disaster moment more elaborate or niche then you run the risk that many in the audience might not relate to it; which means that the suffering the character goes through shifts from being suffering and emotional that the viewer relates to; into something personal to that character alone which dramatically shifts how the audience reacts to that character. Indeed in such situations the audience can turn on the character and dismiss their suffering.
 
If you are going to make a lot of movies based on fairy tales, there are going to be a lot that begin with one or the other of the parents dying or dead, because that is how it is at the beginning of so many fairy tales, particularly those that are most well known. (Which could, in itself, make an interesting topic for discussion.) I suppose that Disney studios, following some of their early successes, rather got into the habit of following the fairy tale model for the animated films.

In the live action films (which featured a lot more original stories) the parents have a much higher survival rate.
 
Toy Story makes for an interesting study. The father (it seems) is alive, but he's never shown in the movie aside from in photographs. I think the thought is that the parents are going through a divorce.

But speaking of Pixar, the parents in Inside Out are very much alive by the ending as well. :)
 
The live action Disney movies are more comedic in tone, and most have the traditional family unit intact. I particularly liked the Kurt Russell ones.
 
Actually, the live action Disney movies I remember as a young child were based on historical novels and not comedies: Old Yeller, The Light in the Forest, Swiss Family Robinson. The parents were alive in those. If I remember correctly, the comedy franchises came later.
 
Having grown up Disney-fied, and with a parent in a job that we were informed was lift threatening, I can say that I had a normal (or less than normal) fear of my parents mortality. We got the bed-time stories with all their grim life lessons (Dont eat candy houses while lost in the woods unless you're prepared to burn the owner in her own oven, dont let the local dragon know your a beautiful virgin, while sitting on a glass hill waiting for a dashing young man to sweep you off your feet -dont eat the apple that he's supposed to retrieve and thereby claim you with, youngest daughters and blondes always get the best husbands... etc)

Walt did a better job keeping the stories real than his brother (who in all fairness ran financials till his brother passed on and left him the business). Walt's Cinderella lost first her mother, then her father, and was left in the care of someone less than caring. The next time Disney studios touches Cinderella you only hear after the fact that her father died, and there's no indication that the lack of maternal caring from "the evil step mother" is because she is a step-mother, she could have been the real mother for all we knew.

What I do remember about my childhood experiences with Disney-fied stories, is the shock and horror in finding out The Little Mermaid does not get the dashing prince Eric, but turns into sea foam. (My poor father was screeched, cried, and pillow bashed out of the room by his three incensed daughters who had begged him to read the story which he warned us was not the same as the movie. It was the last bed-time story we ever got.) 4-6 years after that I had my faith in book-movie adaptations completely shattered. It was announced that Disney Studios would be tackling The Hunchback of Notre Dame. So I got a copy of the book and read it. I was 13-14ish my littlest sister coming up on 10. Fortunately alot of the more gruesome bits went over my head, but I was still aghast at the choice and full of wonder at how such a story could conform to the expectations of moral guidance and happy endings. Our parents took us to the cinema (A big deal for a family of 6 on a tight budget) and I came out wishing I had never read the book as my siblings enjoyed the farce much more than I did. I remember sputtering with rage in the car home that the only things of the book that survived to film were some incidental character names. The emerald slipper, which was my favorite part of the book, was out. Esmeralda's parentage and backstory was out. It wasnt even the same Paris! The church guy was made more evil, the hunchback less, the ending that was so poignant and moving because of its tragedy was tossed into a mass grave along with the bones of so many other stories. It was a long time before I felt that a book I loved being turned into a movie was a good thing. Ok, in all honesty, it was Peter Jackson who saved book-film adaptions for me. When I heard that there was a rummer that LotR was going to be made into a movie, I hastened to read it so that it wouldnt be ruined for me. By the end of FotR I was sold, my faith in movie makers restored. Well, not fully restored. However well Peter did with LotR, when I heard that Disney was doing Narnia, I cried and begged the gods of cinema that they not screw it up, surely they had seen what a faithful adaptation could do to a box office, surely they wouldnt cock it up... well, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. LWW almost lived up to my imagination, and I was happy to purchase a copy. But PC was less faithful and VDT was impossible to find on DVD -when I did find it, fortunately on a rental, it broke my heart again. Someone told me they are going forward with another, though I dont know which one they will kill next, I'll probably watch it with the same face I made that day I stood downtown and watched one of the historic buildings burn to the ground.


TL;DR
I learned to fear the power of social media to brain wash me and my peers more than I learned to fear my parents early or tragic demise. (Seeing as my parents are both alive and relatively healthy, and brain washing is rampant, I apparently chose the correct fear.)
 
Last edited:
hopewrites said:
Walt did a better job keeping the stories real than his brother
Click to expand...

Yes, he did. Children of my generation still remember, as senior citizens, the shock and terror of Bambi's mother's death.

But all the enduring stories have been altered from one era to the next, subtracted from, added to, combined with other stories. That's why there are so many variants, and except for literary fairy tales like The Little Mermaid, when someone speaks of "the original version" they are speaking of something that nobody really knows. The oldest stories have all been altered to fit the sensibilities and prejudices of different times and places, to entertain people of different classes. Taking stories that were never meant for children in the first place and editing out some of the more gory and shocking bits and providing happy endings to make them more palatable for children (or their parents) is not the worst thing that has ever happened to some of them.

Still, if the plot absolutely depends on one parent being dead, it would be a big stretch for anyone adapting these fairy tales for the screen to keep that parent alive and actively part of the story. (In some cases, giving the step-mother's role to the mother would actually make the story more terrifying. Imagine if it was Snow White's own mother who wanted her daughter's heart brought to her in a box!)
 
I think they get changed more to keep the moral lessons in keeping with the morals of the times.

My example morals for instance, were not the morals those stories intended, nor their story tellers, I did never the less learn (and then unlearn) them.

I think that because it happened off camera, I found the death of Bambi's mother less shocking than it would have been if it was on camera. Bambi himself doesn't quite believe it, so despite all evidence to the contrary, I always felt there was the possibility of a mistake. Like maybe she was just winged and it took her a couple weeks to find him again, and when we come back to his story in the spring, he's left his mother as all young do when they reach the age when their sex-organs tell them to mate or die (sex-organs are notably over dramatic).

Alden grows up decent despite not having parents,
and when you finally do met his dad in the third movie
there is the sense that he grew up better because his parents were out of the picture. I feel this goes along with the undercurrented message that 'parents are an out-dated mode of growing up and it's better to have a gang of peers to rely on (and back stab) then fall for the fuddy duddy that parents would cram in your brain hole.' I know that at the very least my generation was fed a lot of media where adults were at best incompetent boobs and at worst out to kill us. My son's generation, subsequently, is growing up under the impression that 'we're all adults here,' from infants to old-farts.

I could go all 'conspiracy-theory' and say that there is an evil plot to control the world through manipulated social perspective... but I prefer to think of those thoughts as paranoia and ignore that I sometimes have them.
 
I'm actually studying this very thing in my children's literature module at uni. The fairy tales have been and gone now (currently looking at Peter pan) but getting hold of the originals is interesting (lots of grimm!), most of the mothers are actual mothers and it was at a later publishing that the grimms changed them to stepmothers to unsettle children less.

And yes it was snow white's own mother who wanted her dead.

The loss of parents is intrinsic to many of them, as it creates a terrifying yet desired space for the child readers who would love to have no ruling parent, but also don't want them to die. The stories are often violent, gruesome, and often have a sexual undertone. But they are very good. They allow the reader to enter a space that they can't in real life and learn, think, engage with it.
Some very interesting critical works on the whole loss of parents thing, and it's really interesting to see how Disney changed that or swapped it or just plain ignored the source material.
 
hopewrites said:
Having grown up Disney-fied, and with a parent in a job that we were informed was lift threatening, I can say that I had a normal (or less than normal) fear of my parents mortality. We got the bed-time stories with all their grim life lessons (Dont eat candy houses while lost in the woods unless you're prepared to burn the owner in her own oven, dont let the local dragon know your a beautiful virgin, while sitting on a glass hill waiting for a dashing young man to sweep you off your feet -dont eat the apple that he's supposed to retrieve and thereby claim you with, youngest daughters and blondes always get the best husbands... etc)

Walt did a better job keeping the stories real than his brother (who in all fairness ran financials till his brother passed on and left him the business). Walt's Cinderella lost first her mother, then her father, and was left in the care of someone less than caring. The next time Disney studios touches Cinderella you only hear after the fact that her father died, and there's no indication that the lack of maternal caring from "the evil step mother" is because she is a step-mother, she could have been the real mother for all we knew.

What I do remember about my childhood experiences with Disney-fied stories, is the shock and horror in finding out The Little Mermaid does not get the dashing prince Eric, but turns into sea foam. (My poor father was screeched, cried, and pillow bashed out of the room by his three incensed daughters who had begged him to read the story which he warned us was not the same as the movie. It was the last bed-time story we ever got.) 4-6 years after that I had my faith in book-movie adaptations completely shattered. It was announced that Disney Studios would be tackling The Hunchback of Notre Dame. So I got a copy of the book and read it. I was 13-14ish my littlest sister coming up on 10. Fortunately alot of the more gruesome bits went over my head, but I was still aghast at the choice and full of wonder at how such a story could conform to the expectations of moral guidance and happy endings. Our parents took us to the cinema (A big deal for a family of 6 on a tight budget) and I came out wishing I had never read the book as my siblings enjoyed the farce much more than I did. I remember sputtering with rage in the car home that the only things of the book that survived to film were some incidental character names. The emerald slipper, which was my favorite part of the book, was out. Esmeralda's parentage and backstory was out. It wasnt even the same Paris! The church guy was made more evil, the hunchback less, the ending that was so poignant and moving because of its tragedy was tossed into a mass grave along with the bones of so many other stories. It was a long time before I felt that a book I loved being turned into a movie was a good thing. Ok, in all honesty, it was Peter Jackson who saved book-film adaptions for me. When I heard that there was a rummer that LotR was going to be made into a movie, I hastened to read it so that it wouldnt be ruined for me. By the end of FotR I was sold, my faith in movie makers restored. Well, not fully restored. However well Peter did with LotR, when I heard that Disney was doing Narnia, I cried and begged the gods of cinema that they not screw it up, surely they had seen what a faithful adaptation could do to a box office, surely they wouldnt cock it up... well, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. LWW almost lived up to my imagination, and I was happy to purchase a copy. But PC was less faithful and VDT was impossible to find on DVD -when I did find it, fortunately on a rental, it broke my heart again. Someone told me they are going forward with another, though I dont know which one they will kill next, I'll probably watch it with the same face I made that day I stood downtown and watched one of the historic buildings burn to the ground.


TL;DR
I learned to fear the power of social media to brain wash me and my peers more than I learned to fear my parents early or tragic demise. (Seeing as my parents are both alive and relatively healthy, and brain washing is rampant, I apparently chose the correct fear.)
Click to expand...
mm, i agree, and am also one who noticed . . eventually, also am always disappointed with film versions of books i have read.
 
Teresa Edgerton said:
Yes, he did. Children of my generation still remember, as senior citizens, the shock and terror of Bambi's mother's death.

But all the enduring stories have been altered from one era to the next, subtracted from, added to, combined with other stories. That's why there are so many variants, and except for literary fairy tales like The Little Mermaid, when someone speaks of "the original version" they are speaking of something that nobody really knows. The oldest stories have all been altered to fit the sensibilities and prejudices of different times and places, to entertain people of different classes. Taking stories that were never meant for children in the first place and editing out some of the more gory and shocking bits and providing happy endings to make them more palatable for children (or their parents) is not the worst thing that has ever happened to some of them.

Still, if the plot absolutely depends on one parent being dead, it would be a big stretch for anyone adapting these fairy tales for the screen to keep that parent alive and actively part of the story. (In some cases, giving the step-mother's role to the mother would actually make the story more terrifying. Imagine if it was Snow White's own mother who wanted her daughter's heart brought to her in a box!)
Click to expand...
Hahaha, funny! . . Personally, i would just leave the (dead) parent out completely for children, simpley telling the story from the moment the action begins, with no explaination . . If the story is good enough, the child will not notice, but be engaged and entertained by the movie.
 
hopewrites said:
I think they get changed more to keep the moral lessons in keeping with the morals of the times.

My example morals for instance, were not the morals those stories intended, nor their story tellers, I did never the less learn (and then unlearn) them.

I think that because it happened off camera, I found the death of Bambi's mother less shocking than it would have been if it was on camera. Bambi himself doesn't quite believe it, so despite all evidence to the contrary, I always felt there was the possibility of a mistake. Like maybe she was just winged and it took her a couple weeks to find him again, and when we come back to his story in the spring, he's left his mother as all young do when they reach the age when their sex-organs tell them to mate or die (sex-organs are notably over dramatic).

Alden grows up decent despite not having parents,
and when you finally do met his dad in the third movie
there is the sense that he grew up better because his parents were out of the picture. I feel this goes along with the undercurrented message that 'parents are an out-dated mode of growing up and it's better to have a gang of peers to rely on (and back stab) then fall for the fuddy duddy that parents would cram in your brain hole.' I know that at the very least my generation was fed a lot of media where adults were at best incompetent boobs and at worst out to kill us. My son's generation, subsequently, is growing up under the impression that 'we're all adults here,' from infants to old-farts.

I could go all 'conspiracy-theory' and say that there is an evil plot to control the world through manipulated social perspective... but I prefer to think of those thoughts as paranoia and ignore that I sometimes have them.
Click to expand...
 
Social engineering via the media, is a documented aim of the programmers, but luckily many people are not fooled, see it for what it is and stick to the simple, realistic, common sense parenting, family morals and affection.
 
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