Ever wonder about the origin of the Great American Novel Moby-Dick? According to the trailer for director Ron Howard's In the Heart of the Sea, it's from another Great White Whale of monstrous proportions, giving the historical movie a seemingly sci-fi-oriented tone.
Starring Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy and Tom Holland (who recently landed the role of Spider-Man in the upcoming Captain America: Civil War), the film is based on a nonfiction book of the same name by historian Nathaniel Philbrick about the whaling ship Essex, which departed from Nantucket en route to South America in 1820 and was attacked by a sperm whale, shipwrecking the remaining crew. Philbrick's take on the events of the Essex earned him a National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2001.
While parts of novelist Herman Melville's Moby-Dick were certainly based on the trials and tribulations that the Essex faced, most literary theorists and historians point to another source as the inspiration for the novel, another original American monster: Mocha Dick, a large bull sperm whale (the same type that attacked both the Essex and Melville's fiction Pequod in his novel). First spotted in 1810, Mocha Dick allegedly had a penchant for his retaliatory aggressive behavior, as chronicled by the explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds. Like the Great White Whale, Mocha Dick was pale, described by Reynolds as "white as wool," and was also made distinctive in appearance by a festoon of barnacles that patterned his body. Mocha Dick was caught and killed in 1838, according to Reynolds.
Here is the official synopsis for the film:
"In the winter of 1820, the New England whaling ship Essex was assaulted by something no one could believe: a whale of mammoth size and will, and an almost human sense of vengeance. The real-life maritime disaster would inspire Melville's Moby-Dick. But that told only half the story. In the Heart of the Sea reveals the encounter's harrowing aftermath, as the ship's surviving crew is pushed to their limits and forced to do the unthinkable to stay alive."
In the Heart of the Sea is set to open in theaters on December 11.
Check out the latest trailer for In the Heart of the Sea below.
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