I’ve never read any of Patrick O’Brian’s books about Aubrey/Maturin. I did see the movie version of “Master and Commander: Far Side of the World,” and mostly enjoyed it.
I didn’t find out until much later that a hugely important plotline of the book had been radically changed- namely, that Aubrey’s enemies in the movies were Napoleon Bonaparte’s Navy. The book is set in the War of 1812, and Aubrey is sparring with the United States Navy!
Now, even as a patriotic American, I think the War of 1812 was a rather stupid, unnecessary conflict with no real good guys or clear winners. I like Lucky jack Aubrey and wouldn’t have enjoyed the movie any less if he’d been shown attacking American ships.
From a purely business standpoint, I suppose I can understand moviemakers thinking “America will be the biggest market, and we can’t afford to piss off the viewers we need most.” But I’m not sure this movie EVER had “blockbuster” written on it. I think the kinds of viewers the movie was likely to get would have ben willing to see the U.S. Navy as the “bad guys” (or, conversely, to see that America’s adversaries were sometimes admirable folks in their own right).
Was there REALLY any need to change the ethnicity of Aubrey’s foes?
I think Americans would have been a lot more confused by it. It would have had to go more into the backstory of the events. The Average American (yes, proper noun) sees Brits and Americans as allies UNLESS its the Revolutionary War.
We wouldn’t question the French and the British fighting.
While the “Surprise chasing a ship to the Pacific” plot is based on FSoTW, the movie diverges from it in many, many other ways, and has scenes/plots/events adapted or lifted from several other Aubrey/Maturin novels. In fact, the final battle between the Archeron & Surprise is much more inspired by the Sophie/Cacafuego battle in Master & Commander, where Spain was the enemy. In the FSoTW novel, in fact, the two ships never see each other. So given all the liberties they took with the plot to begin with, I don’t see an issue with changing the nationality of the enemy ship in the movie.
I don’t think it was necessary to change the “bad guys” for the movie (eye of the beholder etc.), but I suppose it might’ve done marginally better box office with Frog bastards as the foe. As it happens, the Acheron was a digitized version of the USS Constitution.
Yea, Aubrey spends the majority of the series fighting the French, and even in the books where they go against the Spanish or Ottomans or Americans, its usually the treacherous French that are ultimately behind everything. So the change wasn’t totally unjustified, even putting aside the need not to alienate Americans.
I haven’t seen the film since it came out, but IIRC, the captain of the enemy ship is generally portrayed as a worthy advisary. He’s the antagonist, but not really a “bad guy”, so in those cases I don’t think the American movie going public would have much of a problem with it, and might actually like the novelty of having one of their own be the advisary.