ADVERTISEMENT American farmers have been having a hard time dealing with wolf attacks, as the number of canis lupus has soared since they were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, in 1995.
As a result, attacks on cattle and sheep have skyrocketed – with farmers finding themselves in a bind as they are forbidden to harm wolves due to their protected status.
But now, a technological innovation has been deployed in the fight to prevent attacks by wolves in the rural north-west: drones. And not just any drones – Quadcopter drones equipped with speakers which blare out AC/DC and the voice of Scarlett Johansson.
While the loud rock music can seem like an evident tactic to scare wolves away from cattle, the second does seem a little more incongruous…
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that people arguing is a distressing sound for wolves and so, the fight scene between Johansson and Adam Driver in the 2019 movie Marriage Story is a perfect deterrent.
“I need the wolves to respond and know that, hey, humans are bad,” the aptly-named Paul Wolf, a USDA district supervisor in Oregon, told WSJ.
Harsh, as the two married protagonists in Noah Baumbach’s film, Nicole and Charlie, are going through a bi-coastal divorce that pushes them to their limits. They’re flawed, certainly, but hardly bad.
Still, that argument is one for the ages… And a really tough watch.
Still, wouldn’t you know it, the music and film clips work.
Since the deployment of the drones, the number of wolf attacks in Oregon has been reduced. The number of cows killed by wolves has fallen from 11 over a 20-day period to two over the next 85 days in Southern Oregon.
In that case, allow us to be so bold as to recommend some other classic on-screen arguments like the Jack Nicholson-Tom Cruise back-and-forth in A Few Good Men; the Joe Pesci “How the f*** am I funny?” bit in Goodfellas; that biting confrontation between Jesse and Celine in Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight; and of course, the “You’re tearing me apart, Lisa” scene from The Room.
And if Ben Kingsley’s “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” eruption in Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast doesn’t terrify the wolves, we don’t know what will.
Kingsley still terrifies us to this day.
In other Scarlett Johansson news, the 40-year-old actress recently broke a Hollywood record by becoming Hollywood’s most bankable lead performer.
This follows the commercial success of her latest film Jurassic World Rebirth.
The takings of the most recent instalment in the Jurassic franchise have put Johansson at the top of the list of the highest-grossing lead actors of all time, with $14.8billion (approx. €12.7bn) in box office for her films across her career in leading or ensemble roles.
According to the breakdown from The Numbers, the following projects were the biggest contributors:
- Avengers: Endgame – $2.7 billion
- Avengers: Infinity War – $2 billion
- The Avengers – $1.5 billion
- Avengers: Age of Ultron – $1.4 billion
- Captain America: Civil War – $1.1 billion
- The Jungle Book – $951 million
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier – $714 million
- Sing – $631 million
- Iron Man 2 – $621 million
- Lucy – $457 million
In our (less than glowing) review for Jurassic World Rebirth, we said: “Despite Gareth Edwards excellent direction, some nifty staging of CG set pieces and a handful of spectacular sequences – chiefly the riverbed encounter with a dozing T-Rex – Jurassic World Rebirth comes off as more of a nostalgic legacyquel than a rejuvenating fresh start. (…) Jurassic World Rebirth honours the magic of Spielberg’s gamechanging blockbuster but downgrades what could have been a daring revival to a passably entertaining regurgitation.”
Read the full review here.
Scarlett Johansson can next be seen on the big screen in the upcoming crime drama Paper Tiger by James Gray – in which she’ll team up with Adam Driver once more.
Hopefully their interactions will scare off more wolves. But please, less breaking of audiences’ hearts. We’re still recovering from that Marriage Story tiff.
