Brave Little Tailor 1938

In medieval Europe, a king seeks a brave warrior to slay the Giant who has been terrorizing his realm. There is much talk in the village, but no one steps forward. While this unfolds, a young peasant tailor, Mickey Mouse, kills seven flies at once while at his work. He unknowingly interrupts a conversation about the giant and brags loudly about his feat, sparking gossip that Mickey has killed seven giants with one blow. The king summons him and asks if he truly killed seven giants with one blow, and Mickey launches into an elaborate retelling of how he killed the seven—flies, not giants as the king believes—which impresses the king enough to appoint him “Royal High Killer of the Giant.” On discovering the misunderstanding, all of Mickey’s confidence disappears, and he stammers his way out of the assignment. The king thinks he is holding out for a bigger payday and offers him increasingly vast riches and then (at her suggestion) the hand of his only daughter, Princess Minnie in marriage if he can kill, or at least subdue, the giant. Smitten with Minnie, Mickey proclaims he’ll “cut the giant down to my size” and sets off. When the gates of the town close behind him, however, his confidence fails him and he wants to turn back, but he sees Minnie and the townspeople cheering him on from the walls and decides to soldier on.

“cut [the giant] down to my size”

“Gosh,” Mickey sighs to himself later, sitting in a field of a deserted countryside wondering how to catch a giant. Just then, the Giant appears, forcing Mickey to scramble for a place to hide as the giant’s feet crush rocks, trees and buildings, and cause nearby animals to flee as he walks, until he stops to sit on a barn. He picks up a cart of pumpkins and eats them, as if they were grapes, with increasing handfuls until he dumps the rest into his mouth. Mickey, hiding in the cart with the pumpkins, keeps himself from being swallowed by clinging to the giant’s uvula, which gives the giant a case of the hiccups. To remedy this, the giant pulls a water well from the ground and drinks from it as though it were a thermos, and Mickey is saved from drowning in the giant’s stomach by getting caught by the well’s bucket. The reprieve is short-lived, however, as the giant almost immediately grabs the haystack in which Mickey seeks refuge and rolls it into a cigarette, and then to light it, lifts off the roof of a nearby house to get its stove so he can use it like a lighter. He then leans on a silo to relax. The smoke makes Mickey sneeze, which finally brings him to the giant’s attention.

The Giant, after getting poked in the nose with a pair of scissors, attempts to squash Mickey, but Mickey binds the giant’s arms with a needle and thread, lassos the giant’s nose, pulls it up and ties it to his hair, preventing him from opening his eyes, before swinging around him and tripping him. The Giant falls down, crushing the ground where he lands and sending a chunk of earth into the air, that falls on his head and knocks him out. After a sigh of relief, Mickey dusts his hands triumphantly.

Following the giant’s defeat, an amusement park is built on the site of the battle. The carnival rides are powered, via a series of belts and gears connected to a windmill, by wind from the snoring giant, who is chained to the ground. The film ends with the king and a newly married Mickey and Minnie enjoying a ride on the carousel.