Post
by artymon I\/ » Sun 23rd Feb 2020
The Call of the Wild
I be a simple, shallow fellow. I see Harrison Ford in a movie, I go to movie.
I suppose no one would be overtly surprised if I revealed I never read the book, I read White Fang, which I had loved as a kid when I read it and I definitely noticed similar themes/elements.
Although it was sort of done in reverse. White Fang is the story of a semi feral wolf-dog that starts his story in the Yukon and ends with the titular character finding peace with a family in California. (Think it's Cally anyway..)
Call starts in Cally and ends with the pup being his own master and free in the Yukon.
Now, I know I said I was in this for Harrison, but I absolutely loved the bit where Buck was with Perrault and his sled dog team. You could see Buck could have spent a lifetime there, happily leading his team. You could see it was a Disney-Hercules moment for him; he found a place to belong, to be. Where he was loved and appreciated.
And I freakin' loved Perrault. The man had a gigantic map-diagram drawn up and was briefing his dogs. Going over the course they'd do, what stops they'd make.
Headcanon he and Françoise are related to Roxanne.
However.
The film was not without faults.
I'd be remiss to not go off on a tangent about the most glaring and obnoxious thing I learned about this movie.
THE CGI DOG. WHY. WHY WHY WHY WHY.
Alright, fine. Maybe only Michael Douglas and Paul Rudd can control ants. Maybe it was asking too much to train an army of ants to chase Harrison around in Crystal Skull. I mean, I don't think so, but alright, fine.
But a DOG?! You're telling me, the most easily trainable creature in the world, and you replace it with CGI?!!! Why, huh? Because you 'could'? Oh gee, let's make a movie about a dog but not put a single, real puppy in the movie. No one wants that do they, Carl? "But I've got lead on where we could get a litter of St Bernards that could use a good home..." No one cares, Carl, it's alright, we'll just create our own.
Beyond authenticity, do these film makers accept and realize that by just poof inserting their own fake dog in the film they're stealing jobs from the real dogs?! What's a pup supposed to do to make an honest buck??!
(Fill-In: I see what you did thar)
For real though, I can't stand CGI. I know, I know. It makes everything soooo much easier, that even seasoned directors have hopped onto the bandwagon. Well guess what? Your bandwagon was CGI and you've just fallen on your bum, mate.
It just...doesn't look convincing enough. My brain knows it's fake. And you know what? My brain isn't the smartest. I can admit. But even my simpleton mind can go "Yeaah....no."
Although, I will say, it was quite humorous watching Harrison in interviews describing a man in balls posing as Buck for reference.
Then there was the other issue. What, you're surprised I found something else to pick at? No? Well...good.
They kill him off, man. Why. I don't want to watch that. I don't want to see my hero dying. I know he doesn't really die.....but it's like...he's getting older and it is going to happen sooner or later. I knew this kind of stuff was coming though. Ever since Force Awakens. It was like...you knew he was at an age where he was starting to outlive his characters. In retrospect, Han Solo's death is rather...a romantic send off for the character. Yeah, he dies. But...he knows that it's not in vain. I knew there'd be a pay off, eventually. There's a part of Han that knew he was never leaving that planet. That knew he had to make a sacrifice. And I stand by the "Han shot first" theory, where it's actually Han that activates Kylo Ren's lightsaber and kills himself, sparing his son the sin of patricide. Sparing him from completely turning to the dark side. And in a way, a part of Han still lives in Ben....until they kill him off in Rise.
But anyway, even back then in 2015 I knew we had reached a turning point with Harrison. Now that he had one of his most iconic characters ganked, it was on the table to start regularly killing him off. I just don't like seeing that, man.
☠
