Monday, January 30, 2012
Movies Spoiler questions, now that we've seen 'The Grey'
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 10:03 AM
1. Why do the survivors leave the crash site? We don't really get an explanation of why the plane filled with oil company roughnecks crashes in the frozen Alaskan tundra. When wolves begin to attack the seven survivors, Liam Neeson's Ottway, the company marksman, insists that they leave the crash site, because it's too exposed. Now, most of what I know about air travel comes from movies and TV, but wouldn't the crash leave air traffic controllers with some kind of data about their locations? Do contemporary planes have the means to automatically transmit distress signals if they go down? Even with snow covering the wreckage, wouldn't a rescue plane have a much easier time spotting the survivors out in the open, especially if they make signal fires. (Plus, landing a rescue craft would be enormously easier.) Ottway asserts that they'd be safer from the wolves in the woods, even though the fuselage offers crude shelter and the wreckage seems to contain jet fuel for fires, and probably has plenty of peanuts and in-flight meals.
2. How did the wolves get to the other side of the river? The survivors' route takes them to the edge of a huge cliff over a river far below, with pine trees on the other side. With no immediate way down, Ottway suggests the cross the chasm with a rope and climb down the trees to the other side of the river, to get away from the wolves. But when the last man to cross breaks the rope, he falls through the branches, hits the ground, and wolves get him almost immediately. Are these different wolves than the ones that have been stalking the heroes? If not, how did they get down ahead of the humans? Did they have their own rope?
3. Does Ottway live at the end? That cool moment from the trailer, with Neeson affixing broken mini-bottles to his fist before facing the alpha wolf, is almost the final shot of the film, and thus kindof a let-down. Instead of a full-on, glass-punching mano-a-lupo brawl, the film shows Ottway brace himself, then a huge shape lurches into frame, and cut to black. When I saw The Grey, I skipped my usual practice of staying through the credits, and regretted it, since there's a stinger at the end, which apparently shows Ottway breathing heavily beside the alpha wolf. I've seen two interpretations of the shot. One thinks it means that Ottway survives, and another found it to be a mirror of an early scene, when Ottway stands respectfully beside a wolf he shot, and that both man and wolf are dying. Either way, given that he's surrounded by wolves at the end, even if he beat the alpha, surely the others would get him in the end.
4. Is Ottway all wrong, or what? Ottway may have good intentions, but his choices never pan out. Leaving the plane, going into the woods, crossing the chasm, following the river — done of them seem to make the group any safer. Ottway's theorizes that the wolves are more aggressive because the survivors are too close to the wolf den, and if that's true, then Ottway dooms them all, as his route eventually leads him, as the last survivor, directly to the den. Between wolf attacks, Ottway and the survivors argue about the nature of fate and faith — would God spare them from the plane crash, just to kill them off in the woods? Ottway even shouts a challenge to God near the end, and nothing happens, until all the wolves show up. The Grey seems to be asserting that either God doesn't exist or has a malicious sense of humor. (I'll suggest that He is actually Anubis, the canine-headed Egyptian god of death.)
At any rate, the last time Neeson played a character so consistently mistaken was probably The Phantom Menace, when his seemingly wise Jedi knight spends the whole film champion the skill and character of a young boy who grows up to be a murderous galactic warlord. Maybe The Grey goes to show that in a survival situation, you shouldn't count on the suicidal guy.
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