National Marine Week: The Best Ocean-Based Movies

Ash Walker • 30 Jul 2024 Features

Ahoy! Films off the starboard bow!

It’s National Marine Week, the Wildlife Trusts’ annual celebration of all things oceanic, and we’re getting in on the action the only way we know how - by watching movies!

We’ve put together a selection of the best marine-based movies, filled with ships, sharks and sheepshanks, each showcasing the briny deep in all of its glory.

So let’s dive right in!

Finding Nemo (2003)

Credit: Finding Nemo Trailer #1 (Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers, YouTube)

What better way to kick things off than with one of Pixar’s most beloved movies, and a true celebration of the sea and everything that lives in it?

Marlin (Albert Brooks) is a clownfish. He’s also a helicopter parent, overbearingly protective of his curious, adventurous son Nemo (Alexander Gould). But when Nemo goes missing, Marlin has to put his own fears aside and set out on an epic journey across the ocean, in the hopes of bringing his son home.

Finding Nemo is a modern classic: full of heart, beautifully animated and packed with hilarious, vividly-realised characters. Who could forget Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), the memory-challenged blue tang? Or Crush (Andrew Stanton), the laid-back surfer dude sea turtle? Or Bruce (Barry Humphries), the great white shark trying really hard to not eat any more fish - named, incidentally, after the unreliable mechanical fish used while filming Jaws.

This movie is a sheer joy, and is just as enjoyable twenty years after its initial release. The sequel - Finding Dory - is also worth a watch.

See also: The Little Mermaid (1989), Song of the Sea (2014), Luca (2021)

Jaws (1975)

Credit: Jaws Official Trailer #1 (Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers, YouTube)

Speaking of sharks… It's been almost fifty years since the release of Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece, which is often credited as being the first summer blockbuster, and Jaws still casts an enormous, toothy shadow.

Based on the bestselling novel by Peter Benchley, the movie follows police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), a former New York cop whose small New England town is menaced by a giant, man-eating shark. It’s thrilling stuff, but Jaws really starts to sing when Brody, along with oceanographer Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and salty old fisherman Quint (Robert Shaw), hits the open ocean to finally put an end to the monster fish, once and for all.

It’s funny, exciting, endlessly quotable - “You’re gonna need a bigger boat!” - and so scary it put an entire generation off swimming in the sea. Truly, this is the mother of all killer shark movies.

And let’s not forget John Williams’s masterful score, which has since become a sort of cultural shorthand for the fishy predators. Altogether now: Dun-dun. Dun-dun. Dun-dun.

See also: Deep Blue Sea (1999), Open Water (2003), The Reef (2010)

The Abyss (1989)

Credit: The Abyss | Remastered 4K In Theaters | Official Trailer (20th Century Studios, YouTube)

Director James Cameron loves the ocean. He’s an accomplished diver, and his passion is peppered throughout his filmography, from the latest Avatar movie to Titanic to, uh… Piranha II: The Spawning.

But it is on full display in his 1989 science fiction adventure The Abyss, which follows the crew of an experimental underwater drilling platform as they investigate a deep sea trench. They’re looking for a missing US submarine, but what they find is far stranger than they could have ever imagined.

It’s aliens. They find aliens.

Renowned for its ground-breaking special effects - the animated, shapeshifting water column inspired the T1000 in Cameron’s own Terminator 2: Judgment Day - The Abyss is a fascinating, visually stunning film that celebrates science and exploration. It’s also a pretty scathing warning about mankind’s destructive tendencies.

See also: Sphere (1998), Underwater (2020), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Credit: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl Official Trailer 1 (Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers, YouTube)

The Pirates movies became such a global phenomenon that it’s easy to forget they’re technically based on a theme park ride from the ‘60s. Although you’ll find little in common with that creaky old attraction in Gore Verbinksi’s swashbuckling 2003 adventure film.

It follows blacksmith Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and highborn lady Elizabeth Swan (Keira Knightley), who become embroiled in the (mis)fortunes of notorious pirate captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). Specifically in Sparrow’s feud over the titular Black Pearl, a rotten old galleon crewed by undead buccaneers.

This is pure adventure cinema, bursting with witty banter, sword fights, cursed Aztec gold and rotting, immortal pirates. Not to mention some beautiful shots of pristine Caribbean seascapes and desert islands.

Perfect viewing for a Sunday afternoon.

See also: Cutthroat Island (1995), The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012), the Pirates sequels

Waterworld (1995)

Credit: Waterworld | Trailer HD (Arrow Video, YouTube)

Famously one of the biggest box office bombs of all time, Kevin Costner’s waterlogged post-apocalyptic epic shows us a world ravaged by rising sea levels. The ice caps have completely melted, flooding the planet and forcing the surviving humans to live on rusted, floating cities called ‘atolls’.

Costner plays a wandering mariner with - no kidding - gills and webbed feet, who falls in with a mother and daughter desperately seeking the mythical ‘Dryland’. All the while they are pursued by the raving mad Deacon (Dennis Hopper) and his band of jet-ski-riding pirates.

It’s long and a bit rambling, but there’s something striking about the insane, Mad-Max-at-sea production design, and the fact they built all of it for real - which accounted for much of the ballooning budget - is undeniably impressive.

A bonkers slice of ‘90s extravagance.

See also: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Aquaman (2018)