I was one of the few million people who ended up seeing Will Ferrell in “Semi-Pro.” A lot of people hated it, I thought it was OK, but there was no denying the individual talent of one particular actor in the movie: Dewey the bear. That bear had the heart of a lion, which is something you don’t see everyday. But honestly, the bear seemed pretty well-trained especially for a wild animal. I’d probably put this bear #2, behind Dave, for best training job of a wild animal.
Anyways, a few days ago, that very same bear ended up killing his trainer. Yes, it was a terrible thing to read about, and I’m sorry that the man ended up dying, but why are people talking about killing the bear now? Last time I checked, they had just taken a 700-pound bear out of the wild and were trying to train it not to kill people. Honestly, did they not expect something like this to ever happen? It’s a damn bear for crying out loud. Did people forget that they have been instinctively programmed to kill other living things, and have been doing it for hundreds, if not thousands of years?
I’m pretty sure we’ve come far enough along with computer-generated images that people can start putting fake animals in place of real ones in movies and this sort of thing won’t happen as much. I’m all for rehabilitating wild animals, but let’s stop dressing them up in funny costumes and having them do all sorts of weird things.
Man vs. Wild,
Matt