The treatment of marine life at water parks became a serious hotbed issue with the 2013 documentary, Blackfish. Mind you, the subject was a big deal even before this film. However, the success of the project brought the conversation to the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist. Whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals are frightfully complex creatures. They have social circles, language, and interactive needs. Those aren’t going to be met in captivity. That makes the journey of Keiko all the more horrifying and why they’re the subject of an upcoming documentary.
Free Willy was a Pop Culture Phenomenon
Children of the ’90s know Keiko as the orca from the 1993 film, Free Willy. The movie is kind of a schmaltzy family film about a kid who wants to free a whale from captivity. The whale’s name is Willy, hence, “Free Willy.” The fact that this movie was so successful that it spawned two sequels is a testament to how cheesy the ’90s could be. But the film did draw attention to the actual orca involved named Keiko. He was scouted for filming from an amusement park in Mexico City.
To the credit of the producers and those involved in the film, they all knew that Keiko’s conditions were not good. Warner Bros. themselves who had produced Free Willy started campaigning to get Keiko into a better, healthier environment. This eventually led to a push to try and reintroduce the orca to the wild. Years later, this didn’t end up going very well. Keiko ended up passing away from pneumonia in 2003. The saga that toook place between the start of that campaign and his eventual death is part of the upcoming Netflix documentary.
The Upcoming Documentary
The currently unnamed film includes the description, “What began as a dream shared by millions of children to see him return to the ocean transformed into one of the most ambitious and controversial animal reintroduction experiments in history.” When it comes to any kind of animal reintroduction there are a lot of factors to consider. As tragic as it sounds, sometimes trying to bring a captive animal back to the wild is a terrible decision. Depending on how those animals function, they may not be able to fend for themselves any longer. Additionally, if it’s a social animal it may be shunned from any packs and not integrate into the necessary society it needs to function properly.
This film is likely to be a VERY heavy emotional story, and it’ll be interesting to see if it takes a certain stance, or just objectively portrays what happened. No release date has been offered yet We will provide you with updates in the future. Meanwhile, if there’s a whale heaven, we can only hope that Keiko is swimming freely there.
