master and commander: oh how I enjoyed this movie

Sorry I'm such a downer. I tried to do some retail therapy over lunch but was indecisive and didn't buy anything.

But Russell Crowe is annoying anyway.

From a narrative perspective this was one of the absolute worst films I have seen in years. I found myself workshopping it on the way out. For instance: if our doctor is actually very keen on naturalism and covets a chance to unknowingly beat Darwin to the Galapagos, perhaps we should learn that before they're headed for the Galapagos. I mean, there was an audible clunk in the theater when this issue spawned itself and suddenly became the focus of a film that had previously been basically about catching a French ship, and post-clunk, to be honest, I gave only about a quarter of a shit whether he got to go to the Galapagos, because I was watching a story about a navy ship, not two guys. Workshop suggestion: just fucking open with the doctor looking like a nice guy and saying "Incidentally I've always wanted to see the Galapagos" and we're all set to empathize. More generally: possibly in a plot that's ostensibly character-based it helps to try within the first I dunno thirty minutes of a film to latch onto the relevant characters, rather than just assuming that we'll of course care about certain ones just because they're, like, standing around a lot (or children)? And is it so difficult to introduce characters in some sort of interwoven way, rather than having like five different twenty-minute arcs concerning each one? Furthermore: biggest overuse ever of picturing non-speaking characters in a bunch of shots just so that when they die we'll care. And then at the end, it was worse than Shanghai Knights as far as giving us feel-good wrap-ups to the stories of characters we weren't even told were supposed be important: so he made one-dude captain but who was that dude, even, apart from a guy who agreed with Russel Crowe once while eating dinner? And okay WTF was with the Crowe/doctor ending? Was that supposed to be comedic? Like hahaha oh that crazy Russel Crowe will just chase this damn thing forever and poor doctor-guy will never get to spend any quality time with the turtles??? That wasn't cute or funny or even sensible.

In closing, I have not in many years seen a film with a story as poorly presented as this. At first I thought to myself that it was probably the editor's fault, like maybe they shot a three-hour epic and in trimming everything down to a decent running time they cut out millions of important narrative bits that made the whole thing feel really stupid and insulting. But no, no: the film would have had to be about 15 HOURS LONG to have enough cutting done to make it as narratively deformed as it is. Either that or an editor who had never, ever, in his whole life watched a movie or read a book or encountered any sort of narrative whatsoever. I mean Jesus. The ships looked super-cool, totally, but Jesus.

The doctor was uncomfortable with the Navy in general, the kid was going to be important because he was precocious (and just like Lord Nelson...), the Captain's relationship with the XO made sense (notice that during that dinner scene, it was mentioned that they had been serving together since Egypt under Nelson), etc.

The ending was "Oh, shit, the French Captain didn't die - the adventure continues!"

A lot of the narrative was in small details, but it all made sense.

(I.e. I understood everything that was going on -- it just seemed really stupidly ill-formed as an ostensibly-enjoyable story. There were a lot of turns and switches where it became clear to me that the film was trying to make me feel a particular way without having justified it at all; e.g. I think we all knew the French captain didn't die from the moment the camera lingered ominously on "his" body like we were kindergarteners who wouldn't otherwise understand [and I feel insulted that you bothered explaining it to me! no offense] which is one of about a million reasons that that turn at the end just fell completely flat for me. That is just not how you conjure an "adventure continues" vibe, in my opinion, especially since there was very little arc to the original "adventure" anyway -- it just seemed completely pathologically silly. Even the super-easy "ooo, note how the bug from the island has given Crowe a clever idea for warfare" thing -- a thing that even fucking sitcoms manage to pull off with occasional panache -- felt like a parody on SNL, just all-wrong, all-wrong. Sorry, I'll stop talking about this, except to say that if anyone involved in that film thinks they managed to tell the story well, that person will without doubt spend eternity in a graduate writing workshop somewhere in hell.)

I just don't see what you're taking issue with.

The one I'll agree with you on is that the stick insect was painful. The only thing worse was having the guy sitting behind me in the theatre yell - in all seriousness - "The Captain has an idea!" and then explain it to his friend. The one time I give up on my pledge to only see movies weekday afternoons...

For example, here is a terrible story that makes sense but has problems similar to those of Master and Commander:

John and Steve are walking to store. A man approaches them with a gun and grabs John by the neck. "Give me your money!" he says to John. John is terribly frightened and so is Steve. But then John shouts: "Hi-ya!" Because it turns out that John knows judo. And he judo-flips the mugger onto the ground and then stomps on his face. Later on, John gives Steve a hundred dollars! And Steve says: "Thanks, you don't know how much that means to me."

See, it doesn't not make sense that John gives Steve a hundred dollars -- we totally get that, that could happen -- but why are we supposed to be excited about it? Plus it makes sense that John foils the mugger with judo, but we didn't even know he was into judo until right then. So if we wanted to improve the story, we might write it like this:

Once upon a time John was a rich judo champion, but then he developed a strange performance anxiety that made him unable to do judo, so now he has very little money left -- maybe one hundred and fifty dollars, tops. John's friend Steve has even less money; Steve is a total coward and so he was fired from his job as a security guard. Now Steve is dead broke, and has already pawned even the one-hundred dollar back brace that keeps him from developing this awful debilitating hump, which hump he's now redeveloped ever since he pawned the back brace. All of Steve's friends have started avoiding him ever since he redeveloped the horrible hump -- all except John. One day they are walking to the store, and a man approaches them with a gun and grabs John by the neck. "Give me your money!" he says to John. John is frightened and so is Steve. John wants to do a judo-chop but because of his whole performance complex he knows he doesn't have the courage or will. Steve, knowing his friend can't do judo anymore, thinks he could probably run away to safety and let John get robbed -- but he doesn't, because John is Steve's friend, even despite Steve's grotesque back-hump, and so he is going to stick by him, even in times of danger. And at that moment John sees the courage of the usually-cowardly Steve and he is inspired by it and he shouts: "Hi-ya!" And he uses his judo skills to flip the mugger to the ground, then stomps on his face. And later on, out of gratefulness for Steve's inspiration and loyalty and not-running-away, John gives Steve a hundred of his hundred-and-fifty dollars, money the mugger would have stolen if not for the whole courage thing. And Steve, knowing that now he can afford to correct his horrible hump-back, says: "Thank you, John."

See now that story is still not very good, but in that story I actually sort of care that Steve got a hundred dollars. Because he needed it, for the back-brace, and plus he seemed like a good noble guy what with the sticking with John despite his cowardice. Also it was cool when John did the judo flip, because it was like he had that whole performance anxiety thing but then right when it mattered, see, it was like his overlooking Steve's back-hump was repayed in terms of the courage inspired in him by Steve's loyalty. I mean, wow! That's a story where I could care about what happens, if it were less horrible of a story.

I liked this a lot as well.

this should have cut down a bit so it could be the pilot episode of an HBO series. Jack and Stephen floating about all across the world constantly at odds about whether to stop off and wookit aw th' amazin animaws vs blowing up ever increasingly advanced french boats, plus the madcap adventures of the adolescent junior officers. It could have been great formula teevee.

and twice during of every episode you get new sea shanty montages, like flight of the conchords but with englishmen and nautical bullshit instead of new zealanders and hipster dating quandaries

I believe this film should always be referred to by its full title:

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

http://scottthong.files.wordpress.com/2006/07/fightinaroundtheworld.jpg

http://scottthong.files.wordpress.com/2006/07/southpark2.jpg

OK, I loved this movie, despite Russell Crowe. But it had kind of a big, giant "made for kates" sticker on it, didn't it?

For the first time in recorded history, Nabisco TOTALLY WRONG.

I put off seeing it for a long, long time because Russell Crowe is so NOT how I saw Jack Aubrey. But he didn't really bother me that much, because there was so much sea and canvas and gold braid and handsome officers and sea storms and big battles and stuff going on WAH-HEY!

As for back story, if you've read at least one of the books, most of that is perfectly clear. And I think it would have held up as an example of the genre even without reading any of the books.

I thought Maturin's motivation was completely obvious from even the most glancing pop culture understanding of such references. I don't know. How ill educated would you have to be to not hear the words "Galapagos" and "naturalist" and not think "Charles Darwin?" I always thought, from even before I read any of the books, that Maturin was partly based on Darwin.

I bloody love this film.

nabisco's story about the judo champ was kind of weak

havent seen the movie but i bet id like it

Loved it so much i bought it!
I'm just glad i didn't live in those times and have to do what they did!

How ill educated would you have to be to not hear the words "Galapagos" and "naturalist" and not think "Charles Darwin?"

OMG okay the problem was that the movie goes like this:

- 40 minutes of crap happens
- Russell Crowe goes "oh hey we're passing the Galapagos"
- other dude goes "I am totally dramatically crushed by this because not that it's come up in the preceding 40 minutes of crap, but all that time I have secretly been a naturalist who really WANTS to go to the Galapagos"

The narrative of this entire movie is the equivalent of someone who tells an entire joke and then, after nobody laughs at the punchline, goes "wait wait, did I mention that the pharmacist was a DUCK? because you have to know the pharmacist was a DUCK"

A million people can tell me I'm wrong about this, and I will just wind up writing their names down in a big book titled "One Million People Who Might Be Developmentally Disabled"

well there are like 21 books they could draw material from, so yeah they definitely kept it open ended on purpose

i saw this on a ferry, but since i was already on the ferry i really didn't give it ANY precious life-hours :D:D:D:D:D:D!!!!

i liked that it didn't end. that whole napoleon deal kind of dragged on for a while, didn't it.

That is how all the books are. They flow pretty seamlessly together.

love this movie. jeremiad clarkson was otfm. i think maybe nabisco saw it stoned or something. it's not complicated. it's basically an excerpt from the books without any real beginning or end, which i loved. the sound design in this movie is tits, too. when i get a speaker system i'm gonna buy this thing on blu-ray and zone the fuck OUT.

LONDON — Russell Crowe is in the early stages of negotiations to reprise the role of Jack Aubrey as a British sea captain in a new movie version from the Master & Commander series of novels.

Crowe told The Associated Press on Friday that a script based mostly on the eleventh novel of Patrick O'Brian's 20-novel series, The Reverse of the Medal, had been written, but that discussions were at a very early stage.

"There's still a long way to go," the New Zealand-born actor told AP at a cricket match between England and Australia in London. He said talks had been taking place with the owner of the rights to the novels.

The 44-year-old Crowe, who won a best actor Oscar for his starring role in Gladiator, is a keen cricket fan. His two cousins, Jeff and Martin, are former captains of the New Zealand national team. Jeff is now a senior cricket official and is in charge of the team of officials at the England-Australia match.

The AubreyMaturin novels consists of 20 books and one partly written before his death in 2000 by O'Brian, all set during the Napoleonic Wars.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Russell Crowe | Patrick O'Brian

The 2003 movie Master and Commander took material from several of the novels. The Reverse of the Medal, published in 1986, sees Aubrey in the Caribbean in his ship HMS Surprise, where he meets his illegitimate son Samuel Panda, a Catholic priest born from an illicit liaison.

Crowe gave no indication of when filming could start but said it was one of a number of projects he is considering.

http://weblogs.variety.com/thompsononhollywood/2009/07/master-and-commander-redux.html

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World has all the elements of the kind of movie that keeps studio heads up at night: it's literary (based on the Patrick O'Brian seafaring series), period (Napoleonic), expensive (close to $150 million), packed with action (swords, pistols, rifles and cannons) and VFX (ships at sea under fire). That's why, even though the Napoleonic adventure movie looks like a success, grossing $209.5 million worldwide, it was a nail biter for Twentieth Century Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman at the time. (He took on partners in the venture, and had to push back the release to get the FX finished.) The well-reviewed awards contender (nominated for ten Oscars, it won two) barely made its production and marketing costs back. (Here's my NYT story from 2003.)

It makes sense that Russell Crowe (post-State Of Play) would want to return to the juicy role of Captain Jack Aubrey in what should be a big adventure franchise. A script is in the works based on the 11th novel set in the Caribbean, dealing with Aubrey's illegimate son, a priest.

But this sort of heavy-duty period movie about ships at sea is tough to execute: Master and Commander had finicky Australian Peter Weir at the helm. Rothman wooed him by laying a mock captain's sword on his lap and asking him to take command of the HMS Surprise. Weir has been unwilling to return for a sequel.

Fox says it's early days yet, with no deals in place.

this is pretty interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/movies/a-high-risk-film-on-the-high-seas.html?pagewanted=all

(lol at ''It's a $135 million art film,'' said Russell Crowe)

Just finished reading the first Patrick O'Brien book, thoroughly enjoyed it. Love this movie too.

So then i loaded up Napolean Wars, and tried my hand at sea battles, for i now know what a 'sloop' and 'brig' is. but still got battered by the brits.

I'm reliably informed by O'Brian nerds that Napoleon Wars is an inadequate game, partly because it fails to take account of the wind in any real way at all. I have heard "it's impossible to miss stays" said with a sad shake of the head on more than one occasion.

I adore this film more than I could possibly describe, but the blue/green screen effects in it are shockingly bad on modern tellies.

I dunno, they suffer from their having been a few years of refinement in digital FX work since it was made, but the blu-ray always looks pretty good to me. I'm no stan for CGI, but adventure on the high seas is a genre which FX are super difficult to "get right" for. On balance I'd say Weta, ILM et al did a stand up job.

i got it on blu ray too, and looks great. would love them to make another.

The blu-ray sounds freaking spectacular too. Great all around experience.

I think my problem is that I don't like it not to be real.

drown-o-vision never really took off

Russell needs your help.

I suspect he wants Ridley Scott to direct, though. I would dislike that.

"sir, I found a curious beetle walking along the deck"

Saw this recently & had to laugh at how that scene was played - I was half-expecting the doctor to quit moping and yell "Hey kid...catch!" and toss the kid his waistcoat while he's walking away all dejected

i hav proudly given prob 5 hours of my life in the service of this movie

― ice cr?m, Thursday, December 11, 2008 8:07 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i am going to give 2.5 more hours in service this xmas

Inspirational suggestion, caek - I'll gladly take the King's Shilling for a festive viewing of this wonderful film. Might set up a Boxing Day matinee with chestnuts and port to hand.

gonna let this film press gang the shit out of me

"The Surprise is not old; no one would call her old. She has a bluff bow, lovely lines. She's a fine seabird: weatherly, stiff and fast... very fast, if she's well handled. No, she's not old; she's in her prime."

I can rarely resist an opportunity to describe behaviour as "lubberly and un-navy like" either.

I'm not missing your point, nabisco. The first of my quotes is right at the beginning of the movie. Maturin's character is established from the start as a guy who's a cut above the usual incompetent ship's doctor, and who is also an expert in bugs and wildlife. Later comes the weevil joke, which is something we can have a laugh about because we already know that he's the naturalist dude who's going to take the question seriously when really it's just a set up for a bad pun. There are other references too, when Aubrey and Maturin are arguing about duty and he's disparagingly referred to as someone who looks at the world through a microscope.

Then and only then is it mentioned that they're going to Galapagos and obviously some people are going to get the significance straight away, but they have the dialogue about being the first naturalist to underline the fact that this is pre-Darwin and therefore even more of a big deal. So to say that the desire doesn't come before the conflict is just inaccurate, and you had to ignore half my post to persist with the idea.

It's a fair criticism to say that the film is structured as one damn thing after another, although I don't think that's a problem because it's part of life on a ship to be somewhat at the mercy of random events. But this particular plot line is set up in advance, you just missed it.

― jeremiad clarkson, Saturday, September 27, 2008 9:36 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark

The Day Nabisco Was Owned

I can rarely resist an opportunity to describe behaviour as "lubberly and un-navy like" either.

Similarly "clearly something fascinating and nautical has just happened" whenever a joke I don't understand is going on around me.

haha, i recall that from the book

this movie is one of consistent undeniable ownage

^^^^

^^^^

― kanellos (gbx), Wednesday, December 8, 2010 1:23 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark

a sequel would be sweet as hell too... crowe can only do fatguy roles now anyway... idk if hwood's too stoked to bankroll something like that after his last 17 bombs though :/

yeah but if we tweet about it

i liked how this movie was kinda grim too, like when all these dudes on the ship got killed at this end and their corpses were all laid out it was kinda *final*, like nothing romantic and splendid about their deaths

The Day Nabisco Was Owned

^^ that's racist

Would dearly love to see a sequel to this wonderful flick.

Yes, myself and the husband have the second half all worked out. Surely another movie must include the daring rescue of Stephen from Spanish interrogation by Jack and the crew of the Surprise.

20th Century Developing New ‘Master And Commander’ Movie With Patrick Ness Penning the Script https://t.co/WmdA8wEIQN

— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) June 4, 2021

if i were king of hollywood the MCU would stand for the

Master (and)

Commander

Universe

— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) June 4, 2021

the No Crowe Universe version of Master and Commander sounds like a good start, but I bet it won't be as good as The Terror!

but tbf the og MaC had some stunning cinematography

when R Crowe yells at the surgeon/botanist Bettany character: We don't have time in this 2 and a half hour long movie for your damned hobbies, sir. He was subconsciously self-owning!

I watched this recently for the first time in many years. I'm always kinda surprised that it's not much higher in the Dad Movie rankings.

https://www.gq.com/story/master-and-commander-anniversary

nabisco otm. the narrative makes no sense as a story. it's "and then what happened was" for 2 hours. it's still totally fucking awesome.

― caek, Friday, September 26, 2008 6:01 PM (fourteen years ago)

this is otm, probably the most incongruous part for me was after rounding the horn in a very wet, very stormy fashion then all of a sudden water water everywhere, not a drop to drink, becalmed seas, guy i never paid attention to is brought out so he can give his playstation 5 away... 🫡 don't get me wrong, though, it was still great!

i did appreciate how, though set in 1805, on top of the references to darwin, it embodied the themes of the rime of the ancient mariner and moby dick nicely... or maybe those themes were already in the air at the time, i'm not a connoiseur of historical seafaring literature...

came here to share that piece. the movie still rules after all these years. totally bromantic. but i think if anything that writer undersells Weir's directorial abilities, he's just absolutely great, the kind of dynamic and thoughtful craftsman who's been thrown over for directors desperately trying to emulate John Wick.

The twenty (20!) books in the series do have female characters. Many of them. They have strength of character, depth, and are treated with as much respect as the male characters. When you have that much room in which to recreate a world you can't exclude women and girls.

Yes, the subject matter requires that men characters are predominant, so I'm not trying to claim women would love these books in the way men do. It's more that they give their male readers many admirable women characters where sexuality is not their primary reason for existing, which is exceedingly rare in books aimed at a male audience.

xp yeah, after consuming only hbo video game property the last couple of weeks i was struck by how nicely edited and directed this was. the analogy in my head that doesn't make sense objectively but does to me is that this movie's got great room tone, just so many shots that don't serve a function narratively (at least directly) but go so much towards immersing you in the world - is mise en scene the right word here? not necessarily talking about worldbuilding although i loved all the references to nelson, bonaparte etc. just all these shots, couple of seconds max, that looked expensive to shoot for the purpose they served but did so much in putting you right there on the ship.

there's a lot of care in the film which really adds up to something pretty substantial as a story and a ~~**vibe**~~ and for me it's refreshing. i almost said this in the "do you watch shows?" thread but the insistence on frenetic and frenzied action movies is probably why i even moreso appreciate when those kind of genre movies deploy a more classic and measured style relative to other recent releases. i do understand that people are wild about the style employed by Stahelski/Leitch/etc but it's kinda tiresome and shows up everywhere.

like watching scenes from Bullet Train just made me want to inject Johnnie To and Christopher McQuarrie flix into my veins for a week.

I haven’t seen this since it first came out on … would it have still been VHS??!? But I remember really enjoying it.

They have strength of character, depth, and are treated with as much respect as the male characters.

i think this is a stretch!

it's "and then what happened was" for 2 hours. it's still totally fucking awesome.

― caek, Friday, September 26, 2008 6:01 PM (fourteen years ago)

having since read the books, this is exactly what the books are like. no hero's journey three act stuff. not even an ending to most of them in any traditional sense. just one thing after another for a few hundred pages.

i just picked up m&c from the library, excited to dive in

i turned on the subtitles for my watch but it did not help at all