Darker and Edgier/Animated Films

• As far as Pixar movies go, only one franchise so far hasn't involved at least one death, but Toy Story 3 and The Incredibles are considered to be among their darkest.
  • As mentioned in the page quotation, Toy Story 3 is considered much darker than the first two, as well as unusually dark for a Pixar movie. This is one of the more Justified examples, though, since the concepts introduced earlier in the series leave room for Fridge Horror. The third has a darker feel because it calls attention to a fair bit of said fridge horror. That, and it's a Prison Episode rife with disturbing elements like sadistic teddy bears and cymbal banging monkeys. Considering the time gap in between each movie's theatrical release, this seems somewhat appropriate. It's almost as if Pixar directed the film at an older audience who grew up on the older films. The way Toy Story 3 ended, it felt like Pixar wanted to give the now Teen/Young Adult audience of the first movie some closure on the series they came to love when they were kids.
  • Before Toy Story 3, there was The Incredibles, with gun violence, Electric Torture, suicide attempts, large-scale destruction, bad guys who Would Hurt a Child, and "good guys" who run from the police and lie to their own families, all in the same film. Brad Bird's history of working on The Simpsons really comes through in the style and tone of The Incredibles.

"Really, really little kids should not see this movie. They should wait till they get older. We're getting some reactions from people who were disappointed that their 4-year old was a little freaked out by it. Well, I don't want to compromise the intensity in order to please a 4-year old."

• • Pixar's twelfth film Brave is said to be darker than the previous Pixar entries.
• As for the Disney Animated Canon, The Black Cauldron and The Hunchback of Notre Dame are considered to be among Disney's darkest.
  • The Black Cauldron was known for its use of darker fantasy concepts, such as the undead, and was the first Disney Animated Canon movie to get a PG rating.
  • Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, despite getting a G rating, may very well be the darkest movie of the Disney Animated Canon. The whole story is driven by the villain's sexual obsession with one of the female protagonists, and a number of darker themes - including lust and religious fanaticism - are shown. Well, you can watch the first five and a half minutes of it and see for yourself. It's still Lighter and Softer than the original book by far, though.
  • While not as extreme as the above, The Lion King is considered darker than most Disney movies; it involved the villain successfully killing one of the good guys for real, and clearly subverted Never Say "Die". It also dealt rather bluntly with issues like mass starvation. Roger Ebert notably stated that Lion King "is surprisingly solemn in its subject matter, and may even be too intense for very young children."
    • Even in comparison to the first movie, the sequel is perhaps even darker. Its Villain Song is considered much more intense than that of the first, subjects like child abuse and war are dealt with much more bluntly, and the violence is both heavier and more frequent.
• How to Train Your Dragon wasn't that dark or edgy, but it was more serious compared to DreamWorks' other animated films. And it's still Darker and Edgier compared to the book it was based on.
• The 2009 made-for-DVD animated film Wonder Woman takes this approach. Wonder Woman is shown killing on numerous occasions, including cold-bloodedly killing several guards (including two who have their throats cut by her tiara). The film also ramps up the sexual innuendo.
• The G.I. Joe animated film G.I. Joe: Resolute predated the live-action G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra in depicting the Joes as actually hitting and killing enemy soldiers, something that was rather glossed over in the classic TV series.
• Kung Fu Panda 2 is significantly darker than the first film. Multiple characters are Killed Off for Real on screen, (though we don't see their bodies) and the Never Say "Die" rule is broke a LOT, to where it seems like "death", "dead", and "kill" are used every other sentence. The villain wants to take over all of China with giant cannons that are seemingly unstoppable and really are used to kill.
  • The repressed memories of Po's traumatizing childhood.
  • How much darker it is than the first film is debatable. It's still quite kid-friendly, and while there is more action, it's justified due to the villain having an army with him, and at least most of it is just as mild as anything in the first one. On top of that, "kill" and "dead" were already used relatively normally in the first one, and Tai Lung was considered pretty scary, even to some of the adults. If there's anything darker about this installment, it's some of the underlying themes and the status of the villain. Other than that, there's still quite a bit of comedy mixed in with the action, and most of the deaths that are in it are offscreen.
• Transformers: The Movie compared to most of the rest of the series, the original series occasionally took a darker turn but everything usually turned out fine in the end, but in the movie the vast majority of the original Autobots are killed within the first 20 minutes in increasingly gruesome manners Optimus Prime included, later the surviving Autobots (mostly newer characters) band together to save the world from Unicron, a planet eating Transformer, while having to avoid Galvatron, the rebuilt Megatron.
• Digimon X Evolution. When Digimon die, they actually leave their corpses behind, the hero has an attack called "All Delete", and previous heroes are ruthless killers.