Wolf Center says new Liam Neeson film full of 'scat'

Posted at 10:45 AM on February 2, 2012 by Dan Kraker (11 Comments)
Filed under: Around MN, Arrowhead, Environment, Outdoors

Liam Neeson prepares to fight off wild wolves in a scene from "The Grey." (Photo courtesy Open Road Films via AP)

"The Grey" is the new thriller starring Liam Neeson, who leads a stranded group of oil-rig roughnecks to safety in the remote Alaskan wilderness while being stalked by a vicious pack of rogue wolves.

The film is doing quite well in theaters, taking in nearly $20 million through this past weekend.

But the International Wolf Center in Ely isn't thrilled with the action flick. In the Center's blog Wild Bytes, Jo Tubbs, the International Wolf Center's board chair, calls the movie "dark, depressing, and as accurate a portrayal of wolf behavior as King Kong was about gorillas."

The Center is nominating The Grey for its first ever Scat Award, in the Scare Tactics and Silly Information categories. The educational center's main complaint, according to Tubbs, is that wolves in the movie are portrayed as killers, "when the incidence of wolves killing humans in North America is so rare as to garner huge headlines."

She says only two cases have been documented--a 2005 killing by wolves in Saskatchewan, and a 2010 death near Chignik Lake, Alaska.

There are now about 3,000 wolves in Minnesota. The state's Department of Natural Resources took over management of the wolves last Friday after wolves in the Great Lakes region were removed from Endangered Species list.

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Comments (11)

As a educator I am increasingly alarmed at the misinformation dumped on us by Hollywood and TV, especially as it related to the portrayal of the natural world! Young people need to learn about nature and are increasingly growing up without that knowledge, which is bad enough, without having to wade through the distorted ideas they are constantly receiving from media where blood. violence and sickness are presented everyday as commonplace. The media needs to find an ethical footing that is not related to profit.

Posted by Steve | February 2, 2012 3:06 PM

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All of us Minnesotans consider ourselves wolf savvy just because we live here. The old standby: wolves kill the old and crippled herd members. Bull! They kill to kill. 50 sheep in one night in mid-Minnesota a few years ago. Throats tore out and left to rot. Deer carcases in northern Minnesota. Hamstrung, throats slashed and just the nose eaten. And they never returned to the carcases. Fact. Wolves are not something to stand in awe of. They say they have their place in the environment, but so do mosquitos and woodticks. Now, for the movie "The Grey".......my gosh, it's just a movie. Do you think Stallone and Schwartzenegger are portrayed true to life? Sit back, enjoy the show, and don't be so silly.

Posted by Brad | February 2, 2012 3:59 PM

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Come on... Its a movie... Entertainment... We could pic apart any movie that comes out of hollywood, even the one they say are based on true stories. The bottom line is they are fake and should be treated that way. Please use this public news service as that NEWS. Not a movie review service.

Posted by Brandon | February 2, 2012 5:16 PM

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Well, I'm an educator too, and have to answer questions about the movie 2012: "Are they going to keep making calendars after that?" They watch movies and think they are real! So, the blatant inaccuracies of "The Grey" sound too familiar; one more myth I have to dispel in time for standardized testing...

Posted by Christopher Nelson | February 2, 2012 7:19 PM

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Brad--I would be interested in a citation on the sheep killed. Can you help with that?

Posted by Eric | February 3, 2012 6:25 AM

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Yes, I never heard the story of the Big Bad Wolf and the 50 sheep with the throats "tore" out, either.

Where? When? Link?

Posted by Denny | February 3, 2012 8:32 AM

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"the incidence of wolves killing humans in North America is so rare as to garner huge headlines....only two cases have been documented--a 2005 killing by wolves in Saskatchewan, and a 2010 death near Chignik Lake, Alaska"

Yeah right, not to mention the 39 other attacks in Alaska alone that involved injury but not death.
http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/home/library/pdfs/wildlife/research_pdfs/techb13_full.pdf

You can keep peddling this Walt Disney crap all you want but the fact is that wolves terrorized the populations of Eurasia for centuries until firearms became advanced enough to control their numbers. The only reason North American wolves aren't as feared is that we had guns by the time we settled here, and as people moved in, the wolves were almost wiped out.

Then ecologists decided wolves should be protected. As the North American wolf population approaches 100,000 and people move into the wild, there will be more encounters, and deaths will be less rare. In 2000 we had the Icy Bay attack in Alaska where a six year old was bitten repeatedly. It's no surprise that the two documented deadly wolf attacks happened after that.

You can say that the encounter depicted in The Gray is fanciful or improbable, but it is certainly not impossible. References to King Kong reflect the irresponsible wishful thinking of wolf worshipers.

Posted by Montesa_VR | February 3, 2012 9:59 AM

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Yes, wolves are dangerous, but did you read the article you posted about human-wolf interactions in Alaska and Canada?

In almost all the cases not involving rabid wolves, the wolves were reacting to human behavior because the wolf had been habituated to humans. The 6 year old who was attacked was sleeping outside, not in a tent (no humans were bitten while sleeping when inside a tent according to that article), in an area where wolf presence is known and the wolf was not displaying attack behavior when the child was bitten.

But I guess now humans have guns, so we have a right to kill all the wolves instead of keeping our distance and having respect for wolf behavior.

Posted by Mallory | February 5, 2012 3:15 PM

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Look, although we know that wolf attacks can occur here on this continent, it is true that the number of documented cases is extremely low. Way more people die of bees in Minnesota then by wolves. Still, North American incidences of wolf attacks and wolf kills are rarer than in Asia or (potentially) Europe. But the idea that this trend exists because we use more guns is preposterous. The reason is likely because the landscape in North America had not been developed in the same way that European and western Asian landscapes were, and therefore wolves have historically had less of a reason (the presence of garbage and livesotck) to hang around people here than across the ocean. Native Americans did not have guns prior to Europeans and very few native American traditions depict wolves as violent man-eating wolves, meaning wolf attacks have probably always been rare here.

Secondly, although this is just a movie, there is good evidence that this kind of media does have major impacts on our society. Hollywood flicks exploit fear and stir our emotions in ways that we really don't have a whole lot of control over. The stories that we take pleasure in reflect and encourage our societies increasingly violent tendencies.

Posted by Jacob Johnson | February 6, 2012 12:31 PM

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I've run into several wolves up here in northern Minnesota, last summer I happened upon a small pack of 5 while heading down a seldom used path to a remote lake. I was all alone in the woods with no gun and not one of these 5 wolves made a step in my direction. As a BWCA outfitter one of the most common questions our guests ask me is "what do I need to protect myself from wolves." I tell them all the same thing--a lack of fear. If you act like a prey you look like a prey. Wolves are potentially dangerous, but only in extremely rare and usually preventable circumstances.
However from 2005-2011 there have been 190 people killed by their pet dogs. Food for thought.

Posted by Benjamin | February 13, 2012 1:52 PM

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I was Eatn by a wolf once

Posted by scarecrow | March 27, 2012 1:07 AM

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