Summary
- Netflix’s “The Beast” received praise from a mountain lion expert for its extremely realistic depiction of a lion’s attack, even if the victim’s survival is unrealistic.
- The survival thriller is inspired by the true story of the tsavo man-eaters, the lions that terrorized workers building the Kenya-Uganda railway in 1898.
- While The Beast accurately captures some aspects of lion behavior, its premise that a lion stalks and preys on humans for fun is a fabrication and unlikely to come true.
Netflix’s “The Beast” was praised by a mountain lion expert for depicting a lion’s attack very accurately, albeit brutally, on screen. The 2022 thriller tells the story of Dr. Nate Samuel (Idris Elba), a recently widowed father who takes his two daughters on a trip to South Africa. However, what was supposed to be a journey of healing and reunion turns into a fight for survival when they are chased by a ferocious lion. The Beast received mixed reviews from critics, with some praising Elba’s suspense and acting, while others criticized the implausible premise.
However, according to lion expert Mark Elbroch (via Insider), the Beast did show off an extremely realistic lion attack. Elbroch admitted that the attack was hard to watch, comparing it to the brutal bear attack in Leonardo DiCaprio’s The Revenant. However, the Netflix movie did a lot of justice, including portraying the sheer size of African lions and their true way of attacking when attempting to kill. The only unrealistic aspect of the depiction was the survival of the victim of the attack, which in real life would certainly have been fatal. Read Elbroch’s statement below:
African lions, the largest, are almost the same size as the largest tigers. There are records of specimens weighing up to 600 pounds, but they are markedly sexually dimorphic, and it is a technical word for males that are much larger than females. When I came face to face with a lion in the wild, when they get up, their eyes are almost at the level of my chest, which is very scary. It’s hard to watch. It reminds me of The Revenant with Leonardo DiCaprio, the scene with the bear was incredibly violent. I mean this is the most realistic attack we’ve ever seen. Back – the spine is often, you know, in big cats when they attack any prey. And you notice that this lion bites very hard. We have not seen this in other clips. Many scratch, which, as I said, are more aimed at injury. This lion is going to kill. This clip is as realistic as possible. I put a solid eight. Loses two points only for affecting the person on the other side. You know, the destruction from that attack would be deadly.
Is the Beast movie based on a true story?
Even though The Beast features an extremely realistic lion attack, this raises questions about the realism of the film as a whole. After all, there’s no denying that his premise seems a bit far-fetched. When a lion attacks a family for no apparent reason and then starts chasing them for miles and places to do their job, this is far from typical lion behavior. So it’s easy to see that The Beast is not based on a true story, but takes inspiration from the story of the infamous lions told in Ghost and Darkness.
“The Beast”, “Ghost and Darkness” were inspired by the true story of the Tsavo cannibals. The Tsavo cannibals were a pair of lions that terrorized a construction site where workers were building the Kenya-Uganda railway in 1898. They exhibited unusual behavior, hiding around the construction area and treating people like prey. While the exact number of victims is disputed, some experts believe the lions killed up to 135 workers before they were killed by project leader John Henry Patterson. Even today, it is not clear what caused the lions to behave like this.
However, studies have shown that lions can become “man-eaters” due to factors such as starvation, lack of food sources, or disease. Therefore, the idea of a lion preying on people is not so far-fetched. However, an unrealistic aspect of the Beast story is that the lion is implied to hunt for fun, as it does not eat its prey. This never happened as it is believed that the Ogres of Tsavo also hunted for food and survival. Overall, The Beast has some of the right elements regarding lions and lion attack stories, but its premise is still fictional and unlikely to happen in real life.
Source: Insider