YMMV / Orca: The Killer Whale

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Was the Orca's mate actually trying to attempt suicide after being harpooned by swimming into the propellers as the crew said or was she so blinded by pain and distracted by worry for her unborn calf that she wasn't paying attention to where she was going and swam into the propellers by mistake?
  • What happens to the Orca is horrific, in fact it is the same generic plot used in a lot of movies, the only difference is that it usually happens to a human protagonist. Given his motivations, it's not hard to see the Orca as the hero and Nolan as more of a Villain Protagonist.
    They took his wife from him, cost him his unborn son, now he's out for revenge.
  • On the other hand, anyone who knows what we now do about orca social habits will more likely interpret the male Orca as an enraged son avenging his pregnant mother's and unborn sibling's murder.
  • Additionally, does the Orca go off to commit suicide by drowning under the ice or did his thirst for revenge consume him so much that he didn't realize he would be surrounded by ice and be unable to surface through it?
    • Is the opening sequence of the Orca and his mate cavorting establishing them as the whale equivalent of Happily Married expecting parents, or showing them reunited in the afterlife after both of their deaths, making the entire movie a How We Got Here moment?
• Awesome Music: The whole score. It is by Ennio Morricone, after all.
• Cult Classic: The film's following especially grew after the release of Blackfish.
• Draco in Leather Pants: While the Orca is supposed to come off as sympathetic, many people see him as the hero of the movie. This ignores the fact that he destroys a fishing town's economy by driving the fish out, destroys a good part of the town, kills Nolan's best friend, and cripples Annie just to get at Nolan.
• Fridge Horror: What if Nolan had succeeded in capturing the male Orca and selling him off to an aquarium? This whale probably would have made Tilikum seem like an angry guppy.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The whole movie becomes this after the release of Blackfish.
  • Orca trainer Keltie Byrne was killed by three orcas at Sealand Aquarium in 1991, 14 years after the release of Orca.
    • And then 23 years after the film's release, trainer Dawn Branchau was horribly killed by Tilikum, one of the whales from the previous attack, no less. Branchau had formed a years-long bond with the whale despite his history, but one fateful day, for reasons unknown, he snapped and viciously turned on her in the middle of a show.
  • The notion of an orca mourning its dead mate might seem farfetched to some; Nolan himself is skeptical that it's capable of such behavior. In the summer of 2018, a female orca, traveling with her pod off the coast of British Columbia, pushed her calf that had died about 30 minutes after it was born for 17 days straight, even falling behind the pod. Marine biologists have come to the conclusion that she was, indeed, grieving.
    • Note that this seems to be true only of female orcas. Male orcas, like other dolphins, are promiscuous at best and sexually aggressive at worst; they don't play any part in raising the babies that they father, and certainly don't grieve for them. However, they do play a role in helping raise their younger siblings as well as their nieces and nephews as male orcas stay in their mother's pod.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The movie was clearly a Jaws knockoff, especially the scene where the Orca kills a great white shark, but Jaws: The Revenge appears to have ripped this film off with the notion of a marine predator having a personal vendetta.
• Magnificent Bastard: After his mate and unborn calf are killed in a botched capture attempt, the orca seeks revenge on the man responsible, Captain Nolan. To draw him back into the water for a confrontation, he first deposits his mate's corpse on a beach near Nolan's hometown, then gets the other townsfolk to pressure Nolan by attacking the town's livelihood, boats and infrastructure. Finally getting the response he wants when he bites off the leg of Annie, one of Nolan's crew, the orca leads Nolan and his companions in a pursuit north towards icy waters, taking opportunities to whittle down the party chasing him. Sinking Nolan's boat with an iceberg to force him to confront him on foot, the orca breaks off an ice floe to isolate Nolan, then knocks him into the water and throws him to his death with his tail. His revenge complete, the orca spares Nolan's sole surviving companion, Rachel Bedford, and leaves her to be rescued by a helicopter while he swims away under the ice.
• Money-Making Shot: The scene where the Orca suddenly jumps from the water and snatches a deckhand was prominently featured in the trailer — three times.
• Narm:
  • Nolan's speech about how the orca's had its revenge, and now he's going to essentially re-revenge against it.
  • The scene where the suicidal female orca miscarries its calf. It's shot so seriously and the effect looks so goofy you can't help but laugh.
• Narm Charm: "My Love, We Are One." Sure, it's over-sung and the lyrics are corny...but it just may jerk a tear or two.
• Nightmare Fuel: The aborted whale fetus, all the deaths, and the whale itself. Sweet dreams.
• Retroactive Recognition: Yep, that's Dumbledore (The first one) harpooning an orca.
• Rooting for the Empire: After the so-called heroes kill his mate and child, there's a good chance you'll end up rooting for the orca; as it says above, make him human and he'd be the hero of a Roaring Rampage of Revenge action movie.
• Squick: While the death of the orca's mate is incredibly gruesome, what happens to the unborn baby is even worse. Artistic License – Biology aside, it's little wonder the titular orca went completely insane.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The film in general is pretty sad when looked at from the orca's perspective, he helped save humans from a shark attack and his reward was that the humans killed his mate and made her miscarriage her baby driving him mad with grief and desiring revenge. While his actions are excessive, it's really hard to fault him for turning out that way.
  • The female orca's death, after being caught and raised up on the ship it looks at the humans as if begging to let her go while shedding tears and crying in a unmistakenly human-like voice, just before she miscarries from the pain and injuries and dies shortly after. Even Nolan and his crew are horrified at what they did. And worse is that her mate can only helplessly watch before screaming in anguish.
  • The humans' dilemma, too, a simple mistake out of impulse cost the town a lot and Nolan himself shows regret over his actions, even though it's too late to fix anything. That fact that he dies at the end is kind of heartbreaking too, despite arming himself with bravery to face the Orca, he is no match for him and is ultimately killed in a rather painful way.
  • Rachel's line about how whales shouldn't be in captivity has a genuine sense of grief from her disdain on how the magnificent creatures are stripped of their freedom for human entertainment despite their conditions being highly harmful to their general health. Moreso with how in modern day it's been seen in action and through studies just how harmful captivity is to killer whales.
  • The film's theme song "My Love, We Are One", depicting an utterly melancholic and sorrowful melody as opposed to a high-action or suspense one, selling how the entire film is one tragedy after the other rather than the usual monster attack scenario.
  • The final, thoroughly haunting scenes of the orca swimming underneath the ice. Even if he isn't trying to kill himself, it's still a Pyrrhic Victory — he's avenged his wife and child, but now what's left for him?
• Values Resonance: Rachel tries to dissuade Nolan from attempting to capture an orca, talking about the questionable morals and potential dangers of holding one in captivity. With the increased scrutiny cast on such practices in the 21st century, this scene has aged very well.
  Rachel: These animals are too big and too smart, and they're made to be in constant motion. They don't even sleep. It's much crueler than putting a lion in a cage. It's hardly something to screw around with.
• Vindicated by History: At the time Orca was seen as another generic Jaws knockoff that was forgotten as quickly as it was released. As decades passed, more people discovered the film and saw it as a unique take on the "animals attack" genre of The '70s that did something different from other Jaws-based films, namely have the orca itself be an intelligent creature out for revenge rather than a rogue animal on the loose. Nowadays it’s seen as a Cult Classic and one of the better Jaws-inspired films.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: When the film was being shot, the animatronic whales were so realistic at the time that animal rights activists blocked trucks that were delivering the animatronic whales to the set, thinking there were real whales in them.

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