Disney Plus-Or-Minus - White Fang 2: Myth Of The White Wolf
White Fang, the enjoyable 1991 adventure, is not a movie that cries out for a sequel. Jack London, the author of the original novel, didn’t seem to think so, otherwise he probably would have written one himself. But the first movie had been a moderate hit, so the marketplace of the 1990s demanded one get made. And so, three years later, Disney brought us White Fang 2: Myth Of The White Wolf, one of the least necessary sequels in the studio’s history.
Believe it or not, this wasn’t the first time someone had created a dubious sequel to White Fang. In 1973, the Italian gore-meister Lucio Fulci, of all people, had filmed a loose adaptation of London’s novel. A year later, he returned with Challenge To White Fang. Fulci sat out the third installment, 1974’s White Fang To The Rescue. I haven’t seen any of these Italo-White Fangs but I suspect they’re a shade more violent than the Disney versions. Just a hunch.
David Fallon, the screenwriter of Disney’s White Fang, returned for the sequel. In 2000, Fallon went on to create a short-lived TV show based on London’s Call Of The Wild. The first film’s director, Randal Kleiser, had gone on to direct Disney’s Honey, I Blew Up The Kid and its theme-park extension, Honey, I Shrunk The Audience. In his place, the studio hired Ken Olin, best known as an actor on the ABC drama thirtysomething. Olin hasn’t directed another feature since White Fang 2 but he continued his Disney connection on the television side, producing and directing multiple episodes of the Touchstone-produced Alias and The Wonderful World Of Disney TV-movie Phenomenon II.
There isn’t a great deal of connective tissue between White Fang and White Fang 2. An uncredited Ethan Hawke pops up for about 90 seconds at the beginning to pass the torch. His character, Jack Conroy, is busy in San Francisco, so he’s left White Fang and his gold claim in the care of his previously unmentioned friend, Henry Casey. Happily, the wolf-dog and his new boy seem to be getting along just fine in Alaska, give or take the odd intruder trying to muscle in and jump their claim.
Henry is played by Scott Bairstow, the latest in the seemingly endless parade of now problematic Disney actors. Bairstow later had recurring roles on the TV shows Lonesome Dove: The Series and Party Of Five. In 2003, he was charged with sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl who was related to his ex-wife. He ended up pleading guilty to a lesser charge and serving four months behind bars. So, not great. Fortunately for us, he won’t be a recurring presence in this column.
Unbeknownst to Henry, his cabin is situated near a small Indian village that’s facing hard times. The caribou the tribe relies on for food have not returned to the area in over a year. With the tribe facing starvation, missionary Leland Drury (Alfred Molina) urges the elders to move on. But the chief, Moses Joseph (Al Harrington), has a better idea. In a dream, he sees his niece, Lily (Charmaine Craig, who soon went on to perform as the live-action reference model for Disney’s Pocahontas), follow a mythical white wolf who takes her to the caribou. Following his vision, he prepares Lily to go seek out the wolf.
Meanwhile, Henry has amassed a frankly ridiculous amount of gold while working Jack’s claim. Realizing that a trip to town is long overdue, he loads up the raft and embarks with White Fang on the treacherous river route back. Seriously underestimating exactly how treacherous that river can be, Henry runs afoul of the rapids, capsizing the raft and becoming separated from White Fang. Lily happens to be nearby and sees White Fang go under the water but only sees Henry come back up. Assuming this is the shape-shifting white wolf she’s been sent to find, she fishes him out and takes him back home with her.
Back at the village, Henry tries to explain the real connection between White Fang and himself. He also urgently needs to go back to find his wolf-dog and his gold (which, excuse me Henry, isn’t that Jack’s gold?). Lily is appalled that Henry won’t accept his true calling as a mythical white wolf but Moses knows he must find his own way and allows him to head back to the nearest town.
In the settlement, Henry encounters the good Reverend Drury, who tells him a little of the tribe’s suffering. That night, he has his own dream about tracking down the caribou with Lily and White Fang. He resolves to go back and help. When shopkeeper Mr. Heath (Clint Eastwood favorite Geoffrey Lewis, who really seems like he should have been in a Disney movie before now) refuses to extend a line of credit, Drury generously offers to pay for whatever supplies Henry wants to bring back to the village.
During Henry’s absence, White Fang turns up at the village, having steadfastly tracked Henry down despite meeting an alluring female wolf along the way. Moses interprets this as a good sign that Lily was correct all along (honestly, Moses doesn’t see a lot of bad signs) and that Henry will return. He almost doesn’t, after Drury orders Heath to kill him before he gets back to the village. Heath can’t bring himself to shoot the young man, which infuriates Drury who, again, literally just went out of his way to help Henry for no reason at all.
Having returned to the village, Henry picks up some tracking and hunting lessons from Moses’ son, Peter (Anthony Ruivivar). As a woman, Lily is allowed to help teach but not hunt, so Henry, Peter and White Fang head up the mountain without her. They don’t make it far because Drury has hired some cutthroats with far less compunctions about killing Henry than Heath.
Peter bravely takes one for the team and runs off in the opposite direction in an attempt to draw the bad guys after him. Unfortunately, not everyone takes the bait. Things look grim for Henry and White Wolf…sorry, Fang…until Lily turns up to save the day. They continue up the mountain, fulfilling the prophecy and recycling the dream footage for the third time. The caribou’s path down the mountain has been blocked by an enormous wall of rubble. Scrambling down the mountain to investigate, Henry and Lily plummet through an air shaft leading to an enormous gold mine run by, guess who, Leland Drury.
Long story short (too late, I realize), Lily and Henry manage to free the caribou by using way less dynamite than you’d actually need to make a dent in a wall that size. Drury, now fully gripped by gold fever, tries to escape with his loot but is stopped by White Fang and trampled to death by the stampeding caribou. Returning home, Henry tries making his feelings for Lily known but she rejects him. She reveals that his gold had washed up to shore near the village (which I don’t think would be physically possible given the weight of all that gold and the way currents work), believing that’s all he cares about. But when he turns his back on the gold (and, again…not YOUR gold, Henry!) she changes her mind. Everyone lives happily ever after, including White Fang, who welcomes a litter of pups with his new girlfriend.
The original White Fang was an entertaining update to a formula Disney had been working at for decades. White Fang 2 also feels like a nature-adventure picture from the 50s or 60s, but not in a good way. In fact, I could imagine Disney making this exact same movie back then, just leaving out the loose connection to White Fang. The movie’s frequent lapses in logic and lackadaisical attitude toward continuity feel very on-brand for B-pictures of the 1950s.
Drury’s mood swings from benevolent missionary to murderous villain come as no surprise, not least because he’s played by Alfred Molina. He’d might as well be wearing a sign that reads “I’m the bad guy” from the jump. Charmaine Craig is appealing as Lily but her character gets weirdly defensive whenever anybody questions her taste in Chosen Ones, especially considering she was a bit skeptical of the whole idea in the first place.
But the movie’s biggest drawback is that for a picture called White Fang 2, it doesn’t have nearly enough White Fang in it. When we do see him, he’s not the unpredictable half-savage we remember. That dog was thoroughly bonded to Jack and no one else. Now, he seems like just another dog. Protective of Henry, sure. But kind of okay with most other folks, as well. We’ve covered a whole heck of a lot of dog movies in this column. White Fang 2 does not approach the upper echelons of that list.
Critics were generally a bit kinder to White Fang 2: Myth Of The White Wolf than I just was, possibly because they hadn’t recently seen literally every other dog movie ever produced by Walt Disney Pictures. Gene Siskel didn’t like it either, leading to one of those amusing Siskel & Ebert segments where Gene can’t believe his partner is giving this movie a pass. The film opened on April 15, 1994. It did poorly, barely making it to eighth place that weekend with just over $2.6 million. It faded from theatres soon after, earning a total of $8.9 million.
Disney’s dreams of a White Fang franchise, much less an extended Jack Londonverse, died with the failure of Myth Of The White Wolf. But you can’t keep a good formula down. Rest assured, we will find ourselves back in the great outdoors soon enough.
VERDICT: Disney Minus