I'm sorry about my apparent charlatanry regarding my knowledge of natural wolf behavior. What I did was generalize the behaviors of many wolves and their prey (like these) to the interactions between wolves and humans.
The thing is the article you referenced was an interview with a researcher who worked in Yellow Stone, the national park which is famous for (among many reasons, obviously) its Wolf reintroduction program. Humans had actually killed all the wolves in Yellow Stone off in the early 1900's. But then their prey started overpopulating, and the ecosystem got thrown out of whack. So we put them back in. Now these wolves, like most wolves that are around civilization, wouldn't attack us- I assumed it was because they know better. However I figured that in the middle of Bumblefuck, Alaska, they may be more likely to treat humans as they would any old Bison.
I agree with you that complete plausibility is not necessary or even desirable in a story. It is just that I like it when such deviations, even in the realm of fantasy, exist to expand upon some sort of central theme- or at least, be really cool. I didn't think this movie was that cool. I just didn't feel anything visceral when watching it. But that is just me. I can't really argue feelings.
I like your idea about the movie redefining manliness, which didn't cross my mind at all really. But it does make sense. I look at his admission of vulnerability from a different framework.
We live in a radically individualistic society, so many of our movies tend to be about one person who has the world on their shoulders- or people who in some way excel beyond everyone else. And a common attribute these people possess is an invulnerability to fear or death. Neeson has neither.
They did a study once (forgive me, I read about this in a psychology textbook years ago and don't feel like finding the reference)- they went through thousands of articles in Japanese and American newspapers. And what they found was that anytime there was a crime, the ways in which the papers described the stories were measurably different. In Japan the stories tended to focus much more upon the perpetrators' life stories, their childhood, their schools, their socioeconomic status, etc...whereas in America they found that the articles tended to focus on the details of the crime, the immediate circumstances, and immediate implications. And this data is indicative of qualitative differences in the ways in which people think about and approach the world. Namely, in the West we are more likely to place huge emphasis on the individual, the self-made man, and look at progress and achievements as purely individual accomplishments. And this attitude leads to the production of cinema with invulnerable heroes, however unrealistic or unrelatable they may be. It may seem like a stretch, but I do believe that many films about superheroes and invulnerable men are in fact a type of propaganda. It's all about subtext, that is all. For these reasons I commend the movie for producing a character like this. He is not completely absent from films, but the trend down the other road is much more prevalent.
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