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Avengers Endgame – Spoiler free review on the most important bird-related theme

A Common Loon, which evidently not only lives on Earth, but also on…whatever planet bad guy Thanos retired to after the end of the previous Avengers movie, Infinity War. Would “EndGame” show proper respect to the use of bird vocalizations in a movie?

What a great night from an entertainment perspective! My son and I went to see Avengers Endgame this evening. After 10 years or so and 22 movies, we were pretty invested in the storylines and characters, and the movie certainly delivered! Without giving anything away, it hit all the right notes and is definitely one of the best of the lot. That was followed by watching the newest episode of Game of Thrones. Wow…another satisfying and highly entertaining show.

But there’s one elephant in the room that I’m sure is on EVERYONE’s mind regarding the Marvel movies and the Avengers storyline. It all goes back to “Infinity War”. At the end of that movie, big baddie Thanos snaps his fingers, and BOOM, half of all sentient beings in the universe turn to dust…including many of our favorite Marvel characters. Thanos then retreats to an idyllic planet to “retire”.

The problem that was on EVERYONE’s mind after watching Infinity War…the audio that accompanied Thanos and his retirement. As the scene goes to this strange planet, what sound are we greeted with in the background? THE HAUNTING CRIES OF A COMMON LOON!!!! Now, Hollywood certainly is guilty of using the vocalizations of a few species in movies, particularly Common Loons, Red-tailed Hawks, and Kookaburra. But a Common Loon…ON AN ALIEN PLANET!?!? That was a new low.

When we got to the theater tonight, the lot was by FAR more full than I’d ever seen it. We got there 50 minutes early and still stood in a massive line to wait for our screen to open. While waiting, we overheard a theater working noting that the day before, they had 4,901 tickets sold, a record for one day. ONE THEATER, in a city of 180,000, and they had almost 5,000 people visit for this movie! And what was on EVERYBODY’S mind? That’s right…Was Marvel going to have a major bird-related faux pas again?!?!? So as the movie got going and we caught up with our favorite (surviving) characters, I, like everyone else in the theater, had my ears tuned to the sound track. Would we have a similar ridiculous audio misstep?

It was relatively early in the movie where I heard, yes…THE CALL OF A COMMON LOON!! AGAIN!!! But alas, THIS time Marvel got it right!! It was a stage in the movie where we visited Tony Stark and a home on a lake. It looked like what might be typical northern woods surrounding the lake, and yes, this was on Earth. A PERFECTLY normal place to potentially have a loon call!

WELL DONE MARVEL!! I hereby brand “Endgame” to be a total success, and at the end of the movie, everybody was clapping, which I’m SURE was also related to the proper use of a Loon call!

Bird sounds in cinema – Confirmation I haven’t just been hearing things!

Someone on Twitter pointed this story out from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I’m glad they brought it to my attention, as I was almost wondering if I was just hearing things all of these years!

There is nothing quite like the calls from a loon. Hollywood can’t get enough of them, either.

Evidently I’m not the only one who has noticed that Hollywood LOVES to use certain bird songs in movies…whether or not it’s appropriate. Common Loon (any kind of “wilderness), Red-tailed Hawk (the default vocalization for ANY raptor they show in a movie), and Laughing Kookaburra (pretty much in any “jungle” movie scene) seem to be the three that I notice the most.

This piece in the Star Tribune provides a nice list of movies where the Common Loon pops up. I’m glad I wasn’t imagining hearing a Common Loon cry at the end of Avengers: Infinity War!  That one takes the cake as most ridiculous, given that it was happening not just in inappropriate habitat, but on another planet!!  I missed some of these, as in Game of Thrones!

Birds in Movies – “Gamenight” gets it right!!

Common Nighthawk Drawing - Chordeiles minor

Drawing of a Common Nighthawk I did a few years ago. They have a VERY distinctive call when flying around at dusk or at night, something that really stands out on the soundtrack when watching a movie! Kudos to “GameNight” for the correct use of a bird call, in the proper time and context!

As a birder, one major pet peeve of mine…Hollywood’s (mis-)use of birds in movies! It seems that Hollywood typically has about 3 different bird vocalizations that are used in any situation a bird is present. One is the ubiquitous Red-tailed Hawk screaming cry, something they use for ANY raptor that happens to even tangentially appear on a screen. Conan O’Brien wasn’t alone when making this erroneous use of a Red-tailed Hawk call, but he WAS called out by birders for his actions!! Bald Eagles are often shown in movies and TV, but the more iconic Red-tailed Hawk call is usually used instead of the real Bald Eagle cry.

The second iconic call that’s heard ALL the time is the haunting call of a Common Loon. Occasionally it’s used in the proper setting and context, but there are SO many times when movie characters are out “in the wild” and the call of a Common Loon is dubbed in the background.  What’s that?  Your favorite character is roaming the forests of the Appalachians? Perhaps it’s a wild setting, but NOT EVERY WILD SETTING SHOULD HAVE LOON CALLS PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND!! This site notes several “misplaced” birds in TV and movies, including the mis-use of Common Loon calls in Murder She Wrote and Raiders of the Lost Ark (presumably while in Peru!!). The Common Loon has also been mis-used visually…something I noticed IMMEDIATELY when watching Finding Dory. “Becky” is the loopy Common Loon that plays a role in the rescue scenes in Finding Dory, along the California coastline. The presence of a Common Loon along the California coast isn’t out of place IN WINTER.  But “Becky” in Finding Dory is a Common Loon in full summer breeding plumage…NOT LIKELY!!

The third call that’s heard in EVERY jungle scene is the laughing call of a Kookaburra. They’re a bird found in Australia, but listen to any jungle scene supposedly set in Africa, South America, or southeast Asia, and you’ll STILL likely hear the wild calls of a Kookaburra.

Given how often birds are mis-used in movies, I always get a bit of satisfaction when I see a movie that gets it right!  Tonight my wife and I went to see “GameNight“, starring Justin Bateman and Rachel McAdams.  It’s a really funny movie!!  We both greatly enjoyed it.  The only time birds were evident (and surely ONLY to me, among the movie crowd) was a scene late in the movie.  It was a setting in a relatively dense urban setting, on a bridge over a large river and fairly out in the open. Large buildings could be seen in the surrounding area, and it was night. As the scene played out (I won’t spoil the movie for you here!), I could CLEARLY hear Common Nighthawks giving their typical flight calls.

PERFECT!! You often DO hear Common Nighthawks as they fly through the night skies in and around urban areas, picking off flying insects in flight with their massive, gaping maw.  One of the places I’ve heard them the most is at the airport here in Sioux Falls. They typically use rocky areas to breed, and the rocky roofs that many urban buildings use work perfectly for their purposes.

WELL DONE GAMENIGHT!!  You get a rare GOLD STAR for proper use of a bird in a movie!!

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