Movie: Into The Wild

[White97Jimmy]

Based on a true story. My GF started to read the book, and I decided to take the easier, lazy route and watch the movie on my new 46" screen instead

Anyway, it was a pretty decent movie. It's basically a movie about a college graduate who decides to live in the wilderness of Alaska to get away from the city. The movie is mostly flashbacks about how to got to where he was. The GF said the book is much more detailed. The soundtrack is mostly by Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam).

I'd give it a 4/5.

[DonJefe]

Originally Posted by White97Jimmy

Based on a true story. My GF started to read the book, and I decided to take the easier, lazy route and watch the movie on my new 46" screen instead

Anyway, it was a pretty decent movie. It's basically a movie about a college graduate who decides to live in the wilderness of Alaska to get away from the city. The movie is mostly flashbacks about how to got to where he was. The GF said the book is much more detailed. The soundtrack is mostly by Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam).

I'd give it a 4/5.

I really enjoyed this movie as well. Definitely worth the rental.

[CHRONO14]

I though it was a pretty good movie. Probably not one I would purchase but most definitely worth renting. I liked the sound track also.

[JCK]

I thought it was a decent movie. It dragged at times. I'm not convinced that he could survive the intial two years considering some of his adventures, most notably navigating class IV - class V rapids in a kayak without flipping it over only to die of starvation after mis-identifying a poisonous plant.

It's a sad story.

[GWN]

Yet to see the movie but I read the book when it came out a few years back. I think the author, John Krackauer did a great job piecing the kid's life together based on interviews with those who knew him. Same guy wrote Into Thin Air, another great book about tragedy on Mt. Everest.

[JMAC]

I thought the movie was OK as a movie; but I have to agree with what this Park Ranger wrote about Chris McCandless:

Chris McCandless from an Alaska Park Ranger’s Perspective
by Peter Christian
Both Chris McCandless and I arrived in Alaska in 1992. We both came to Alaska from
the area around Washington, D.C. We were both about the same age and had a similar
idea in mind; to live a free life in the Alaska wild. Fourteen years later Chris McCandless
is dead and I am living the dream I set out to win for myself. What made the difference
in these two outcomes?
There was nothing heroic or even mysterious about what Chris McCandless did in April
1992. Like many Alaskans, I read Jon Krakauer’s book “Into the Wild” when it first
came out and finished it thinking, “why does this guy rate an entire book?” The fact that
Krakauer is a great outdoor writer and philosopher is the bright spot and it makes a great
read, but McCandless was not something special.
As a park ranger both at Denali National Park, very near where McCandless died, and
now at Gates of the Arctic National Park, even more remote and wild than Denali, I am
exposed continually to what I will call the “McCandless Phenomenon.” People, nearly
always young men, come to Alaska to challenge themselves against an unforgiving
wilderness landscape where convenience of access and possibility of rescue are
practically no nexistent. I know the personality type because I was one of those young
men.
In fact, Alaska is populated with people who are either running away from something or
seeking themselves in America’s last frontier. It is a place very much like the frontier of
the Old West where you can come to and reinvent yourself. In reality, most people who
make it as far as Alaska never get past the cities of Fairbanks and Anchorage because
access is so difficult and expensive (usually by airplane), travel is so hard, the terrain is
challenging, the bears are real, and so on.
A very few competent and skillful people make a successful go at living a free life in the
wild, build a home in the mountains, raise their children there and eventually come back
with good stories and happy endings. A greater number give it a try, realize it is neither
easy nor romantic, just damn hard work, and quickly give up and return to town with
their tails between their legs, but alive and the wiser for it.
Some like McCandless, show up in Alaska, unprepared, unskilled and unwilling to take
the time to learn the skills they need to be successful. These quickly get in trouble and
either die by bears, by drowning, by freezing or they are rescued by park rangers or other
rescue personnel–but often, not before risking their lives and/or spending a lot of
government money on helicopters and overtime.
When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did
wasn’t even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic and inconsiderate. First off, he spent
very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail
without even a map of the area. If he had a good map he could have walked out of his
predicament using one of several routes that could have been successful. Consider where
he died. An abandoned bus. How did it get there? On a trail. If the bus could get into
the place where it died, why couldn’t McCandless get out of the place where he died?
The fact that he had to live in an old bus in the first place tells you a lot. Why didn’t he
have an adequate shelter from the beginning? What would he have done if he hadn’t
found the bus? A bag of rice and a sleeping bag do not constitute adequate gear and
provisions for a long stay in the wilderness.
No experienced backcountry person would travel during the month of April. It is a time
of transition from winter’s frozen rivers and hard packed snow with good traveling
conditions into spring’s quagmire of mud and raging waters where even small creeks
become impassible. Hungry bears come out of their dens with just one thing in mind—
eating.
Furthermore, Chris McCandless poached a moose and then wasted it. He killed a
magnificent animal superbly conditioned to survive the rigors of the Alaskan wild then,
inexperienced in how to preserve meat without refrigeration (the Eskimos and Indians do
it to this day), he watched 1500 pounds of meat rot away in front of him. He’s lucky the
stench didn’t bring a grizzly bear to end his suffering earlier. And in the end, the moose
died for nothing.
So what made the difference between McCandless and I fourteen years ago? Why am I
alive and he is dead? Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide while I
apprenticed myself to a career and a life that I wanted more badly than I can possibly
describe in so short an essay. In the end I believe that the difference between us was that
I wanted to live and Chris McCandless wanted to die (whether he realized it or not). The
fact that he died in a compelling way doesn’t change that outcome. He might have made
it work if he had respected the wilderness he was purported to have loved. But it is my
belief that surviving in the wilderness is not what he had in mind.
I did not start this essay to trash poor Chris McCandless. Not intentionally. It is sad that
the boy had to die. The tragedy is that McCandless more than likely was suffering from
mental illness and didn’t have to end his life the way he did. The fact that he chose
Alaska’s wildlands to do it in speaks more to the fact that it makes a good story than to
the fact that McCandless was heroic or somehow extraordinary. In the end, he was sadly
ordinary in his disrespect for the land, the animals, the history, and the self-sufficiency
ethos of Alaska, the Last Frontier.

[jkorp]

I read the book, but haven't seen the movie yet. I think the book was great, just a really good read. No matter what you think about McCandless, Krakauer writes the story well, and his personal commentary adds much to trying understand what happened.

It's easy for a person to look at just the surface and write something like Peter Christian's view, but talking to the people and hearing the accounts that Krakauer has compiled, it's hard to think he had a death wish. It was a tragedy and a waste of life and potential not matter what you think of McCandless. But it really doesn't matter at this point. I think you take what you want from this story

I look forward to seeing the movie, available On Demand 3/28 I think. I'm not too fond of Vedder's credit for the soundtrack because he didn't write "Big Hard Sun", but seems to willingly take the applause for it.

[ResIpsa]

a friend of mine made me watch this movie. Her take on it wa different than mine, hers being to romantize his life. Me, I saw the guy as a nutjob dumbass.


different strokes for different folks I guess.