This story about “The Sea Beast” first appeared in the Awards Preview issue of TheWrap awards magazine.
“The Sea Beast,” the latest feature from director Chris Williams (“Big Hero 6,” “Moana”) and his first for Netflix, is a fun throwback to the kind of old-school adventure movies Williams grew up on: 1976. “King Kong”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, “Clash of the Titans” and, of course, “Star Wars”. It is set in a mythical land with deep ties to the ocean, a place where monster hunting is not only encouraged, but sponsored by the kingdom. And it’s where a monster hunter named Jacob (voiced by Karl Urban) strikes up an unlikely friendship with a girl (Zaris-Angel Hator) and discovers that the creatures aren’t just killing machines.
Neither sequence sets up the world, and the stakes, like the monster hunt on the high seas.
“I’m a big fan of well-executed action and will always be an advocate for it,” Williams said. “When we set out to make this big action-adventure story, I knew I wanted to make a splash with the opening scene, and through it, get to know our characters and how the ship works and how sea monster hunting works. .”
But more than just a technical understanding of how the world of “The Sea Beast” works, Williams knew that he also had to integrate the emotional and thematic stakes of the world. “He knew that people, on some level, would have mixed feelings about what they were witnessing, because you can’t help it. They are monsters, but at the same time they look like large marine mammals and we can’t help but equate them to whaling. And she knew that was going to be a problem. We were going to try as much as possible to tilt our sympathies towards the hunters, make the monsters appear to be the aggressors, celebrate the heroism of the hunters and see them as saviors.”
That moral cloudiness was something Williams wanted to lean into rather than push away. “I knew our sympathies would be divided at least a little bit,” he said. But that didn’t matter to me. And I think sometimes in movies these days, there’s a sense that the audience needs to feel one thing and one thing only at any given time. When I think about the movies that I loved, and most of them were made in the ’70s, those movies invited you to feel conflicted when you watched them.” Williams cites “The Godfather” as a major influence. “Those conflicting feelings can be a source of energy and I’m not afraid of that,” he said.
As for the staging of the sequence, Williams and his team found themselves asking a series of questions: “Can it be more fun? Can it be more exciting? Can it seem more dangerous? Are there more opportunities for character?” Williams wanted to avoid excessive cuts and emulate the feel of the “Mission: Impossible” movies, where you know Tom Cruise is doing those stunts. His guiding principle of it? “Always: never settle.”
Learn more about the awards preview here.
