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The broken oar and the gear of foreign dead men
So I feel like I owe writeups of several things, including Readercon and the movie I saw last night, but what you're getting right now is a list of different movies altogether. Over dinner tonight, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel and I were pipe-dreaming the program for a festival of maritime film. (I don't even remember. I think we were talking about John Ford.) Inevitably, it's kind of a list of our favorites. So far we agree on—
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), dir. Frank Lloyd
Captain Blood (1935), dir. Michael Curtiz
Captains Courageous (1937), dir. Victor Fleming1
The Long Voyage Home (1940), dir. John Ford
The Cruel Sea (1953), dir. Charles Frend
The Caine Mutiny (1954), dir. Edward Dmytryk
Moby Dick (1956), dir. John Huston
The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), dir. John Sayles
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), dir. Gore Verbinski2
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), dir. Peter Weir
We very regretfully did not include either 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) or Treasure Island (1950), although James Mason and Robert Newton are deservedly classic and inimitable in each.3 I am uncertain whether A Night to Remember (1958) counts as maritime film or just a disaster movie that occurs aboard a ship, albeit a wrenching and excellent example of the form. (You will notice Cameron's Titanic (1997) is not on this list.) I am also not sure I can count Splash (1984), formative sea-movie of mine though it is, and I know I can't count Pacific Rim (2013), although somehow it feels like one should. There are no documentaries; there should be some. Some more recent films couldn't hurt. And something non-American. Also it has not escaped my notice that this list of directors is kind of a dickfest and I cannot believe women never make movies about the sea. Tell me what we're missing!
1. If, as my husband stipulates, the audience remembers that the very last lines are terrible.
2. The first movie remains the best example of swashbuckling I have seen since Errol Flynn. I love so much about the second and third, but they are so wildly inconsistent I cannot in good conscience include them. Davy Jones and the Flying Dutchman and Calypso/Tia Dalma: fantastic. Elizabeth Swann coming into her piracy: could've used more, but that's why we have fanfic. The cannibal island and whatever the hell was going on with Singapore: naaarp.
3. Newton's Long John Silver is extremely imitable, but that is part of his glory.
derspatchel and I were pipe-dreaming the program for a festival of maritime film. (I don't even remember. I think we were talking about John Ford.) Inevitably, it's kind of a list of our favorites. So far we agree on—Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), dir. Frank Lloyd
Captain Blood (1935), dir. Michael Curtiz
Captains Courageous (1937), dir. Victor Fleming1
The Long Voyage Home (1940), dir. John Ford
The Cruel Sea (1953), dir. Charles Frend
The Caine Mutiny (1954), dir. Edward Dmytryk
Moby Dick (1956), dir. John Huston
The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), dir. John Sayles
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), dir. Gore Verbinski2
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), dir. Peter Weir
We very regretfully did not include either 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) or Treasure Island (1950), although James Mason and Robert Newton are deservedly classic and inimitable in each.3 I am uncertain whether A Night to Remember (1958) counts as maritime film or just a disaster movie that occurs aboard a ship, albeit a wrenching and excellent example of the form. (You will notice Cameron's Titanic (1997) is not on this list.) I am also not sure I can count Splash (1984), formative sea-movie of mine though it is, and I know I can't count Pacific Rim (2013), although somehow it feels like one should. There are no documentaries; there should be some. Some more recent films couldn't hurt. And something non-American. Also it has not escaped my notice that this list of directors is kind of a dickfest and I cannot believe women never make movies about the sea. Tell me what we're missing!
1. If, as my husband stipulates, the audience remembers that the very last lines are terrible.
2. The first movie remains the best example of swashbuckling I have seen since Errol Flynn. I love so much about the second and third, but they are so wildly inconsistent I cannot in good conscience include them. Davy Jones and the Flying Dutchman and Calypso/Tia Dalma: fantastic. Elizabeth Swann coming into her piracy: could've used more, but that's why we have fanfic. The cannibal island and whatever the hell was going on with Singapore: naaarp.
3. Newton's Long John Silver is extremely imitable, but that is part of his glory.
no subject
It's not the fault of the actor, I think, and it's kind of a hazard of the part -- given that they have a lead character who loathes having forced himself into the role of a pirate, and another character who doesn't want to be a pirate but is doomed by literary destiny to become one, they need a character who is Unconflictedly Pirate Who Just Wants To Pirate. Which is liable to be less interesting.
But they don’t ever manage to give the character any internal conflicts beyond two tropes I find among the most tedious imaginable: ”Must be Strong Man!” vs. “I wish to fuck this woman, who weakens me with her assertion of her own goals!” and “This is a Father Figure!” vs. “Must rebel against Father Figure to become my own man!” (the latter played out twice).
Also, he doesn't give a shit about his crew committing gang rape, which while realistic also puts the character well over a moral event horizon for me, and makes it a lot harder for me to enjoy him.
(There's no logical consistency in this given the mass-murdering ways of some of the characters I do love; it's just a thing.)
Definitely an individual mileage thing, though; plenty of people seem to have enjoyed the character hugely.
no subject
That's fair, but I appreciate the answer. It does seem to me that Pirate Who Just Unconflictedly Wants to Pirate is not an archetype that needs to have quite such stereotypically macho tropes attached to it. [edit] Especially not on a show with that many canonically female and/or queer pirates!