Free Willy

Kamehameha!

Let’s cast our minds back to 1993. Bill Clinton was in the White House, dial-up internet was screaming its digital mating call into our telephone lines, slap bracelets were a public safety hazard, and the cinema was graced with a cinematic titan: Free Willy. A movie that could only be about one thing... a clarion call demanding freedom for willies everywhere, damn it. Now that's a cause I could always get behind.

Ah, yes. The movie that single-handedly convinced an entire generation of elementary school students that... there is no sound more annoying than the distinctive pitched-down mosquito-like warble of an orca whale crying into the night (and also put it into our brains for all time). That taught us all that the white dots above their eyes are not, in fact, their eyes (I can't be the only one who thought this, right?). And also, that a troubled, baggy-shirted foster kid with anger management issues could not only be rehabilitated by Captain Ahab's archnemesis, but also coordinate a multi-ton marine-mammal-jacking using nothing more than youthful angst, a wet suit, and a really, really big ramp. Seriously, if you've ever wanted to see whole fish slide down an orca whale's throat again and again, boy-oh-boy have we got a movie for you, ya weirdo!

If you grew up in the 90s, this movie wasn't just a film; it was a cultural event on a VHS tape that you rented fifty times from Blockbuster and probably even watched at school on those big roaming carts they used to wheel out when the teachers were bored. But looking back at it with adult eyes? Hoo boy. Aside from the sheer peak 90s fashions and aesthetics, Free Willy is actually a really touching movie and really does make you believe ("Hold me, like the River Jordan..." *wipes tear*). However, it's also an absolute fever dream of absurd plotting, deeply questionable parenting, and a protagonist who is honestly a bit of a menace to society and would probably end up in "the tank" anyway irl.

So grab your neon-purple-and-pink windbreaker, pop some Dunkaroos, and let’s dive deep into this one... or sink our teeth into it.. or whatever... 

RIP cake.

Speaking of which, let’s talk about our hero, Jesse. Played by Jason James Richter, who also did that awful Neverending Story III that shall not be named lest it curse me to remember it (damn it!). Jesse is introduced to us not as a misunderstood cherub, but as an absolute feral goblin of angst, hormones, and probably piss. Within the first fifteen minutes, this street urchin is taking discarded and untouched food from outdoor eateries, which... okay, that's okay actually. I mean, even urchins have to eat. But then night sets in, and Jesse is hanging with his boys, out robbing a bakery for some birthday cake (maybe a play on the name of the real whale, "Keiko"), and committing the crime of plowing (and mowing) into it with his bare grubby hands. The Man comes swooping in, so the urchins scatter, running from the cops and committing the SIN of stepping on the cake (an image that has haunted me for decades). 

Is he... Banksy?

He and some of his fellow "urchins" decide to break in and hideout inside "SeaWorld?" (I know it's not SeaWorld in the movie, that was a pun), and of course they start spray-painting private property with an assortment of dicks and Stussie S's and such (to which, as any 90s kid will tell you, "art is subjective man"), including the below-ground viewing area of the whale tank where he first meets the "beastie" itself (sorry, Star Trek IV reference). Yeah, this kid and his gang are a walking, talking PSA for what boomers think we all were back then, and they were only mostly right. Sadly, his goons abandon him to get busted by the cops.  

After this, and a close call with the juvie clink, his social worker drops this little anarchist into the laps of Glen and Annie, two of the yuppiest cereal commercial parents you'll find this side of the Mormon Church. And it's probably best that he does, because can you even imagine what that street urchin's pits must SMELL like after being homeless? Allow us to introduce you to, the shower! Glen and Annie live in a lovely house on a hill, and give Jesse a killer room with a killer view of the ocean that would be the envy of any backwards-hatted, flannel-shirted shitstain of the 90s, especially the litte 8-year-old shitstain I called ME. And how does Jesse repay them? At first, by spending the first 30 minutes of this thing sulking, staying out late at the whale park to brood menacingly over the whale tank and play some of his hobo harmonica for the whale (a tune that unites him with Willy). Then, by busting up his new bedroom window with a baseball his foster parents gave him as a welcoming present when they're mad at him for staying out too late. And then, by considering running away with his street urchin friend to California to pick up the beach babes they see on a post card. Ultimately, the deep calls unto deep, and he decides against going with his old ratpack buddy. Instead he decides to"go straight" and play this whale park thing out. 

Enter Willy. The whale that is.

Willy is an orca, played by a real life show-orca named Keiko—a "killer whale" if you don't mind, which is a marketing term that implies excitement, though Willy spends 90% of the movie looking like a depressed bus submerged in green water. Willy is essentially the aquatic equivalent of an angsty teenager stuck working the register at a suburban multiplex: he’s underpaid (in dead herring), overexploited (in bouncing balls on his nose), and forced to listen to awful carnival music while doing tricks for screaming tourists while refusing to splash the tourists in the front row LIKE THEY PAID FOR. What a spoiled rock star...

Anyways, Jesse is sentenced to "clean up" the whale tank that he was caught spray painting, which is where he starts to bond and "dance" with Willy. There he meets the very attractive, my dream-chick, my preadolescent awakening, every teen guy's "bedroom wall poster," hot-in-a-wetsuit (and soaking wet), Rae (not surnamed Palpatine...), played by Lori Petty, Willy's marine biologist and trainer, who doesn't much care for the lad at first (and even kind of hates him) but slowly begins to see something desperate and sensitive in him despite his troubled life as a literal HOMELESS KID (yeah lady, give the kid a break! ...Oh and if you're not doing anything later...). Even more important to her, she begins to notice he has a calming and positive effect on the whale. "He's not like the other urchins" or whatever. 

Naturally, Jesse and Willy lock eyes. It is an instant, psychic connection forged in the fires of mutual juvenile delinquency, the kinship of all living things, Native American mysticism, and the shared ability to gulp down large amounts of food without swallowing. Jesse looks at Willy, a captive apex predator trapped in a tank that’s chlorinated and way too small, and thinks: "Hey, that guy also hates authority and refuses to cooperate with management. We are basically twins! And not just because he does whatever I do." It doesn't take Freud to tell you what this is really about: the "hero of a thousand willies" who must first contend with the ole' caged-in "beast from below" if he's ever going to save himself from the captivity of adolescence and enter the open ocean of adulthood, freedom, and getting laid... metaphorically speaking. It's every-dude's hero's journey, really, should we choose to accept it. 

 

So now that we've established that "taming the orca" is just a metaphor for "taming the willy"... and since Jesse really seems to enjoy hanging out at the SeaWorld whale tank, Rae decides to offer him a summer intern position there helping her train the thing, teach it to do tricks, and even get in the tank with it and ride it around over the course of a few months. He even becomes a kind of whale buff, and makes friends with another employee of the park, a wise Native American mentor-figure (can there be any other type?) named Randolph who teaches him the Native wisdom of the whales (something about how "whale spirits" can see the "true soul" of a man, or something). At this point, Jesse’s journey from "slipped-through-the-cracks runaway" to "slippery-when-wet Whale Whisperer" happens at light speed, mostly because the plot demands that he "learn how to care" (and fit into latex), so he can, you know, make Willy the star attraction he was bread to be.

How does Jesse bond with Willy? Jesse hangs out by the tank at night, throws fish at the whale, and plays that harmonica. Yet, somehow, it works. Willy responds. He splashes. He does tricks. He learns sign language faster than a Harvard linguistics major. Soon, Jesse and Willy aren't just "spinning in circles" together, they're a tag-team, culminating in Willy even letting Jesse RIDE him in the pool, synchronized swimming, and heck, even choreographed song and dance "Puttin' on the Ritz" showstoppers that would make Young Frankenstein weep, but ONLY when there aren't any crowds. And aye, there's the rub!

"And a 5, 6, 7... If you're blue and you don't know where to go why don't you go..."

Cut it out you dicks!

Sadly, Willy had become so much of a loss leader for the park that the manager turned evil. The park’s evil manager, "Dial" (played by a man whose entire performance radiates "I foreclose on orphanages for fun"), is losing big money because Willy still has trouble performing in front of CROWDS who love to BANG ON THE GLASS constantly. And what kind of "big money" is Dial losing? Well, given the fact that Michael Jackson actually wanted to purchase Keiko but decided against it because owning a whale was too expensive even for him (true story, look it up), we can kinda get an idea. Unfortunately, the banging and stomping crowds anger Willy so much that he lashes out and breaks the walls of his tank during a performance, triggering an evacuation and an attraction closure. This was the final nail in the Dial, so he decides he's gotta "rub out" the fish (MAMMAL!). Dial actually decides the best financial move with Willy is to bump him off in a "suppose he should meet with an unfortunate accident..." mafioso-style, big dickbrain insurance fraud scheme, and cash the check. And this sets up the grand finale: the greatest, dumbest, most physics-defying jailbreak in cinematic history. Because apparently all the cruelty to the whales is only a problem when they're not bringing in the big mamoo: that's right, the "Shamu" money. 

 
Okay Beavis, let’s set the scene for the climax of the Free Willy.

Jesse, along with his fellow ecoterrorist friends from the whale park, Rae and Randolph, who love Willy more than keeping their jobs or avoiding prison, decide to steal Glen's flatbed truck, and use it to steal a four-ton orca from a heavily lit, commercial marine park and turn him loose in the open ocean. This makes Annie and Glen very worried that they're thinking of adopting a kid who just stole their truck, but once they see it's all in the service of giving Jesse his redemption arc, they say "oh what the hell, you already got it in the truck, so..." Okay, sounds good, says the 8-year-old me. ...So you have a whale. Whales weigh tons. They are essentially massive, blubbery water-balloons that collapse under their own weight when they aren't supported by the buoyancy of the ocean. Moving a whale requires... er... well I don't know because whales are huge and heavy. But our heroes achieve this using: (1) a crane and sling that looks like it was rented from a local Home Depot; (2) Glen's flatbed trailer; and (3) a lot of hope and duct tape.

They hoist Willy out of the tank—an image that is genuinely hilarious because Willy just lies there like a discarded sofa cushion for the last act of this, looking mildly inconvenienced and wailing like a banshee—and load him onto the truck, hosing him down to keep him moist like they used to do with the meat at the Old Country Buffet carving station. And then begins the slow, agonizing chase scene where the evil park owners try to stop their Grand Theft Orca (a much more badass title for this... Such a missed opportunity!). The cops are called. Roadblocks are set up. Snags are had (at one point getting stuck in a ditch). But in the end, Jesse is successful at getting all the adult accomplices driving the flatbed truck straight toward a breakwater, looking at a massive rock wall barrier, and deciding: Me and Willy have been training for this moment our entire lives...

Just like we practiced!
*wipes tear*

Now, let’s talk about the famous jump (the one you do in your theatre seats when it happens because it's THAT AMAZING). The gang of thieves here back the truck all the way into the water, finally get the tail open, and finally coax Willy out into the water, just as the cops come bearing down on them amidst a hail of shouting baddies... and with just a little encouragement from Jesse out on the jete (because Willy only does tricks when Jesse is around), that whale triumphantly launches himself through the air like a majestic, airborne torpedo, clears that massive rocky barricade with just enough clearance to not smash Jesse backwards into the water (or crush him like a bug), and lands gracefully in the deep blue ocean behind the kid. If a real killer whale tried that stunt, it would have turned into a four-ton tube of toothpaste against that concrete wall, and maybe a half-eaten kid, who knows.

And yet... "WOOOOO!!!"  As 90s kids sitting in a dark theater or watching it on VHS for the hundredth time, we didn't care. We stood up and cheered. We pissed our neon-pink shorts with jubilation! We cried tears of pure JOY as Willy splashed down, stuck out his tail in the sunset, did a little victory flip, and swam away to go live his best life to the tune of Michael Jackson's "Will You Be There"... a song you can't help but cry to (and are doing so right now, admit it), presumably eating seals and ignoring Jesse forever... until the sequels of course. In the end, Jesse's life mattered. He and his foster parents hug it out. 

So yeah. I'm not crying, you're crying... *wipes away many, many tears*

The movie doesn't dwell on any of the ramifications of what they just did, but save to say they get away with it and the villains are vanquished... yada yada. But we don't really care about any of that anyway. The point is that Willy is free. Because see, to understand Free Willy, you have to understand the specific flavor of environmentalism we were fed as 90s children. The 90s were a weird golden age of eco-guilt. Captain Planet was yelling at us about recycling. The FernGully fairies were asking why we were so intent on cutting down the rainforest when we could just use our magic powers to do everything instead (See? Simple!). Polar bears were drowning in Coca Cola for goodness sakes! We were a generation raised on the solemn promise that if we didn't personally save every endangered species on the planet, the earth was going to explode by the year 2000.

Free Willy tapped straight into that (still very real) anxiety, but weaponized it with a potent emotional cocktail for a 90s kid: the longing to be understood, the needing to pave our own destiny, and one big penis joke of a movie title. Every 90s kid felt a little bit like Jesse. We were misunderstood by adults, trapped in institutional systems (the elementary school industrial complex!), and desperate for a profound, cinematic connection with something, we wanted to be moved and deeply touched by something, even if that something was Michael Jackson (in SONG! In SONG! Okay?). So of course if that something happened to be a majestic, captive sea creature that could solve our emotional trauma through interpretive splashing, even better.

The movie taught us some very specific, highly vetted and true life lessons: 

• Jokes about penises are funny.
• If you love something, steal it from a multi-million-dollar corporation.
• Adults are either evil corporate villains or helpless bystanders who will eventually support your heists if they're big enough. 
• Pop music solves all barriers between species, even whatever species Michael Jackson was. 
• Any problem in life can be solved by screaming "WILLY!" in a dramatic, cracking pre-pubescent voice.
• Never eat birthday cake with your damn grubby paws!

It was earnest, it was cheesy, and it was aggressively manipulative. It had a funny name for a movie. But goshdarnit, it worked. We're not made of stone here, okay? And now that it's been over 30 years, we could all stand to grow in compassion for each other and our fellow creatures... rather than just surrendering to cynicism, and hating and fearing each other (except the evil corpos of course!). "90s kids" these days need a reminder from our childhoods about what true compassion looks like, and why it is the key to our salvation as a generation. We still need this movie to remind us of what we once were. 

Because when Michael Jackson started singing “Will you be there?” over the credits, every kid in America had a tear in their eye and a sudden, burning desire to become a marine biologist, despite having C-minus averages in fourth-grade science. It gave an entire generation a hero they could root for—not because Jesse was smart or polished, or even smelled any better than the fish tank, but because he was just as messed up by the world and confused about the future as we were, and still are. But if he could find his saving grace in compassionate outreach to those "different than us" and learn that "down deep, we're all the same," maybe there's hope yet for us 90s kids. 

And as for the fishy smell, he took care of that too.