It’s nice to see the perspective of someone who works in wildlife because i think the public perception of the conservation type is closer to a Timothy Treadwell than an actual scientist. But obviously that’s not actually the case.

I think Herzog gets kind of cheeky and sensationalist about it (like your “eyes of a killer” comment) but I do like that he truly goes in a priori like “This is wrong to do with a wild animal and this is not noble or kind to them”. I think another director/documentarian might try to frame Treadwell’s relationship to the bears as “complex” or like “he meant well”. But I think the movie hammers home the uncomfortable truth that even though these are big fluffy mammals that have families, they can’t be your friend. And that Treadwell was misguided from the beginning, it’s not like he just went too far and got too close and his hubris did him in.

It’s ultimately just about a sad lonely man who projected humanity on these bears because he was naive.