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Spice it up. Michael Pena as Maturin.
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Feb 26, 2021 22:30
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PlushCow posted:There are little nods towards things in the novels like Jack scratching a stay, Killick trying to save the silver, Stephen taking up a sword himself, that would have more significance to a reader than a otherwise. There's also a bit where Bettany/Stephen flexes his fingers a few times before playing his cello, a nod to Stephen's torture.
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Feb 26, 2021 22:37
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I’m sure Tom Hardy would get chonky and learn the violin to be a great Jack. Andrew Scott (uglied up) for Maturin. For Bonden, uh, Jason Statham?
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Feb 27, 2021 00:33
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Tom Hardy is too quiet and low-key menacing. I'm honestly not sure which currently young actors in the late 20s to late 30s range I'd cast. (That is roughly Jack and Stephen's age at the very start of the series, right?)
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Feb 27, 2021 00:40
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Fire Safety Doug posted:. For Bonden, uh, Jason Statham? 
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Feb 27, 2021 01:12
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I like the casting as-is except of course Bonden, who should have been played by Vinnie Jones
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Feb 27, 2021 08:47
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Vinnie Jones is Awkward Davies thank you!
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Feb 27, 2021 23:18
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Phenotype posted:I've always thought a younger John Goodman would have been a great Jack Aubrey. Too late now, obviously, but he's the right mix of fat/big/strong and can be oafish and funny but also serious and commanding.
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Feb 28, 2021 04:09
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I know we've ruled out Tom Hardy for Jack, but what about for Bonden?
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Feb 28, 2021 15:37
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CroatianAlzheimers posted:I know we've ruled out Tom Hardy for Jack, but what about for Bonden? He needs to be believable as someone who could cheerfully be champion of the med fleet.
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Feb 28, 2021 17:36
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builds character posted:He needs to be believable as someone who could cheerfully be champion of the med fleet. Have you seen Bronson?
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Feb 28, 2021 18:12
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Fire Safety Doug posted:Have you seen Bronson? Lots of punching, not much cheer. For Aubrey though I genuinely think a fattened-up Chris Hemsworth would be good, he has the baseline goofiness while still being able to be serious when the situation calls for it.
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Feb 28, 2021 18:44
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thekeeshman posted:Lots of punching, not much cheer. Oh, Bronson was cheery, alright. A manic, dangerous, brittle kind of cheery, but cheery nonetheless.
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Feb 28, 2021 18:47
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Mainly mentioned Bronson as an example of Hardy making a believable brawler, although I do think he’d have the range to do Jack as well.
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Feb 28, 2021 20:17
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CroatianAlzheimers posted:Oh, Bronson was cheery, alright. A manic, dangerous, brittle kind of cheery, but cheery nonetheless. Well then this is Awkward Davis. I do think Hardy has fallen into the Ryan Gosling pigeon hole: actually has range, but has been typecast to mostly be in serious, staring-into-your-soul-with-his-eyes roles for at least five years.
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Feb 28, 2021 22:57
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Pwnstar posted:Aubrey is the original himbo. He knows about sailing but otherwise he's a big goof, Russel Crowe needed to oaf it up a bit imo. He's a brilliant mathematician, and musician. Just terrible at things you can only do ashore. Rosie O'Donnell as Jacquelyn "Jack" Aubrey, Melissa McCarthy as Stephanie Maturin, and The Rock as Barret Bonden. Raskolnikov2089 fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Mar 1, 2021 |
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Mar 1, 2021 04:18
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:He's a brilliant mathematician, and musician. Just terrible at things you can only do ashore. This is just the worst! Obviously, the Rock should be Killick.
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Mar 2, 2021 13:28
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Anarcho-Commissar posted:This is just the worst! The Rock as Killick. John Cena as Bonden. Dave Bautista as Stephen.
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Mar 2, 2021 14:11
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:Rosie O'Donnell as Jacquelyn "Jack" Aubrey, Melissa McCarthy as Stephanie Maturin, and The Rock as Barret Bonden. cursed
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Mar 2, 2021 21:16
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https://twitter.com/dennisbhooper/status/1377139141914161152?s=20
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Mar 31, 2021 21:01
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:Spice it up. Michael Cera as Maturin.
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Apr 2, 2021 04:48
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I've been reading the Bliven Putnam novels by James Haley because of a review of one that explicitly said "Haley is the American Patrick O'Brian, he really is that good" ... and he's not. They're not bad per se (although his treatment of slavery in the US south is hamfisted - I'm only one book in and a bit and he's flirting with a "there were plenty of nice slaveowners, so it wasn't that bad for everybody" narrative but also drawing a kind of clever parallel between the US accepting a biblical justification for enslaving Africans but getting angry at the Barbary states for their religious justification of enslaving Americans). The issue is just that they're not good compared to O'Brian and it's interesting to think about why that is - it tells me something about what makes O'Brian so good. The main difference is that the Haley books are focusing on the captain of the ships involved and the battles. There's much less attention to the wardroom or the other officers and none at all to the crew - in a book and a half I can literally think of one named crewman, and he didn't get any development as a character. Haley is writing naval fiction, sure, but he's not writing about the people involved - just the navies. It makes the whole thing flat compared to O'Brian.
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Apr 2, 2021 19:29
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Notahippie posted:The main difference is that the Haley books are focusing on the captain of the ships involved and the battles. There's much less attention to the wardroom or the other officers and none at all to the crew - in a book and a half I can literally think of one named crewman, and he didn't get any development as a character. Haley is writing naval fiction, sure, but he's not writing about the people involved - just the navies. It makes the whole thing flat compared to O'Brian. That's still a step up from C.S. Forester! I'm working my way through his novels and Hornblower himself feels flat as a pancake: A good seaman but with a massive chip on his shoulder that robs him of the capacity for happiness and engaging forthrightly with his fellow man. He's like if someone decided to do 10 novels about Lord Clonfert!
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Apr 2, 2021 20:12
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I kind of lump O'Brian and Tolkien together as writers who have an incredible collection of interests and knowledge that they're able to channel into their writing to make really well-developed worlds. In some of O'Brian's books 200 pages will pass without any sort of battle, but it's still compelling stuff because O'Brian never has a shortage of other interesting things to share with you be it a bunch of sailing stuff, interpersonal relations of the crew, studying the natural world, or just love of music. It's something I think very few writers are able to live up to.
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Apr 2, 2021 23:02
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Also, O'Brian is an excellent writer. Every other sentence is like an acrobatics routine. It's just a joy to read.
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Apr 2, 2021 23:38
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I read through the Hornblower series a few years back and while I enjoyed the books just fine, I certainly prefer O’Brian. One thing that bothered me (and I suppose this is a spoiler of sorts) is that Hornblower never really seemed to be in real danger of losing everything; he merely progresses through the ranks and battles, brooding and complex but always brilliant as a leader and tactician, while Jack’s constantly running into setbacks because of politics or personality. Admittedly O’Brian resorted to increasingly contrived methods of holding Jack’s career back in later books, but you need that sense of peril to uphold the stakes.
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Apr 3, 2021 10:03
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Fire Safety Doug posted:I read through the Hornblower series a few years back and while I enjoyed the books just fine, I certainly prefer O’Brian. One thing that bothered me (and I suppose this is a spoiler of sorts) is that Hornblower never really seemed to be in real danger of losing everything; he merely progresses through the ranks and battles, brooding and complex but always brilliant as a leader and tactician, while Jack’s constantly running into setbacks because of politics or personality. Admittedly O’Brian resorted to increasingly contrived methods of holding Jack’s career back in later books, but you need that sense of peril to uphold the stakes. In the novels, no character is actually accorded an inner life except Hornblower and his tedious Imposter Syndrome. Everyone else is reduced to bit players; cardboard cutouts erected in service of the hero's narrative. This solipsism makes it extremely hard to become invested in the world and its supposed dangers. The TV series does a lot to remedy this imo. Other characters are expanded upon and humanized and even Hornblower feels more relatable thanks to good casting. And speaking of casting, the series is worth the price of admission solely to catch David Warner's performance as an elderly captain in the grip of paranoid delusions.
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Apr 3, 2021 13:26
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PerilPastry posted:In the novels, no character is actually accorded an inner life except Hornblower and his tedious Imposter Syndrome. Everyone else is reduced to bit players; cardboard cutouts erected in service of the hero's narrative. This solipsism makes it extremely hard to become invested in the world and its supposed dangers. I'm well glad to read this, old man. For you see, I had a disagreement with my ex-Army brother-in-law some 15 years since about the relative merits of the 2 seafaring sagas, and he was all about Hornblower and dismissive of O'Brian. I drat near called him out, except for my sister's presence. But then he later ran his mouth on some idiotic political opinion and my late mother reduced him to well, a well boiled baby?
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Apr 3, 2021 17:09
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It's been a while since I read the Hornblower's, but wasn't the one with Captain Sawyer written from lieutenant Bush's perspective? Probably not coincidentally, I remember that being my favourite one. From memory, he had a short period of a couple of books from when he got out off the terrible midshipman's berth on his first ship to gaining command when he was friendly to his fellow officers and could be fun. Then he became someone whose dinner parties were surely dreaded.
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Apr 3, 2021 18:04
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Austen Tassletine posted:It's been a while since I read the Hornblower's, but wasn't the one with Captain Sawyer written from lieutenant Bush's perspective? Probably not coincidentally, I remember that being my favourite one. whimsies can be enforced with the full authority of the articles of war - is easily the best of the series too.
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Apr 3, 2021 19:10
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PerilPastry posted:In the novels, no character is actually accorded an inner life except Hornblower and his tedious Imposter Syndrome. Everyone else is reduced to bit players; cardboard cutouts erected in service of the hero's narrative. This solipsism makes it extremely hard to become invested in the world and its supposed dangers. Yeah I don’t really have any gripe with this assessment. In the TV series Hornblower is also so young that the stakes still feel real.
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Apr 3, 2021 20:30
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Put me down as someone who read the Hornblower series as an adolescent, and loved them at the time, but as an adult, far prefers O'Brian. Hornblower is essentially an adventure hero with some fairly original-for-the-time self loathing thrown in. But apart from a few wrinkles in his personal life, he's presented with a problem, the solution is there, he seizes it, well done, couldn't have done it without you Horatio, tea & medals all round. As was pointed out, none of the other characters in the C.S. Forester books are fully realised. I do think his writing of action sequences and management of his books' pace is very good indeed. But even there, I don't think the circumstances and details are as exhaustively researched or plausible as O'Brian's naval engagements, which seem to have been largely lifted from contemporary memoirs, letters and the Gazette. Contrast Hornblower's escape from French captivity, which is a wonderful piece of adventure but (someone correct me if I'm wrong) rather far-fetched, with Jack & Stephen's, which is closely based on Sydney Smith's.
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Apr 3, 2021 20:47
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I always thought the dancing bear part of their escape seemed pretty outlandish and beyond belief.
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Apr 3, 2021 22:44
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I always thought the dancing bear part of their escape seemed pretty outlandish and beyond belief. Agreed, to the point where I wondered if O’Brian wasn’t deliberately trying to reference more picaresque or pulp adventures than his other books. It doesn’t really fit to me in the rest of the series, even if it’s a really good set piece. I’d like it better in something like the Three Musketeers.
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Apr 4, 2021 16:47
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Notahippie posted:Agreed, to the point where I wondered if O’Brian wasn’t deliberately trying to reference more picaresque or pulp adventures than his other books. It doesn’t really fit to me in the rest of the series, even if it’s a really good set piece. I’d like it better in something like the Three Musketeers. I wondered if O'Brian wrote that thinking that later he'd use it as a potential source of rumor and ridicule among the crew members....and never did. Because that would have been great.
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Apr 4, 2021 17:01
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I always thought the dancing bear part of their escape seemed pretty outlandish and beyond belief. Lol, I meant during The Surgeon's Mate - where it's more due to political manoeuvring in the French cabinet. Don't really have an answer for the bear escapade.
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Apr 4, 2021 17:51
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I give a pass to the bear escape because it rules
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Apr 4, 2021 21:20
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What o, the bear! The bear scene rules, haters to be flogged around the fleet.
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Apr 4, 2021 21:48
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I agree that the bear scene a) is utterly unrealistic b) rules Also, gonna gripe about this because it's the only place that will get it: I'm slowly working my way through the series for the first time and saving the books for holiday or airplane reading because I know I will enjoy them, and also generally because I'm usually holidaying by the ocean or at least in new environs and that's what these books are all about, baby! (I read The Ionian Mission in one sitting on a 30-hour 3-leg flight from Australia to Europe.) I had an Easter long weekend by the sea and tried to finish up what I was already reading before then - because I'm also too neurotic to start one novel before finishing what I'm already on - but had a really busy week and so found myself still reading The Bell Jar (great novel but inescapably bleak) and A.A. Gill's last book of collected journalism (incredible writer whom I love but it's about refugees which is also inescapably bleak). I hosed up! I was on holiday, I wanted to read about my beloved boat boys!
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Apr 6, 2021 10:29
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freebooter posted:I agree that the bear scene I always pick a random book from the series for when I take a beach trip. The sound of the waves and smell of the salt air really adds to the enjoyment. Plus they're short enough that I can finish them fairly quickly and not spend the entire vacation with my nose in a book. How the hell did O'Brian get so much done with so few words?
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Apr 6, 2021 20:07
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