An Earth Month Surprise

So, let’s talk about Disney+, everyone. Again. (Listen, it’s the most active part of the company right now, and I’m at home every day like everyone else, so I’m spending a lot of time on the service.)

I’ve written about a few of the catalog titles that arrived on Disney+ last Friday, but wanted today to talk about a few parts of the service’s Earth Month collection. You may have heard that Disney+ released two new nature documentaries last week: Dolphin Reef and Elephant. But I’m sorry to tell you that this is a lie. Disney+ didn’t release two new nature documentaries last week. They released five new nature documentaries.

There are the aforementioned two documentaries, along with two related feature-length behind-the-scenes documentaries: In the Footsteps of Elephant (which is kind of a grammatically awkward title), and Diving with Dolphins. The third one is tied to last year’s Disneynature documentary Penguins, entitled Penguins: Living on the Edge. All of these films have different narrators, different directors, and arguably different attitudes. If you’ve ever watched the BBC Natural History Unit’s miniseries Planet Earth (or many other BBC Natural History Unit programs, which are uniformly excellent), you may recall that each episode ends with a brief look behind the scenes of how various animals were filmed, environments were captured, etc. These three documentaries are very much in that vein.

Now, your mileage may vary. I prefer the BBC Natural History Unit style of documentary filmmaking, which really means I prefer the David Attenborough style of narration. (Many of the filmmakers, such as Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, who work on Disneynature documentaries are also part of the BBC unit.) Attenborough has a gravitas that you can’t find in many actors, in part because it feels like it’s largely above parody, unlike a Morgan Freeman type. Attenborough’s style also eschews silly jokes; not to suggest he’s dour or humorless, but there’s not a lot of condescending narration or talking down to little kids.

Disneynature documentaries, to a fault, are about that magical word that you’ll hear anytime you watch anything about…really any Disney property: story. These are all about telling you stories, which means they’re about identifying animals by names (which they don’t have) and creating character arcs and plots (which don’t really exist). They are about telling stories where stories don’t have any place. And that means the narrators have to do a lot of heavy lifting.

When I saw Penguins last year, I was both impressed by the nature photography and aggravated by Ed Helms’ narration. (I was also, as I mentioned on Twitter at the time, the only person in a faux-IMAX theater. It’s the only time in my life I’ve seen a movie in theaters by myself. A truly odd experience.) It’s not so much that I dislike Ed Helms — he’s fine! It’s that any actor has a Herculean task, when they have to tell a story and act it out, and try not to be too aggressive in doing so. And listen, Penguins culminates with a Whitesnake song blasting from the speakers (yes, really), so it’s less a narrator problem and more a creative problem.

From what I’ve seen, the three behind-the-scenes docs don’t have this issue. Diving with Dolphins is narrated by Celine Cousteau (of that Cousteau family). Penguins: Living on the Edge is narrated by Blair Underwood. In the Footsteps of Elephant, the one of three I’ve watched in full (and thus, Your Recommendation for Today), is narrated by Jeremy Sisto.

In the Footsteps of Elephant isn’t perfect — there are a couple of bits that seem too good to not be rehearsed, such as one at night where a producer believes he hears a lion roaring just offscreen only to walk to the back of one of the massive Jeeps the crew is using, to find a field guide snoring up a storm. (It’s a funny bit. I…wonder how planned it is, because the staging to reveal the snorer is pretty well executed, moreso than if it was truly candid.) But Sisto’s narration is much more functional and authoritative, as opposed to lathering on nonsense about a story or characters. To wit: if I heard correctly, the elephants that Meghan Markle talks about in Elephant are not named at all in Footsteps. It’s a telling choice. (If I’m wrong that the names are never mentioned, they are mentioned very, very few times. Also a telling choice.)

If you like nature documentaries and photography, this is a good month for you. And if you have Disney+, you’ve got a pretty extensive selection from which to peruse. I can only recommend Footsteps for now, but I’ve already begun to watch the Penguins behind-the-scenes doc. While the standard features offer beautiful HD photography of striking natural environments and habitats, they also are best experienced on mute. At least with Footsteps, I can enjoy the narration too.