Why Didn’t They Use a Real Dog?
The Harrison Ford vehicle ‘Call of the Wild’ is out in cinemas this month. It is based on a novel of the same name which apparently is an American household staple. Being British, I had never heard of the book so have no preconceptions about the movie. What I do know is that it is about a dog. So, one assumes, the filmmakers must have gone to some trouble to find some similar looking dogs and train them so that th- oh, no, they just CGI-ed it.
And they didn’t just CGI it, they made a guy dress up in a motion capture suit and crawl around on all fours. While it’s funny to watch Benedict Cucumberpants do it, that was at least justified by there being no live Dragons around to cast as Smaug. So an adaptation of this famous, beloved, Yukon-set, century-old story about a dog losing the shackles of his enforced domesticity… doesn’t have a dog in it. Oh and it wasn’t shot in the Yukon either. In fact it wasn’t even shot on location. What few location shots there are were shot in Santa Clarita California, the rest were against green screen. When the Yukon still exists (though for how long is now up for debate) and so do Dogs, yet a film that is largely about those two things features neither, we are left to wonder: why?
It was the same question most audience members had when leaving the theatre after watching, or even after seeing the trailer for, Cats. Why were they all…
