9. Old Yeller

Becoming an adult blows. Previously deep-rooted beliefs in immortality develop into a slowly creeping anxiety heading towards the truth that one day you will be dead in the cold ground; happy endings are replaced with empty grief; and the jolly old people you knew as a kid become senile, melted versions of their previous selves. Life is not a gooey perpetual cycle of building bases and seeing what happens when you poke that with this; it is cruel and hard and people will leave you, dammit. Kids are not supposed to know this, yet at the end of wholesome Disney live action dog-a-thon Old Yeller — when the main protagonist Travis has to shoot his beloved pet in the face in order to take his first steps to manhood and protect the family from rabies — every hideous detail of adulthood was crammed into our tiny little baffled brains, as if Walt had done it himself with a hypodermic needle. Why, Disney?… WHY?!