Disney Villains Falling Off Things

I suppose it is less traumatic than shooting or strangling or eating someone: Disney villains always seem to "die" (we don't actually see the corpses) by falling off of things.
 
Snow White's Witch
Apparently, this movie--the first full-length Disney which owes a debt to European illustrators like Gustave Dore--terrified full-grown adults, especially the final sequences. The classic exemplar of pride and vanity, the witch falls off a cliff. Since a big rock falls after her, her death is pretty much assured. (The watching vultures are very happy.)

Scar
Simba returns to reclaim his pride! And Scar falls off a cliff. I believe the hyenas then get him. Actually, Simba leaving Scar to the hyenas may not be excessively noble, but it is a fairly accurate depiction of lion behavior. People who like to feel all warm and fuzzy about the sweetness of nature should watch National Geographic episodes about real animals in the wild. Lions will  leave each other to starve and be eaten by hyenas. There's no such thing as a "clean" death.

Gaston
In the 1946 Beauty & the Beast, Avenant (the Gaston
character) turns into a Beast at the end.
In both the animated and live-action versions, Gaston causes himself to fall off a tower when he recklessly attacks the Beast. I honestly thought they might leave him alive this time around. I mean, come on, this is Luke Evans (I just rewatched him in The Hobbit, where he is amazing) and he wasn't sooo bad in the beginning at the movie. Why couldn't he be redeemed (like, eh hem, the Beast)?

I actually thought the writers were going to go that route, but . . . no. Of course, we don't see the broken, damaged corpse, so maybe . . .

There are more recklessly-footed Disney villains! But you get the idea.

1 comment:

Matthew said...

This so common that TV tropes actually refer to it as Disney Villain Death

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisneyVillainDeath