Wolves are really scary!

So this is related to my review of The Grey,( an excellent movie).

It is easy for wolves to be regulated to a bottom tier monster, just above goblins and giant rats. Kinda the giant rats of the wilderness. I know in Skyrim when a wolf pack attacks I lazily unsheathe my sword and halfhearted swing it around in their direction, more annoyed then menaced.

In a game with dragons and demons and ogres, it is real easy for wolves to look lame. It is easy to forget that wolves are scary.  Seriously, they aren't slightly cooler dogs- they are feral apex predators. One of the most successful predators on this planet. They are territorial, social, and intelligent. Alot of the reviews I have read of The Grey (and I read quite a few when I decided to do my own review) slammed the movie because they thought the wolves acted unrealistically by hunting and killing humans.

It is explained in the movie the wolves are so aggressive because the humans are near their den, although Wikipedia neither confirms or denies this sort of behavior it does affirm that wolves are fiercely territorial and that attacks on humans are escalating. The humans in the movie are wounded, bloody and suffering from the high altitude and exposure to the elements, and they are unarmed.  No more than 8 wolves are ever shown on camera together, usually you don't see them at all. They perform skillful ambushes and hit and run attacks, probing and testing, not committing to an attack unless they can be confident of a kill.

How many times are your PC's wounded and trekking through the trackless forest to or from a dungeon.

From now on in my games I'm going to treat wolves seriously and turn them into a real threat.

The Grey Movie Review

My pretty girlfriend took me to see "The Grey" tonight, and boy was I blown away. The trailer does not do this film justice at all, I just wanted to see Liam Neeson box a wolf, so I was pleasantly surprised by how great a movie it was. (Update: This extended trailer is a bit better, but shows alot of footage which was not used in the film, mostly of the wolves).

It is not a cheesy Neeson as action hero type film.  So if that's what you expect prepare to be disappointed.  


It is a movie about death, what it means to die, and how a man faces his death. It is bleak poetry, terrible and beautiful- much like the lines of poetry which are dear to the main character:

Once more into the fray

Into the last good fight I’ll ever know

Live and die on this day 

Live and die on this day 

The pacing is great - the movie takes it's time. It is slow and drawn out when it needs to be, but can also shock you with how startlingly fast things can happen.  There is a sense of danger and urgency throughout the entire film, because you know that if the wolves don't get them they will freeze or starve anyway. Even when the characters are just standing still you are very aware that a race is on. I have read a few reviews wherein the reviewer complains that there are "too many shots of dudes just walking slowly through a forest" - you can really feel how cold and exhausted they are though, you can feel the supreme effort going into every footstep through that deep snow. I'd rather watch a movie about men struggling to keep moving in the cold than one with super-humans shooting rockets at wolves- but that's just me. 


The visuals are awesome too. There is such a stark and unforgiving beauty in the landscape, and it is all on such an epic scale that the human characters are reduced to tiny little black specks. The wolves are unfortunately in CG as is to be expected, but the closeup animatronics are pretty convincing. To the filmmakers credit we don't really see the animals all that much, usually they are just blurry shapes at the edges of the campfire. They are scariest when we don't see them anyway, because the threat of attack is always present.


The acting is really good throughout, and feels very authentic. The characters are mostly pretty relate-able, and although some don't have much character development they still feel like real people, and not just cut-outs or stereotypes. The character development we do see though, man- it goes deep, and it draws the viewer in.


Anyway- a great movie. I do not think you will regret seeing The Grey.


I'm going to do a D&D related follow up post to this soon.

Immigrant Song

I am so damn excited to go see this.