The global box office is on pace for its best year since the pandemic, buoyed by low-budget breakouts from Gen Z auteurs (Obsession, Backrooms) and the all-powerful Zendaya Cinematic Universe (The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, The Drama). But the best may still be yet to come — and it’s not Avengers: Doomsday, which feels like it might be spiritually AI slop, nor Dune: Part Three, which in a just timeline will prevail on Dunesday. There is another studio release that should be treated as an essential piece of monoculture.
May I interest you in the movie where the homeless dude from Weapons gets swallowed by a sperm whale?
This is Whalefall, which dares to ask, “What if 127 Hours covered a much shorter span of time with someone escaping the digestive process of one of the largest species on Earth?” While Whalefall is based on Daniel Kraus’s novel of the same name, this inexplicably happened to someone in real life. In 2021, a lobster diver on Cape Cod was swallowed by a humpback whale and — even more incredibly — lived to tell the tale.
Based on the trailers, Whalefall takes things to a more extreme level: Austin Abrams’s protagonist is swallowed alongside a giant squid, and he has one hour to escape before running out of air. In this race against time, feeble-minded viewers might assume the whale is the villain of this story, but director Brian Duffield has helpfully pointed out that it’s just as much of a victim. “The whale is not a bad guy,” he said in a June interview with Variety. “The whale doesn’t understand that it’s swallowed Austin. It’s trying to swallow its lunch, and Austin is just a byproduct of that.” Noted.
This is why we go to the cinemas. There’s no question Whalefall is the moviegoing event of the year — if not our lifetime — and to celebrate the occasion, it’s time to take stock of the most memorable whales in pop culture. From the infamous sperm whale that terrorized Captain Ahab to the majestic Tulkuns of Pandora, here are the 15 best pop culture whales, ranked. Figuratively and literally, it’s time to dive in.
15. The Orca from Orca
When Jaws pioneered the summer blockbuster in 1975, it was inevitable that knockoffs would follow. And with all due respect to Piranha, the 1977 thriller Orca got one thing right: killer whales are legit scary. They can coordinate attacks on boats. They kill animals — not only for sustenance, but sometimes for the love of the game. Keeping orcas in captivity is a cruel practice, but let’s not act like they’re gentle giants. Orca is interesting in theory — the titular animal is seeking revenge for the death of its mate — making it one of the more psychologically complex creature features of its era, even if it never quite matched the cultural impact of the film that inspired it.
