How many kids first learned about death because of Bambi? Five decades before King Mufasa lectured Simba on the Circle of Life, Disney animators painted this quiet tableaux vivant of birth, life, and death centered on the childhood of a woodland deer, his doting mother, absentee father, and friends Thumper the Rabbit and Flower the Skunk. Bambi also marked the first time Disney employed its famous multi-plane camera, which breaths 3-D depth into hand-drawn images. But, let's face it, this movie will be forever known for the death of Bambi’s mother at the rifle-wielding hands of Man, a moment of primal trauma that began the enduring trend of dead moms in animated movies. —Christian Blauvelt