Does the dog die in the movie ‘Dog’?
While promoting the film, Channing Tatum, who made his directorial debut with Dog, made it known that the film takes inspiration from his own adventures with his actual pup. However, unlike what happened in his real-life tragic road trip, Dogs Lulu does not die.
On Feb. 8, 2022, Channing appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to promote Dog. The shows host mentioned to the 41-year-old how hard it is to tell which direction a movie will take when a dog is involved. Most of the time, he said, it goes the wrong way, where the dog dies in the end and spectators are left sobbing. Article continues below advertisement
In response, Channing said, “I think Marley and Me has scarred everyone … Every single person that I’ve told that I made a dog movie, they’re like, I’m not going to see it unless you tell me if the dog lives.”
The Magic Mike star added that he asked his loved ones why they would want to know the ending, but he quickly learned that they were less concerned about spoilers if it meant knowing that the adorable furball survives. Luckily, Channing confirmed that Dog has a “good ending.” Article continues below advertisement
Fair warning: We did include a couple of films in which the dog does technically die but is reincarnated in another dog’s body.
So to that end, we’ve assembled a list of 15 movies where the dog doesn’t actually die. From cartoons to real trained animal actors to CGI canines, this list runs the gamut in terms of types of dog movies.
Man’s best friend is a frequent companion on the big screen, but more often than not it feels like these Very Good Characters are introduced only to die later in the film, providing emotional fuel for the main human character. Stories new and old capture the unbreakable bonds formed between man and mutt, or in some cases, mutt and mutt. But the emotional turmoil of watching dogs die on (or off) screen is too much more many viewers.
Categories With Most Combined Yes/No Votes
Category | Combined votes |
---|---|
Category | Combined votes |
A dog dies | 57278 |
An animal dies | 38005 |
A cat dies | 36157 |
A kid dies | 34760 |
A parent dies | 34377 |
A horse dies | 33517 |
There are jumpscares | 31878 |
There’s blood/gore | 31763 |
There are clowns | 31409 |
Granted, that massive lead for “a dog dies” is partly attributable to its early availability and to the name of the site. But it still says something that “a dog dies” has maintained its top-dog status (sorry) for so long, and that fictional dog death was the particular trauma that inspired the site in the first place. From an evolutionary standpoint, shouldn’t we be bothered by depictions of endangered humans more than we are by depictions of endangered dogs, no matter how cute, soft, and smol?
Actually, that very cuteness hijacks human hardwiring to make us care deeply about dogs. In 2017, three sociology and/or anthropology professors published a paper in the peer-reviewed Society & Animals journal with the inviting title “Are People More Disturbed By Dog or Human Suffering?” The paper reported the results of a study in which 256 undergraduates at a “major northeastern university” were “asked to indicate their degree of empathy for a brutally beaten human adult or child versus an adult dog or puppy, as described in a fictitious news report.” (Sounds like a fun afternoon.) The results suggested that humans experience more empathy for fictitious human children, puppies, and adult dogs than for fictitious adult humans. And while humans age out of their capacity to induce empathy, dogs never do: They make us go “aww” indefinitely.
One of the paper’s coauthors, University of Colorado sociology professor and human-animal expert Leslie Irvine, elaborates via email that dogs boast elite-level neoteny, or the retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood. Those juvenile characteristics stimulate caregiving behavior in humans, an evolutionary response that encourages adults to take care of their young. “Baby faces bring on a flood of the intimacy hormones vasopressin and oxytocin, which produce pleasure, which makes us want to bring on more pleasure,” Irvine says. “Neotenous animals are easier to anthropomorphize, and so we identify with them more readily than we would with, say, a lizard or a cockroach.”