Highlights
- Disney shorts, like Runaway Brain, are typically light-hearted and funny, but some can take a dark and creepy turn.
- The evil Mickey Mouse in Runaway Brain is unsettling because Mickey is supposed to represent magic and happiness, so seeing him with an evil look is jarring.
- The transformation of Mickey into an evil version with dark circles, pointy teeth, and snarls makes it scary, especially since it’s new territory for Disney.
While Disney is probably most known for their feature-length animated features, they also have a wide range of shorts in their catalog as well. Many of these shorts were intended to be played right before the newest animated movie, though the subject matter often didn’t relate to the feature itself. Most of the time, these shorts were funny, silly, and even heart-warming, and are light watches that just act as a small bite of entertainment. However, it turns out that some of these shorts are darker than others.
Runaway Brain is one such short, as it takes a surprisingly dark and creepy turn that most audiences wouldn’t be expecting out of a Disney short, particularly one starring Mickey Mouse. This short starts out pretty lightly, but then it adds elements that might make someone wonder if it was actually intended for a young audience. So what is it exactly about Runaway Brain and its evil take on Mickey Mouse that makes it so scary?
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What Is Runaway Brain About?
Runaway Brain opens on Mickey Mouse engrossed in a video game – a Disney parody of Mortal Kombat, to be more specific. He’s so obsessed with the game that he fails to realize that it’s his and Minnie’s anniversary, which makes Minnie angry. Mickey sees an ad in the paper for a mini golf course and has the idea to take her there, but when he shows her the paper, she looks at the wrong ad and instead thinks he’s saying he’ll take her on a trip to Hawaii. Mickey panics when he sees that said trip costs $999.99, wondering how he’ll be able to afford it, until he sees a want ad in the same paper for a Dr. Frankenollie who’s paying the exact amount of money he needs for “a mindless day’s work”.
When Mickey arrives at Dr. Frankenollie’s, he quickly finds that the “work” isn’t quite what he was expecting, as Frankenollie plans to switch Mickey’s brain with that of his giant monster, Julius. The experiment works, as Mickey ends up in control of Julius’ body, while Julius now has control of Mickey’s. Julius’s brain being in Mickey’s body has turned him into a much more feral-looking version of the character who acts animalistic and evil. Julius pulls out Mickey’s wallet and catches a glimpse of Minnie, who he instantly becomes obsessed with.
He runs from the laboratory and finds Minnie out shopping. She mistakes him for Mickey, of course, until Mickey in Julius’s body saves her, having to convince her of who he actually is. Mickey and Julius duke it out until they end up being electrocuted by a telephone wire, the electricity causing them to switch brains again. Mickey finally retrains Julius, defeating him, and Mickey and Minnie decide to travel to Hawaii on an inflatable boat, towed by Julius.
What Makes The Evil Mickey Mouse So Scary?
So obviously, the evil, Julius-brained version of Mickey is the part of the short that is the most jarring to watch. But why does this transformation cause such unease? The main reason is because, as the tentpole character of Disney, Mickey Mouse is supposed to represent magic, happiness, and all things good. He’s the hero of his stories, and is the character most familiar to the audience that they know they’re supposed to root for. So when he’s put into this position where he has an evil look to him, it can be incredibly unsettling.
Mickey himself is normally a pretty cute character, just a cartoon version of a mouse. However, the evil Mickey Mouse has dark circles around his eyes, pointy teeth, fur standing on end, and snarls like an animal, only speaking a few words with the limited capacity that Julius’s brain has. It’s such a contrast from what Mickey is normally like that it makes the transformation pretty scary. The short originally had even darker elements than what appears in the final cut, but the animators were told to take them out because they were too much (for example, Evil Mickey drooled over Minnie a lot more, and the electrocution scenes were more graphic). Having a Disney short where Mickey (or, at least, the body of Mickey) is the villain is entirely new territory.
Runaway Brain is now quite hard to find, despite the fact that it was nominated for an Oscar and is regarded as one of the more interesting and innovative Disney shorts. However, perhaps that’s not a huge surprise, considering that it’s such a dark turn for the character of Mickey that perhaps Disney would want to keep it under wraps as much as possible to protect his image. The image of an almost zombie-like evil Mickey Mouse is an incredibly jarring sight, despite how good the short itself is. If Disney ever wants to go in a different, darker direction, they should definitely consider pulling this one out of the vault.
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