Free Willy

Released in July 1993 by Warner Bros., Free Willy follows Jesse, a lonely 12-year-old foster kid (Jason James Richter) who, sentenced to clean up a rundown marine park, forms a bond with Willy, a captive orca who won't perform for anyone else. When Jesse learns the owners plan to kill Willy for the insurance money, he engineers a daring escape — ending in the film's signature shot of Willy soaring over a breakwater as Michael Jackson's "Will You Be There" swells. It grossed over $150 million and spawned two theatrical sequels.

The most remarkable part of the story is true. Willy was played by a real orca named Keiko, captured near Iceland in 1979 and, at the time of filming, still living in a small tank at a Mexico City park. Public outrage that the whale who played a freed orca was himself captive fueled a years-long, multimillion-dollar campaign: the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation formed in 1995, and Keiko was flown to Oregon in 1996 to rehabilitate, then to Iceland in 1998.

In July 2002, Keiko became the first captive orca ever released back into the wild. The coda was bittersweet — he never rejoined a wild pod, remained dependent on humans, and died of pneumonia in a Norwegian fjord in December 2003 — making his story a landmark, and a cautionary tale, in the debate over orca captivity.