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Master and Commander: Patrick O’Brian: Book 1 (Aubrey-Maturin)

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One Reddit commenter, explaining its popularity, describes it as a “wholesome bromance, which is the ultimate catnip for straight dudes.” Fighting against the tyranny and oppression of the French, his is the classic underdog tale. Acheron has twice the guns and twice the men. Taking it on is a test of nerve, discipline and courage. The narration is excellent - Ric Jerrom is a revelation. He gives a supremely able and assured performance - certainly on a par with Audible's other star narrators (for instance Rupert Degas and Toby Longworth). Online, 20 years after the film’s release, many men are finding comfort and inspiration in this contrasting picture of what masculinity can look like.

Aubrey improves the Sophie's sailing qualities by adding a larger spar to her mainmast, enabling him to spread a larger mainsail. He makes her ready to sail in convoy with twelve merchant vessels. During their journey east, the new captain takes the opportunity to get to know his sailors and to weld them into a fighting unit. As he does, he and the crew explain many naval matters to Maturin, (and thus to the reader) since the doctor is a novice sailor. This instalment takes Aubrey and Maturin sailing on the pirate-plagued waters of the Red Sea, trudging over the Sinai Peninsula and even the depths of the sea floor in their efforts to stay one step ahead of the treachery afoot. Master and Commander Books #10: The Far Side of the World (1984)

Napoleon, escaped from Elba, pursues his enemies across Europe like a vengeful phoenix. If he can corner the British and Prussians before their Russian and Austrian allies arrive, his genius will lead the French armies to triumph at Waterloo. With a Dutch man-of-war to windward, the undermanned, outgunned Leopardsails for her life into the freezing waters of the Antarctic, where, in mountain seas, the Dutchman closes. Master and Commander Books #6: The Fortune of War (1979) It is this promise that keeps men returning, two decades later, to Master and Commander. Much like Stephen’s flightless bird, it’s not going anywhere. — The Conversation via Reuters Connect

At almost the same time the sun popped up from behind St. Phillip’s fort; it did, in fact, pop up, flattened like a sideways lemon in the morning haze and drawing its bottom free of the land with a distinct jerk.”Some may say Master and Commander is just too male, and too white, to be called a true classic. I may say, if so, that some should have a word with my mum, a teacher of English literature, a lover of Eliot and Austen who treats O’Brian’s novels as holy writ and loves the film as much as me. Arising from which, a confession: I haven’t read O’Brian’s books. I got about a chapter into the first novel, Master and Commander itself, before deciding I’d rather read Flashman. In my defense, I was 16 and an idiot.

The sea itself already had a nacreous light that belonged more to the day than the darkness, and this light was reflected in the great convexities of the topsails, giving them the lustre of grey pearls.” Master and Commander is an action movie with a brain. Its thrills are never mindless. Weir’s recreation of life in the close confines of a warship in 1805 is meticulous, fascinating and sometimes, rightly, nausea-inducing. Crowe and Bettany’s interpretation of a friendship between two men matches such artistry precisely. As Gabriella Paiella said for GQ earlier this year, much of the film’s lasting appeal springs from that portrayal of male closeness. The Aubrey/Maturin series are classics. They are quite simply the best historical novels ever written.Napoleon is master of Europe. Only the British fleet stands before him. Oceans are now battlefields. And a moderate box office success from 2003 has become an unlikely streaming favorite, a poster child for the kind of movies Hollywood doesn’t make anymore, and a beacon of positive masculinity.” To quote Garth Franklin, editor of DarkHorizons.com: “Needless to say this is not real, but God I wish it were.”

The portrayals of these two men and their friendship — their abiding love for each other overcoming differences of politics and personality — carry the film. At times, Weir’s film seems to be a pure character study; the Acheron’s chase and capture matter much less than the development of this key male friendship. Reports of a new movie, a prequel, have been around forever. Last year, an image spread of a supposed unveiling of an “Aubrey-Maturin Saga”, complete with release dates, from Master and Commander: Post Captain (spring 2023) to Master and Commander: The Reverse of the Medal (spring 2027). Along their journey, Maturin climbs the Thousand Steps of the sacred crater of the orangutans; a killer typhoon catches Aubrey and his crew trying to work the Dianeoff a reef; and, in the barbaric court of Pulo Prabang, a classic duel of intelligence agents unfolds: the French envoys, well entrenched in the Sultan’s good graces, against the savage cunning of Stephen Maturin. Master and Commander Books #14: The Nutmeg of Consolation (1991) Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and the ensuing peace brings with it both the desertion of nearly half of Captain Aubrey’s crew and the sudden dimming of Aubrey’s career prospects in a peacetime navy. When the Surpriseis nearly sunk on her way to South America―where Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are to help Chile assert her independence from Spain―the delay occasioned by repairs reaps a harvest of strange consequences. They open a window into a world two hundred years gone - the world of the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. This was a time of blood and thunder, of maritime siege, a war of long, patient endurance against a tenacious and powerful enemy.The performances of the protagonists are gentle, subtle and lifelike. Crowe gives a rugged and charismatic performance as the tradition-loving Aubrey. Bettany as the charmingly lubberly Maturin is the perfect complement to Aubrey, even as he differs from his book counterpart, his role as an intelligence agent being conspicuously absent from the script. Also introduced are Master's Mates(Senior Midshipman) Tom Pullings, William Mowett and midshipman William Babbington, who become long-term fixtures in the series, and James Dillon, Sophie's first lieutenant, who is also a member of the United Irishmen along with Stephen.

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