Film Theory: What is Disney's Body Count?

"Sleeping Beauty"? Maleficent and her subordinate Raven her Devil. "Lady and the Tramp" only kills one rat, but she remembers that it

count

s, because it's a movie full of sentient animals. "The Rescuers" has Medusa, who is just a recycled version of Cruella Deville, "The Great Mouse Detective" has Ratigan, a subordinate and two of his henchmen, and "Peter Pan" loses two pirates, surprisingly not Captain Hook. So yes! Even though there are still dozens of other killer pirates running around Neverland, and killer mermaids too, if you know the source material. Other notable mentions in this category, Snow White singing "With a Smile and a Song", "All Your Cares Fly", just after the attempted assassination of her.

I've heard about the power of positive feelings, but wow! You might want to take a couple minutes and process

what

just happened to you, Snowy! Also, coming from the dishonorable mentions of this sixty-

film

series, "Fantasia 2000," which only has one death: a surprisingly practical Jack-in-the-Box, but which also features the most absurd moment and the entire Disney animated canon ; a sequence of Donald Duck aboard Noah's Ark. I eat animals two by two, and then... there's only Donald Duck! Noah literally walks up to Donald Duck and says, "Come. Come aboard my biblical Ark." That? That's after scenes of flying whales and Penn & Teller's embarrassing magic hand.

I mean, if you've never seen "Fantasia 2000," this movie is like the hottest disaster. Last things to mention here quickly, because I know I'll hear them in the comments. "Tangled": Yes, we see a huge broken dam, but it's in an isolated area of ​​the desert, and everyone washed away eventually resurfaces later, so there's only one death there. And that's Mother Gothel at the end. Also, "Wreck-It Ralph" forced me to think about my rules, as we watch thousands of Cy-Bugs die, but remember, they're not sentient, so they don't

count

. Also, we see Sergeant Calhoun's husband die in a flashback, but remember that she is just a video game code, which means her husband never existed as a program in the system, so there is only one death there, which is the big bad Turbo, who died in a video game that wasn't his and is therefore completely dead.

No more "Continue?" for him! If we add up the Disney movies with a single-digit

body

count, we get forty-one, which leaves us with seventeen to cover, but this is where things start to get difficult. It seems like it should be an easy task to check and count bodies, but in several of these cases the analysis starts to get quite complex, like in "Frozen." We see Anna and Elsa's parents die in a shipwreck, but how many really bit the dust in that scene? I mean, sure, we see a third person welcoming them aboard the ship, but clearly there has to be more crew here than him.

When you do the research, technically, there are probably about thirty-three total deaths in "Frozen," obviously the parents, and Marshmallow, who does count (because if Olaf dies, you'd probably count it). So Marshmallow should count too, but there's also the 30-person crew it would take to man an entire ship of that size, of that era, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. How about "Bambi"? How do you calculate how many forest creatures die in the forest fire in that movie? How many antelope deaths is Scar responsible for in "The Lion King"? That meets all our rules. How many Huns did Mulan kill?

How many lives did Ursula destroy in her Little Mermaid Typhoon at the end? The answers involve a mix of history, art and computing. So stick around because who makes it to the deadly finish line and how we crown the winner will probably be a bit of a surprise. The next episodes are already written and ready to go, but in the meantime, let me know which movie you think will come out first in the comments. The next part should be out in a few days. I know, I know it's a cliffhanger! You can murder me in the comments!

It'll just add one more to that death count! Ha ha! I'm killing myself here, see? Now you want me to stop! So until next time, remember! That's just a

theory

, a

film

theory

! Aaaand cut!