Watership Down · reception & legacy
1978 · Martin Rosen
How Watership Down has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A genuine hit in Britain in 1978 — and a chart-topping soundtrack single to boot — it spent decades filed under 'the cartoon that traumatized a generation' before being reclaimed as a masterpiece of British animation, unsoftened and all the better for it.
What's debated
The forever-debate: is it a children's film at all — and was that infamous UK 'U' certificate (finally bumped to PG in 2022) the most misleading rating ever issued?
Its footprint
Art Garfunkel's 'Bright Eyes' became the UK's best-selling single of 1979, and the film is a byword for 'cute bunny movie' bait-and-switch — complaints still rolled in when it aired on Easter Sunday in 2016. Donnie Darko pays it homage in the classroom.
Where it stands
A rite-of-passage cult classic — the 'you watched it too young and never forgot it' entry in the animation canon.