10 Disney Films With Shockingly Dark Source Material
3. The Hunchback Of Notre Dame
The Hunchback of Notre Dame was a heart-warming story of a man overcoming his physical deformities and finally being accepted by a society that had shunned him for so long. The Victor Hugo novel it is based on, however, is decidely less heart-warming.
In the novel Quasimodo's heroic moment where he saves Esmeralda, thus sending her on a path to understanding that helps to inform so many others about the true nature of the gentle hunchback, goes pretty poorly as Esmeralda ends up hanged anyway. And if you think that this change in the original story would affect the narrative that the movie laid out- well, you'd be absolutely right.
Instead of any redemptive path to acceptance for poor Quasi, he ends up sitting by Esmeralda's grave for the rest of his life and starving to death. The grave is eventually pried open and two skeletons are found together. When they are parted, they simply turn to dust. Hauntingly beautiful, perhaps- but heart-warming it is not.