When I was a kid in the late 90s, I was really into the Animorphs series by K.A. Applegate. It’s a young-adult sci-fi series about teenagers who gain the power to morph into animals, and use it to fend off an invasion of parasitic, mind-controlling aliens. I imagined having the power to transform myself, and thought that the first animal whose DNA I’d assimilate into myself would be that of a bird, because I wanted to fly.
Here’s five movies about birds, ordered by how much I enjoyed them.
Valiant (2005)
Valiant (Ewan McGregor) is a small wood pigeon with heroic aspirations to become a war messenger in 1944 Britain. However, his first mission is beset by difficulty in the form of General Von Talon (Tim Curry), a German falcon.
In Mass Effect 2, if you played FemShep and attempted to romance Garrus, you might have noticed that Bioware had difficulty animating turian-human kisses, since turians don’t have lips. Displaying romantic interactions involving species without lips is a long-standing problem in animation, to which Valiant is not immune. I spent 76 minutes watching pigeon antics just for the emotional payoff of one, zoomed-out, peacetime pigeon kiss involving the only female pigeon who was not the protagonist’s mother. The rest of Valiant was a wasteful execution of the premise: it’s a war movie but we are never shown the tactical significance of the message Valiant carries. Is it a supplies requisition? A command to attack? A command to retreat? The pigeons sure don’t know either. You should only watch this movie if you love McGregor’s voice, you love pigeons, or you appreciate undemanding and formulaic plots. This is yet another movie where the noble members of class Aves are the butt of many awful, children’s movies, including but not limited to Happy Feet, Happy Feet II, Surf’s Up and Free Birds.
Chicken Little (2005)
After his infamous overreaction to the Acorn Incident of 2004, Chicken Little (Zach Braff) is ostracized by everyone in Oakey Oaks, except fellow misfits Abby Mallard (Joan Cusack), Runt of the Litter (Steve Zahn), and Fish Out of Water (Dan Molina). Then pieces of the sky start falling again. Cue the Adele.
Well, uh, Chicken Little is more entertaining than Valiant, which doesn’t say much. It better exploits the avian personality characteristics of its digital actors, and its skimpy storyline is backed by fairytale backstories. And there are some cute touches, such as the employment of chameleons as traffic signals. However I felt like I was watching a neutered version of Shrek that substituted preschool-friendly fable characters into roles that previously required a modicum of psychological darkness and character flaws that are more than punchlines. Chicken Little doesn’t work because there isn’t any emotional consequence or substantial humour to the follies of this cast of PG animals.
The Birds (1963)
Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) meets prankster Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) while he is looking for lovebirds in a pet store. Intrigued and infuriated by their encounter, she visits his hometown of Bodega Bay. The town is then attacked by birds.
After having watched Rear Window I had high hopes for The Birds, but the birds are about as menacing as the professional squirrels from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and much less coordinated. Although Hitchcock fills his frames with feathered fiends, they are surprisingly ineffective at attacking anything. Sure, they get in everyone’s hair and occasionally nip at exposed skin, but only a few attack at a time. It would have been much more effective for Hitchcock to have his seagull puppets dive-bomb the humans, kamikaze-style. There is one terrific discovery of a neighbour’s body with his eyes pecked out, but it seems that this birdocalypse could be overcome by wearing goggles and strong denim. Without any sense of danger, the carefully composed suspense falls flat.
March of the Penguins (2005)
Emperor penguins breed inland, to lay their eggs where the ice is the most solid. However their ancestral breeding grounds are 100 kilometres from the sea during the Antarctic winter, requiring the parents to alternately protect the eggs in -62 C temperatures and journey to the sea to hunt fish.
While watching this Oscar-winning documentary, I began feeling extremely inadequate. If faced with starvation whilst incubating an egg in blistering cold, and walking 100 kilometres to the sea to eat sushi, I think I’d probably die. Forget peregrine falcons, paranoid chickens, and monkey-eating eagles; through evolution, emperor penguins alone have conquered their icy domain and proven themselves the fiercest of avians.
The Black Swan (2010)
Nina (Natalie Portman) is a technically accomplished ballet dancer cast in the dual roles of the innocent White Swan and the seductive Black Swan. However, the director (Vincent Cassel) is unconvinced that Nina can embody the sensuality of the Black Swan, unlike her rival, Lily (Mila Kunis).
This Darren Aronofsky film explores the Madonna-whore complex in the contexts of identity and dissociation in the context an extremely effective and disturbing way. Physically, there are eyes going orange and legs bending the wrong way. Emotionally, there’s a girl cracking violently under stress. You know how they recommend acting loudly, erratically (e.g. scuttling sideways like a crab and screaming) in prison or robbery situations to deter conflict? Acting unpredictably is a deterrence to others to engage you in conflict. Anyways, Nina’s transformation into the Black Swan is properly terrifying without being explicit, unlike the gratuitous sex.
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