National Geographic for Disney/Fleur BoneLast Earth Day, Nat Geo and filmmaker James Cameron debuted the first series in their outstanding Secrets of natural history programming franchise, Secrets of the Whales. The franchise continues this Earth Day weekend with the next installment, the equally impressive Secrets of the Elephants (Friday and Saturday, April 21-22 at 9pm ET/PT and streaming next day on Disney+).
Describing the Secrets of films at a recent press conference, Cameron related this real-life programming to his fictional Avatar blockbusters.
“On the Avatar films,” Cameron said, “we’re creating a fantasy view of nature, but, thematically, underneath all that is this idea of the interconnectedness not only of nature itself but of us with nature, as inhabitants of nature. In the Secrets series we try to forge an even more intimate and emotional connection with nature — to illuminate how these amazing creatures think, how they feel, how they communicate, how they function as complex societies and cultures.”
In Secrets of the Elephants, all of that is on incredible display over four episodes (two airing each night) that follow these pachyderms — often a herd of families — as they work to survive in savannahs, a forest and even a desert in Africa, and urban Asian landscapes.
Narrated by Natalie Portman, the series features breathtaking cinematography as it grips viewers and brings them into the elephants’ world. It will likely teach you things (we did not know that a rare group of elephants somehow manages to live in Africa’s inhospitable Namib Desert, for example, and they have learned to “surf” down sandy cliffs to get to the infrequent waterhole) and shows some previously unfilmed behavior, such as a mother elephant “showering” with the afterbirth following her delivery of a daughter.
There is also compelling drama that makes a viewer invested in these creatures’ constant drive for survival, as various emotional and suspenseful moments play out in scenes like: a matriarch ultimately communicating her decision to lead the herd, including a few calves, down a treacherous mountain path toward a life-sustaining waterhole; or when cameras follow a newborn calf among the desert-dwelling elephants to see if she will become the first in eight years to survive her first six months of life in that harsh terrain, with the other females in the small herd also pitching in to protect the youngster.
Secrets of the Elephants continues a great Earth Day tradition, one that will continue for years to come. Earth Day 2024 will see Secrets of the Octopus, and subsequent installments that will focus on bees and penguins have also been ordered.
All I find is the trailer. Where’s the whole show?