YMMV / Captain Phillips

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• Award Snub:
  • Despite the film gaining Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, Tom Hanks did not garner a nomination for Best Actor.
  • While not a glaring oversight, given the strength of the contenders, it was a slight surprise that Paul Greengrass was not able to reap a Best Director bid, given how successful he had been in scoring the necessary precursors beforehand.
• Draco in Leather Pants: As Brad Jones pointed out in his Midnight Screenings review, some of the alternate trailers paint the Somali Pirates in a less villainous and more heroic light.
• He Really Can Act:
  • In his very first role, Barkhad Abdi gives a tremendous performance, bringing a perfect balance of villainy and humanity to Muse, earning a well deserved Oscar nomination.
  • This also applies to the other actors portraying the pirates, who, much like Abdi, were not experienced actors.
• Memetic Mutation: Abduwali Muse saying "Look at me. I'm the captain now." has rapidly become exploitable.
• Rooting for the Empire: As a lot of fans have pointed out, Phillips holding the Idiot Ball with his decisions (the big one being choosing to sail 300 miles away from the Somali coast by themselves instead of 600 miles away with a dozen other ships) meant that people would want to be on the side of the pirates.
• Signature Scene:
  • When the pirates board the ship, confront Phillips and Muse drops the film's instantly iconic Signature Line.
  • The final scene where a traumatized Captain Phillips is rescued.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The track "Safe Now" that plays near the end of the film sounds extremely similar to the track "Time" from Inception.
• The Woobie:
  • Bilal. He spends so much of the movie in misery from his lacerated foot, and the other pirates being abusive and dismissive of him after the injury, that you begin to feel sorry for him. His youth and the fact that you know he's going to wind up dead at the end of the film doesn't help the situation much.
    • Bilal is even one in-universe. Toward the end of the ordeal, Captain Phillips all-but begs him to just surrender so he won't be killed, realizing how young and in-over-his-head he is, and he screams in despair when he realizes that Bilal was killed with the rest of the pirates.
  • Phillips himself especially towards the end. After all the hell he's been through and how deeply shocked he gets out who wouldn't want to give him a nice hug ?

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