"Call me Ishmael." It's the opening line of Moby Dick written by Herman Melville in 1851 and is one of the most famous first lines in literary history. It's right up there with "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" from A Tale of Two Cities. Melville's account of events that supposedly took place in New England in 1820 is also hailed as "the greatest book of the sea ever written" and "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world". In the Heart of the Sea is Ron Howard's film that is not an adaptation of the novel by Melville and the infamous Captain Ahab's unhealthy obsession with the great white whale. It is, instead, a film about the actual events that lead the Melville's story. It's about Captain George Pollard, Jr. (Benjamin Walker) and his first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) about the Essex. The ship was destroyed by a giant sperm whale as chronicled by Chase.
The preview looks absolutely incredible. It looks like the the kind of action-packed yet character-driven films that Ron Howard has mastered over the years as he's brought us such incredible movies like Backdraft, Apollo 13, and Cinderella Man. Even his earlier works of Cocoon and Willow are still watched with fondness as stepping stones of ingenuity and story-telling. However, my hesitation comes from knowing they could not have filmed this with an actual giant whale. So, the question is, how will Howard deliver us Moby Dick in real life? Will he use a live model like in the Jaws movies? Will he use computer animation that has comes leaps and bounds over the years, but is still not quite perfect enough to pull off being undetected? Either method leaves the door wide open for the slightest flaw, the faintest hint of a green screen, the smallest bit of mechanical movement versus nature taking you right out of the movie.
Movies and theatre often ask you to do something called "suspend your disbelief". They ask you to buy in to what they are selling. George Lucas had us sold with the original trilogy of Star Wars and then lost us with Episodes I - III. We knew Yoda and Jabba the Hut were puppets, but we weren't thinking that when we watched the movies because they were so well done. These characters were re-introduced as computer animations and it was obvious to the point that you were taken out of the movie, taken off of Naboo, and reminded that it was fake, it was a movie, and it lost you. In the Heart of the Sea can very easily lose its audience with so much of the movie relying on the whale to sell it. If it was any other director, I'd have my expectations low at 2.5 stars. But it's Ron Howard. So I'm putting a lot of faith in him giving this a 4.0 star prediction, a movie well worth the money to watch and having a good chance of making it to my home collection. Am I right? We shall see.
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