The following contains a minor spoiler for Wonder.
It's not uncommon for actors to end up playing similar roles on a regular basis throughout their careers or to otherwise make similar films over and over again. However, it seems that Owen Wilson has a somewhat unusual calling card. He makes movies where dogs die. While this may not be a pattern that you've noticed, it is one that Own Wilson himself has come to terms with. Most people are probably familiar with Wilson's film Marley and Me, which is about a dog dying, but Wilson actually kills a dog himself in The Royal Tenenbaums, and it turns out that the family dog also does not survive Wilson's new film Wonder. According to the actor...
Yeah, that's my calling card. Actually, that's the third, because, in The Royal Tenenbaums, the dog dies also. Although actually, in that one, it's not my dog. In fact, I run over the dog! What's the name of the dog in this movie? Buckley, Marley, and Daisy. You know, it's getting where if a dog sees me cast in a movie, he starts to get nervous.
While the dog that dies in Wonder is not a major plot point, the fact that the movie is a fairly successful tearjerker could very well cause viewers to have Marley and Me flashbacks, considering that a dead dog and Owen Wilson are in the same movie. It's not clear whether Owen Wilson seems to go after roles where dogs end up dead, or if something about dead dogs leads casting directors to think of Wilson, but either way, there's certainly a strange connection here and one wonders where it came from.
These days, Liam Neeson is known for making "old guy" action movies. Sean Bean is known for getting killed off. It's certainly not uncommon for particular actors to end up in movies that share things in common. Sometimes, it's because a particular sort of movie with a particular actor just does well. Other times, the connection seems more tenuous, but it's certainly there.
For what it's worth, Owen Wilson seems to truly empathize with the dogs that end up dead in his movies. As he points out to Uproxx, there was a time when the thing that kept happening in Owen Wilson movies was that Owen Wilson was the one that ended up dead.
And I know how the dog feels, because I used to never make it to the third act either. I died in Anaconda, The Haunting... Armageddon. Armageddon, Yeah...
To be fair, everybody died in Armageddon.
Hopefully, dogs won't always have something to fear from Owen Wilson, but if you go see him in Wonder, maybe bring tissues.
