The Sea Beast

Netflix's surprisingly winning The Sea Beast takes place in a long ago and far away era when terrifying sea monsters roamed the oceans and it was up to brave hunters in wooden warships to keep these bloodthirsty creatures from destroying the idyllic kingdoms built by humans. At least, that's how the stories read by a young orphan girl named Maisie Brumble always tell it. Maisie's parents were killed by one of these monstrous creatures, and she dreams of one day fighting alongside her heroes Captain Augustus Crow III, his loyal first mate Sarah Sharpe, and his heroic adopted son Jacob Holland on the most famous monster hunter ship, The Inevitable. But when Maisie stows away onboard the legendary vessel as it embarks on perhaps its final voyage before the King and Queen decommission the hunters in favour of more sophisticated weaponry, she discovers that, as Obi-Wan Kenobi once so wisely put it, "many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."

The Sea Beast is helmed by veteran animation director, writer, and story artist Chris Williams (Moana, Big Hero 6, Bolt) and its CGI animation is so richly designed, physically immersive, and exquisitely rendered it almost feels like a live-action picture. The human characters have depth and weight, and the ocean looks vast and dangerous. By contrast, the sea beasts themselves are smooth, brightly colored, and slightly cartoonish. They seem otherworldly in ways that are appropriate to the story while keeping them from being too scary for younger viewers. Even more exciting than the visual look, and even more of a delightful surprise is that the film is structured and paced like an adventure picture from a bygone era when filmmakers who made kids' movies that trusted their young viewers had enough patience to sit through the quiet parts that are absolutely essential to the action/adventure genre. In real life, and in the best stories, epic journeys have far more downtime than they have sword fights and monster battles. From Treasure Island to The Chronicles of Narnia to The Hunger Games, many of the most memorable and important scenes in adventure stories occur when characters stop to catch their breath and figure out what to do next. The sequences that provide the most illuminating character moments and best explore subtextual ideas are usually ones where heart-pounding action is not occurring. These are scenes of conversations set in the bowels of a pirate ship while waiting to reach its next port, or unfolding when characters are stranded on a deserted island figuring out how to survive, or, even better, when contact with a mysterious new arrival suddenly diverts the protagonists' attention from their long-term goal as they focus on engaging with a new character who might be able to help.

The Sea Beast still has plenty of high-flying, swashbuckling action that feels like Errol Flynn crossed with Spiderman, as well as giant monster fights that recall Ray Harryhausen classics like One Million Years B.C. and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, or Japanese kaiju pictures like Godzilla vs (take your pick), but these action set pieces are balanced with calm, comedic, and contemplative moments. We get to witness the point when Maisie starts to question her long-held beliefs while she recovers from a scary experience, rather than have her come to this realization while in the midst of a high-adrenaline event. It is precisely because she slows down to observe and reflect, rather than constantly running and jumping and flying through the air, that she's able to process the information that leads to her character's meaningful arc.

I don't know when animation directors and producers became so afraid of silence and stillness, but I view Finding Nemo as the demarcation point. Up until this year's Turning Red which, like The Sea Beast is nominated for Best Animated Feature Oscar), Nemo was my least favourite Pixar picture. Listening to Albert Brooks sustain his frantic, breathless, panicked state for nearly the entire duration of that movie—in which even the chill, stoner turtles zoomed forward in a rapidly flowing current—exhausted me to the point of madness. Of course, there have been plenty of examples of animated films that do not give in to this nonstop flatline approach to storytelling—Moana being one of the finest examples—but I haven't seen one unfold with such elegant swings in tempo for a very long time. I didn't watch The Sea Beast with any kids, and I haven't spoken with any parents of kids who've seen this, yet. I'm curious to know if viewers under twelve found parts of the film boring and parts of it too intense, or if they simply got as swept up in it as I did.

It is also a pleasant shock to see a Moby Dick-style adventure made at a time when children’s stories about leaving the safety of home to go on a dangerous quest that involves the hunting and killing of animals while engaging in traditionally masculine rites of passage don't exactly play well. But Williams and co-screenwriter Nell Benjamin (known mostly as the lyricist and composer of theatrical musicals based on movies like Legally Blonde, Mean Girls, and Dave) prove it is not as difficult to update stories like this for modern sensibilities as many studios and social media scolds seem to think it is. The multiracial crew of The Inevitable look authentically like the complement of mariners who would populate a globe-travelling man-of-war, rather than an assembly of representational "types" put together by some corporate casting department or animation studio brain trust checking off boxes in a half-hearted attempt not to appear Eurocentric. The movie also uses its traditional hero's-journey narrative to interrogate certain established story structures and tropes; as well as the motivations behind how villains and enemies are depicted in popular culture, the unquestioned foundations of long-accepted histories, and the vested interest rich and powerful forces have in maintaining the status quo. While the picture's ending may be a little heavyhanded, these are complex themes for a kids' movie to tackle, especially in our politically charged times, and the filmmakers do an admirable job.

Part of why The Sea Beast works so well is its wonderful main character. Voiced by young Zaris-Angel Hator, Maisie is feisty, rambunctious, and headstrong, but she's also compassionate and introspective. She's not an insufferably one-note depiction of a child (like the title character in another of this year's Oscar-nominated animated features, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio). Maisie acts like a real kid acts. She's multilayered—fun, funny, sensitive, and intelligent in ways you recognize in kids you actually know. She's paired with the puffed-up conquering hero Jacob Holland, wonderfully voiced by Karl Urban (Dr. McCoy in the rebooted Star Trek series and Éomer in The Lord of the Rings movies). These two protagonists have a wonderful chemistry that never becomes tedious, even though they constantly get on each other's nerves in ways typical of mismatched movie characters forced to cohabitate. The story requires both of its leads to reassess their long-held beliefs and allows them to come out the other side with their dignity and personalities intact. And while the true bad guys of the story are strawmen, the rest of the supporting cast, who would seem two-dimensional at first, are given enough screen time to become fully realized. Jared Harris and Marianne Jean-Baptiste bring surprising depth to the characterizations of the Ahab-like Captain Crow and the strict but fair-minded first mate Sarah Sharpe. The filmmakers never indulge in overt audience winking, modern references, or dialogue and jokes that feel anachronistic to their imagined "many centuries ago" milieu. The Sea Beast is an unexpected treat.

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