Comments (1-15) of 185 Add your comment
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Stef
What about I am Legend?
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Amanda
I refused to watch that movie based solely on the fact that the dog dies in that movie. Just cannot bring myself to watch. When I tried I was hysterically SOBBING before it even got to that point in the film! Just knowing it was coming was too much for me to handle
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Moonllama
I bet you’re one of those people who didn’t thinkk it was absolutely hilarious when the dog was squished in A Fish Called Wanda. Wuss.
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Henry
I Am Legend is a great example. I was shocked and moved when the dog died. Movies should feel free to play that card for emotional impact.
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James D
haha, and I CRIED my head off when Old Yeller was shot. Any movie where an animal dies is pure bull****
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Danny
Amanda, it sounds like you have psychological problems that you need to deal with.
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DE
I agree, I own the movie and before I finishd watching someone said did you get to the part where the dog dies? I stopped the movie and have never watched the whole thing.
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jezoebel
I didn’t even know the dog died till I saw the film. After that I had a hard time watching. I own cats now, but when I was a kid I had dogs, especially a German shepherd like the dog in the movie.
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Moonllama
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Megan
I haven’t watched that movie in a while because of that fact!
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woody
The truth is that the average high school watch over 100,000 deaths in one form or another before they get to flip that tassel. I counted one night over 13 deaths in 3 hours. I hate horrow shows but teens love them….. I not a spring chicken so I love romance.woody
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Casey
(I AM LEGEND SPOILER ALERT) The dog death scene in I Am Legend didn’t bother me nearly as much as the scene when (SPOILER ALERT) Will Smith’s kid died. That was crushing. The dog death was sad. The child death was crushing. Yet most people only remember the dog death.
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Nic
I think people remember the dog more because we got to know her better, she was really the supporting role in that movie. The daughter wasn’t as much of a character. Though that scene in the helicopter was devastating
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Nic
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Amanda
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Mary Q. Contrary
We look at animals, especially dogs, which most of us currently own or have owned at one time, the same way we do babies and children. We feel the need to protect them, and when we look at them, they stir emotion and empathy in us. Killing a child in a film is usually a significant event, and it’s a very similar case with pets, even fictional ones.
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Henry
Nobody could look at their little girl or boy and say “I love you… almost as much as the dog.” The people who say dogs ARE their children really mean, “This dog is the closest thing I know to having kids.” They’re pushing their point and people who do have kids look at them like they’re very sheltered. Why not just say “The dog is my buddy. I love the guy and he loves me.” That’s sweeter because it’s true.
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TellyB
Please don’t act like you know what all people do and/or think. I have both a kid AND a dog, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I love them both equally. And that SOULD NOT be shocking or an indicator of me loving the kid any less. No, that means that I love the dog in ways that most people can’t understand or fathom. The reality (my reality) is that I would give my life for either my child or my dog, and I would never ever shortchange either. I love them both, protect them and care for them, and that’s it. they are BOTH my family and my both are my children. Nothing weird or dishonest about that.
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JK
Well TellyB, I hate to break it to you, but I’m quite shocked by your assertion that you love your dog and child equally. I also have a dog, and I love my dog greatly and wish to protect him. It also makes me incredibly sad to think about the day when my dog will eventually pass away. However, the love I have for my dog is different than that I have for, say, my mother. And I would be pretty offended and disturbed if my mom told me (or EW.com readers, frankly) that she loved me in the same way she loved our dog. That doesn’t mean I hate animals or wish to diminish their value – I just think that someone’s flesh and blood should be held to a higher standard than a pet.
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Josh
TellyB – How can you love your child as much as your pet? There definitely is a disconnect there. The love one feels for their children outweighs any other. I love my wife, my mother, & my 4 brothers more than I could ever explain in words. But my kids, they are above all. It’s not even close. The fact that you say your child & dog are on par makes me worry for your child.
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Brian
Really TellyB? Really?!?!? You love your dog the same as you love your own child? It’s good to love your dog, but the same as your child? What is wrong with you? I love my pets too, but I don’t care how you rationalize it, saying that is just sick
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Peggy
TellyB, I have to ask, whose life would you save first, you dog’s or your child’s. If you don’t say your child, you really do have your priorities messed up. As much as I love dogs and cats, I would never put their lives ahead of most humans.
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Chris
Why trash TellyB for saying what he feels? Who are all of you to tell anyone what they should feel? That’s arrogant. If that’s the way you feel TellyB, then that’s great.
Frankly, I’m tired of people telling me that my dog is only a replacement for a child, that I couldn’t possibly love my dog as much as I would a child. Only I know what I feel, no one else does. I prefer the unconditional love of a dog – I would die for her -
JK
Chris – the difference between you and TellyB is that Telly actually HAS a child, as well as a pet, and they still say that they love their child in the same way they love their dog. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to choose to have a pet instead of a child, and I believe that you can absolutely love that pet as you would a child – if we’re talking about a hypothetical child here. If you actually choose to have a pet AND a child, and you love the animal as much as the child, there is something a little bit off about that.
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Chris
I’ll say it again. It’s arrogant to tell anyone that there’s something wrong with them just because they don’t think/feel the same as you. I have nieces & nephews, and I love my dog just as much as I love them (I’m closer to my dog than most of them). I know I would feel the same way if I had a child. I love children & animals – there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
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Chris
It’s our responsibility to protect those who can’t protect themselves – both children & animals
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TellyB
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datruth82
Animals are innocent. They don’t ask anything beyond us loving and caring for them. They don’t ever have ulterior motives, and are just so pure to their core.
Even when they’re upset, there’s never any malice to it. They’re genuinely just unhappy about whatever was done to hurt them. No tricks. No games. Just straightforward and unconditional.
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jmo
We have a love/fear relationship with dogs. Dogs are part of the family, coddled like babies, a friend to children. You wouldn’t kill a baby so why kill Fluffy? However, the dogs in Watchman are killed by Roschach, and we’re fine with that because of what they ate (I’ll leave it at that).
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LoveTV
“Animals are innocnent”? Tell that to the lady who had her face mauled by a chimp about 8 months a go.
They belong in the wild.
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jmo
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Josh
I couldn’t disagree more. I have a dog and 2 children and I don’t have anywhere near the same feelings. I would protect my children with my life, my dog, he’s on his own.
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Mary Q. Contrary
Just to be clear, you all completely missed the point I was trying to get across. I’m a mother of three, and obviously love my kids more than I could ever love a pet. I was only trying to point out the similar way in which we take care of, and nurture our pets. We make sure that they’re fed, healthy, and (hopefully) happy. And when you do that for something, anything, you tend to grow an emotional bond that stays with us long after the pet has passed. Domesticated dogs have been a part of human’s lives for so long that it’s almost ingrained into us to take care of them and protect them. We see them as a pleasant, but weaker species, and therefore our gut reaction is that they need our help. So, I was not trying to imply that I feel that my pet (which I don’t even currently have!) is a substitute for a child, or that they are as important. Just that they inspire certain feelings in us that are hard to turn off.
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Henry
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rebecca
i hate it when more people are saddened by a dogs death than a humans. today one of my teachers told my class that he had to put his 4 yr old dog to sleep and a lot of the people in the class all went “awww” and they were all sad, but i just thought, why is everyone so sad, it is a dog, they cant live forever and this one had a tumor, putting the dog to sleep was better for it, than making it live.
the only movie that i would feel really sad about the dog dying and not the humans, is “Equilibrium”. the humans that were killed in that movie made no impact to the movie, but that is what was supposed to happen. but when Christian Bale’s character John Preston saves the dog from the people that were going to kill it, i was happy because that was important to the movie, but the other peoples death’s were not important for this movie. but in an end of the world movie like 2012, when there are many people dying in tragic ways, seeing one dog die does not make me feel sad, the sad thing is that all those people are dying if the mayan prediction happened to be true(but it is not true IMO!!)-
Johnny
Wow, you are just a cold heartless thing aren’t you? Or have you never had a pet? Guess what, people cannot live forever so does that mean we are not supposed to feel sad when they pass on as well?
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Moonllama
But the point is that people watching movies are more upset when one animal dies than when thousands or millions of their own species die. Doesn’t that make Rebecca more empathetic and heartful than the rest of you combined?
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woody
Johnny owning a pet and loving a pet are two different things. Rebecca made a great valid point, when do we feel the pain of death… we usually don’t feel a lot unless we personnally know who died. We’ve all seen thousands of t.v. deaths and were rearly moved. If you don’t connect with an animal then it just doesn’t take…. It is like watching Lassie and hearing that he died.
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Moonllama
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Any animal
is worth ten of people like you.
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Miya
It’s amazing that technology has reached the point that soulless automatons have nearly reached the point of being indistinguishable from humans.
However, Rebecca still fails the test. She is clearly a replicant.-
Miya
There were a lot of nearly reaching points there. Sometimes emotions such as distaste for insensitivity and callous emptiness from soulless robots cause humans to write poorly.
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Miya
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Josh
Thank You!!
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Kendra
Nobody feels sad when a mass of people dies because you’re not supposed to – this is a faceless mass who you don’t know and haven’t been allowed to get to know and therefore, can’t really feel anything for because the writers don’t want you to. But when a dog, who becomes a character in its own right, dies, you feel sad because you’ve gottent to “know” the dog and have been allowed to develop emotional ties to it. Same idea for when a major character dies in a story compared to a lesser character – you feel more for the major character because you’ve been allowed to get to know that character.
And when people feel terrible watching animals die on screen, it’s because they are relating it back to their own animals and imagining “OMG, what if that was MY DOG who died?”, and obviously, emotions ensue.
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Johnny
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Paul
Dog is man’s best friend
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alex
I’m sorry, but if a dog dies in a movie I just start crying. I can’t handle it. It’s sad but true…
In Mars Attack millions of people died and then they shot the dog and I had to turn it off.
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Danny
Mars attacks? Are you serious? They gave it Sarah Jessica Parker’s head!!!
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Danny
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Ugly Jenny
I don’t know what it is about the death of animals in movies that get to me. The only scene that moved me in “I Am Legend” was when (spoiler alert) Will Smith had to kill his infected dog that was his only companion. I balled in “Marley and Me” like it was my own pet who died.
People have connections to pets that for some people surpass their connections to real people. It may be from the unconditional love, companionship, etc.
For me, when I see a pet survive in a movie, maybe it’s to signify that the there is a light at the end of the tunnel from the disaster that happened.-
Your 4th Grade English Teacher
The word is “bawled”, not “balled”.
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ger
I think “bailed” works, too. As in “I bailed in Marley and Me”.
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ger
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Danny
Yeah nevermind that Will Smith was dying of loneliness.
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woody
Jenny loose the ugly….. we all are ugly in one form or another so quit hogging the word….. form what you wrote you should be carring jenny…. woody
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Your 4th Grade English Teacher
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Stefani
I’m the kind of person who can watch disaster movies all day and not care who (or what) dies, but I will almost start crying if I hear about a real life tragedy. I’ll tear if the tragedy is historical or modern. The point is that a movie is FICTION. I don’t cry at fiction (except Steele Magnolias). I cry at real life.
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JK
This comment literally could not be more irrelevant to the topic at hand.
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JK
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MrFord
I don’t really understand why we feel that way. I know that I feel that way definitely. I know, that I should definitely care a lot more for the humans than the dogs, or really most animals for that matter, but the truth is that it’s something about dogs that give this universal feeling of, um, how do I explain this? They just make us go “Awww!”. If a dog dies it’s a turn off for me. It shouldn’t be, but it really is. But hey, great to hear that this one lives! Yeah!
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woody
I think we are trained through repeated interaction with people to seek out things we don’t like, even with our friends, we see what is “wrong” with them that doesn’t match up to our own expectations. We watch horrible people kill stupid people or just people and we don’t flinch. We have great movies like the one’s you mention that highlight the exploits of these animals in a funny or positive way…. we then transfer that to the people careing for those animals. When was the last time you saw an domestic animal portraid in a negative light on tv or in in the movies… think hard….. woody
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woody
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Dave
The only thing worse than watching a pet die in a movie is watching the death of a child.
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kaydevo
Perhaps anyone who is hardened to human movie death vs. being horrified at pet movie death were traumatized by watching Old Yeller as a child (I swear I never got over that one)! I think people see their own beloved pets when they see the movie pet. I feel sadness when a human character I care about dies in a movie, but so many of these disaster films kill hundreds of millions of faceless folks, and you know it’s just so unreal, as in fake. And the plots tend to gloss right over it, which wouldn’t happen in real life. Fake again.
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Alissa
for me, it’s often that the animal has done nothing to deserve any amount of suffering. I refused to watch I Am Legend, and I spent the last forty minutes of Marley & Me sobbing absolutely hysterically [this could be due to the fact that I had put my 13 yo Corgi to sleep a few months prior, and I was 7 when I got him]. to me, most of the humans that get killed in movies are either ones I have no emotional attachment to, or ones that have done something wrong. when I do have emotional attachment, I still cry. but an animal that gets killed almost never does anything wrong, making it truly heartwrenching [especially if its death comes at the hands of humans].
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Miya
Animals are completely innocent, at least as much as any human infant, and whether the affection they show us is due to our own wishful thinking, manipulation on their part, or the genuine unconditional love we comfort ourselves with by believing them to give us, no pets have ever rejected, screwed over, back-stabbed, or acted out of calculated malice towards a human, which counts for a lot and is more that can be said for even some children.
When something bad happens to an animal, they don’t understand why and we can’t explain it to them. That’s heartbreaking, particularly when domesticated animals are so reliant on the humans who are often the source of such cruel acts to them. They only experience uncomprehending terror and pain and it’s that particular horror that is so hard to watch in a film.
Such tactics are cheap and manipulative, the hallmark of crappy film making, and no matter how effective it is on me at the time of viewing it, I resent the cheap manipulation of killing or harming an animal onscreen.-
Cass
Beautifully written!
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Thank you
Your comment describes exactly what I feel and believe. I could not have put it into better words myself.
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Chris
Agreed. There are a lot fewer people looking out for animals than people, and it doesn’t take much encouragement for a lot of people out there to hurt animals, so why give them more encouragement?
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Cass
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paige
anyone realize that Roland Emmerich did THE EXACT SAME THING IN INDEPENDANCE DAY!!! First lady Mary McDonald dies but THE DOG LIVES!!! He is a master hack. I hope this movie bombs but I doubt it…
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Lisa Schwarzbaum
Good point about Independence Day. Maybe the Dog That Lives is a Roland Emmerich signature, like flying doves in a John Woo movie or a Where’s Waldo-like appearance by Alfred Hitchcock in his pictures?
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Danno
Or that ugly green/yellow car in Sam Raimi’s movies.
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Danno
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crispy
I’m shocked that people are looking for depth in a Roland Emmerich movie at all.
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Cait
BOOMER!
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Lisa Schwarzbaum
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whatevs
I only wish that this theory was true. Whenever any movie comes out that has a dog in the trailer, I always assume that it dies. It seems that dogs are put in movies for the purpose of being killed off. I absolutely cannot watch any movie with any dog in it just to be safe. I’ve been sufficiently scarred by having to watch countless movies where dogs die in elementary school…
I care because dogs are innocent creatures and people aren’t.
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Grady
Hmm. Dogs do have that magical power these days, as the US begins to care more about animal rights than human rights, but I must say, one of my favorite scenes ever in a comedy is when Jack Black punts Ron Burgundy’s dog off a bridge in Anchorman!
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Danno
ROTFL!!!!
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Danno
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'2012' spoiler-free: the dog lives!
You’ll have my full review of the end-of-the-world disaster pic 2012 in a few days. But I just came home from watching the movie, and I need your help; I’ve witnessed cities crumble, I’ve seen the sea rise up to swallow continents, I’ve watched billions of people lose their lives, accompanied by loud music. Yet the pampered little lap dog carried by one of the score of characters we get to know survives, hooray!
Not that I had any doubts she would. Hell has to freeze over — or at least ancient Mayan predictions of global collapse have to come true — before a movie audience will accept the death of a fictional pet with the same nonchalance we accept the deaths of countless fictional humans. But why should pet death be more shocking or upsetting to moviegoers than people death on screen? I’m as humane and caring a dog-lover as the next girl who watches marathon broadcasts of The Dog Whisperer on Friday nights, yet it rubs my paws the wrong way that moviemakers exult in the many ways they can invent for people to perish, just so long as the pooch prevails. Those producers know that if an animal bit the dust, there’d be an outcry, and editorials, and boycotts, and dogfights among critics….
So here’s where I need your help: Please explain to me the magical superpowers of cinema canines. And while you’re at it, please tell me whether my theory is right or wrong, that pet death is an audience turn-off, while people death is, you know, what movies are all about.