Even as he rocketed to stardom following the release of Thor in 2011, Chris Hemsworth stayed busy with a wide variety of other movies. Some of the movies were more successful than others. In the Heart of the Sea wasn’t one of them, but nine years after its theatrical debut, the historical drama is being rediscovered by a whole new audience on Netflix.
On paper, it sounds like a home run. Ron Howard (Apollo 13) directs a script written by Charles Leavitt (Blood Diamond) based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2000 non-fiction book In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, about the true story of an event that partially inspired Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. And then you hear the cast list.
Hemsworth, reteaming with Howard after 2013’s Rush, stars as Owen Chase, first mate of the Essex. He’s joined by Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Brendan Gleeson, Ben Whishaw, Benjamin Walker, Michelle Fairley, Frank Dillane, and Donald Sumpter.
The story revolves around the crew of the Essex, a ship that has been refitted by a whaling company in Nantucket to hunt whales for their whale oil. After spending months searching the Atlantic Ocean with little to show for it, the Essex heads west to the Pacific Ocean, where the crew finds an enormous, white bull sperm whale. As you can probably guess, the encounter is far more treacherous than any of them could have imagined.
Despite its massive budget and star-studded cast, the adventure film was left rudderless at the box office, making just $94 million worldwide. Warner Bros. Pictures EVP of domestic theatrical distribution Jeff Goldstein said at the time that though the studio believed in Howard’s vision for the story, “some movies work and unfortunately some movies don’t.”
Reviews weren’t especially kind, either. The movie is sitting at 42% on Rotten Tomatoes with over 230 reviews. “For all the special effects and half-starved A-listers, this is a sodden beast. Perhaps there’s a reason that Melville only told half the story,” said Ian Nathan of Empire. “Thor and Spider-Man fight a whale,” wrote Brent McKnight for the Seattle Times.
Nevertheless, Netflix subscribers are making time for the seafaring adventure all of these years later. You can stream In the Heart of the Sea on Netflix right now.
