MovieChat Forums > Wrecked (2011) Discussion > Mountain Lion

Mountain Lion

posted 13 years ago by roy2k
15 replies | jump to latest

I really liked this movie alot. I thought it was very well done but there was one thing that just bugged me that didn't seem to make sense.

I'm pretty sure a mountain lion of any kind will not eat a dead animal (or human) especially not 2 or 3 days dead. So that whole thing where the cougar grabs the corpse out of the car and when Adrien fed the dead robber to the cougar just didn't sit right with me.

Correct me if I'm wrong so I can like the movie better.

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[–] !!!deleted!!! (6732138) 13 years ago

I'm not sure about mountain lions in particular but I thought most predators would prefer uncontested, already dead prey provided it still smelled acceptable (it was in a cold place so maybe not too much rotting yet) rather than risking injury and expending energy attacking live prey.

[–] Ike_McAdoo 12 years ago

sure they will. they'll go after dead meat before they'll try to make a kill. they often kill large animals and eat on it for a week (or longer, who knows?). that's why he saw the head in the lair (although that part begged belief a little). cougars and other predators will often hide their kill so they can go back to it later and not have it stolen. but to just drag off the head? well, i'm not too sure about that.

wolverines just pee all over carcasses when they're finished eating so no one else can have it. richards.

[–] !!!deleted!!! (6732138) 12 years ago

Yes, Hugh Jackman does that in a couple of the deleted scenes on the Xmen DVD's.

[–] Ike_McAdoo 12 years ago

(for some reason I can really see him doing that.)

[–] BShepherd24 12 years ago

Of,course a lion would eat something dead. Big cats are constantly trying to keep other large predators from eating their kills. Cheetahs makes kills all the time and have them stolen by bigger cats. So yea, if there was a dead person lying around where a big cat roams it would most certainly start eating it.

[–] shwen 11 years ago

i wasn't sure about what animal was that.

but if it were mountain lion, do they actually live in the woods in north america?

[–] Elfie-5 11 years ago

but if it were mountain lion, do they actually live in the woods in north america?

Of course they do. They're only native to the Americas and live from Canada all the way to south America. They're less common in the eastern parts of the US than the rest of the country, though.

[–] tabbycat 10 years ago

I don't believe the mountain lion was real either. It represented evil (or hell) -- as it dragged off the baddies one by one.

The dog represented the good in Adrien Brody's character, rediscovered after he lost his memory and was left to wonder ("Are you a good dog or a bad dog?")

[–] witeowlK 10 years ago

I was wondering about that, and you just cinched it for me. This also takes care of the question about "how'd the bank robber get to the road?" Answer: He didn't. That was another hallucination there for the sake of Brody's character's memory coming back enough to realize that the ID card wasn't his.

[–] hypermecha 10 years ago

I don't believe the mountain lion was real either. It represented evil (or hell) -- as it dragged off the baddies one by one.

The dog represented the good in Adrien Brody's character, rediscovered after he lost his memory and was left to wonder ("Are you a good dog or a bad dog?")

Oh the cougar was definitely real. The man with the rifle, who takes some of the money from the trunk & then runs, is killed by the cougar & his body taken back to its den. Yes there are mountain lions all over North America, yes they do attack & eat humans, however they will eat something recently-dead over expending energy and risking injury to kill something themselves.

The only hallucinations in the entire movie was the girl and the dog. The girl is the main character's girlfriend & the dog was supposed to be or was similar to his childhood pet. Everything else is real.

I was wondering about that, and you just cinched it for me. This also takes care of the question about "how'd the bank robber get to the road?" Answer: He didn't. That was another hallucination there for the sake of Brody's character's memory coming back enough to realize that the ID card wasn't his.

The bank robber who got to the top of the road was injured, but he managed to grab a backpack and make for the top of the ravine before dying of his wounds, all before Brody's character wakes up. I don't understand why this is hard to figure out, it's pretty straightforward.

[–] yurenchu 10 years ago

I'm not convinced that the cougar was real. In my opinion, the dog and the cougar both represented parts of Adrien Brody's character; instincts that helped him survive. The dog represented a calm, collected use of his wits, while the cougar represented aggression that was necessary in extreme/danger situations to survive.

The black man with the rifle might have been a passer-by who didn't want to help Adrien Brody but who instead robbed him, and in some fight to the death Brody managed to kill him and take his phone.

So what the movie wants to tell, is a story of a disturbed protagonist who in threatening life-or-death situations is forced to go to extremes in order to survive.

There are at least two other films that allow for a similar interpretation:
- Life Of Pi (2012) by Ang Lee
- The Descent (2005) by Neil Marshall

______
Joe Satriani - "Always With Me, Always With You"
https://y2u.be/VI57QHL6ge0

[–] hypermecha 10 years ago

The dog & the girl don't interact with anyone else; the cougar does.

The black man with the rifle might have been a passer-by who didn't want to help Adrien Brody but who instead robbed him, and in some fight to the death Brody managed to kill him and take his phone.

I don't understand at all where you're getting that from. A fight to the death!? Brody was in NO shape to fight anyone. You're just completely making that up out of thin air. Hell, maybe a helicopter came by, dropped Brody a hot pizza and a nice warm pair of pajamas for him, too; who knows?  It's ridiculous & pointless to speculate like that. All we have to work with is what we're given to see by the film makers. The guy with the rifle is obviously a hunter who stumbles across the accident, and realizes they are the bank robbers mentioned on TV, or puts 2 and 2 together because the money is scattered around & figures they stole it. He opts to take some money & run, rather than help out an accident survivor. The cougar got him. End of (that) story.

BTW, why did you black out the name of the 2 movies that you say are similar to this one? The title of a movie isn't a spoiler.

🐯

[–] yurenchu 10 years ago

Brody had a strong will to live and was obviously in enough shape (or had enough adrenaline) to make sure that he would survive. What do you think a mal-intentious hunter might do when he finds a load of cash, and suddenly finds out there's an alive witness who is probably a tough criminal and who would probably not like having the money stolen from him?

And what is that cougar doing with three bodies over the course of merely three days? Was that cougar expecting his cougar family to come over for its birthday or something, that's why it was hoarding so much (dead) food?

There are people who may not want to know the titles of those movies because I'm essentially spoiling them by saying their endings hint at similar interpretations; that's why I blacked them out. What's so difficult to understand?

______
Joe Satriani - "Always With Me, Always With You"
https://y2u.be/VI57QHL6ge0

[–] keith81 10 years ago

The mountain lion is real - it kills the black hunter who stole the money from the car. Then Brody finds the hunter's phone with which he saves himself at the end.

[–] Theshornwonder 9 years ago

I think it depends. If the already dead were rotting badly, the cougar would take Brody. He was badly injured and predators do prefer to kill their own food. Big cats like that scavenge when they need to, but they'll take a fresh kill over a scavenged 3 day old corpse, especially when the live one is injured to the point of not being able to fight the cat off.