Why Root for the British?

Because we (hopefully) have become invested personally in the lives of Aubrey, Maturin and the rest of the crew since the story follows their trials and tribulations. Had the story been told from the point of view of the apparently very heroic, clever and capable captain of the French ship they were facing then no doubt we'd be rooting for him and his crew.

Enjoy the story for what it is and for how it's told. It's not like you're being asked to root for a heroically depicted Nazi Gestapo commander or something. The British of the time were certainly foes to the Americans, but they weren't evil villains (despite what Mel Gibson might have you believe based on several of his films...he really seems to hate the English).


Brude
http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/#/gallery/?video=16074

This kind of thinking is the reason why America feels the need to remake every popular film worldwide, because they don't expect the American audience to be able to empathise with anyone non-white or non-American. Do u think nobody in England enjoys Braveheart? Silly patriotic bordering-on-xenophobic nonsense.

1 name and we dont even need the full name....Napoleon, pretty much sums up why American's should have been and should still be rooting for the British. The French that supported the US during the Revolution are not the same French that are portrayed in the movie, in the geopolitical sense. Hell the French that supported the US Revolution were no better than the British the US was fighting. In fact the only reason the French were supporting the US was because of its rivalry (hatred) with the British.


I am the motherf&*%in Shore Patrol As^&*%#!

The British might've been the opposition the Revolution but there's been plenty of time & experience between 1783 and now, as well as a shared heritage, to make most Americans sympathetic towards the British in this particular story.

Even with the 'blip' of the 1812-1814 "War of 1812", heated up issues with the Oregon Territory in the 1840s, siezure of Confederate emmisaries off British ships, and plans to war with the UK being drafted as late as the 1930s, the United States has traditionally had no issues w/ the UK, and have seen it as one of our, if not the, prime trading partner throughout most of our history.

As for the French, we may have been allied with them during the Revolution, but it still didn't prevent some Frenchmen from being murdered, then, by Americans who still had raw feelings over the French & Indian War just a few years earlier. What's more, when the French King was overthrown the American government repudiated any alliance with the French so as to avoid any entanglements in the war between Republican France & the UK & her allies. Heck, we came THIS close to warring with Napoleonic France instead of the UK 'round 1803. Our historically recent push for 'Freedom Fries' on account of not having our anti-Iraq foreign policy supported by present day France is just the latest example of our traditional emnity towards the French.

It's wonderful that you black-list millions of people that you've never met. Men and women from several age groups, families.

War is a truly necessary evil sometimes. Hitler could not have been defeated through peace or politics. History bares that out. If anything peace, and politics made him stronger, and lead to the loss of millions upon millions of lives.

Anyone who speaks in absolutes about war, as if it's merely a matter of saying it's good or bad, is committing intellectual suicide. It's dishonest. For it to be true, you'd have to change just about everything about human nature, and indeed even nature itself would require intense reform.

But then, we wouldn't be human beings anymore. We'd be something wholly different. Better? Perhaps. But we'd love things like passion, and diversity. War is sparked often by a difference of perception, and different goals. To eliminate war you'd have to eliminate free will, and force everyone to live under one ideology, and one government, and even then, you'd have to ensure no human being ever deviated from that, or even thought about the possibility of deviation.


Do you see how sadistic your view point is when taken all the way?

Shut spifflock a hole

Right. Thanks for that eloquent and articulate feedback.

----

Lazy + smart = efficient.

Do Americans really have that myopic of a worldview that they consider these things?

Goodies and baddies and all that *beep* Mein gott.

[deleted]