10 best animated films from the Disney Renaissance

6. Pocahontas

Pocahontas is one of Disney’s most controversial films mainly due to the fact that it’s based on a real person, yet completely changes most of the facts of her life. The storytellers at Disney took one part of Pocahontas’s life, where she saved John Smith, and made it into the whole movie. Even making them fall in love when that was not the case.

Changing history is nothing new for works of fiction, but because it was done to a Native American woman, a group of people who have been tortured and killed at the hands of the settlers, it looks incredibly offensive. It is!

The film follows Pocahontas, the Chief’s daughter. When we first met her, she is restless and looking for any kind of adventure. But her father wants her to marry and to a man she does not have feelings for. What they both don’t know is that people are coming to their land and will change their lives forever.

While walking through the forest, Pocahontas comes across John Smith. He is suspicious of her at first, but once they start speaking, they realize they have more in common than they once thought. The problem is that John’s shipmates and Pocahontas’s tribe do not share their open-mindedness.

They fight against each other, one of John’s friends kills one of Pocahontas’s tribe, and things get heated. When John is captured by her people, Pocahontas saves him from being killed, stepping in the way before her father can hurt him.

The film ends with John Smith getting hurt and leaving to go back to Europe, and Pocahontas staying with her people. Disney has not made a remake of this film, and it doesn’t look like it plans to anytime soon. Considering how wrong it went the first time, it’s probably for the best.