John Krasinski and Drew Barrymore are going to save some stranded whales and they need an entire town in Alaska to help them.
Embedded below is the first trailer for Ken Kwapis’s sure-to-be heart-warming BIG MIRACLE, the true story of three trapped whales and the caring people who tried to save them. If this first preview is any indication, you can bet there will be some tears shed in theaters this February. Kwapis seems to be going for all the reliable heart-tugging moments: adorable whales fighting for their lives, a whole town coming together to save them and even some romance. This thing is tailor-made from some sobs.
While the movie has a great look to it (I love the color scheme) I have a hard time getting excited for a Kwapis film. Sure, he’s directed episodes of THE OFFICE, PARKS & RECREATION and FREAKS & GEEKS but he’s also the man behind HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU, LICENSE TO WED and DUNSTON CHECKS IN. If this were a TV project, I could be on board but Kwapis’s feature films have been severely lacking.
But I love whales. Who doesn’t? I sure hope Barrymore, Krasinski, Dermot Mulroney, Tim Blake Nelson, Kristen Bell, Stephen Root and others save them.
BIG MIRACLE opens Februrary 3, 2012.
I’m looking forward to this movie. I just finished reading the newest edition book by Tom Rose, and I compared the real people’s names that were involved with the rescue to the character names from Universal.
Universal created new names for all the top people involved in the rescue. They even invented a new name for the Governor of Alaska in 1988. For example, the Greenpeace woman’s name is really Cindy Lowery, not Racheal Kramer. The real governor’s name was STEVE COWPER, not Governor Haskell. The real guy who shot the video in Barrow, played by John Krasinski, was the TV Studio Manager of the North Slope Borough, Oran Caudle. The big oil executive’s name was Bill Allen of VECO, not Liam Peterson played by Ted Danson. And so on and so on…
It would have been better if Universal had used the real names. I guess that is why they advertise “Inspired by” instead of “based on” the book by Tom Rose.
I’m still going to go see it. But shame on you Universal.
A reading of the books “Freeing the Whales” and “Big Miracle” by Tom Rose, as well as various newspaper accounts, point out something quite dark about the screenplay of the movie “Big Miracle.”
In reality, it was “Inuit” Eskimo Roy Ahmaogak who first sees the stranded whales. It was “Inuit” Eskimo Marie Adams who was the first reporter to conduct interviews at the whale stranding site, doing interviews with “Inuit” Hunter Billy Adams and two North Slope Borough biologists with a TV crew from the local NSB government. There was no white reporters from KTUU-TV from Anchorage at the start of the whale story.
The screenwriters of “Big Miracle” removed from existence the Inuit Eskimo’s accomplishments at the very beginning of the whale saga. The screenwriters chose to make this more a caucasian movie about white people coming to the rescue in the beginning of the movie. There was no outsider white people at the meeting of Inuit whale hunters to talk them out of harvesting the whales. It was strictly an Inuit decision, done without white people giving any persuasive speeches. There was no Greenpeace person in that meeting at all.
In my opinion the movie “Big Miracle” is racist and bigoted, bringing to mind the old cowboy and Indian movies. In the “Big Miracle“ version, Inuits are given the credit for cutting holes in the ice, while the all knowing and caretaking white people make all the major discoveries and decisions. Such was not the case.
The “inspiration” that the screenwriters seems to have got from the books is how to marginalize a race of people and their accomplishments.