Disney’s heartbreaking new short film earns its content warning

The content warnings Disney puts in front of its streaming content have drawn controversy in the past, for everything from the exact wording of warnings to what does or doesn’t get an alert. But Disney Plus’ new animated short, Versa, fully earns the “sensitive content involving loss and grief” warning that precedes it. The short, about two cosmic beings mourning after their child dies in utero, is emotionally intense and built around heartbreak. It’s a particularly personal project for writer-director Malcon Pierce, who explains in a live-action prologue that he wrote the short after he and his wife similarly lost a child due to a complication with her pregnancy.

In the wordless short, two giant glowing beings, a male-and-female couple who treat planets like playthings and galaxies like rooms in their cosmic house, are about to have a child. The woman is heavily pregnant, with a glow in her midsection indicating the child’s life. But when that light winks out, the couple have to navigate their sorrow, separately and together.

Pierce conveys their emotions by having them dance together, in balletic sequences where the galactic clouds spin and puff up around their feet. Their grief goes through clear stages, as they mourn together, then separately, with the woman hovering over their empty cradle, while the man flees it, and her. Both entities crack and fracture, but eventually mend, with gold lines where the cracks used to be — a reference to the Japanese art of kintsugi, where broken pottery is replaced with gold, emphasizing and embracing the cracks rather than trying to hide them.

The vivid colors and equally vivid emotions of this short make it visually beautiful, but viewers’ responses will be highly personalized based on how they feel about child loss and the mourning process. Everyone grieves in different ways and at different rates, and a child’s death is such a deeply personal experience that some people will likely see this short as cathartic or comforting, while others find it glib or offensive, especially when the grieving couple have another child and move on with their lives. It’s dangerous, volatile subject matter for Disney to explore, and it required someone who went through this particular experience himself, and is communicating his own emotions from the heart.

For adult fans of animation, Versa is well worth watching, but take that content warning seriously.