As an early Earth Day treat this year, Warner Bros. presents audiences with the beautiful and moving “Born to be Wild 3-D,” playing exclusively at IMAX theaters across the country.
This relatively short (40 minutes) film documents orphaned orangutans and elephants and the extraordinary people who rescue and raise them—saving endangered species one life at a time.
Stunningly captured in IMAX 3-D, the documentary is a heartwarming adventure exploring the lush rainforests of Borneo with world-renowned primatologist Dr. Birute Galdikas, and traveling across the rugged Kenyan savannah with celebrated elephant authority Dame Daphne Sheldrick, as they and their team rescue, rehabilitate and return orangutans and elephants back to the wild.
The spectacular visuals (shot with state-of-the-art IMAX 3-D technology) delve into the two wholly divergent wildernesses of southeast Asia and Africa with such detail, one might attempt to swat away the on-screen bugs. On top of that technical feat, the filmmakers employ the unparalleled king of the voice-over jungle, Morgan Freeman, who again proves to be a majestic storyteller.
While those elements deliver on a procedural level, the true soul of the movie is the women themselves, and the animals they rescue. From the playful (orangutans learning how to bathe themselves, elephants playing soccer with human companions) to the heartbreaking (a mourning orangutan rocked to sleep by its surrogate human mother, an elephant waking up with night terrors when recalling its mother’s death) and finally to the hopeful (orangutan reintegration back into the jungle, acceptance by older, former elephant orphans into their pod).
Ultimately, the film succeeds in showing two humans whose love for the downtrodden animals persevered in harsh conditions, and have provided the animals a safe haven in which to heal. Unlike other overtly emotionally manipulative documentaries, “Born to be Wild 3-D” does not anthropomorphize the animals to make them relatable to the human viewers, but rather lets them tell their story in a straightforward, respectable manner that proves how connected our species really are. A
Ari Silber is a Loyola MBA student. Before graduate school, he worked for nine years in the Los Angeles film industry , focusing on marketing, publicity and distribution. He can be reached at
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