Crimson Tide: Difference between revisions
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{{tropelist}}
* [[Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene]]: Near the end when the two commanders refuse to back down, and just sit around hoping the radio gets fixed... and start having a conversation about leadership, thinly disguised as a discussion on horses, of all things.
* [[As You Know]]: During the attacks by the Akula submarine, one crew member repeatedly asks another what basic combat terms mean. In fairness, this is lampshaded when another crew member asks "How did you get on this ship!?".
* [[Backed by the Pentagon]] - Averted, as they refused a script involving a mutiny. The newscaster had to speak from the French carrier Foch instead of the American one as originally planned.
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{{quote|'''Ramsey''': God help you if you're wrong.
'''Hunter''': If I'm wrong, then we're at war. God help us all. }}
* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]: [[The Lord of the Rings|Aragorn]] is friends with [[Malcolm X (film)|Malcolm X]] whom [[The Sopranos|Tony Soprano]] would love to shoot. [[NCIS|Director Vance]] is standing by and not sure what to do.
* [[Hot Sub-On-Sub Action]] - The ''Akula'' class. Or is it? Bum bum bum.
* [[Interservice Rivalry]] - "I expect and demand your very best. Anything less--you should have joined the Air Force!"
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* [[Mildly Military]] - Roughly 95% of the movie is utterly bizarre, implausible, and will reduce real submariners to hysterical laughter. Still fun to watch. Some examples:
** The idea that any captain would order a missile-launching drill while an actual fire had been reported is risible. ''Any'' fire is worrisome on shipboard, and doubly so on submarines (due to concerns about confined spaces and limited oxygen). Drills are NEVER run during an actual casualty.
*** Additionally, once a fire has been reported onboard a warship that fire is treated as still in-progress until ''after'' a) the damage control team has reported to the bridge that the fire is confirmed out and b) the spot where the fire occurred has been kept under "reflash watch" for a period of time after it is extinguished to confirm that the fire hasn't restarted. Due to the fact that heat dissipates slowly from inside enclosed metal compartments, it is entirely possible for a fire that's been put out to spontaneously start up all over again... because the temperature in the compartment is still too high, and flammable materials are still present. For every fire onboard ship, even a minor one, there is at least one guy with a fire extinguisher doing nothing but sitting and watching that spot for half an hour or more after the damage control party has finished putting out the immediate fire.
** The entire conflict between Ramsey and Hunter prior to the missile launch crisis is artificially inflated for pure rule of drama. In real life, if a CO and an XO have disagreements the absolute last thing either officer will do is air those disagreements anywhere except to each other in private, let alone mutter them to the enlisted men behind each other's backs. They will do these even if they absolutely despise each other, because undermining a senior officer's authority in public indirectly damages every other officer's authority as well -- including their own. Hunter's derogatory comments about Ramsay to both the messcook in the galley and the Chief of the Boat should have had him relieved of his post about two minutes after they were first brought to Ramsay's attention.
** There are at least three separate points in the movie where the submarine sustains damage that would logically require the next scene to be "fade to black, loud crunching noises, roll credits". Of course, this being a movie, the damage is heroically repaired by sailors jiggling the controls and heroically banging on things. In reality? If your engine room is flooded, your sub is dead. If you've lost reactor power, battery power, and the ability to do an emergency blow of your ballast tanks all simultaneously, your sub is dead. If you have water in the people tank in both the rear section and the front section simultaneously, then no matter what else is going on your sub is dead, dead, so very very dead.▼
*** This one is defensible because in order to react to it, the captain first has to be told about it. A lower-ranking enlisted man like the messcook is almost certainly going to decide that the best idea when the two most senior officers on the boat are getting into a vendetta is to do absolutely nothing to draw attention to himself, in addition to the fact that he has no chance to speak to the captain without going through the entire chain of command above him first -- which includes the XO. The Chief of the Boat, on the other hand, has absolutely nothing to fear by getting involved (not only is there very little you can threaten a master chief of his seniority with unless he actually commits a serious violation of regs, but bringing word to the captain of things going wrong is actually ''part of his job'') and can easily get in to see the captain at any time -- but ''because'' he works directly with the captain every day, its entirely possible that COB agreed with Hunter's opinion of him.
** The entire scene with the Weapons Officer and the key is pure plot contrivance. In reality, a minimum of three men would have access to that safe. One of those men would be the guy who was trying to threaten Weaps to open that safe at gunpoint. The captain has access to EVERYTHING, that's why he's the captain. ▼
▲** There are at least three separate points in the movie where the submarine sustains damage that would logically require the next scene to be "fade to black, loud crunching noises, roll credits". Of course, this being a movie, the damage is
▲** The entire scene with the Weapons Officer and the key is pure plot contrivance. In reality, a minimum of three men would have access to that safe. One of those men would be the guy who was trying to threaten Weaps to open that safe at gunpoint. The captain has access to EVERYTHING, that's why he's the captain.
** You'd like to think that at around the time the captain was threatening to murder innocent crewmembers in cold blood to intimidate another one of his subordinates into compliance, the men standing around him would go '... o-kay, I think I know which one of the two senior officers on this boat is the crazy one, and its not the XO. Now, how do we get that pistol away from Captain Insano here so we can get him down to sick bay and get him strapped to a bunk and tranquilized?'
** Bilge bay? What is this thing called a "bilge bay"?
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** Played straight in that the movie completely ignored the existence of the nuclear triad - given the tactical situation, it would have made far more sense to use a land-based silo for a retaliatory launch or a Stealth bomber for a pre-emptive strike.
** For that matter, given that the Russian missiles in question are being fueled and prepped for launch by a general who's gone rogue, why aren't the ''Russians'' already nuking him? They're far closer to the spot marked X than we are, have an equally vested interest in not letting some psychopath unilaterally start World War III, and have a fine selection of tactical nuclear warhead options mounted on various delivery systems.
*** In addition to the fact that firing the nuke themselves allows the Russians far more control over where its actually going to land than by trusting ''us'' to shoot one towards Russian territory. I mean, fuck, we'd hardly trust the Russians to do it if the situation was reversed and Russian institutional paranoia makes US institutional paranoia look tame.
*** You'd think 'Some rebel psycho has just stolen one of my strategic missiles bases and is an unknown number of hours away from being launch ready, and there is a nontrivial possibility he'll just start flipping them around at random once he is' is a situation that would result in a quick conference call between the heads of state for all the UN Security Council permanent member nations, immediately followed by General Insano's eating a nuclear strike from whichever nation was in best position to deliver one first.
* [[Peace Through Superior Firepower]] - "We're going over there, and bringing the most lethal killing machine ever devised. We're capable of launching more firepower than has ever been released in the history of war. For one purpose alone: to keep our country safe."
* [[Race Against the Clock]] -- For the captain this trope is literal. The Russians have begun fueling their missiles and so they will be ready to launch in one hour. If that's correct, then he needs to launch preemptively.
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** Dougherty and some other officers talk about submarine movies, including ''[[The Enemy Below]]''.
* [[Shout-Out]]
** Hunter invokes ''[[Star Trek: The
{{quote|'''Hunter''': Well I'm Captain Kirk, you're Scotty, I need more power.}}
** Hunter states to a crew member, "anyone who reads comic books knows that the [[Jack Kirby|Kirby]] Silver Surfer is the only true [[Silver Surfer]]."
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[[Category:Sea Stories]]
[[Category:Crimson Tide]]
[[Category:Military and Warfare Films]]
[[Category:Film]]
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