Jolt Country

The hardest part about turning novels into films is that directors have to figure out a way to deal with characters' inner thoughts and monologues. In a novel, it's no big deal for a character to spend a few pages mulling over the pros and cons of making a decision. Save for a voice over you can't really do that in a film, which means that scene gets turned into dialog (which usually involves characters explaining things they should both already know to one another), cut down to about three seconds, or simply removed.

All those problems are multiplied when the main character is an animal, even moreso when the animal is supposed to be realistic. The protagonist of Call of the Wild is really Buck the Dog, not any of the humans he interacts with.

For anyone who didn't read the book in high school, Call of the Wild follows Buck (a German Shephard/Collie mix) through several phases. He starts off as a pet before becoming a sled dog and eventually ends up as John (Harrison Ford) Thornton's companion as the two of them head north to collectively find themselves. Through each part of his journey, Buck finds himself being drawn to his ancestors (wolves).

On the Monsters, Inc. DVD there's a "making of" featurette that goes into great detail about how many hairs Sully has. It's one million. He has one million hairs. They go on, and on, and on about it. "Two years go, we could have only done a hundred thousand hairs, but now... man, one million!" Man were they proud of those blue hairs.

Of course Sully was a cartoon monster. Go watch Polar Express or that Final Fantasy movie and you'll see the problem. CGI doesn't look real, and even when it looks almost real, it still doesn't look 100% real. And Buck, in Call of the Wild, doesn't look 100% real. He looks 99.99% real, but it's just off enough that every time Harrison Ford leans over to pet him you have to wonder if he was just petting air.

One of Buck's former owners comes looking for him, and soon it's a showdown between the two humans while Buck is off literally chasing some tail. The book is a classic, but whether or not you love the movie depends on how vested you are in an almost real dog. Watch it with a kid and tell them how many more hairs Buck has than Sully, that'll impress 'em.

Call of the Wild is supposed to have a kid in it or at least a young adult, not a geezer who is too old for even Star Wars, that's why this failed badly. Its better to watch the version with the silver spoons kid. Even better is to get an anthology of Jack London's short stories, so much better than the well known Call of the Wild. London was an incredibly prolific writer and my favorite part is how he observes humanity, not just the kid and dog relationship.

Ihat moment I realized the old grizzly white-haired man used to be Han Solo was a real gut punch.

So how do they communicate the dog's inner monologues?

THE
ARF ARF BALLOON
AARDVARK

So in the scene where Buck is about to become a sled dog, the two sled dog owners have a long conversation where one says "that dog will never be a leader!" and the other says "no, you can tell he will be," and then one of the guys explains the entire plot to the dog and person two says, "you know he can't understand you, right?" So it's a lot of that. Also, in the scene where the alpha dog takes on Buck out in the snow, the movie's just five minutes of no dialog.

This is a fucken dog talk flick??

Flack wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 6:13 pm So in the scene where Buck is about to become a sled dog, the two sled dog owners have a long conversation where one says "that dog will never be a leader!" and the other says "no, you can tell he will be," and then one of the guys explains the entire plot to the dog and person two says, "you know he can't understand you, right?" So it's a lot of that. Also, in the scene where the alpha dog takes on Buck out in the snow, the movie's just five minutes of no dialog.

If you want a good "old man and dog sled" movie, try last year's "Togo" with Willem Dafoe.

Also Air Bud

My dad got my into reading Jack London when I was about 11. We went to see White Fang when it first came out. No way in hell we would pay to see this.

The best piece of schaudenfreude in the book is when two men and a woman have several dogs including Buck on an overloaded sled, and the woman is riding on the middle of the sled in front of the driver (a big no-no, dogs can't pull two people) and the other man is whipping the dogs to get them to move.

Disgusted by this, John Thorton grabs the man's arm, and says, "If you whip that dog again, I'll kill you." He then unhooks Buck, and takes him for his own (properly organized) sled.

The two men and woman, ignoring warnings about what not to do, get about 100 yards up the trail before the ice cracks (from an overloaded sled) and the three of them, their packs, sleds and dogs, all disappear into the arctic-temperature water.

Whoever said it, you are right that Buck is the protagonist of the story.

And no, Call of the Wild was not an assigned book, I read it on my own, for pleasure. It was in a big book of Jack London stories, possibly the complete collection. And in those days a professional writer had to be prolific, or they starved. He became the first millionaire author, and very famous.

TV Channel 2, KTVU, in Oakland, California, is located at Jack London Square.

Jesus, dude, how 'bout a spoiler alert??

You weren't ever going to watch it anyway. Well, maybe, but now you won't be shocked at the tragedy. Do you think White Thang would be better with Bruce Willis doing the dog's inner monologue, just like that 'What the Fuck is Talking' movie? You know, the one with the Sally Field cat and the two dogs that go cross country and never shut up, or stop at a White Castle. I think it would be better and I'll never see it.

THE
3X ROADKILL
AARDVARK

hahahaha WHITE THANG