Gorillas in The Mist
 |
You like this ring? You want to keep the hand this ring is on? If I see or hear or smell you anywhere near my gorillas, you'll be writing with your other hand and I'll have a new ashtray.
—Dian Fossey
|
 |
A 1988 film directed by Michael Apted, Gorillas in The Mist starred Sigourney Weaver as Real Life naturalist Dian Fossey. Fossey was one of "Leakey's Angels", at the time the world's leading researchers in the field of primates, inspired by anthropologist Louis Leakey. In the 1960's, she traveled deep into the isolated jungles of Rwanda to study endangered mountain gorillas. Fossey devoted her life to ending poaching at the cost of her relationships with the people around her. Her fight became more and more heated, to the extreme ends of confronting the Rwandan government and eventually burning down a poachers' village, which quickly put her in their crosshairs.
Tropes used in Gorillas in The Mist include:
- Badass Bookworm: Dian Fossey.
- Everything's Better with Monkeys: Or in this case, apes.
- Foregone Conclusion: Dian is murdered by poachers.
- Mama Bear: Dian Fossey came to consider the gorillas her family. So needless to say, she became very protective of them, and when any of them died, she got pissed.
- Motherly Scientist: Dian Fossey.
- Real Life Writes the Plot