{"id":805218,"date":"2026-10-17T04:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T04:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/805218\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T04:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T04:46:12","slug":"whalefalls-father-son-relationship-unpacked-by-director-author","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/805218\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Whalefall\u2019s Father-Son Relationship Unpacked By Director & Author"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT: This story spoils the plot of the film Whalefall<\/a>, now out in theaters, based on Daniel Kraus<\/a>\u2018 novel.<\/p>\n

\n\tA running joke Whalefall director Brian Duffield<\/a> had going to summarize the film hailing from 20th Century Studios and Imagine Entertainment and hitting theaters this week was that \u201cmen would rather get swallowed by a sperm whale than go to therapy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJust as Austin Abrams<\/a>\u2019 Jay Gardiner finds himself in quite the harrowing predicament trapped in a whale\u2019s stomach after a tangle with a squid, the cast, crew and filmmakers of Whalefall also found themselves in the tricky situation of bringing the premise of Daniel Kraus\u2019 novel to the big screen.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo back up, Jay\u2019s decision to seek out the remains of his dead father Mitt Gardiner (Josh Brolin<\/a>), who has committed suicide by drowning in the Pacific Ocean following a diagnosis of mesothelioma, is what really landed him in this situation. Just as he has to get scrappy and use anything he can find to escape, those behind the making of the movie had to be in constant communication about what it would take to pull off such intense scenes, many of which took place inside a life-sized whale stomach built specifically for the film.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt takes a village to build a whale, and I think it takes a really great village to survive it. And that\u2019s been really one of the most gratifying parts of [production],\u201d Duffield said when Deadline visited the set of the movie at Radford Studios<\/a> in L.A. in September, during an early tank scene where Abrams encountered the whale for the first time. \u201cIt\u2019s such a new and unique challenge that I think we hired the right people, because it was a lot of us all banging our heads together trying to figure out how to shoot every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMultiple whale stomach models were built by Weta Workshop in New Zealand, with the head, throat, esophagus and larynx constructed in California because they were too big to ship to set on time. The 12-foot-tall, 18-foot-long whale head was manufactured by StudioArt & Technology.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAustin Abrams as Jay Gardiner in 20th Century Studios\u2019 \u2018Whalefall\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t20th Century Studios<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s such an interlocked set. I\u2019ve never made a movie, and I can\u2019t imagine ever making a movie where every single department really has to be talking to each other every step of the way,\u201d Duffield said. \u201cFor the stomach, Ramsey [Avery] our production designer [had] to figure out how to build it, and then we [had] to figure out how to put cameras in it, but then also we had to figure out how to light it, and then the lights become bioluminescence.<\/p>\n

\n\tVisual effects supervisor Guillaume Rocheron, who worked on Jordan Peele\u2019s Nope, rigged the LED lighting in the stomach to eventually render as the bioluminescence that then helps illuminate Jay\u2019s environment.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSome colors do not show up the same color in LED lights. So, our costume designer had to build Austin\u2019s costume around what the LEDs would show up with,\u201d Duffield added. \u201cSo we would take neoprene samples to New Zealand, where we built the stomachs, to show them under the lights, against the whale skin, to see what colors show up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCameras and lenses were broken \u201cnonstop\u201d during filming; the crew ultimately constructed scenes around the one spot the camera could actually fit into the cramped space and worked backwards from that vantage point. If that weren\u2019t claustrophobic enough, Abrams also faced the added challenge of emoting behind a facemask and the diving equipment Jay uses.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe redesigned the regulator to make it as small as possible, because regulators are not really meant to be worn outside of water. And yet, the air inside the whale stomach is toxic. It won\u2019t kill him, necessarily, but it\u2019s full of methane and things that make him a little high,\u201d Duffield said. \u201cSo we redesigned the regulator to give him as much mouth shape as possible. He actually does talk throughout the movie to himself or to other characters in the stomach. That has been a challenging learning curve.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAustin Abrams as Jay Gardiner<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t20th Century Studios<\/p>\n

\n\tThese formidable aspects of the film\u2019s creation echoe Kraus\u2019 general approach to writing books; he now has 30-plus under his belt.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI like to create new problems and have to fight through the solutions \u2014 I try to start with an impossible [conceit] where I just throw hurdles in front of me of things that I don\u2019t know,\u201d Kraus told Deadline on set. \u201cSo I have to relearn how to write a book every time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe impetus for Whalefall came from a viral video in which a kayaker ended up in the mouth of a whale. Once Kraus heard about the clip, it spawned discussions with friends about whether it could actually happen. He could not stop thinking about it.<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing an email to author friend Mary Roach, author of Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (2013), and correspondence with three whale experts she recommended, Kraus had found the \u201chigh concept\u201d hook for the book, which hit shelves in 2023.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI didn\u2019t want to do it if it couldn\u2019t really happen \u2014 being swallowed by a whale has been treated like a fable and Biblical stories forever. My interest was, could you do it scientifically accurately?\u201d Kraus said. \u201cAnd by the end of the day, I was all systems go. All the whale experts were super-excited to help, and they think about whales all day, but never in this context. We were off to the races.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBoth Duffield and Kraus drew connections to the science fiction genre in different ways, with Kraus developing an interest in whales during the frontloaded research process for the book, which took about three months.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI became more and more \u2026 obsessed, you might say, with whales,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of what I was doing with this biology of a whale, but I also unexpectedly started to get really enamored of whales as a being, as a force of nature.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSperm whales are extraordinarily intelligent. They\u2019re one of the most mysterious animals on the planet. Everything about them is strange. They really feel like aliens. Even in the deep ocean, which is filled with alien-like creatures, the whales almost feel like a master alien. They\u2019re not aggressors. They\u2019re very peaceful animals. Sperm whales have been witnessed helping humans many, many times, like divers in trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tExperiencing a whale from the inside out adds complicated layers to Whalefall\u2018s story, even when it comes to the father-son relationship at its heart.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHow do you fall in love with a character through its guts, basically? It\u2019s definitely gross, but what are the ways that we can fall in love with this animal, because Austin is in such a unique situation, and I think there\u2019s something interesting about his character, who is very fond of of animals and nature,\u201d Duffield said. \u201cOne of the things that differentiates his character and Josh\u2019s character is Josh is very hard and Austin\u2019s very soft. But they both have this love of nature, and so giving Austin moments that he can really, for lack of a better way to put it, appreciate how cool the situation is \u2014 while also being scared sh*tless and thinking he\u2019s going to die pretty much at any given moment \u2014 that was part of the craft of it, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDuffield evidently shared a similar awe. For him, the trick with the stomach being the setting for a majority of the movie was balancing the claustrophobic feeling of Jay\u2019s plight with breaks from the cramped space.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s challenging for a couple reasons. One, it\u2019s such a long stretch of the movie, and quite a lot happens while he\u2019s in in the stomach, but it was also about keeping it fresh and interesting so [that] after 30 minutes, people weren\u2019t just like, \u2018Alright, I\u2019m sick of this stomach,\u2019\u201d Duffield said. \u201c[Jay] does have different little side adventures. He spends some time in the second stomach, which is very visually different, and then in the esophagus of the whale as well. Different animals that are also in the stomachs, and different problems he has to MacGyver his way out of, so it\u2019s just trying to figure out how to keep it fresh visually, which Daniel honestly just did a lot of in the book.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhalefall executive prodcuer Doug Merrifield, whose credits include the Free Willy films, joined Duffield, Kraus and Imagine Entertainment\u2019s Allen Mandelbaum in emphasizing that the whale is not the villain in the movie. It\u2019s orcas that attack Jay\u2019s sperm whale that ultimately provide the antagonists and the catalyst for the film\u2019s climax.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe whale is not a bad guy. The whale is just an animal that\u2019s doing what it\u2019s meant to be doing. The whale is not interested in [Jay]. It\u2019s trying to get a squid, and Austin is in the way,\u201d Duffield said. \u201cThe movie makes a very direct correlation, eventually, between Josh Brolin and and the whale, and part of Austin\u2019s journey is making peace with his dad, who is dead at the start of the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tL-R: Austin Abrams as Jay Gardiner and Josh Brolin as Mitt Gardiner<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t20th Century Studios<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the main threads of the book that drew Duffield to directing the adaptation was the father-son relationship at its core; his own son was 4 at the time of the set visit. In Whalefall, Mitt and Jay didn\u2019t always know how best to communicate with each other; the ocean is where they find common ground.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe miracle of the book and hopefully of the movie is, when it ends, you primarily are talking about the relationships, and then the whale is third or fourth build, which for a movie that\u2019s set almost entirely inside of a whale feels impossible, but somehow [Kraus] pulls it off,\u201d Duffield said. \u201cAs you age up, you start viewing things from different perspectives. I think before I was a dad, I probably would have been firmly in Jay\u2019s point of view, and then now being on the other side of it and having a son \u2014 granted, my son just turned 4, so it\u2019s a very different than the relationship between [Jay] and [Mitt] \u2014 [I\u2019m] really starting to feel for Brolin\u2019s character, and understand him to some extent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKraus, who grew up in conservative small-town Iowa, leaned into the personal when it came to building the tension of Mitt and Jay\u2019s relationship. His father was a hunter, not as extreme as Mitt, but still an inspiration for the character.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m a product of [where I grew up], which is to say, I have avoided getting therapy. I\u2019m a product of that culture where you don\u2019t express yourself and you don\u2019t show your feelings when it comes to interpersonal things,\u201d Kraus said. \u201cMitt is a very emotional guy when it comes to the ocean, like he will fight tooth and nail for every living creature in there. He\u2019ll do whatever it takes to protect the ocean. But when it comes to dealing with his son, he\u2019s absolutely clueless. He would be much better at interacting with a whale than he would be his son. And ultimately, Mitt becomes the whale, in a sense, and through the whale, they are able to have the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Jay fights nitrogen narcosis \u2014 a condition in divers in which certain gases take on an anesthetic effect in the nervous system, resulting in a kind of high \u2014 and the methane in the whale\u2019s stomach, he has flashbacks that help him piece together info he needs for his survival. The memories often involve his father imparting pearls of wisdom, regardless of whether Jay though of them that way at the time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe challenge really was, the book has probably 50 flashbacks where it\u2019s constantly hopping back and forth. In the movie, [we had] to take all that information that Jay needs to know scattered across all those flashbacks, and find ways to pack them into vastly fewer flashbacks,\u201d Kraus said. \u201cThat was really the biggest challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA small creative detail further merges Mitt and the whale, who speak as one character in Kraus\u2019 book.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe whale\u2019s heart is beating, and the stomach is reacting to the beats of the whale\u2019s heart. So that\u2019s sound puppeteering the stomach. There\u2019s water in it, which is moving from that. And then, on top of all of that, just to show how full circle it starts to go, the whale\u2019s heart is Josh Brolin\u2019s heartbeat,\u201d explained Duffield, who came up with the idea. \u201cWe\u2019ve recorded Josh\u2019s heartbeat, and then our sound guys made it a whale heartbeat that is playing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tL-R: Austin Abrams as Jay Gardiner and Josh Brolin as Mitt Gardiner<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t20th Century Studios<\/p>\n

\n\tThis detail also fits in with Kraus\u2019 thematic vision.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I came across the concept of a whalefall, which is when a whale dies and its corpse sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and its body, as it decomposes, sets off a shock wave of life, generations of life are born from its remains,\u201d Kraus said. \u201c I found that very emotional and touching to the idea that when a whale dies, or somebody we know and love dies, that their death sort of begets life, the memory of them, the influence of them. It goes on, and it goes on for generations, and even when I talk about it now, I get goosebumps, it\u2019s just such a beautiful thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSometimes it takes getting stuck inside a whale to provide some perspective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT: This story spoils the plot of the film Whalefall, now out in theaters, based on Daniel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[104002,154592,214836,96,16231,2839,56,54,55,134175],"class_list":["post-805218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-austin-abrams","tag-brian-duffield","tag-daniel-kraus","tag-entertainment","tag-josh-brolin","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-whalefall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}