Environmental & Life Lessons Found in Family Movie Night: FernGully: The Last Rainforest & Over the Hedge
Jan 16
10 min read
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Lessons of Coming Together for Change, Believing in Yourself and Keeping our Animals Wild
Edition 1 from the Collection: Environmental & Life Lessons Found
in Family Movie Night
Tonight we are featuring two classics from two different time periods! FernGully: The Last Rainforest and Over the Hedge! Learn about the environmental lessons that can be taken away from these timeless tales! Enjoy!
FernGully: The Last RainForest:
believe in yourself, make the connection to nature, come together in strength to bring about change, and respect our animals
I enjoyed this movie because it’s shows the interconnectedness of life with alot of great points to draw from, as well as reminded me of the animation I remember watching as a kid!
This is a story about a young man named Zak working as a logger who gets turned into a fairy, by Crysta, another fairy living in the forest and learns the harm his human ignorance is causing to the environment. This causes change within him and a fight to change a fate he’s a part of causing. Join along to see what I took away from FernGully: The Last Rainforest!
This movie touches on some really great fundamentals regarding the natural laws of life and living in peace with nature. Nearly right off the bat (no pun intended) this film started off with a stern message from Batty the lab bat escapee, played by none other than the late great Robin Williams, about animal testing and its horrible cruelty.
The scene certainly struck a grim seriousness in its message — maybe not to a child's eyes but to me it depicted the cold truth and darkness of this practice. Now the wires shown coming out of Battys head could lend credence to other nefarious behaviors but we may just be getting into conspiracy theory stuff here so we’ll save that for X!
I’ll say it was a great way to grab the audiences attention, at any age, but more importantly it was a job well done by the writers to bring awareness to this issue we still face well over 3 decades later.
Another beautifully done element to this animated film was the backdrop of a very biodiverse forest, showcasing lots of different animals living with the land. The characters in this story as you know are fairies, these are beings that watch over our plant & animal souls, which was on display throughout the whole adventure. But something Magi said, Crystas grandmother and the almighty fairy of the tale, stuck with me.
When the loggers came to cut down FernGully, Crysta asked if Magi could heal the fallen trees. She told her she couldn’t because the destruction was not natural. And it got me thinking, the more man-made our mess becomes, the harder it gets to clean it up — some good words to ponder anway …
As fairies are one with the forest, they can feel its pain and when the unknowing comes in and does damage, there's a ripple effect in nature which causes harm to more than just one thing.
When Zak and Crysta were out exploring, he did a bone headed thing and carved her name into a tree, trying to be cute of course. She became genuinely sad and even said “he doesn’t understand” as she was brought to tears.
That was one of the most relatable things in the whole movie for me because she’s right, people don’t understand and it’s literally destroying our planet!! Yes, there are things at a higher level that could be done too but it doesn’t need to start at the top. You have the power. We all have the power!
That is why I am so excited an honored to be a part of what we are doing at Restored Lands! Bringing awareness and knowledge to the people is first and foremost in making a connection that is necessary to bring about change. We are fully committed to cultivating that connection that will change our relationship with Gaia (Earth) forever.
Coming together in strength is imperative to create change and it arguably cannot be done naturally without the support from others. The finale of this movie shows how the idea and action of just 1 can culminate into the action and success of everybody.
When Crystas world was facing imminent defeat, she had to look inside herself and trust herself that she could do this. She had the belief in herself and what followed was the full backing from the rest of the forest and its creatures.
Sometimes the first step is the hardest, but when it comes to putting the power within yourself to become who you are destined to be, there is no greater reward than discovering the real, full you. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t take work, determination and belief — that it does — but it’s nothing we cannot take on and come out the other end victorious! Believe in yourself and always do the best you can do, you may be surprised at who you find looking back in the mirror someday.
This film also sheds light on growing a conscious towards our environments beauty & importance; this was Zak's job for us. His character, like many people today is one of a rather clueless cat — environmentally speaking — until he meets Crysta. Crysta helps him create his own connection to FernGully and through that he becomes more aware of his negligence and starts to makes a difference, perhaps the biggest action of the movie. This shows the impact just one person can have when they care for our planet.
It causes a ripple, then a wave and then a whole new ocean.
Don’t be afraid to be that voice that no one is hearing and stand up for what is right for the future of our planet & our people.
“We are all one, yet We are all the very nature we neglect.“
-unknown
With that said I think it's important to elaborate on the fact that ALL logging is not bad. It is in fact a needed environmental effort, however, it needs to be done intelligently. Logging is just as important as pruning your plants or thinning your garden. It is basically a haircut for planet Earth and it’s incredibly necessary for the well-being of our planet, and the safety of the people that reside around forested areas.
As we do have another edition in this blog collection featuring a second deforestation movie, I won’t give you the whole ball of wax here so stay posted for more on this — and if you can’t wait, good. Go do some research, grow your knowledge and maybe see how you can make an impact.
When we cut old forests, we make room for new life to emerge and gather resources for the current way of human life.
For example, where I live in the Rockies, when a pine forest is logged, avalanched or burned down there becomes a whole new canvas for life to paint its picture. Aspens are generally the first trees to come to the forests aid and once they do for the first one to 200 years this grove will grow and provide food to the forest critters, even year-round. Aspen groves provide up to 10 times as much foraging opportunities for the wildlife than a pine forest does due to its vegetation on the ground.
Next time you’re in the mountains and see aspen trees, check out the forest floor and then compare that to a pine forest maybe a little higher in elevation, you will notice a stark difference in the chance for feeding. So aspens groves definetly have their place & serve great purpose; there's always a silver lining in mother natures playbook!
In the meantime, this can last anywhere from 100 to 1000 years before the pine forest begins to take over and oust the aspens. The pines grow much taller and steal all of the sunlight from the aspen trees basically cutting off their circulation for growth and ending their reign.
However, the aspen trees are very resilient with the power to cure pain, stop forest fires, prevent sunburn and are identified as the second largest organism on planet earth. Aspens are here for the long-haul!
To finish this one off, I have some super exciting news for FernGully fans! It’s been announced FernGully has future plans for a new movie and TV universe with both animated and live-action films! Woahhh!! This is awesome! Are we talking Marvel level production or what?! Get ready to enjoy your fill of FernGully!
This goes to show they are trying to keep these themes alive with the younger generation so we can foster the continuation down a positive path. You may not notice but it’s things like this that impact the mass consciousness and consciousness is the most powerful thing of all. What we think about, we bring about.
"This movie was dedicated for our children and our children’s children”
-FernGully
Over the Hedge:
the ramifications of feeding wildlife, the residual effects of urbanization, humility, greed & love
Ahhh Over the Hedge, one of my all time childhood favorites! I’m going to assume we’ve all seen this classic so I’ll jump right into it!
I think this movie does a good job showing that when wild animals learn of human food and how to get it, they can never have enough.
When wild animals find out where the peoples food supply is, or even worse people start feeding them, they get overly dependent on that food source and it can lead to all kinds of problems for them, even jeopardizing their lives!
First off, animals are not meant to eat the food we eat, heck we aren’t even meant to eat the food we eat, so introducing this diet can cause much more than just a full belly for them. Second, replacing the need for a wild animal to hunt its own food, reduces its ability to continue doing so. They get reliant on being fed and it can get so bad where they won’t even try to fend for themselves anymore. When that happens and the feeding stops, obviously they will not live as long as they naturally could and in that case we basically will have had a direct hand in its devolution. Which is very uncool, dude.
Unfortunately for someone like the bear, if they get too used to coming into campgrounds or public spaces for food, their chances of turning aggresive rise and they now put the people at risk . Even though it’s more than likely the people are the ones who are at fault for these occurrences, we still take precedence over the animals in the eyes of the law and if something like an attack happens or it becomes a real nuisance, the bear is killed. While this is a last resort, this is a real possibility.
Why can’t they be relocated? Well, next to scaring the bear off, normally that’s the initial response and they are taken elsewhere. However, the reality is that these bears now have a predisposition to behave this way and can no longer function properly in order to live in the wild.
So it is very important to let the animals be wild and keep from feeding them your snacks or your TRASH.
Some bears like the ones in Tahoe are smarter than the average bear and those are ones you need to be extra cautious around. If not, before you know it they’ll be rummaging through your car all night looking for half a jar of Nutella while you sleep!
Don’t ask me how I know …
There are some other good points this movie makes but it’s a little more on the side of entertainment in comparison to the others on my list — which is still super fun and I fully support enjoying this movie with the fam!
Urbanization and need I say over consumption is pretty much the canvas for this film, with tons of traditional, unsustainable tract homes stealing the whole forest from our gang of critters and their inhabitants harboring enough food to stock a mini-mart.
This movie also shows the general human reaction as well as the extreme lengths one may go to when encountering these “pests” in the neighborhood: being mean or cruel in our excitement, fear or need for control. We need to remember though, before this was suburbia, it was lush trees and vegetation so we are technically visitors in their home.
The intricacies of being kind to life outside of you may begin with squashing the fear of it inside of you …
Another thing that stuck out to me was the groups gravitation towards RJ, the raccoon mastermind. Even through all the welcoming and care from his new friends, he stuck to his guns of using these good folks to steal food and busting out of there without a blink. I mean at the rate they were going they could have stolen that food 10x over before next winter so he should have just been honest with the group. Vern even said, if he just told them the truth they would’ve helped him. After all, they’re family.
There’s a lesson of humility through greed, as well as one of love here. It shows there’s no greater good in being so self serving and it’s okay to accept that you can rely on other people so you don’t have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. Also the power of family love runs as deep as it gets.
Much Love and thank you for reading, happy movie night!!
Did you enjoy this blog? What're some of your favorite movies with environmental lessons? Let us know in the comments section!
Fix up a fun popcorn mix!
fix up some popcorn for the movie tonight, enjoy these fun recipes from maple bacon to buffalo and blue cheese popcorn!
Links:
The Remaking of FernGully and expanding its movie & TV Universe
I Didn't Know That!: Don't Feed Wildlife by the National Park Service
For the esoteric types, learn more about real fairies
Geoship: sustainable geodesic homes
CPW Relocates Huge Bear before Hibernation Season
Relocated Bear Comes Right on Back
Watch this bear ignore everybody as he opens doors & rifles through a car
Man in Yellowstone Narrowly Escapes Bison Attack
