Cocaine Bear mo-cap actor learned bear necessities from Revenant and, somehow, not Ted

Cocaine Bear might be inspired by a true story, but it also takes influence from the cinematic wilderness. With so many bears from Hollywood’s history to choose from, including Paddington, Yogi, and Winnie the Pooh, the motion-capture actor who controlled the drug-addled black bear, Allan Henry, had something different in mind: The bear that kicks the crap out of Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant. What? Were you expecting Ted?

This isn’t Henry’s first ride in the little car; he helped bring Baloo to life in Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book. Speaking to /Film (via Variety),
Henry divulged some of his influences and process, and nowhere in the
interview does he say the name “Ted,” so stop asking. He was too busy,
you know, looking at real bears.

“I looked at bears that have been in media, like the bear from The Revenant,” Henry said. “I worked on The Jungle Book. At
Weta, we did some stuff, so I looked at what we had done with Baloo for
those sequences. But a lot of it was nature documentaries and CCTV
footage and camera footage of people who were like, ‘There’s a bear in
my backyard tearing up my car.’”

We appreciate Henry sharing some of his work if only to stop Matthew Rhys from taking credit for it. However, Cocaine Bear was a different, um, animal for Henry, who had already worked on the primate-heavy special effects extravaganzas Godzilla Vs. Kong and the Planet Of The Apes trilogy.

“On films like the Apes trilogy or Godzilla Vs. Kong, there’s something more human about those characters because of their enhanced intelligence and their greater experience, whereas Cokey is just a bear,” Henry said. “Well, I shouldn’t say just a bear. Cokey is a bear. The challenge was trying to move as close as I could to how a bear would move, the pace that a bear would take, the way that a bear would breathe and explore the environment around them.”

Cocaine Bear was something of a surprise hit this past weekend. Though, we don’t know why it’s considered a surprise. People love bears doing drugs (see: Ted). Still, it took a big bite out of Ant-Man’s box office, which made many people who are sick of Marvel movies happy.