Before Spider-Man, Tom Holland Starred With Chris Hemsworth In This Movie

Ron Howard’s 2015 film “In the Heart of the Sea” had a strange conceit. Rather than just filming a proper adaptation of Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick,” he instead adapted Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2000 biographical book “In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex,” a true-story retelling of the titular Massachusetts whaling vessel and how it was attacked by a white-skinned sperm whale back in 1820. Howard’s movie featured bookend sequences set in 1850, in which Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) interviewed Thomas Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson) about his experiences aboard the Essex, using Nickerson’s tale as inspiration for “Moby-Dick.” The bulk of the film is then a flashback to 1820, when the Essex took to sea, encountered a whale, and drifted helplessly for an extended period.

The flashback sequences are so close to the “Moby-Dick” story, one might wonder why Ron Howard elected to take a new angle. Nickerson is the ostensible narrator, and in the 1820 sequences, he’s played by a pre-Spider-Man Tom Holland. He’s kind of the Ishmael equivalent. Chris Hemsworth plays the Essex’s first mate, Owen Chase, a model for Herman Melville’s Starbuck. The biggest departure from “Moby-Dick” is the new captain. On the Essex, the captain is one Captain Pollard (Benjamin Walker), and he’s actually an inexperienced seaman who resents that his first mate is more skilled (and definitely more handsome) than he. The two butt heads over the nature of their mission. Naturally, they will eventually face off against a white whale.

The ship’s second mate, Matthew Joy, is played by Cillian Murphy. That means, to blockbuster movie fans, “In the Heart of the Sea” features the actors who played Spider-Man (Holland), Thor (Hemsworth), Q (Whishaw), Mad-Eye Moody (Gleeson), and Oppenheimer (Murphy). Read /Film’s 2015 set visit.

It’s explained in an epilogue, though, that Captain Pollard kind of became like Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab. After he was rescued from the Essex, he went to sea again to track down the sperm whale that killed so many people. His ship ran onto the shore of a Hawaiian island.

While “In the Heart of the Sea” is ostensibly a sea adventure, it’s hardly rollicking or fun. Indeed, Ron Howard directed the film to be misty and downbeat, as if the voyage were doomed from the start. The crew manages to kill one sperm whale (the Essex is a whaling vessel, after all), but then months pass before they’re able to try again. They travel around Cape Horn because the Atlantic offers no whales, and the Pacific might have more. They’ll run into the notable white whale about 2,000 miles west of Ecuador. The whale smashes the Essex right away, and the rest of the movie involves the plodding and grim fate of three of its lifeboats.

There is some cannibalism in “In the Heart of the Sea,” as things become increasingly desperate. Because Nickerson is the narrator, we know that he’ll be okay, but most mainstream audiences likely won’t know who else survived, so I shall only reveal that some people make it back alive. As mentioned, Captain Pollard will become Captain Ahab. “In the Heart of the Sea” ends on the day that Herman Melville begins writing “Moby-Dick.” At the end of all that, one wonders again why Ron Howard didn’t just make a “Moby-Dick” movie. It’s been a long time since a studio took a crack at a major feature film of Melville’s novel.

“In the Heart of the Sea” is a dour, baffling movie. Ron Howard is a capable director, but I’m not sure what he was getting at with this one. He seems to be too optimistic a director to tell such a nihilistic story as this one. Nature will take you; you may or may not survive, but you will have to be reduced to monstrous savagery if you do. And then, at the end of it, an author will turn your suffering into the Great American Novel. Cold comfort, I would say. At least no one will ever know about the cannibalism. Oh, oops.

Critics weren’t too fond of “In the Heart of the Sea,” as evidenced by its 42% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 236 reviews). The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane wrote that the film lacked impact, mostly because of its bad editing and muddy visuals; movies in 2015, he noted, evolved a lot since Howard made his best movie. In Lane’s words:

“The pacing here is certainly forceful, as it is during the harrying and the slaughter of a sperm whale, and yet the force lacks clarity. This is partly because computer-generated waves never quite buffet us with the slap of the real thing, and also because, in the 20 years since Howard made his finest film, ‘Apollo 13,’ something has happened to the editing of action sequences. No longer, it seems, are we required to know who is doing what, and where, at any given point.”

“In the Heart of the Sea” is surely one of Howard’s lesser movies. The film was also a bomb, only making $94 million on its $100 million budget. Next time, just do “Moby-Dick.”