Western Animation / The Sea Beast

Here there be monsters…

So sing the hunter's praises wherever men draw breath!

For hunters live the greatest lives and die the greatest death!

The Sea Beast is a 2022 animated adventure film directed by former Disney animator Chris Williams (Big Hero 6, Moana). It received a limited theatrical release in June 2022, and released on Netflix on July 8 the following month.

The film is set in a fantasy world where monsters roam the waves and seafaring hunters seek them out to protect humanity. Karl Urban leads the voice cast as Jacob Holland, a monster hunter on the crew of the legendary Captain Crow (Jared Harris), whose latest voyage to hunt down a deadly beast takes an unexpected turn when Maisie Brumble (Zaris-Angel Hator), a young girl with dreams of becoming a monster hunter, stows away on his ship. Also featured in the cast are Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Dan Stevens, and Kathy Burke.

A sequel is currently in development.

Previews: teaser, trailer, IGN sneak peek, "Captain Crow" sea shanty lyric video, Meet the Characters featurette

Not to be confused with the 1922 silent film adaptation of Moby-Dick.

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Tropes:

• Aborted Arc: Captain Crow strikes a deal with Gwen Batterbie, who asks for "everything" as a price in exchange for the Hand of God. However, the deal never comes up again after this point, and Gwen is never mentioned again. Though one could argue that Crow has lost everything by the end of the movie, since he has pushed away Jacob and the days of monster hunting are over.
• Advertising by Association: The trailer and poster really make a point that the film comes from the Academy Award-winning filmmaker behind Big Hero 6 and Moana^note Ignoring that Williams was really just a co-director on the latter.
• Animal Motif: The sea beasts are pretty analogous for whales, who were vilified as aggressive, dangerous, and unknown sea monsters once upon a time, and for a long time. The Red Bluster drives fish to the surface using a similar move to real whales creating bubble nets. Red can also walk on land as a homage to whale evolution or "walking whales", albeit she is more like a seal or a sea lion (and actual walking whales were significantly smaller.) Whales are peaceful creatures by nature, who were basically saved in Real Life by crude oil destroying the whale oil economy. The idea that they were sensitive, intelligent animals wasn't discovered until ages later. The harpoons in Red's hide are also accurate, as 200 year old whales with unexploded harpoons in their bodies have been discovered. The culture surrounding whaling was also pretty close to the fantasy hunters, as celebrated heroes who risked life and limb for the good of humanity.
• All Animals Are Dogs: Blue is a sea monster baby that behaves like a puppy and is definite pet material. However, the other main wild animal character, the Red Bluster, is portrayed in a much more reserved and realistic light, and actually never gets chummy with the protagonists beyond tolerating their presence, even snapping at them at times.
• Alliterative Name: The Inevitable has been led by three generations of Captain Crows. The current one has a first mate called Sarah Sharpe.
• Alien Blood: While fighting the brickleback at the start of the film, several of its tentacles are cut off, spilling inky-black blood.
• Animated Tattoo: When Gwen Batterbie asks Captain Crow why he came to her despite her reputation, he explains that he doesn't "believe in superstitions", which prompts her to mess with him a bit. With a brief red flash of her eyes, she is able to move his tattoo to form a snake-like coil around his neck without him noticing.
• Annoying Arrows: The Red Bluster has dozens of harpoons stuck in its back from various failed attempts to kill it. Maisie takes to removing them one by one, and is soon joined by Jacob, who recognizes one of the harpoons as his own.
• Anti-Villain: Captain Crow begins the story as a Large and in Charge Reasonable Authority Figure, both a brave and respected monster hunter. However, he grows more ruthless and revenge-driven against the Red Bluster, to the point he threatens to shoot Maisie and strikes a deal with Gwen Batterbie the sea witch. Unlike the character he's based on, though, Crow eventually lets go of his grudge against Red and survives the events of the story, giving up on his quest for revenge.
• Arc Words:
  • Hunters "live the greatest lives and die the greatest deaths".
  • Maisie, and later Jacob, state that "you can be a hero and still be wrong."
• Artistic License – Ships: The ships are visually fairly accurate, but their capacities seem a tad amplified in the movie's universe. For example, it's fairly unlikely that the Inevitable would be able to sail dragging a skyscraper-sized monster the size of the Red Bluster.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The royal monster-hunting ship, the Imperator. It's a grand, extravagant vessel packed to the brim with cannons, but as Captain Crow points out, the immobility of the cannons and its low build make her ill-equipped to deal with sea monsters. As expected, Red makes short work of it when it finally encounters her, and splits it in half with a single ramming charge.
• Badass and Child Duo: The main protagonists of the film are Jacob Holland, a skilled and famed monster hunter, and Maisie Brumble, a resourceful and noble young girl.
• Badass Crew: The crew of the Inevitable are all brave, skilled hunters who are all ready and willing to take on sea beasts, and have taken down countlessly many, spawning legends of their prowess along the way.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Early in the film, Maisie longs to be a hunter like her parents and is excited to live and die in greatness like she perceives the Inevitable crew to do. Cue her first actual outing with them, where all of them risk dying when their attempt to slay the Red Bluster nearly ends with the ship getting brought down with it. She was definitely not keen to be amongst her heroes then.
• Berserk Button: Red Bluster absolutely hates monster hunters — the sight of the monarchy's and Captain Crow's ships alone is enough to make her see red. God help them if they should be so foolish as to open artillery fire on her.
• Balloon Belly: Blue's stomach got huge after eating a lot of fish that Jacob and Maisie caught.
• Behemoth Battle: Red fights a giant crab to save Maisie and Jacob.
• Bittersweet Ending: The age of monster hunting is over. It's implied the King and Queen will face punishment for their crimes. Maisie is Happily Adopted by Jacob and keeps Blue as a pet. They had to part ways with Red, but Maisie is happy knowing Red won't be in danger and she'll live a great life. Also, it's left unknown what became of Jacob's relationships with his crewmates, especially Captain Crow.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: After being swallowed alive, Jacob and Maisie wander up into Red's nasal passages to find a transparent membrane blocks their escape out her nostrils (and keeps the ocean out). It serves as a surreal Shark Tunnel, as through Red they're able to finally appreciate the true beauty of Under the Sea, but also the vast graveyard of ships and monsters; they poignantly see just how senseless the struggle against the sea beasts really is.
• Blade Enthusiast: First mate Sarah Sharpe lives up to her last name, owning a large collection of blades. She has to remove each and every one from her top bunk when Maisie is shacked up in her cabin.
• Boring, but Practical: The Inevitable may be less grand and polished than the Imperator, but it is a much more efficient ship that has survived years of sea monster attacks, while the Imperator gets easily destroyed by Red.
• Bringing Back Proof: The King and Queen have a practice of hunters bringing back a piece of a slain beast to prove that it's dead. Early in the film, Crow cuts off the horn of a monster to bring back to the crown, and the King and Queen request the horn of the Red Bluster in the contest between the Imperator and the Inevitable.
• Butt-Monkey: Jacob has a rough time being out of his element after he gets swallowed by the Red Bluster. His hunting skills prove more than useless on an island teeming with monsters several times his size, his methods for fishing and communicating with Red aren't effective, and he's the source of a lot of physical comedy throughout the movie.
• Call-Back: When Maisie first sets foot on the Inevitable, she playfully muses that she should get a bigger knife than the one Sarah Sharpe gave her. When Sarah herself helps Maisie cut the ropes binding Red to the Inevitable, she tells the girl she should have given her a bigger knife.
• Catlike Dragons: A sea serpent version. The Red Bluster is a mosaic of many sea creatures, but the head and especially the mannerisms are all extremely cat-like.
• Central Theme: Two in particular:
  • "You can be a hero and still be wrong". You can admire someone while acknowledging they aren't infallible and sometimes make mistakes.
  • Just because a certain piece of information or version of events has been repeated for a long time, it doesn't necessarily mean it's true. In particular, you should question who is repeating this and why, because their motives may not be as selfless or benevolent as they appear, or they could simply have gotten it wrong.
• Code of Honour: The hunters all live by a code. It's not elaborated upon in much detail, but two of its stipulations are that they shall not leave fellow hunters to die or turn to the dreaded sea witch Gwen Batterbie for aid.
• Colossus Climb: Several times, the hunters have to climb on top of the monsters they're hunting. Jacob and Maisie also ride on top of the Red Bluster as it takes them to the nearest island.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Maisie's parents were both monster hunters who died in the line of duty, giving her an excuse and a drive to run away from her orphanage and join Holland's crew to become a hunter herself. She apparently has no other family.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: When the Imperator tries to kill the Red Bluster, she just rams through the ship at full speed. Thankfully, Jacob's fears that many unprepared soldiers would die doesn't come to pass, as most were unloading on shore, but the ship is destroyed beyond repair.
• Cute, but Cacophonic: The baby Warmblers are small and endearing, but they make a lot of noise after hatching.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Jacob was stranded at sea for days as a kid, after a sea monster destroyed the ship he was on, until he was found by Captain Crow.
  • Captain Crow lost his eye to the Red Bluster and has been on a quest ever since to enact his revenge.
  • Maisie's parents were monster hunters who were killed on the Monarch. Thankfully, she was sent to an Orphanage of Love.
  • Sarah Sharpe mentions that she's "seen things that will never go away", which puts her at odds with the idea of leaving sea monsters alone even when it's clear that they can be peaceful.
• Deal with the Devil: Crow's trade with Gwen nets him the very powerful Hand of God harpoon, but at the cost of everything. Gwen is not specific about what "everything" is, but the end of the film implies that it's his role as a hunter and his revenge against the Red Bluster being foiled.
• Defector from Decadence: Jacob does this for his loyalty to the crown — everyone under the crown, including the Inevitable — when he decides that his days of monster hunting are over. He risks a sure position as Crow's succeeding captain and his son figure, as well as favor with the King and Queen, for making a point to spare the Red Bluster's life. We never learn what becomes of his relationship with Crow or the rest of the crew of the Inevitable, but it is clear his relationship with the royals is long dried up.
• Dirty Coward: After their lies are revealed, both the King and Queen quickly run away from their angry people and guards.
• Disapproving Look: Hilariously, one is given to Jacob from Red herself, a look that screams "you may be a good monster hunter, but you're a worthless fisherman", as he fails to catch any fish to eat. The giant has to lend a fin to help him.
• The Dreaded:
  • The Red Bluster is the largest and most feared of all the sea beasts, able to take out a ship with its massive horn with little difficulty. Even other sea monsters are terrified of it, with a whole swarm of 'Riddlebacks' fleeing their normal territory as it approaches and a Giant Enemy Crab having a visible Oh, Crap! expression when face-to-face with it. However, it's actually a Gentle Giant that won't hurt a soul unless provoked.
  • Gwen Batterbie the sea witch, a reclusive old woman with a talent for poisons and deadly weapons. It's said that her wares come with a steep, non-monetary cost, so the Code of the Hunters forbids turning to her.
• End of an Age: Early on in the film, the King and Queen inform Captain Crow that the kingdom's days of relying on ragtag crews of monster hunters like his are coming to an end, as they intend to use a massive war ship crewed by the Royal Navy to deal with the monsters. In the end, ultimately, a different age ends — the age of monster hunting, following Maisie exposing the royal family's lies about monsters.
• "Eureka!" Moment: When they're pulling into Castle Whiterock at the end, Maisie spots the royal crest and realizes that it's the same one on her books. She then checks the books on the bookshelf, and realizes that all of them have the royal crest: the royal family have been running a disinformation campaign for centuries, exaggerating the threat of monsters to push the hunters into dangerous situations.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Even if he grows more ruthless over the course of the movie, Crow does genuinely love Jacob and openly considers him a son.
• Every Scar Has a Story: Jacob gives a Rousing Speech about how every scar a hunter gets means a life saved.
• Everything's Louder with Bagpipes: The crew of the Inevitable has its own bagpiper to play war songs during battle.
• Evil Colonialist: The King and Queen design to explore places beyond the known limits of the world, and have built their empire on the killing of sea beasts, a campaign of slaughter that was founded on a complete lie that made the sea beasts out to be far more dangerous than they really are. Their intent does not seem particularly benevolent.
• Failed Attempt at Drama: Jacob tries to dramatically break his lance over his knee, but only ends up hurting himself. He gets a do-over later that's more successful (but still painful).
• Famed In-Story: Being monster hunters, Captain Crow and his crew, Jacob included, are famed and adored for their exploits, to the point they are praised in shanties and have a book written about them.
• Fantasy World Map: The world of the film has at least some partially completed maps, though we only see very brief glimpses of it.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Crow notes how seagulls always follow sea monsters. Twice, the presence of gulls on the deck of the Inevitable indicates that the monster is about to surface from beneath them.
• Foreboding Fleeing Flock: The Inevitable comes across a school of small serpent-like monsters fleeing en masse. Crow notes that they don't usually swim this far north unless they're escaping something bigger — the Red Bluster. He sets course to the direction they're fleeing from.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Jacob proves that his noble heart extends to even people who are not part of his crew, since he reminds Captain Crow of the Code of the Hunters and convinces him to help out a fellow hunter struggling with a dangerous sea beast. He ultimately disobeys Crow in a much bigger way by siding with the Red Bluster over him.
  • At one point, while reading through Maisie’s book about sea beasts, Jacob comments on a town that was destroyed, noting that he had been to that area and never saw any trace of it, destroyed or otherwise. Eventually it is revealed that this was a story made up by the Royal Family as anti-monster propaganda. The books being as ornate, detailed, and plentiful as they are also speak to a powerful hand sponsoring their creation.
  • One can spot several shells and other sea accessories adorning the King and Queen's attire, implying that the crown's insistence on slaying beasts is not entirely based on protecting the people.
  • When the King and Queen proudly show the Imperator to Crow, the latter is quite unimpressed, noting that the ship is ill-equipped to deal with a sea monster despite its impressive firepower. Sure enough, when Red attacks the Imperator later on, she effortlessly powers through its barrage of gunfire and breaks the ship in half in a single charge.
• Friendly Pirate: The hunters, especially the crew of the Inevitable, all have the trappings of romantic pirates with none of the unsavoriness. They have the swashbuckling attire, drinking, and sea shanties, and even a rivalry with the crown, who seem intent on shoving them out if the Red Bluster isn't caught. However, they all have a code to abide by, and for better or worse the crown keeps them under their thumb, with many of their books even encouraging the life of a hunter.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: Averted; Captain Crow and his crew are seen helping themselves to rum after celebrating the defeat of the brickleback.
• Gender Is No Object: While the film's setting is mostly equivalent to The Golden Age of Piracy, it completely lacks the strict gender roles associated with the time; the King and Queen seem to rule as equals rather than as monarch and consort, and there are plenty of women fighting alongside the men both among the hunters and the soldiers with no sign of this being anything unusual. Sarah Sharpe is a very prominent example, being Crow's first mate and a highly respected hunter in her own right.
• Giant Enemy Crab: One of the monsters our heroes encounter on the island happens to be a giant blue crab intent on eating them.
• Giant Equals Invincible: Subverted with the Red Bluster, who shrugs off anything humans can muster in their endeavors to kill her, even cannon fire. Crow attempts to kill her via a powerful poison from the sea witch, an expert toxicologist. It merely incapacitates her for a few hours and leaves her sluggish and disoriented at best. However, it's stated that had Crow kept the poisoned harpoon in, it would've actually killed her.
• Gigantic Adults, Tiny Babies: Blue, the baby monster Maisie adopts as a pet, is about the size of a small dog. While we don't see the adult version of his species, we can assume they are enormous if they're anything like the other sea beasts in the movie. However, we do get to see this trope in action with the Warmblers, the orange walrus-like beasts on Red's island — the babies are all roughly the size of Maisie, but the mother is several hundred times their size and goes just under the treetops.
• Giver of Lame Names: Maisie has a habit of giving lackluster names, like Red to the Red Bluster and Blue to a smaller blue monster that she wants to keep for a pet. Jacob mocks this by telling her he'll give her a cat once they reach town again and expects her to name it after whatever color fur it has (like White, Grey, or Ginger).
• Good Is Not Soft: The interactions between the deuteragonists and the massive sea monsters show just what happens to humans being around and fighting creatures of that size and scale. Even though Red is a Gentle Giant towards humans she trusts, her capacity for destruction and accidental loss of life is as enormous as her. Jacob has to point out to her that in her desire to destroy the Imperator, she injured Maisie by accident.
• Gunpowder Fantasy: The technology of the setting corresponds roughly to the early modern period, with artillery, flintlock weapons, and a focus on seafaring.
• Handicapped Badass:
  • Captain Crow lost his right eye to the Red Bluster many years ago, but is still a force to be reckoned with.
  • Sarah Sharpe is missing a left leg and uses a peg prosthetic. She's also an expert handler of guns and knives.
• Happily Adopted: At the end, Jacob adopts Maisie, and they both live a happy life by the sea.
• Heel–Face Turn: It's not focused on for long, but Crow throwing down his sword after Red spares his life at the end implies he's beginning to swing back to the Reasonable Authority Figure he used to be.
• Heel Realization: Jacob has a wordless one when he starts helping Maisie remove the harpoons from Red's back. When he picks up one harpoon Maisie struggled with, he sees that it has the Inevitable's logo on it; as he now knows that Red isn't entirely a bad creature, he feels guilt for his crew hunting her down.
• Here There Be Dragons: This movie takes the idea of sea monsters drawn on maps and makes it literal.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: The royal family has been spreading lies and propaganda about the sea beasts for generations in order to increase their wealth and spread their power, leading to countless deaths.
• Hunter of Monsters: The crew of the Inevitable, led by Captain Crow, are legendary for sailing uncharted seas and fighting the creatures that dwell in them.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: A furious Red is about to devour Crow when Maisie puts herself between Red and him, halting the beast's rampage. She explains to the sea monster that the vicious cycle of hatred must end; if she kills a helpless Crow in front of everyone watching in the city, the age of humans and monsters killing each other will never end.
• Ignored Expert: Crow points out the design flaws of the Imperator to the monarchs, but they dismiss them. Red destroys it with ease the moment she gets a chance.
• Impairment Shot: Two of them. One is when Captain Crow is dragged down by the dying brickleback (after which he wakes up after being rescued), and the other is when the Red Bluster is poisoned and Jacob is rowing Maisie to the Inevitable.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Jacob is able to throw a spear into a cracked bit of shell on a Brickleback and later into the armpit of a crab monster. Subverted for laughs when he tries to fish with a spear and fails, as he's not used to small and fast targets like a school of fish.
• Intrigued by Humanity: The Red Bluster is very clement and gentle around humans when they're not attacking her, finding people to be endlessly curious tiny critters. She's not the only monster who behaves this way.
• It Can Think: Jacob realizes that the brickleback is smarter than they thought when he figures out that it severed the line on the float he attached to it. It gets even worse when Crow realizes that it is hiding right beneath the ship.
• Ironic Echo:
  • Both times Maisie cuts a rope, it is to save a life, but whose life she's saving is different. The first time, after coming face to face with the dangers of the sea and the Red Bluster, she decides to cut the rope connecting the Inevitable to it to save the lives of the crew. She later does the same thing against the Inevitable crew to save Red's life, trying to end the conflict between humans and sea beasts.
  • When Maisie is first discovered stowing away aboard the Inevitable, Captain Crow takes a liking to her and her stubborn pluckiness, saying that she's "full of vinegar." Later, after he's poisoned Red with the Hand of God, she attempts to stab him unsuccessfully, and he ruefully repeats that she's "full of vinegar" and leaves.
• Kaiju: Red and the other sea monsters.
• Kill It Through Its Stomach: Averted. Maisie suggests this to Jacob as a means of escaping Red who abducted them to the Isle of Giant Horrors, though they're sneezed out before considering this further. It's implied and later demonstrated it would've had no effect on her anyway.
• Land Mine Goes "Click!": Or in this case, monster egg goes "crack!"
• Large and in Charge: Captain Crow has a wide and muscular body, and is the captain on the Inevitable.
• Last-Name Basis: We never learn the first name of Admiral Hornagold. Nobody ever calls Captain Crow by his first name either, but the ship's logbook briefly gives it as "Augustus".
• Like a Son to Me: Captain Crow considers Jacob to be as good as a son to him, enough so that he plans to give him his position as captain after he retires.
• Low Fantasy: The sea beasts are treated as regular (but very dangerous) wild animals, and there is little to no magic, while whether's Gwen's forbidden weapon is magical or not is left ambigious.
• Little Stowaway: After being turned away by Jacob at the tavern, Maisie stows away on the ship by hiding in a barrel of rum.
• Mammal Monsters Are More Heroic: The most heroic sea beast, the Red Bluster, looks distinctly mammalian, resembling a cross between a whale and a sea lion. By comparison, the more neutral beasts have fish or cephalopod features and the most hostile beast resembles a crab.
• Martyrdom Culture: To the hunters, a glorious death is the most desirable state of affairs, for the sake of their mission to protect people from the sea beasts. Maisie's rejection of this ideal in favor of a long life is thus made all the more meaningful.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It is unclear if Gwen Batterbie is an actual witch or a chemist of some sort, since she makes the poison without any apparent magical aid, and has advanced technology at her disposal in an underground laboratory below a small witch-like hut. By all means, she is treated as a witch; the hunters consider any exchange with her as a Deal with the Devil, holding it as a violation of the hunter code, and it's said that great misfortune always occurs after making a deal with her. However, it seems that her powers have never been directly proven in-universe, since Captain Crow writes them off as "superstitions", though she does have some level of magic, if not potion-esque magic, since she temporarily moves his tattoo with a red flash of her eyes without him noticing, and it's unclear if it's because of anything supernatural or if it's Through the Eyes of Madness. While Gwen does warn Captain Crow about the cost of making a deal with her, nothing bad actually befalls him or the crew, and it's unclear if it's because they didn't kill the Red Bluster like planned or if it's really just malarkey. The crew also claims she can see through a red moon, though this is not confirmed.
• Mega Maelstrom: Downplayed in that it's not big enough to swallow the ship, but it doesn't need to be. The Red Bluster causes a whirlpool that nearly sinks the Inevitable, forcing Maisie to cut the line to save the crew. Later, Red uses a smaller whirlpool to hunt fish.
• Meaningful Name: Sarah Sharpe has a number of knives and swords in her possession.
• A Minor Kidroduction: The movie opens with a young Jacob attempting to stay afloat on some driftwood following the destruction of his ship at the hands of a sea monster.
• Moby Schtick: Captain Crow starts out as a subversion, being initially portrayed as a Reasonable Authority Figure who chooses to stop chasing the Red Bluster when the hunt threatens the ship, but over the course of the film he becomes more and more obsessed with killing it and resorts to ever-more extreme lengths.
• Monster Is a Mommy: Jacob and Maisie disturb the nest of a walrus-like sea monster called the Warmbler, and once the eggs hatch, the hatchlings go after them. They are followed by the mother, galloping at top speed at our heroes. Fortunately, she stops as soon as all her babies are returned, especially the one who latched onto Jacob's back.
• Morality Chain: Without Jacob's influence, Captain Crow goes from a revenge-driven Anti-Hero to an unscrupulous Anti-Villain.
• Motive Decay: When Crow sees Jacob swallowed by the Red Bluster, he gives up any semblance of honor in pursuit of his revenge, even bargaining with Gwen Batterbie for a weapon to kill it. However, when Jacob returns alive, he's so far gone he's not even interested in hearing Jacob's explanations that the Red Bluster isn't malicious and by the end he falls so far he's willing to attack Jacob himself just to get to Red.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Sea Witch introduces Captain Crow to a weapon of her own creation that she has dubbed "The Hand of God" — a giant harpoon gun with a payload of vicious poison in the tip.
• No Name Given: The King and Queen are never given names.
• Non-Malicious Monster: The sea beasts may be large and dangerous, but they're only wild animals in the end, and most prefer to avoid fighting humans if they can, fighting hunters mainly because the hunters go after them enough that they've learned to fear them. It's only because of royal propaganda that the hunters even exist at all.
• Noodle Incident: Played for Drama. The sinking of the Monarch is the most referenced event in the whole movie, with several people acknowledging it as a respectable ship and crew. Maisie's parents, as well as the General's brother, were taken under the waves on it.
• Ocean of Adventure: The sea is a source of great adventures, full of monsters and brave hunters.
• Orphanage of Love: Implied with the children's home Maisie lives in. It's a large, nicely kept building; the children are friendly to Maisie and help in her escape; and the caretaker may be strict, but she's not abusive to the children in her care. In fact, Maisie only runs away to join the Inevitable to honor her parents and not because she was treated badly by the orphanage. She does, oddly enough, say she doesn't feel like she has anyone who likes her back in Guelston, and she never does stop by to see the orphanage gang after beginning to live with Jacob, at least not that we see.
• Parental Substitute:
  • Captain Crow has been a father figure to Jacob since he rescued the latter. He even regards Jacob as a son.
  • Over their adventures together, Jacob becomes a father figure to Maisie, ending with her being Happily Adopted by him.
• Plucky Girl: Maisie is brimming with confidence and won't take no for an answer. Captain Crow takes a liking to her because she's "full of vinegar."
• Protection in Mouth: Maisie and Crow initially think themselves swallowed as food by the Red Bluster, only for it to turn out to be this, as it only ever holds them on its tongue.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Maisie gives a blistering one to the monarchs, accusing them of turning humans and sea monsters against each other and sending countless hunters to their deaths for their own selfish greed and glory.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: There is a blood moon one night after Captain Crow goes to the sea witch for help hunting the Red Bluster, which Sarah says Batterbie can watch them through, and the crew believes is an omen that breaking the hunter's code will come back to haunt them.
• The Reveal: The royal family has been perpetuating lies about the otherwise peaceful sea beasts for generations, driving an ongoing war against them to expand their empire. Maisie discovers this when she recognizes the crest of the royal family on all the books regarding the sea monsters.
• Revenge Before Reason: Captain Crow's driving motivation is to hunt down and kill the Red Bluster in retribution for it taking his eye thirty years prior. As the movie goes on, he becomes more focused on revenge, to the point where he nearly gets his own ship dragged underwater trying to take it down at any cost, and when he seemingly loses Jacob to the Red Bluster, he is even willing to violate the hunter’s code to make a deal with a so-called sea witch. Fortunately, he gets better in his last scene.
• Rule of Symbolism: When they're traveling on Red, Maisie and Jacob discuss the possibility of becoming a family themselves once the sea monster hunts end. Later, Maisie is injured and needs a transfusion, Jacob is the one giving her blood.
• The Runaway: Maisie runs away from her Orphanage of Love to join the Inevitable. It's implied by the caretaker that she's done it multiple times before.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Even after being directly ordered by the Monarchs to open fire on Red, the General sheathes her sword and outright refuses to give her men the order to fire, having been convinced by Maise's speech that the war can be ended by breaking the cycle of violence. The fact that her own brother, who served on the Monarch, was one of the countless casualties of an ultimately pointless war, most likely helped with her decision.
• Seadog Peg Leg: Sarah Sharpe sports one. It's a little hard to have this trope not show up when an entire group of characters can be summed up as "Hunter of Monsters with a Friendly Pirate culture".
• Sea Monster: The seas of this universe are plagued by giant sea creatures. In fact, the "sea" part of sea monster is merely a preference to them, as all are capable of going on land to chase after their assailants... although we eventually learn they all aren't as bad as they're made out to be.
• Secondary Character Title: The title refers to the Red Bluster, but the true main characters are Maisie and Jacob.
• Shades of Conflict: Maisie and Jacob are trying to save the beasts, while the Red Bluster and Captain Crow are just emotionally wounded creatures trying to survive while stuck in cycles of revenge (and both manage to overcome this by the end). The unquestionably reprehensible characters in the film are the King, Queen and Admiral Hornagold, who are driven entirely by greed and get their just desserts for it.
• Shout-Out:
  • Jacob Holland mentions one of the ways the monsters can kill you is by laying eggs in your mouth and then having their babies burst out of your chest cavity. You know, like a Xenomorph.
  • A few characters drop "by thunder!", a turn of phrase made popular by Long John Silver from Treasure Island. Perhaps not coincidentally, Captain Crow is reminiscent of some portrayals of the character in demeanor.
  • Captain Crow firing a harpoon against the monster that took a body part of his while screaming "I strike at thee!" is directly lifted from Moby-Dick.
  • Admiral Hornagold is likely named after historical character Benjamin Hornigold, a pirate-turned-pirate-hunter who often shows up in pirate fiction, e.g. Black Sails and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.
  • The unknown sea monster that briefly appears in the film's prologue, with its two enormous curved horns, bears a striking resemblence to a Bewilderbeast.
• Ship Of Theseus: Alluded to when Captain Crow tells Jacob he'll succeed him as Captain. Recognizing The Inevitable as an eternal thing that can have every part of it replaced while it's Captain is mortal and finite.
• Shown Their Work:
  • The characters (particularly Captain Crow) often communicate in fairly obscure and technical nautical lingo (e.g. several mentions of "crossing the T") and it's all correct.
  • Several of the tactics used by the monster hunters in the film were used by Real Life whalers, such as when the crew of the Inevitable harpoon the Red Bluster and then let her engage in a futile attempt to swim away so she will grow too exhausted to fight back. This backfires in the film when the Red Bluster attempts to pull the Inevitable under, again, similar to what Real Life whales would sometimes do in response to being harpooned.
• Sigil Spam: Maisie realizes the truth about the royal propaganda when she sees the royal crest and recognizes it from all the books extolling how dangerous the sea beasts are.
• Smashed Eggs Hatching: Maisie wanders into the nest of a Warmbler, with eggs buried in the ground like land mines. Jacob tries his best to avoid stepping on them, but once he does, the eggs all hatch and call for their mother.
• Sneeze of Doom: Jacob and Maisie arrive on land inside Red's nostril. But then, the spear Jacob was carrying irritates her nose, and she sneezes them out with great force.
• Spotting the Thread: When Jacob is going through Maisie's book and commenting on the inaccuracies, like hunters using the word "yarr" way too much, he notes that one specific monster is accused of destroying a town on the coast, but he's been up and down the coast and he's never seen a town on it. This dominoes into Maisie and Jacob realizing that monsters have never actually attacked the mainland, and the accounts of them doing so were fabricated.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Jacob attempts to dramatically snap a hunting spear over his knee... and just ends up hurting his leg, because a spear strong enough to wound a kaiju-sized sea monster isn't going to break that easily. Worse, it's actually metallic, unlike his usual wood-handled spears. He does a much better job of breaking the wooden replica spear attached to a statue, though it still hurts him a bit.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Not of a character, but of a ship : the Inevitable is unceremoniously destroyed by Red near the climax of the movie. Thing is, Red didn't even mean to sink the Inevitable, she just collapsed on top of it while still under the effects of Batterbie's poison. Still, the fact that the Inevitable saw no less than three generations of Captains and survived countless monster hunts only to be sunk in such an anti-climactic way deserves mention.
• Swallowed Whole: The Red Bluster kidnaps both Jacob and Maisie, though they don't get digested in her stomach, as Crow believes they did. Instead, they're free to wander her mouth and nasal passages. She brings them to an island populated by sea monsters.
• Symbolic Weapon Discarding/Symbolically Broken Object: Upon realizing that it's wrong to hunt sea monsters, Jacob tries to show his change of heart to Red, the sea monster that saved his life, by breaking his lance with his knee in front of her. However, he repeatedly fails because the shaft is made out of metal, and hurts himself trying. Later in the film, he manages to successfully break a wooden lance and declares to never hunt sea monsters again in front of a crowd to mark the end of monster hunting. Even his adoptive father, Captain Crow, drops his sword after Red backs down from eating him, marking the end of his vengeful obsession with killing her over losing his right eye thirty years ago.
• Taking You with Me: After Crow slays the brickleback, he is busy sawing off its horn when one of its tentacles grabs onto him and drags him down as it sinks to the bottom. Fortunately, Jacob saves the captain.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Captain Crow and his crew risk their lives fighting dangerous sea beasts and saving other hunters from certain death, but the King and Queen have the gall to be upset over them not specifically killing the Red Bluster.
• Upper-Class Twit: Admiral Hornagold, the crown's designated monster hunter, is an arrogant aristocratic buffoon. Captain Crow points out that he has a grand total of 0 years of experience hunting sea beasts, but he chooses to press on, nonetheless. This gets his ship destroyed and him almost killed.
• Villain Has a Point: Captain Crow is a revenge driven Anti-Villain who shows little reluctance to threaten Maisie's life, but he makes accurate points about the design flaws of the Imperator and how the crown doesn't know the sacrifices he and other hunters have made out there fighting the sea beasts. When the idea of making peace with the sea monsters is brought up, he mentions that it wouldn't undo the past years of war. He ends up going back on this after Maisie begs Red to not attack him.
• Volumetric Mouth: The Warmbler babies are small, but their mouths stretch very wide while they're calling for their mother.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Sea witch Gwen Batterbie is never seen again after her single scene. Considering her Deal with the Devil entailed ownership over everything Crow owns, including the lives of the crew, this seems oddly unresolved, though it's possible that either the end of hunting was the cost, or that the deal wasn't complete because Red is still alive.
  • Admiral Hornagold isn't seen after the Red Bluster leaves him behind. He and his men are presumably still stranded on that island by the time the credits roll.
  • The monarchs are last seen running away after their guards refuse to follow their order and the general demands answers from them. What happens to them afterwards and if they manage to stay in power is unknown.
  • We never get to see what happens to Captain Crow after he gives up the hunting, though it had been previously established that he planned on retiring after the Red Bluster was caught anyways.
  • What happens to Sarah Sharpe and the rest of the crew after the age of monster hunting is also unknown.
  • After Maisie leaves the orphanage, none of the other hunter orphans are ever seen again in the movie.
• Women Are Wiser: Downplayed. Most of the leading women are the ones who keep the rest (and especially the men) out of danger, while people like Jacob, Crow, and Hornagold are all swallowed up by pride and emotion. The orphanage caretaker is constantly telling Maisie to behave and keeps the children in line; the Red Bluster keeps the other monsters from doing anything risky and fights off the crab-like one; Maisie is quickly able to make friends with the monsters, communicate nonverbally with Red, and work out her feelings on if her monster-hunting culture is a lie not to be praised before Jacob can. Even some of the most stalwart and loyal members of their respective teams, Sarah Sharpe and the General, disobey direct orders in the end to save Red's life and honor the sacrifice of their loved ones in the latter's case and otherwise remind themselves and their leaders of their moral code, and cryptic women like Gwen Batterbie still know exactly what people like Crow are driven by. The only named woman who isn't as sharp is the Queen.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • Captain Crow is more than willing to shoot Maisie when she cuts the line connecting the ship to the Red Bluster as it drags the ship down into a whirlpool.
  • The monarchs are only too glad to order the guards to shoot at Maisie for exposing their lies. Luckily, the general refuses to follow that order.
• Wrecked Weapon: To prove to Red that he won't harm it, Jacob yells "No more monster hunting!" as he tries to break his spear over his knee — only he fails to break it, and hurts both legs in the process. He tries it again at the royal palace, and this time he succeeds in breaking the spear, but tries to hide the fact that it still hurt his leg anyway.
• Wretched Hive: We don't see much of Mukesh Island, but the place does not look inviting between the decaying atmosphere, the heavy fog and the presence of Gwen Batterbie.
• Written by the Winners: Maisie starts to wonder if the books she (and everyone else) read aren't skewed in perspective after she and Jacob note several things wrong with it with regards to sea monsters and their history. She later realizes that the books are part of a campaign to stoke hatred against the sea monsters with the ultimate goal of wiping them out so the empire can expand far beyond its current borders.

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