We’re explaining to you that Free Willy isn’t real, how the whale wasn’t really captured by evil people who forced it to perform (despite the fact that the whale…actor…was technically captured by the filmmakers and forced to perform in a film about a whale being captured and being forced to perform). You say you understand. But explaining that the 12-year-old boy Jesse is a 45-year-old man called Jason James Richter, is a little bit trickier.

Carl Burkitt 2025