Sumith Prasad
In Mark Pellington’s survival movie ‘Survive,’ Sophie Turner’s Jane encounters a wolf while trying to seek help to bring her companion Paul down from the mountains. As she passes through the woods, a wolf tries to hunt her down. Even though she attempts to scare the animal off using a stick, the wolf persists and chases her, only for Jane to eventually kill it to ensure her survival. Turner joined the movie after gaining immense experience in dealing with animals as a cast member of the legendary series ‘Game of Thrones’ but it was not enough for her to portray Jane since she had to fight a real wolf in the film!
Fighting the Wolf
The wolf that features in ‘Survive’ is real and provided by the same team that provided wolves to ‘Game of Thrones.’ “We were working with the people who provided the wolves for ‘Game of Thrones,’” Sophie Turner told Conan O’Brien while appearing on TBS’ late-night talk show ‘Conan.’ The actress also talked about how she had to fight the animal for the movie after treating one as a pet while filming the historical series.
“It was actually quite horrible because in ‘Game of Thrones,’ the wolves are our pets, our soulmates, kind of. And on this, I have to basically fight a wolf and try and kill the thing. I found it to be quite symbolic, actually. ‘Game of Thrones’ had just ended, so I was figuratively killing the wolf and ending my career,” Turner added. The production of ‘Survive’ was not a cakewalk for the actress, especially since she had to fight the animal. “I had no experience with fighting off wolves or surviving in the mountains,” Turner told Marie Claire.
Although it is a real wolf, the production department must have used CGI to create the scenes in which Jane kills the animal. Since the release of the Quibi series and its movie version, certain viewers have questioned the authenticity of the wolf attack, claiming that wolves do not attack humans. As per the International Wolf Center, “the risks associated with a wolf attack are above zero but far too low to calculate” based on a new study. However, the same study found twenty-six fatal attacks throughout the globe between 2002 and 2020, with fourteen of them attributed to rabies.
Despite the advancement of CGI, film and TV productions still use real animals to ensure authenticity. Some of the recent examples include the rabbit in Netflix’s psychological horror movie ‘Run Rabbit Run,’ the dog Jax in the action thriller ‘Lou,’ and the dogs in FX’s thriller drama ‘The Old Man.’
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