Captivity - and the call to end or change it - brings out the strongest emotions. There's the obvious "business" component and those who stand to make (or lose) millions of dollars from the display of captive animals. But, the real root of the debate is the desire for parents to expose their children to animals in an "educational" setting.
Simple analogy: Put a Border Collie in a dog kennel for the entirety of its life. Study it, feed it, take it out to do a few tricks and take a dump everyday. Now, tell me what you learn about Border Collies from all of that. There's no difference between that and a 25-foot-long killer whale, weighing thousands of pounds, living in a cramped pool and performing a few times a day. The educational value of that is artificial. Still, it had its place in the 1950s and 60s, when a very tiny amount of people had firsthand knowledge of wild orcas.
But advances in technology, visual media, transportation and an evolving cultural conscience and concern for endangered species has rendered the need for performing marine mammals as "educational tools" extinct.
I hope more folks will see the film.
Because it really is about changing the mindsets of parents and consumers to demand a different "product." Sea World has a "good" side - research and conservation programs - but if that's done in the shadow of abuse, death and imprisonment, it will always be overshadowed by the downside. They need to make changes within to stay in business.
"Blackfish" is not a passing fad, it's a cultural awakening.