Analyzing Red October - Stealth Submarine Breakdown

Spacedock has become... Dock!

"One ping, Vasily. One ping only."

"Ryan, shome things in here don't react well to bulletsh."

40 years at sea, a war at sea, a war with no battles no monuments, only casualties.

Hunt for Red October is one of the examples I hold up of an adaptation not needing to be accurate to be really, REALLY good. Also, an interesting take on the action/thriller stars, since NONE of the "hero' ships (Red October, Dallas) fire a single shot, ever. Dom Noble did a Lost in Adaptation a while back that goes into greater detail. Also, Kamorov, badass navigator. "Give me a stopwatch and a map and I'll fly the Alps in a plane with no windows."

"I said speak your mind Jack, but Jesus." 😅

The Hunt for Red October is one of my favorite movies.

I remember that the argument for why space fiction uses nautical terms and settings, is that a surface vessel already has to operate close to how a spaceship does, while a submarine is quite literally what a spaceship is like, minus the gravity. What I mean is that a ship has to be self contained and sufficient for a decent amount of time; able to house and provide amenities for its crew in a hostile environment. A submarine is operating in complete isolation, relying only on passive sonar, and where a hull breach could spell instant death.

“Next time Jack put it in a goddamn memo.”

Honestly, tHfRO has one of the best openings in cinema. That long helicopter shot of the full-scale prop as the choir builds is just as good now as it ever was.

"Andrei, you've lost another submarine?"

“You're afraid of our fleet. Well, you should be. Personally, I'd give us one chance in three. More tea anyone?”

One really neat bit of misdirection from the novel that doesn't make it into the movie: After the saboteur is taken down, they jettison the missile he was messing with as a precaution. Then later, a US salvage ship sends drone subs down the trench, finds where the missile ended up, and they stage them 'finding' the missile among the wreckage of the Alfa in front of a Russian observer, confirming that it was definitely a missile sub that got destroyed, not just an attack sub.

heck you can easily imagine the conversation between the Dallas's captain and sonar tech being a conversation between Picard and Data. Professional, insightful, and open minded.

I think it's worth noting that - so far as I understand - we didn't know that the Typhoon's missile tubes were in the wet part of the hull until more than 15 years after the book was written

"That's all right, Mr Ryan. My Morse is so rusty, I could be sending him dimensions on Playmate of the Month."

"I would liked to have seen Montana"

It should be remembered that when Tom Clancy wrote The Hunt for Red October, very little of the Typhoon class sub was known in the west that wasn't top secret classified intelligence. Although what WAS known, people like Skip Tyler in the book would be one of the few in the know since he'd be one of the people doing analyses of classified intel on Soviet boats in order to figure out what they were really capable of. But Clancy had no way of knowing that the interior was quite spacious (the book describes the opposite), that there were two reactors instead of one, and that the void space between the missile tubes was flooded.

...Then I will live in Montana, and I will marry a large American woman, and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pick-up truck, or... -er... a recreational vehicle. And drive from state to state... Do they let you do that? Oh yes. No papers? No papers. The XO's lines here and what he says later always stuck with me since I was a teen watching this. Its the realization that what I, an American, thought was so normal was boring, but for others could be insanely idealistic.

Hunt for Red October was such a well done movie. Aside from the few technical inconsistencies with the tech, they made the tech advance the story nicely. Very well done movie. Suspenseful and just good fun story-telling! Nicely Done - Thanks for this Hooji!