"Free Willy" part 2: Rocket-powered Willy

Ok, so thanks to a remark made by Miss Pam Raynor I realize that I completely forgot about another extremely unlikely event. At the very end of the movie, in probably the most memorable scene of the movie, Willy is about to be free when the owners of the park he escaped from lay out nets to block his path out to open sea. So, determined to escape, and with the encouragement (and aboriginal magical chanting) of Jesse, Willy is able to jump the wall and escapes the harbor into the open ocean. Thus, he is free. Check out the video below if you forgot (and also enjoy the classic MJ song too!).

Willy jumping the wall!!
(Sorry, I couldn't get the video to link right into this entry)

What Doesn't Make Sense
Ok, so my dad builds boats for a living. I spent many of my summer days with my dad at marinas very similar to the one that Willy escapes from. The wall that Willy jumps over is a marine retaining wall, also called a breakwater. I played on these all the time when I was younger.

The wall itself isn't like a straight up-and-down, vertical barrier, but essentially a hill submerged in the water. The point of it is to act like a beach and break the surf outside of the marina in order to protect the boats inside. The wall pictured below is pretty close to the one in the movie.

Like an iceberg, most of this wall is underwater. In order for the retaining wall to withstand the force of ocean waves, it needs to be firmly planted in the sea floor. You can find breakwaters in virtually every marina that is on a large body of water, especially if it is susceptible to extreme weather (hurricanes, swells, wind storms, etc).

Notice how wide the structure is? And how tall it is? You can see it in the video I posted above, around the :15 mark.

Now, I'm not a zoologist.  But I think it's safe to say that a wall that size would be hard for a whale to jump over, especially because there is neither the space nor depth for Willy to get a good run at it. I'm sure if he had lots of space to do it, he probably could. But this is a harbor. The water isn't that deep, as it's close to shore. 

So, it is not just a lack of logic, but it goes against the law of physics. There is no way that Willy could jump over that wall to escape. Unless he had rockets under his flippers, it's just not possible. Sorry kids, in real life, Willy would totally be re-captured and returned to his shoebox tank.

Once again, my childhood memories are being crushed with every passing minute....

"Free Willy" and the unnecessary detour

So I'm going back in time a little bit, to a movie that personally touched my life. Big time. To the point that for about 12 years, I wanted to be a whale trainer. Then I saw one fateful episode of "When Animals Attack" and I decided I didn't want to be a chew toy for a whale.

"Free Willy" was a movie produced in the early 90s, starring a killer whale with the super creative name of Willy. The actual whale (Keiko) was originally sold to Marineland, then eventually to an amusement park in Mexico. His return to the wild was very publicized and included the construction of a huge rehabilitation center for him before they set him free. He would later pass away from pneumonia (an illness I personally thought was a  strictly human problem), which broke my little childhood heart. And thus was the end of the most popular whale since Moby Dick.

The Movie
The plot of the movie Free Willy is actually very similar to the events that happened in real life. Willy hated his life because he lived in something that would be the equivalent of a human living in a shoe box. He missed his family, and bonded with a boy named Jesse, who shared his sense of loneliness due to the fact that he had been abandoned by his mother in foster care. So, with the help of some sympathetic adults, Jesse makes it his mission to free Willy from captivity, and reunite him with his family out in the ocean. It's actually a really cute movie, and when you love animals like I did when I was a child, it just makes you want to move to SeaWorld and swim with whales.

What Doesn't Make Sense
So, watch that trailer again, and take a look in the background at the :55 mark of the video.

Notice that large body of water that resembles the ocean?

Well, apparently Jesse and the rest of the adults didn't. Because instead of driving the whale down the street to the water that is literally right there, they instead take what seems like a two day journey through back roads and basically the most inconvenient route ever to find the ocean.... which was RIGHT THERE!

Oh well, I guess the torture of animals for the sake of childhood entertainment is a reasonable excuse. Right? I mean, why else would they take that insane route? Aside from filling the plot of a 90s children's movie.

...and for the record, as I write this, I feel a piece of my childhood dying because of this sad revelation.

(P.S. What I would have given to be ^ this kid ^ when I was 6!)