Runaway is a 2009 animated short film (9 minutes) by Cordell Barker. It was produced by the National Film Board of Canada.
A train runs into a cow on the tracks; with the captain nowhere to be found, the fireman is forced to desperately improvise in order to keep the train going.
The NFB has it up on their YouTube channel. See it here
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Tropes:
- Aristocrats Are Evil: The rich passengers pay the poor passengers to give up all their belongings as fuel to stoke the engine and keep the train from falling off the broken bridge. And how do they repay them? By detaching their car and letting them slide down the cliff. And taking the money back while they're at it.
- Asshole Victim: The Captain and the rich passengers all die when the train crashes. Although the Captain dies when he accidentally falls into the furnace when the train tips over on the tracks.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: The lady is the only rich passenger who is not obsessed with greed and she falls in love with the fireman. She is also very beautiful.
- Billions of Buttons: The engine has thousands of levers and dials, as can be seen in the page image. It makes it that much harder for the fireman to take back control of the train.
- Black Comedy Burst: The scene where the Fireman is throwing everything in the furnace, including furniture and clothes from the passengers, also includes him throwing a baby in the furnace.
- Downer Ending: Played for Laughs Everyone on the train, with the exception of the cow and the dog, ends up dying when the train crashes.
- Effortless Amazonian Lift: When the Rich Lady's dog bites the Captain, the Rich Lady lifts up the Captain and carries him to the other cart to tend to his injury.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: Every character, except the dog and the cow, all die in the ending when the train crashes.
- Laughing Mad: Most of the Captain's dialogue has him constantly laughing between sentences or laughing for long periods of time.
- Mister Muffykins: The Rich Lady's dog is a yappy, annoying little thing. It biting the Captain is what sets the plot in motion.
- Only Sane Man: The Fireman is the only person who is aware of the train going out of control and he's the only one who's trying to prevent the train from crashing. The rich lady is also this to a lesser extent.
- Rail-Car Separation: First the caboose breaks away, taking all the engineers except the captain and the fireman with it. Then, after the car with the poor people is stripped bare to provide fuel for the engine, the rich detach it, leaving the poor passengers to their fate.
- Runaway Train: The train running into a cow causes it to go out of control, with the fireman desperately trying to stop it — and then try to get it running before it rolls back down a gorge.
