Lessons from The Sea Beast written by the Ent. This post contains affiliate links, you can find out more on our policies page or in the disclaimer at the bottom of the blog.
Know Before You Watch
Movie: The Sea Beast
Rating: PG
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy
Length: 1 hr. 55 mins.
Age suggested: 10 and up
Release Date: July 8th, 2022
Warnings: Lots of violence (mostly towards monsters), Loss of Parents, Mild Peril
The Sea Beast Summary
Jacob Holland is known as the most famous and successful monster hunter. Upon setting out for his biggest hunt yet, an orphaned girl named Maisie stows away to join on the adventure. This throws the adventure into some very unexpected whirlwinds that teach us about friendship, judgement, and propaganda.
The Sea Beast Review: (Contains Spoilers)
The Sea Beast provides a very fun, if not predictable, story of friendship and growth. The overarching story of Jacob is intriguing as he transitions from the world renowned monster hunter to someone who befriends a sea beast. The lessons learned about the importance of understanding knowledge sources can not be understated. You can check out our lessons from The Sea Beast down below for more lessons. Overall, Maisie and Jacob get to tell a heart filled story which is fun to watch.
–Why Watch The Sea Beast-
The shining point of The Sea Beast is the characters and the animation. Maisie and Jacob have such fun chemistry as they start of as reluctant travelers to close friends (maybe even father/daughter relationships). Even without their relationship, the characters all interact well with each other to tell and intriguing tale. The captain and Jacob have a very close bond at the beginning of the film that gets weathered as Jacob learns more about the true history of the world.
The animation in The Sea Beast is quite pleasing. There are lots of similarities to How to Train Your Dragon. This is in part because Woonyoung Jung acts as the Art Director, as she did with How to Train Your Dragon. This is seen specifically with the look and movement of Red. Although The Sea Beast Soundtrack doesn’t have any songs with lyrics, it does act as a great musical journey!
Lastly, there is a lot that can be learned from this movie. You can see the lessons from The Sea Beast down below. There is a lot of representation within the film, but it doesn’t come off as forced. Overall, as long as your kids can handle the scarier aspects of the film, they should enjoy it quite a bit!
-Is The Sea Beast Appropriate?-
The Sea Beast starts of with a lot of peril and violence as Jacob and the rest of the crew work on taking down a massive sea monster. Honestly, in terms of violence, this is the most throughout the entire film which culminates with Captain Crow cutting of the horn of the sea monster. None of the violence, even when the humans are cut, result in blood. While riding on the back of Red, Maisie starts removing lances from Red’s back. This does cause discomfort as he groans, but ultimately is seen as an act of help.
The other difficult topic covered in The Sea Beast is the death of Maisie’s parents. They died as hunters, leaving here orphaned. Maisie realizes throughout the story that these deaths may not have even been necessary. Overall, the violence is a bit more concerning for younger viewers, but if the kids are sensitive to losing family members, this may need to be considered.
Continue reading for our Lessons from The Sea Beast
5 Lessons from The Sea Beast
We Need to be Willing to Have Our Minds Changed
Both Jacob and Maisie had biases against monsters as Jacob is a hunter and Maisie’s parents were killed by monsters. Despite this, upon meeting Red and other creatures, Maisie immediately sees that they aren’t killing machines. Jacob takes a bit longer, but is eventually won over.
Some of the Most Important Lessons Will Come From the Younger Generation
Without Maisie, it isn’t hard to imagine Jacob continuing on his journey to be become captain and leading crusades against many more monsters. It is important to remember that just because people are young, does not mean they are wrong. There is a very good chance that they will revolutionize the world!
It Is Never Too Late For Redemption
Even after Jacob turned away from killing monsters, he felt a difficult time with his identity. He had spent so much of his life hunting down monsters, but only now realized that he was wrong to do so. Despite this, he stays his path and does what is right.
Understanding Knowledge Sources is Important
In the climax of the film, Maisie notices something about all of the books about how evil the sea monsters are. They all have the same royal crest, which she hadn’t seen before arriving there. This awakens the idea of propaganda (although not explicitly called that) within her and motivates her to start a revolution
Understanding True History Affects Our Present
When Maisie has the ear of the kingdom, she informs as many people as possible that the authorities have been lying to them. Doing this, she reveals the true history of her people. This was the first step in making corrective steps to preventing further, unnecessary damage.
Favorite The Sea Beast Quotes
“We kill ‘em, lass. We don’t study ‘em. I guess it’s time to start.”
“Maybe you can be a hero and still be wrong.”
“But if that ain’t true, then how are you supposed to know what is?”
“I don’t know how the war started, maybe all that matters is how it ends.”
“Two lives were saved that day. One man and one beast.”
The Sea Beast Discussion Questions
Themes to Discuss: Redemption, Persistence, Understanding Sources, Propaganda, Friendship
- How does Jacob change throughout the film? What causes this change?
- Which was your favorite monster from the film and why?
- How does Maisie’s history affect her on her journey?
- How does Jacob struggle with his identity while going from a ruthless monster hunter to a monster sympathizer?
- What big revelation did Maisie have regarding the stories of how evil the monsters were in the past? How does this revelation affect the future?
Thanks for reading our Lessons from The Sea Beast. Before you go, check out these other posts:
-Our top family friendly Netflix Streaming Suggestions
–A Tale Dark and Grimm Review
-Lessons from The Willoughybys with Discussion Questions
Down The Hobbit Hole Blog and Lessons from The Sea Beast affiliate links. We only link products we think you’ll like and you are never charged extra for them. As Amazon Associates, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. The images used are either from Canva or are from press media kits. We also use cookies to gather analytics and present advertisements. This allows us to keep writing discussion questions and telling ridiculous dad jokes. Find our other reviews with discussion questions here. Our posts about faith here. And our posts about family stuff here.
1 thought on “An Intriguing Tail: 5 Lessons from The Sea Beast”
Comments are closed.