Upcoming Navy movies

[P-40Warhawk]

Last year I heard about a new adaption of Herman Wouk's novel "The Caine Mutiny". Now I know what you're thinking, the 1954 version is a classic! However, often books don't translate literally to the screen, and that was true of it's first big screen adaptation. I'm curious how the new one will hold up, but I don't think it should be compared to the 1954 version. It's not a remake, it's just another adaption based on the novel (which also became a theatrical play). 

The new one swaps the WWII setting as I understand it -in my opinion- and I could be completely wrong about that, if so my apologies for any confusion, with one more contemporary, but we won't know how accurate that opinion is until it's released! Kiefer Sutherland stars as Captain Queeg, a role previously played by Humphrey Bogart in the 1954 adaption. I'm looking forward to this, the novel was good and hopefully we'll get a good adaptation out of this one. 


The other movie I have not heard a lot about, and I don't know it it's dead in the water or just in development 'heck' due to the 2020 pandemic backing up a lot of productions. Originally announced in 2017, a film based on the saga of USS LAFFEY in the Pacific theater - aka the ship that would not die. Mel Gibson was reportedly interested in developing it, supposedly attached as director as of May 2018, but I haven't heard anything solid from about 2019 on.... Movies aren't made overnight, so it's possible this is still in the works. A lot of filming was delayed by months or even a year+ due to the pandemic. It's possible this may still see production, but right now I can't find anything to confirm it's still happening. 

It probably didn't help that the other big US Navy movies Midway & Greyhound, came out when they did. Midway just before the pandemic (4th quarter releases for maritime movies don't seem to do well unless you're James Cameron), and Greyhound in the middle of it. Greyhound repeatedly had it's release details and date moved around, resulting in confusion and adding to the uncertainty. 

WWII films aren't dead..yet, but naval films have always had disadvantages. They tend to be more complex to film, more expensive, and hold limited appeal to people who don't like ships, and or don't care or understand how things work at sea. That said, we will continue to see stories told that are naval or maritime, but they won't likely be the big picture stories we're used to seeing. From what I'm hearing/seeing, the future is still bright and WWII films in general are still telling stories. I'm also pretty optimistic that we'll see more films set during the Vietnam war(s) (not just the US involvement, but all the way back into the 1940s). 

I think Kiefer Sutherland is up to the challenge of Captain Queeg, so let's see how things turn out!
 

[aerialbridge]

Sutherland is good with playing heavies, should be interesting.   I've also wondered what happened to Mel's Laffey movie.   Dead in the water or torpedoed?   If and when either come out, I'll go to the movies again.