Russell Crowe Defended ‘Master And Commander’ And Its Director After He Was Tagged In A Tweet About It

Life in quarantine is tough for everyone, but for millions of Americans the extended time spent at home amid the coronavirus pandemic has brought a lot more hours to watch TV and movies they may have missed. Or if that sounds boring, they can simply tweet about movies and get their stars to defend them on Twitter.

The latter happened over the weekend when someone on Twitter derided Master and Commander and its star, Russell Crowe, hopped online to slam the critic and praise both the film and its director. The 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World starred Crowe as a seafaring captain during the Napoleonic Wars. The film, though a bit anonymous 17 years later, has a respectable 81 rating on Metacritic (and 7.4 on IMDB if you’re feeling that instead) but the tweet that got things started described it more as a movie that will put you to bed.

The original tweet was from January 8, but it tagged Crowe, who has 2.7 million followers on the site and hopefully isn’t checking his mentions too thoroughly like the rest of us. But he did eventually get back to Ian, defending the film and lavishing praise on director Peter Weir along the way.

Crowe called it a movie for adults, implying the man criticizing him was simply a child. Unfortunately, his distaste for the film isn’t related to any boomer-millennial strife.

https://twitter.com/empiresend/status/1350755504449069057

But the moment immediately went viral, with a lot of people weighing in on the movie, the critique, and Crowe’s response to boot. There were also a lot of people praising the film despite the viral tweet.

https://twitter.com/MusketAnna/status/1350826527659847682

A number of critics were quite literally cheering Crowe on.

There was something fun about seeing a random movie from 17 years ago pop up on Twitter, especially given we are just a few weeks removed from Bean Dad.

If anything, the viral moment is likely to get a few more people watching Master and Commander again, or perhaps for the first time. It’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime, if you need it.