10 Movie Deaths That Ruined Your Childhood
Because children need to learn how the real world works at some point, right?
Maybe there's something in the water at every major studio that produces films for children, but they have a tendency to get really dark really fast.
Disney, whose writers seem physically incapable of creating characters without making them orphans with a tragic backstory, is a noted example of this, but far from the only offender. Pixar have excelled in pushing that to another dimension more recently, but even they can't claim to be the owners of the trope.
It seems like we as a culture are obsessed with protecting our children in every possible way, except emotionally, where we take a certain gleeful joy in exposing them to the harsh light of the real world through the medium of film.
Look, kid, sometimes parents die gruesomely in front of their children. That's just the way it is. What do you mean you're having nightmares? You've got to grow up sometimes, right? Why not immediately and devastatingly in the cinema?
Quite frankly, there are few things in this world as emotionally ravaging as most movies marketed towards children, but there are some film deaths that messed everyone up on an entirely different level...
10. Littlefoot's Mom - The Land Before Time
You guys there are so many sad parts in The Land Before Time.
First of all, there's the traumatic scene where Cera gets separated from her parents on different tectonic plates while lava explodes from the earth's surface like some decidedly un-kid-friendly hellscape. Seriously, there are people who were in therapy because of the separation anxiety this scene created.
Then there's the very real tragedy of knowing that the little girl who played Duckie was brutally murdered by her father before this film was even released, a fact that many people learn and then promptly forget because it's just too horrible to make room in your head for.
But what sticks with most children of the 90s from this film is the scene where Littlefoot's mother fights the T-Rex and dies. It's dark and raining and Littlefoot is so small next to her, and she tells him that she'll always be with him. It's hard to even think about it without tearing up.