September 21, 2005

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  Being a penguin fan, it was my duty to go see March of the Penguins.  It’s a documentary, narrated by Morgan Freeman, about the yearly trek that Antarctic emperor penguins take in order to reproduce.  It begins in March, where, after three months of eating, they leave the ocean and begin a seventy mile walk to the breeding ground they’ve been going to for eons.

  
  

  

  
  

  Hi hooooooooooo!  Hi hoooooooooooo!

  
  

  Experts are unsure how the penguins are able to navigate across seventy miles of ice to arrive at the same spawning point year after year. They hypothesize that they have some sort of internal radar or they’re possibly guided by the sun or the stars.  Well, let me put it this way… if you’re only allowed to get busy one time a year, wouldn’t you make doggone SURE to remember how to get there!?!  I mean, you’d be tatooing a map on your arm, wouldn’t you?

  
  

  

  
  

  Hey stupid!  Seven hundred penguins are going the other way… don’t you think we should be following them!?!

  
  

  And that’s another thing with this movie.  Was I the only one that started injecting penguin dialogue into all of the scenes?  I’m not talkin’ about “quack quack” (or whatever the heck sound penguins make), but actual dialogue that would go with the situation they were in.  For example, when they showed a lonely penguin that got a late start, was I the only one thinking…

  
  

  

  
  

  Dude, I am sooooo late!  I hope they haven’t run out of bean dip yet.

  
  

  Or at the very least, couldn’t Morgan Freeman have gotten into his character from The Shawshank Redemption and start quoting lines from the movie?

  
  

  

  
  

  “The lone penguin has no chance against the winter’s cold… it will simply fade away.  Like my friend Andy used to say… get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’”

  
  

  I dunno, I was doin’ this all throughout the movie and it sure did make the movie extremely entertaining.

  
  

  But alas… I digress.

  
  

  Anyway, why do the penguins travel so far away to spawn?  Well, not only does the area offer some limited protection against the upcoming winter winds, but mostly, it’s because the ice is thickest there, so there’s no chance of the ice breaking when summer comes around.  Also, it’s probably to prevent things like this from happening:

  
  

  

  
  

  Shamelessly stolen (but duly credited) from The Perry Bible Fellowship

  
  

  Once they all arrive, they start pairing up.  Morgan states that there are more females than males.  So, I’m sittin’ there in the movie theater thinkin’… what happens when the last male is taken?  What do the extra females do?  Do they start trying to kill other females?  Do they band together to form a female gossip group, spreading rumors to try to break up happy couples?  Do they stand alone by themselves or do they stand next to the couples to be the penguin equivalent of a third-wheel?  Morgan neglects to inform the movie-going public of this.

  
  

  Freaking Morgan Freeman… how did a guy that can’t answer my simple penguin questions get this job anyway?

  
  

   Once everyone is paired up, the penguin orgy begins.  Now, since this is a G-rated movie (and a PG-rated weblog, for that matter), they pretty much skip over the whole penguin orgy thing.  Oh sure, there’s shots of penguins gazing longingly into each other’s eyes, a few french beak kisses and a slow motion shot of two penguins that appear to be heading in the general direction of “hittin’ it”.  But, that’s pretty much all you get and I didn’t feel like uploading any screenshots of this.  So, to all you people that were reading this just in the hopes of getting some gratuitous shots of penguin orgies, tough banana chips, pal.

  
  

  Sometime in June, the egg is laid.  The mother balances the egg on her feet and protects the egg from the cold by enveloping it in a layer of blubber/fur.

  
  

  

  
  

  Is that an egg between your legs are are you just happy to see me?

  
  

  It is at this point in the relationship where the dads get royally JIPPED!!

  
  

  Now that the harsh Antarctic winter is about to begin, making it the most perilous time for the egg’s survival, the mother penguin… LEAVES!?!  For two months!?!

  
  

  Morgan explains that the mothers need to feed and bring back food for the chick.  So, they head on out and Morgan tries to make it seem like a tough deal… they have to trudge seventy miles back to the edge of the ice, they’ve lost a third of their body weight, blah blah blah.

  
  

  Gimme a break.  Let’s take a look at the situation, shall we?  While the moms get to go off and party for two months, the dads have to…

  
  

  endure minus 80° temperatures with winds up to 100 mph in almost 24-hour-a-day darkness…

  
  

  

  
  

  and in order to survive, they have to huddle together to keep from freezing to death…

  
  

  

  
  

  which of course, leaves hundreds vulnerable to fall victim each year to the deadly Monty Python foot.

  
  

  

  
  

  all while balancing an egg atop their feet, protecting it from the cold with their bellies that haven’t tasted food for four months.

  
  

  Yeah… good trade-off.

  
  

  In this brutal environment, some of the dads are unable to protect the egg properly, signaling the egg’s demise.

  
  

  

  
  

  Aw crap… I am SO in trouble when she gets back.

  
  

  Meanwhile, the momma penguins are livin’ la vida loca:

  
  

  

  
  

  They’re swimmin’ around, wavin’ their fins like they just don’t care and filling their bellies with fish and squid.

  
  

  The one thing they do have to worry about, however, are the penguin-eating sea lions.  Now, I know there’s more than a few people out there that think of sea lions as cuddly creatures of the sea.  But Morgan paints them as some sort of mercenary of death, living for no reason other than to kill penguin moms and in the process, baby penguins.  Morgan gives us this whole guilt trip about how the sea lion didn’t take just one life, but two, since the still-unborn chick will never get the food needed to stay alive.

  
  

  

  
  

  Evil sea lion about to munch on poor, defenseless penguin

  
  

  So people were genuinely sad when they showed a mommy penguin getting eaten by a sea lion.  I mean, I’m a penguin fan and all, but this is bordering on propaganda.  Hey, what about the little guppies that the penguins ate?  What, guppies are considered nothing but food while penguins get our sympathy cuz they’re cuter than guppies?  If this was March of the Guppies, would we be shedding tears when the cruel penguins come barrelling down on the poor defenseless guppies!?!  And don’t you think sea lions have a few babies to feed as well?

  
  

  Doggone sea lion discrimination, I tell you.

  
  

  
  

  But alas… I digress yet again.
  

  Anyway, back at Penguin Hell Central…

  
  

  

  
  

  While the moms are dining on their favorite foods, the dads are livin’ it up in the middle of the most inhabitable place on earth on a steady diet of snow and… snow.  Par-tay.  After a month or so, the dads finally have a companion to share in their misery…

  
  

  

  
  

  The chick is finally born.  Eager to get its first taste of food, the chick looks up to discover that the mom is still whoopin’ it up seventy miles away.  The fathers now have to put up with a hungry baby.  Way to go, mothers.

  
  

  

  
  

  After awhile, the mothers make it back and begin feeding their chicks.  So now, it’s time for the fathers to leave to get something to eat before they die of starvation and it’s the mother’s turn to take over to watch the chick.  Oh sure, now that the sun is shining and winter is receding, the moms decide it’s “their turn”.

  
  

  

  
  

  Insert “Awwww, how cuuuuuuuute!” here

  
  

  Within a couple of weeks, the chicks are able to walk around on their own, exploring their surroundings and playing with the other chicks.  Then, a small storm hits.  Many chicks take shelter under their mothers, but many mothers don’t do crap.  All they do is huddle against each other instead of trying to find their kid.  Alas, the unattended chicks die in the storm.  When some of the mothers find their dead chick, as Morgan states, a few of them react in “an unimaginable way”… by trying to steal another chick.

  
  

  Now, how is this so unimaginable?  What do you think is gonna happen to the mother when the father… who was left alone with the unborn chick for two months, who braved the coldest winter on earth, who didn’t eat for four months straight, who single-handedly hatched the egg, who entrusted the mother to take care of the chick for a little bit while he goes and gets some food before dying of starvation… comes back and discovers that she was out watching Oprah or something when the storm hit and the chick died?

  
  

  

  
  

  Not only that, but with the warmer weather comes airborne predators.  Sea gulls (or whatever those birds are… heck, look ‘em up yourself, do I look like a bird encyclopedia!?!) circle around landing close to the chicks and attempt to take them away… and the moms do… NOTHING!?!  I swear, these moms act like teenage babysitters that when something happens, they say, “Ewwww, I’m not getting paid enough to deal with that!”.

  
  

  Now, while the movie was goin’ on, I was wondering how they were able to get such awesome close-up shots of the penguins.  I figured that they had to be camouflaged well in order to not frighten or distract the penguins.  That also meant that when something bad happens, the cameramen would be unable to do anything to help.  Otherwise, they would expose themselves to the penguins, blowing their cover.  But in the end credits, they showed the behind-the-scenes stuff.  These guys were standin’ out there like it was a movie set!  They walked right around and up to the penguins with their cameras and had screens and lights and stuff.  Heck, I think I saw a couple of guys chowing down at a buffet table in the background!

  
  

  The point I’m trying to make is… what are the cameramen doing when bad stuff was happening!?!  Couldn’t they throw a rock or a snowball at the sea gull or something!?!  When the parents messed up the egg exchange, couldn’t one of them rush in there and help the penguins, saving a penguin baby’s life instead of zooming in on a dying, frozen egg!?!  Couldn’t they have made a few tuna fish sandwiches for the starving fathers!?!  WHAT KIND OF UNCARING JERKS ARE THESE CAMERAMEN!?!  Geez, these guys would make excellent mother penguins!!

  
  

  Boy, I seem to be doing a lot of digressing in this blog.

  
  

  So August arrives and… the moms leave?  AGAIN!?!  They don’t even wait for the fathers to come back!  They just take off, leaving the chicks alone.  By the time the fathers return, some of the chicks will have died from cold, hunger or at the hands of predators.  Well, how about adding in mother neglect!?!

  
  

  

  
  

  WHERE IS YOUR MOTHER!?!

  
  

  For the next couple of months, the parents take turns going back and forth to the ice edge to bring back food.

  
  

  

  
  

  The family together at last… during one of the few moments that the mom hasn’t abandoned her kid

  
  

  By November, the chicks are healthy enough to survive on their own, so the parents leave.  In December, the chicks are able to swim for the first time.  And as the sappy music swells, the chicks are shown frolicking in the water, as they are finally able to swim home… for the first time… only to be eaten by a horde of sea lions.

  
  

  The end.

  
  
  
  
  

  Okay, they didn’t really get eaten… but you know, it coulda happened.

  • 9:43 pm
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