Free Willy is a 1993 family film directed by Simon Wincer, and released by Warner Bros. under its Family Entertainment label. The film stars Jason James Richter as a young boy who befriends an Orca.
Followed by two sequels and a short-lived animated television series, Free Willy was a critical and financial success, eventually making a star out of its protagonist Keiko. The film also gained a cult following, followed by a series of spoofs on the film's famous climax in popular culture.
Michael Jackson produced and performed "Will You Be There", the theme for the film, which can be heard during the film's credits. The song won the MTV Movie Award for "Best Song in a Movie" in 1994. It was also included in the album All Time Greatest Movie Songs, released by Sony in 1999. Jackson also performed songs for the film's first sequel.
Plot
The film begins with a pod of Orcas swimming near the coastline of the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, this family of Orca is tracked down by a large group of whalers, and a single orca gets caught in their net. Unable to save him, his family leaves him behind, and he is taken away to a local amusement park.
Sometime later, Jesse a young boy who has been on the run since he was abandoned by his mother six years before, gets caught by the police for vandalizing a theme park along with a group member of three other abandoned kids (who are not caught). However, his social worker Dwight helps him avoid legal consequences, provided he cleans up his mess at the park. While there, Jesse befriends Willy, the Orca that was caught earlier and has a collapsed dorsal fin. He teaches him behaviors, something the trainer, Rae Lindley ,had failed to do. Over time, Jesse and Willy become the best of friends, and Jesse earns a long-term job at the marina while learning to live with his new and supportive foster parents, Glen and Annie Greenwood .
The owner of the amusement park, Dial (Michael Ironside) sees the talent Jesse and Willy have together, and makes large plans to host "The Willy Show" in hopes of boosting sales and making money for himself. On the day of the first performance, everyone is set to begin, but Willy comes down with stage fright due to the children banging constantly on his underwater observation area. Willy scares them off by smashing against the tank, unintentionally damaging it. Jesse is devastated, but later, while at the tank, Jesse notices Dial's assistant Wade (Richard Riehle) and other men sneaking into the underwater observation area and damage the tank enough that the water will gradually leak out in an effort to kill Willy. It is surmised that Dial is interested in collecting the insurance money, since he has a $1,000,000 life insurance plan on Willy.
Thus, Jesse, Haida shaman Randolph Johnson (August Schellenberg) and Rae begin plans to release the Orca. They use equipment at the park to load Willy onto a trailer, and Jesse and Randolph 'borrow' Glen's truck to tote Willy to the ocean. They try to stick to back roads to keep from being spotted with a gigantic Orca, and eventually get stuck on a back road. Wade meanwhile notifies Dial that the Orca is missing, and begin a search to find Willy.
Jesse must admit that he needs help, and calls his foster parents using a CB-Radio located in the truck they took. Annie and Glen show up and are able to help free the truck, and continue on to the marina they are headed to, in order to release Willy. Dial knows where they are likely headed, and when they show up, he, Wade and his henchmen are blocking the gate into the marina. Glen charges at them full speed in the truck, forcing the henchmen to move right before Willy's ride plows through the gate to the marina. Glen quickly turns the truck around and backs up Willy into the water, flooding his truck in the process.
Willy is finally released into the water, but Dial and his goons have a backup plan for the death of Willy. The whaling company shows up in the water, releasing nets into the water to trap Willy in the marina and succeed. Jesse has one last chance. He leads Willy to an area where if Willy would just jump, he would be free. Amidst everyone's prayers, Willy makes the jump (in an iconic scene as shown in the film's poster), to the amazement of all his friends, and is free to return to his family. The film ends with the happy trainers and newly formed family watching Willy swim away.
Cast
Production
Most close-up shots involving limited movement by Willy, such as when Willy is in the trailer and the sequences involving Willy swimming in the open water, make use of an animatronic stand-in. Walt Conti, who supervised the effects for the whales, estimated that half of the shots of the whale used animatronic orcas (each full-sized whale needed over 250 horsepower of hydraulics).[1] Conti stated that the fewer movements of a real Orca actually made things difficult in some ways for him and his crew; they had to concentrate on smaller nuances in order to make the character seem alive.[1] The most extensive uses of CGI in the film is the climax of the film, where Willy jumps over Jesse and into the wild.
The title of the film caused considerable amusement in Britain because "willy" is a slang term for "penis". It was rumored at the time that the UK distributors wanted the name of the film changed but the studio bosses refused the request.[2][3]
Reception
Box office performance
According to Box Office Mojo, the film had a domestic gross of $7,868,829 in its opening weekend. Around its second week, the film's grossing increased to $8,645,619, only to gradually decrease in weeks to come. The film had a foreign gross of $76,000,000, making a total of $153,698,625 worldwide.[4]
Critical response
Despite the film's overwhelmingly positive reception in the box office, critical response was generally mixed. Free Willy currently holds a 50% rating on the Rotten Tomatoes website, based on 20 reviews.[5]
- The aquatic star of this film was an orca named Keiko. The huge national and international success of this film inspired a letter writing campaign to get Keiko released from his captivity as an attraction in the amusement park Reino Aventura in Mexico City, this movement was called "Free Keiko". Keiko was famously moved to a bigger pool in Oregon by flying in a specially modified United States Air Force C-17 freight aircraft. In Oregon it was discovered that the combination of the chlorination and the excessively warm temperature of the water was causing skin lesions. Keiko was eventually released and joined up with other whales in the wild. Keiko eventually died of pneumonia near Norway on December 12, 2003.
- The famous scene where Willy jumps over Jesse to freedom was parodied twice by The Simpsons. Once in the episode "The Boy Who Knew Too Much" Homer watches a version of the film where Willy fails to clear the rock and lands on Jesse, with his parents saying "oh no, Willy didn't make it, and he crushed our boy". Dismayed, Homer says, "Oh, I don't like this new director's cut!" The second time was during the third story of "Treehouse of Horror XI" titled "Night of the Dolphin"; when Lisa frees a dolphin from the Springfield aquarium, it jumps a rock barrier similar to Willy, but its tail smacks Lisa in the face.
References
External links
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