Beautiful, good story - but why all the violence?

Rating: 9/10 (24 November 2003)

This is clearly a great film, beautiful images, good story, and as often with Disney it can be taken in at many levels and so can satisfy children as well as adult audiences.
(WARNING: SPOILERS ahead)

But now, if I may, two questions: - why all the violence? Nemo's mother gets killed/eaten by a Barracuda and the scene is violent and close-up. Then the sharks are close-up though not violent - until one smells blood and turns back into a killing machine, with a chase that's not far behind some of the chases in "Alien" as the sharks tries to explode metal doors, gets a torpedo to be shot, not to mention all the submarine explosions that ensue. Still later on we have the whale - it is a friendly whale by between its huge cavernous voice, its dark and noisy insides, its terrible tongue, it is not made to appear very friendly. And of course there is the best of all, the encounter deep into the sea with one of those monster-fish that lurk in the abyss, true to its real-life form but nevertheless very scary, again a close-up of course, and again pretty close to some of the worst "Alien" chases. What's the deal here, to prepare young children to watch gore movies by the time they're 10? - why so many orphans in Disney films? I mean, sure, it is great if an orphan can still make it. But why can't we apparently have ANY films from Disney with a normally functioning family? What is the message here, than families with two parents are bad?
So my conclusion: high-quality film, but why don't Disney / Pixar consider next time to include NOT SO MUCH VIOLENCE, and consider to have a history where the child hero will have BOTH PARENTS?