The Island: anybody else remember this one?
Surely I'm not the only person here who ever saw the movie or read the book, right? Peter Benchley's forgotten classic -- The Island?
Here's the trailer:
Basic plot for those interested: wussy reporter takes his smart-aleck kid along to investigate the Bermuda Triangle disappearances, only to discover that the real problem in the Triangle isn't UFOs, lost Atlantis, or sea monsters. It's a lost colony (?) established 300 years ago by the buccaneer Jean David Nau, better and far more ominously known as L'Ollonais, probably THE most sadistic pirate captain of the Golden Age of Piracy. They've survived for 300 years by hiding out, and raiding boats and occasionally other small island communities (in the novel it's stated that these are mostly would-be polygamists hiding out; sounds odd to me too) for food, medicine, and kids and young girls they take away for breeding purposes.
What the heck, as lost civilizations go it makes more sense than a whole city full of Aztecs.
The reporter, fortunately named Maynard ("Descended from the one who slew the mighty Blackbeard") is taken in by the pirates until he sires a child to replace the man he killed. His son gets taken in to learn how to become a pirate and takes to murdering strangers with a disturbing glee. The reporter learns how to become a savage himself and saves his son by, well...
That's after the pirates, using 18th century weaponry (flintlocks, cutlasses, axes, and a few cannon) take down a US Navy Destroyer. When I was a kid I found that awesome; but now? Does anyone reading this find it even remotely plausible?
Oh, and in the movie L'Ollonais gets killed by being shot with a flare gun (!); in the book, he commits suicide so he can die "By his own hand, as a free prince."
Something I never considered until now is, what's gonna happen when the Navy comes along and finds Maynard and his son alone on a destroyer full of hacked and machine-gunned corpses? "Oh, they were all pirates. Yes, like in the story books. No, they killed the crew. Then I machine-gunned their *^#!@* asses dead. What do you mean, 'Prove it?' I'm a reporter, everyone knows how honest we are."
I do like one thing about the story and movie. It thoroughly deconstructs the idea of pirates as romantic heroes. These guys are stone cold killers and rapists, a tribe of savages, barely held together by the 'Articles', which are basically (and rather plausibly, given the society) cribbed from actual pirate 'Articles' from the 18th century meant to keep a gang of thieves in order. But even so, I can't see these guys as lasting more than one generation before they either got discovered or killed themselves off.
Another, rather surprisingly subversive bit is the English anthropologist who has learned of the pirate's existence and has been supplying them with food, medicine, and the like. Why? Because he sees them as "authentic" and "a pure culture" and all the buzzwords used by a certain class of intellectual in the real world when they demand that some sadistic murderer be released upon society despite their uncontrollable violence and cruelty. The anthropologist deludes himself into thinking that he's a "partner" and that L'Ollonais and the rest respect him and admire his deep wisdom and intellectual superiority... right until they decide to knock over the aforementioned US Navy Destroyer, at which point he orders them to not do it because "I won't let you ruin everything I've done here!"
And they promptly slit his throat just like that.
Note that this was the book and not the movie; in the movie, he gets killed by the woman on the island that's fallen in love with Maynard, which I think is a much weaker way to do it.
Still, fun book, fun movie.
Here's the trailer:
Click to viewBasic plot for those interested: wussy reporter takes his smart-aleck kid along to investigate the Bermuda Triangle disappearances, only to discover that the real problem in the Triangle isn't UFOs, lost Atlantis, or sea monsters. It's a lost colony (?) established 300 years ago by the buccaneer Jean David Nau, better and far more ominously known as L'Ollonais, probably THE most sadistic pirate captain of the Golden Age of Piracy. They've survived for 300 years by hiding out, and raiding boats and occasionally other small island communities (in the novel it's stated that these are mostly would-be polygamists hiding out; sounds odd to me too) for food, medicine, and kids and young girls they take away for breeding purposes.
What the heck, as lost civilizations go it makes more sense than a whole city full of Aztecs.
The reporter, fortunately named Maynard ("Descended from the one who slew the mighty Blackbeard") is taken in by the pirates until he sires a child to replace the man he killed. His son gets taken in to learn how to become a pirate and takes to murdering strangers with a disturbing glee. The reporter learns how to become a savage himself and saves his son by, well...
That's after the pirates, using 18th century weaponry (flintlocks, cutlasses, axes, and a few cannon) take down a US Navy Destroyer. When I was a kid I found that awesome; but now? Does anyone reading this find it even remotely plausible?
Oh, and in the movie L'Ollonais gets killed by being shot with a flare gun (!); in the book, he commits suicide so he can die "By his own hand, as a free prince."
Something I never considered until now is, what's gonna happen when the Navy comes along and finds Maynard and his son alone on a destroyer full of hacked and machine-gunned corpses? "Oh, they were all pirates. Yes, like in the story books. No, they killed the crew. Then I machine-gunned their *^#!@* asses dead. What do you mean, 'Prove it?' I'm a reporter, everyone knows how honest we are."
I do like one thing about the story and movie. It thoroughly deconstructs the idea of pirates as romantic heroes. These guys are stone cold killers and rapists, a tribe of savages, barely held together by the 'Articles', which are basically (and rather plausibly, given the society) cribbed from actual pirate 'Articles' from the 18th century meant to keep a gang of thieves in order. But even so, I can't see these guys as lasting more than one generation before they either got discovered or killed themselves off.
Another, rather surprisingly subversive bit is the English anthropologist who has learned of the pirate's existence and has been supplying them with food, medicine, and the like. Why? Because he sees them as "authentic" and "a pure culture" and all the buzzwords used by a certain class of intellectual in the real world when they demand that some sadistic murderer be released upon society despite their uncontrollable violence and cruelty. The anthropologist deludes himself into thinking that he's a "partner" and that L'Ollonais and the rest respect him and admire his deep wisdom and intellectual superiority... right until they decide to knock over the aforementioned US Navy Destroyer, at which point he orders them to not do it because "I won't let you ruin everything I've done here!"
And they promptly slit his throat just like that.
Note that this was the book and not the movie; in the movie, he gets killed by the woman on the island that's fallen in love with Maynard, which I think is a much weaker way to do it.
Still, fun book, fun movie.