Very disturbing scene

I talked about the scene where he falls overboard in my previous discussion I started, but I mostly focused on it from the parents' point of view, and how sad and horrified they must have been. Now I want to focus on it from Fievel's point of view.

I don't really see anybody else mentioning that scene on here, but to me it is very disturbing. Can you imagine how scary that must have been for Fievel? Falling off a ship that big into rough water that must have been thousands of feet deep, in the middle of the night , in the middle of the Atlantic...can you imagine? Not only that, but how cold was the water and long would he be able to swim?

It gives me nightmares thinking of it, and it puts me in tears thinking of Fievel. It is only an animation but still seems so real. After he falls off the boat, they quickly cut away from that scene and show him in a bottle close to shore. I really hope he came upon the bottle very quickly and that the storm ended quickly and that he was only lost at sea for one night.

The director had a lot of guts to show him getting lost in that manner. I thought about this recently. I don't think I would have the guts to put something that disturbing in a children's film, even if the film was for adults only, I still couldn't portray a child character getting lost in that manner. Yes, it shows other near death experiences, like where he almost gets eaten by cats, but those scenes are less relatable for us as humans and instead more cartoony.

What would I have done? I wondered if I would just show him getting lost upon arrival in the city, but that would be less emotional and interesting. Maybe I would show him falling off the ship but taking a life saver tube with him or something similar, so the audience would have the comfort in knowing that he at least had something to float on the entire time, and then I would show him running into a flock of migrating pelicans the next morning , or some other sea bird, while he was still off shore but closer , and they would tell him they are going in the direction of NYC just like he was, and they would pull him along.

My scenario might sound corny, but the way the director jumps from poor Fievel floating out at sea with nothing in the middle of the night, to him floating to shore in a bottle on some following morning, just leaves so many disturbing thoughts in your head. How long before the poor little thing found the bottle? How many days was the poor thing lost at sea? How did he luckily end up at NYC? From the current?

I love this movie and wouldn't change it, but the manner in which he got lost could have been a little less disturbing , but still intriguing and sad enough to keep your interest.