Year in Review: Ten Most Memorable 2020 Screen Animals
Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 10:01PM by Nathaniel R
Over the Moon
We have a few big 2020 Year in Review pieces left to go but how about something fluffy and little tonight like "Bungee" in Over the Moon (pictured above).. or if not always that then slippery but cuddly, or dangerous and otherwordly. We polled Team Experience for their favourite critters of the year onscreen and here were the results (sort of). We'd intended to do the usual countdown thing but the results were truly all over the place with 20+ animals cited and not much in the way of consensus. So rather than attempting little blurbs and a ranking we'll let these dozen animals speak for themselves. Not that they can speak. Which was your favourite screen creature in 2020?
Onward
The New Mutants
If you fancy dragons as pet companions you had two options: "Blazey" in Onward and "Lockheed" in The New Mutants.
The Invisible Man
Love and Monsters
i'm thinking of ending things
The traditionalists or dog lovers amongst you might surely prefer brave "Zeus" in The Invisible Man or scene-stealer "Boy" in Love and Monsters though you won't get much comfort from elusive wet "Jimmy" in i'm thinking of ending things.
I'm thinking of ending things
Gunda
Pigs had a rough 2020 onscreen though they were definitely memorable via the hallucinatory bleeding pig in I'm thinking of ending things that surely inspired some critical discourse (we're guessing) and "Gunda" and her piglets, who refuse to be anthropomorphized in the stark and hypnotic documentary Gunda.
Wolfwalkers
First Cow
Okay so while we found no real consensus on greatest screen animals of 2020 amongst our team, there were two films which came closest to uniting our affections, "Mebh" and her wolfpack in Wolfwalkers and the titular First Cow in Kelly Reichardt's critical darling. Evie as that first cow unfortunately doesn't understand the concept of "acting" and doesn't think to hide her affection for Cookie (John Magaro) in one pivotal scene which proves to be one of the most weirdly nail-biting and suspenseful moments of the film year. Action directors wish! Evie was popular enough this year to get her own GQ profile.
What was your favourite screen animal this year?
Or are you not an animal lover? Perhaps you're more like Betsey Trotwood (Tilda Swinton) and wishing TFE was a "donkey free zone!"
Reader Comments (11)
Co-sign Evie's insouciance in First Cow. Kelly Reichardt said in an interview that Evie stood out among the cow head shots she examined (headshots of cows!). The real life Evie gave birth to a calf named after one of the characters of the film -- Cookie. In another interview, Reichardt said that the biggest challenge was how to transport the cow on a barge since cows don't swim. When I was younger I distinctly remembered witnessing a horrific scene where a cow fell from a barge and it swam its way towards us who were watching from the other side. It was simultaneously surreal and sublime. So, yes, cows do swim. Unless that swimming cow I saw had super(cow)powers.
Evie's my winner! Like Owl, I love your comments about her bovine "performance". You're right that the scene is incredibly tense, despite the odd banality of the premise.
Oh, it has to be Evie, the First Cow of Cinema. What a charmer! And the donkeys - but only if Tilda is there to shoo them away.
Most disturbing was that dog that wouldn't stop shaking itself in i'm thinking of ending things - I really wanted it to stop (the dog, not the movie!).
Unfortunately, this movie just wasn't seen widely enough, but I guarantee that anyone who saw Sang-soo Hong's THE WOMAN WHO RAN (I don't think it even got a release in the USA beyond festivals like New York) knows that the absolute hands-down no-argument winner of this category for 2020 is the cat who sneaks into shot and steals the whole scene!
No love for the Hyena Bruce from Birds of Prey?
The Cow in 1st
Does Gong Li count from MULAN? She transforms into a falcon and my god, she was so dang watchable.
Always love this feature. Gunda for the win! Also love the dogs in The Truffle Hunters.
Evie is the star of the year.
Invisible Man's "Zeus"... I loved it. And was fearing the worst, for him.
I have to add... the one we see in "The New Mutants", isn't "Lockheed" at all, despite they called it like that. "Lockheed" isn't even a pet, but a sentient alien who has a relationship with Kitty Pryde that rivals the one that The New Mutant's Warlock has with Doug Ramsey (Cypher). Hope Feige explores both relationships (quite complex and beyond cute) in the MCU.