Director: Trey Stokes
Producers: Paul Bales, Stephen Fiske, David Michael Latt, David Rimawi
Screenplay: Paul Bales
(Based on the Herman Melville novel "MOBY DICK")
Co-starring: Barry Bostwick, Adam Grimes, Michael Teh, Matt Lagan
US Release Date: 23 November 2010
Length: 90 minutes
Genre: Creature
Interesting Character Scale (Lorraine Beasely=0 Gabrielle=10}: SEVEN
Best scene for ROC: CALL ME MICHELLE
Fossils of a prehistoric sperm whale that once hunted smaller whales 13 million years ago have been found in Peru. The whale's ten foot skull and 14-inch teeth suggest a length between 43 and 59 feet. It is unlike the modern sperm whale which lacks functional teeth in its upper jaw. The giant species, now extinct, has been named Leviathan melvillei for obvious reasons.
The film is not bad as low-budget sci-fi goes. There's plenty of action, some scientific basis for the creature (see above),
and suspense is generated willy nilly. There's even some humour, such as Dr. Herman sleeping beneath a
precariously dangling torpedo, and two black dudes on the deck of a submarine discussing whether they can relate to a white whale as a villain. (One can, one can't. The camera
then focuses on Ahab's shock of white hair.)
If only they hadn't involved Herman Melville in this.
Melville's Ahab was more than a man with a fatal obsession. He was an eloquent spokesman for the doomed. There's a line in there somewhere (in the book not this film) about going out with a smile on your face. Ahab inspired his whole crew (save Starbuck) to do just that. In this film, the extremely blue-eyed Ahab seems motivated merely by insanity and hence garners no sympathy (from me at least).
GALLERY
Dr. Herman (at least they didn't call her Dr. Melville Herman though Michelle is close) keeps trying to explain to Ahab that whales don't do this sort of thing unless prodded into it. Ahab just doesn't care. Sure he has followed her work on cetaceans, but only to further his mad quest. Not because he wanted to actually find out anything. The question that never comes up is just why does Moby Dick go about chomping on oil platforms and cruise ships which she clearly cannot eat. What comes to mind is something Carl Sagan said many years ago about whales.
Whales are verbal creatures. They sing to one another all the time, and their songs are the basis for their (rather complex) social organization. Sound travels faster in water than in air. About 4.5 times as fast. When the oceans were quiet, whales could communicate over very long distances. Then came the steamship and all that changed.
Steamships are noisy. Sailing ships made virtually no noise. The coming of the steamships cut each pod of whales apart from all the others. Imagine if radio waves were almost completely jammed. Imagine what that would do to our social organizations.
So I understand why this very very big whale might have been taking revenge on human aquatic technology. Truth is, the whale is really cool. It does some things that might be physically impossible, but by the end of the film it's hard not to root for Moby. Ahab is just irritating and his crew follow him probably only because of his big blue eyes.
Speaking of eyes, the close-ups of Moby's eye are supposed to make her seem threatening, I guess. They don't. The eye of Moby seems sad, dark, and wise. Remember NIGHT OF THE LEPUS? It was a "creature" film starring
Janet Leigh and DeForest Kelley (of Star Trek), and it was about giant mutant bunnies. It quickly becomes apparent upon watching
that film that bunnies are never scary, even if they are giant mutants. It seems that whales suffer from the same sort of
irrevocable cuteness on a larger scale. Sharks are scary. Wales are not.
Renee O'Connor is certainly the most noticeable character in the movie. It has been said that her character is supposed to be Ishmael, and she does survive, but she is more a soothsayer (scientist) who tries to warn Ahab of his doom than she is a narrator.
NOTE: U.S. nuclear submarines are, with the exceptions of the U.S.S. Henry Jackson, and the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter, named either after American cities or American states. The Pequod was, in Melville's novel, named after the Pequot native american tribe which was wiped out in its entirety in the 17th century by European settlers.
The date on the paper is apparently "Monday February 13, 1992. February 13 was a Monday in 1995 and will be again in
2012. In 1992 it was a Thursday. The story below the photo reads: "The Spanish fiancee of Chelsea footballer
has called time on their seven year relationship. Elen Rives, who has two children with the England midfielder,
is understood to...". That news is from 2009.
