Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

There's been some confusion over the years about whether or not Richard Adams' original novel and this animated adaptation are suitable for young children. I'm firmly in the "no" camp, even though schools, libraries and recently the UK's Channel Five have been marketing it that way. Adams' novel is really a story about combat soldiers, creatively transposed onto the natural history of rabbits, and though Adams claims he originally wrote it for his own kids, your approach to parenting (and your children's level of tolerance for depictions of loveable animals in constant terror for their lives and being maimed and killed in numerous sudden, violent ways) is likely to be diferent.Obviously there are people who think that any story about animals is suitable for kids, even if it depicts the suffering or death of animals because suffering and death are a part of life and kids need to learn about it sometime. I would reply that this is true, but it's also cruel to expose children to movies that have a well-established track record of giving them nightmares, as this film does. Anyway you'd be giving them a distorted view of the lives of animals, which are NOT all about fear, suffering and death. Rabbits spend most of their lives eating (including their own poop). They also do routine work (they have to dig those burrows after all), play, mate and have babies--a lot of them. You don't see this in "Watership Down," because as I say it's a fable about war, not a natural history lesson. Another point: females are nearly invisible in the story, so not only is half of the life cycle of rabbits cut out, it's not even a proper depiction of war, which despite the conventions of war stories that Adams was drawing on, has always involved women combatants, whether in the regular army or not.

This is a really intense film. One issue I often have with animated features that focus on animals is that the rest of the world is like window dressing. There is a bit of this here, but the anthropomorphism works relatively well in that they are doing rabbit-like things all along. In an almost Native-American beginning, we are introduced to the gods who punished the rabbits because their original creation literally turned his back on them. They were given only their escapability as a defense from predators. In this effort, we have a sort of savior rabbit who is able to lead the others out of their immediate danger to a place where they might be safe. Of course, in their quest, they are confronted by all kinds of dangers, including other rabbits that have created a kind of Gangs of New York world. They also are in the realm of humans where guns are part of their world. This is quite violent for an animated feature, but it really captures the pain and fear these little creatures must deal with.

Is this movie violent? Yes. Is it dark? Yes. Is it scary? Yes. Is it important? Yes. "Watership Down" is a fantastic example of challenging cinema for children. I remember seeing this when I was very little, and the only thing I remembered was how scary it was. Now seeing it 15 years later, I have nothing but respect for it. I may not have kids now, but if I do, this will be required viewing for them. This movie does not hold your hand, it does not sugar-coat things, it is meant to challenge you. It covers topics like death, and dictatorship, and industrialization, and violence, and all of those are real in our world. Children need to have their minds challenged, I love innocent Disney movies as much as the next guy, but movies like this are just as important. This movie wasn't made to scare children, it was made to introduce them to concepts that they may not understand. If you look past the violence and blood and all that and look at what it is at it's core, it's a story about surviving in a cruel and unforgiving world. And at the end of the day, that's what life is about.

Watership Down is a 1978 animated adventure-thriller, directed by Martin Rosen and stars John Hurt as the heroic Hazel, the films main protagonist. Watership Down has always been widely known for its dark reputation and sometimes graphic imagery covered and hidden amongst an innocent children's story. After a prophecy is foretold by Fiver (Hazel's brother) about the destruction of their home (the warren). A small group of rabbits begin a journey to find a new home for their families, friends and allies. Along the way is where Watership Down starts to show its darker side, various rabbit deaths start to spiral the story into a much more grittier tale, with this some quite disturbing scenes, especially after the introduction of the ruthlessly, brutal General Woundwort. Watership Down features one of the greatest scores in cinematic history accompanied with an extremely emotionally hard-hitting, religiously depicted and ambiguously realistic scene, Art Garfunkel's hit single 'Bright Eyes' beautifully lifts and lowers the tone with the famous 'near-death' scene, this is where Watership Down shines at its peak. The film does however have some significant flaws these unfortunately being a lack of character development and variety within the main group, also a rushed final act and quick cuts between scenes almost feel half of the story was left out, as was the impact and emotion, also some seemingly developing story arcs that weren't fully explored to their max due to the short run-time. The ending as a result was not as hard-hitting and teary-eyed as it should have been because of this, but still a great concept. 7/10