It really is. I mean it's funny how Reddit picks and chooses who is evil and who isn't. Like

Ellen, a bully = evil, unforgiveable, horrible person.

Herzog, who consistently tortured animals on screen = nah he's cool

Sure.

• The animal abuse was so bad that the handler on set quit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu_the_Vampyre#Animal_cruelty

• In his film Aguirre, The Wrath of God, chickens are dropped from a cliff. A horse is beaten. A horse is thrown into a river and kicked. Monkeys are rampantly abused and thrown into a river.

• In Fata Morgana, a fox is carried by the throat.

• In Stroszek, a chicken on a hot plate ("dancing", aka its feet are being burned) is shown.

• An abandoned project called Game in the Sand had animal abuse so out of control that even Herzog himself admitted it was a bit much. https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/4s9uyb/wtf_happened_with_the_rooster_in_werner_herzogs/

• I mean look at all these horrible examples for his film Even Dwarves Started Small : https://violence-hurt-animals-in-film.blogspot.com/2020/08/even-dwarfs-started-small.html

I also believe that the "penguin walking away to its death" scene in his documentary Encounters at the End of the World is staged. In that he abducted a penguin and displaced it far from its colony, causing it to walk endlessly to its death because it was lost. Purely for his film.

And it is not only animals. Herzog is also cruel to the actors he puts in his films, notably the mentally disabled man Bruno S, whom he had cast in two films. Herzog admitted to torturing and tormenting this man to get him in a certain frame of mind for his films.

Herzog is a real piece of shit, I hate how he's become kind of a meme that everyone loves and thinks is funny. He's evil.

I do find him talented, but when you're watching his films, you're literally watching the abuse on screen. That's what I can't get past.