Some movies make us laugh till we can’t breathe. Some movies will scare us till we wet ourselves. And some movies…well…it can break our hearts, and make us cry no matter how many times we’ve seen it (I cry every time I watch Big Hero 6. Oh Baymax).
Anyways, here is another movie that will make us cry for sure because it tells the true story of a dog. No! Not a dog! What will happen to it?! Let me break it down for you the story of Space Dogs.
Space Dogs is a documentary movie by Icarus Films (fitting production name for this movie if you ask me). The movie uses archival footage to tell the story of the clever and doomed Moscow street dog Laika, the first mammal to go into orbit and (SPOILER ALERT) the first mammal to die there (insert Darth Vader’s Noooooooo). In 1957, the Soviet Union sent Laika to space in the satellite Sputnik 2.
It was assured to the public that Laika will come back to earth alive and unharmed but that’s not entirely true as she was always intended as a sacrifice to scientific progress because there was no way to return her to Earth at the time. WHY?!
For years, the party line from officials was that Laika had been humanely euthanized before the satellite reentered the atmosphere. In reality, she lasted less than a day before heat and stress killed her, turning the object of cosmic progress into her small coffin.
The film doesn’t have footage of Laika suffering in space (Thank God, that would hurt even more) but it does have plenty of clips of scientists putting Laika and a few other research dogs through a barrage of exercises that I don’t want to go much into detail, you can see it in the trailer.
Space Dogs will be available in mid-September through a few different venues, including the Alamo Drafthouse’s virtual release program. People are going to be extremely angry about this movie because they’ll learn more about what Laika has been through. Poor dog.
The sad story of Laika has inspired artists and writers for decades since the guileless little dog burned up alone and she is often memorialised as a heroic creature whose martyrdom earned her immortality among the stars. The truth is, Laika’s life was collateral damage, and the decades-long Russian project to memorialise her as a symbol of national pride is little more than a guilt-assuagement exercise.
Space Dogs offers dignity to its pitiable subjects by stripping away any pretensions that humans have been friends to the creatures they claim as their closest companions. You can watch the trailer down below.
