Making a splash
Eight scenes set lofty standard below the surface
As ‘Aquaman’ gets ready to take the boxoffice plunge, a look at some of the iconic underwater scenes that blazed the trail for the DC Comic legend.
Scenes set underwater have a particularly breathtaking quality, a mixture of beauty, fear and unknowability. Maybe it’s the way the way water obscures and bends color, or how the human body moves through liquid.
In some cases, these scenes are inherently fraught with a sense of immediate danger, upping the stakes for our characters. In others, the world beneath the waves can twist our earthly reality through its prism, offering a new perspective on an old story. Not to mention that the ocean deep remains one of the most unknowable places on the planet, and film is all about exploration. Whatever the case, moviegoers only gain when the camera plunges beneath the waves.
In honor of the opening week of “Aquaman,” which takes place mostly underwater, we’ve compiled our favorite scenes that play out in the watery depths. From slapstick comedy to delightful fantasy to exploring the limits of the human body, there’s a little something for everyone – so long as you’re not aquaphobic.
“Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” (2015) Six minutes. That’s longer than Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” or the Who’s “Baba O’Riley.” And that’s about how long Tom Cruise held his breath for an underwater rescue scene in the fifth installment of “Mission Impossible.” He said that he and director Christopher Mc- Quarrie always envisioned filming the scene – in which his character Ethan Hunt is trapped in a water-filled room – without any cuts. So that’s exactly what they did, with the strain on Cruise’s face adding pulse-raising suspense. Each new entry in the series comes with one or two set pieces best described as, well, impossible. Cruise puts his body through the ringer, from learning how to fly helicopters to scaling the world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa in Dubai. But holding one’s breath for more than two renditions of “Twist & Shout”? That’s legendary.
– Travis M. Andrews
“Top Secret!” (1984) One of the more underrated qualities in movies is pure, unadulterated silliness, as Jim Abrams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker demonstrated in their parody films “Kentucky Fried Movie,” “Airplane!” and the “Naked Gun” series. The trio’s genius lies in perfectly re-creating movie tropes, then subverting them with one small change. That led to one of the most sidesplitting underwater scenes ever filmed: an old-timey bar fight. It begins with two men trading jabs in a car, before they plunge off a bridge and into a lake. At the bottom is an old saloon, the kind from John Wayne westerns. The comedy derives from the characters seeming unaware that everything is moving in water-motion, from the bartender breaking a bottle on the head of one character to a chandelier falling from the ceiling. The funniest moment, though, is the bartender slowly drying a glass as two men trade punches at the speed of molasses.
– Travis M. Andrews
“The Night of the Hunter” (1955) There are no mermaids in “The Night of the Hunter,” but this black-and white thriller – a tour de force of visual storytelling directed by actor Charles Laughton – has one of the most striking underwater sequences ever filmed. The scene in question comes on the heels of a scene in which Robert Mitchum, playing a psychopathic preacher, is heard lamenting the fact that his new wife (Shelley Winters) has abandoned him, when in fact he has killed her. Cut to a shot of Winters’ lifeless body (actually a wax dummy’s) sitting in a car at the bottom of a river, the gentle movement of her blond hair mirroring that of the seaweed. Shot in a studio tank by a cameraman in scuba gear, and using underwater fans and eight blinding overhead lights, the shocking scene comes close to fetishizing violence against women but ultimately remains just this side of beauty, in the hideous realm of evil’s troubled waters.
– Michael O’Sullivan
“Paddington 2” (2017) Sally Hawkins has done a lot of on-screen swimming with odd creatures over the past couple of years – as in the defining scene of “The Shape of Water,” in which she embraces a mysterious amphibian underwater. But we’re here to talk about the movie that has not (yet!) won the Oscar for best picture: “Paddington 2.” The rare sequel to be better than its predecessor, it begins with our favorite Peruvian bear settling into his London life with the Brown family. Their love for Paddington is undying, and they will do anything to help him get out of jail – long story – and save him from literally dying. For Mary Brown (Hawkins), this involves jumping into a river to save Paddington from a sunken train car and, with the help of Paddington’s fellow broken-out prisoners, such as the brawny “Knuckles” McGinty (Brendan Gleeson), the bear is freed. The scene involves a whole lot of dramatic eye-locking, hand-holding and chain-breaking – hallmarks of an excellent underwater movie moment.
– Sonia Rao
“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” (2005) One of the joys of the Harry Potter film series is watching the actual magic described in the books come to life. How well the movies do this varies considerably, and there is certainly much to dislike about the fourth film in the series, such as the tremendous amount of time spent on Quidditch in place of the actual story. But it nails the underwater scene. “Goblet of Fire” finds Harry in the midst of a wizarding tournament, and his second challenge forces him to explore the lakes of Hogwarts. With the help of a magical herb, he sprouts gills and fins and takes a deep dive into the water. Director Mike Newell takes this opportunity to imagine a haunting world – filled with mournful and frightening merpeople and towers of thick, flowing seaweed artfully obscuring the camera’s view – adding a spine-chilling wonder to an already magical place.
– Travis M. Andrews
“Always Be My Baby” music video (1996) The music video for Mariah Carey’s 1996 hit “Always Be My Baby” contains an underwater scene that’s forever seared into my memory. The video, directed by Carey, sets the singer’s song about enduring love to a nostalgic story about two childhood sweethearts sneaking away from their bunks at summer camp and frolicking together on a perfect night. It ends with the youngsters plunging into the camp’s expansive lake, where they grasp each other’s hands and share an innocent kiss underneath the moonlit surface.
– Bethonie Butler
“BoJack Horseman: Fish Out of Water” (2016)
“BoJack Horseman” pulls off one of its most creative and visually stunning episodes with this clever underwater romp in the Netflix show’s third season. The episode follows BoJack, an anthropomorphic horse and former sitcom star, as he attends an underwater film festival in hope of reconnecting with a director he worked with in the past. The episode, which you can enjoy even if you’re unfamiliar with the show, features almost no dialogue. There’s a really good reason for that, revealed to hilarious effect, in the end.
– Bethonie Butler
“Titanic” (1997) Listen, you can’t talk about movies that have to do with water and not mention the most famous shipwreck – and shipwreck-related film –of all time. There are so many riveting underwater scenes that it’s impossible to choose just one. We hold our breath with the characters while Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet) frantically grasp for keys that have been dropped underwater and that will unlock a gate keeping them trapped. We bask in the eerily ethereal beauty of a scene in which a woman, backlit by the ornate lighting of the ship’s interior, floats lifelessly past the camera. We pinch our partners when the beloved duo briefly lose each other in the moments after the ship goes under, Jack sucked away by the sinking’s force while Rose desperately clings to keep him near. And we cry, no matter how many times we’ve seen the James Cameron flick, when Rose, discovering Jack has frozen to death while awaiting rescue, unlocks herself from his icy grasp, whispers, “I’ll never let go” and watches him slowly sink to his watery grave. If she had just made space on that darn door.
– Caitlin Moore