AMC’s “Nautilus” Gives Us Indiana-Jones Worthy Adventure with Imperialist Villains

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AMC’s (formerly Disney’s) “Nautilus” is nine-tenths fun adventure. We’re talking otherworldly sea creatures, lost treasure, and 1850s technical marvels, portrayed by the best our 2020s studios can offer. The ten-part first season follows Nemo (an appealing Shazad Latif), the Odysseus-esque captain of the first-ever submarine, sharing the show’s title, in this loose adaptation of “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.” He’s on an adventure to escape the British East India Mercantile Company that enslaved him and most of his shipmates, in addition to committing a whole host of atrocities.

And that’s the other tenth of the show—a clear-eyed portrayal of the evils of imperialism and the colonialism that empowered it. The brown and Black crew members of the Nautilus (including Pacharo Mzembe as the endearing firstmate Boniface) are escaping war crimes and enslavement. They are right to take arms against the unjust system that has gobbled them up along with their homes, even if their primary goal is just to survive personally.

The upper class white women—Georgia Flood as the intrepid, eligible engineer Humility, and Céline Menville as her fierce French maid/chaperone, Lottie—are also stuck in a patriarchal system that treats them as chattel, even as it provides them with good meals and pretty dresses along the way. I do wish Humility were more person and less plucky stereotype, but she gets some meaningful arcs as the story goes on, which counts for something in a show that is much more interested in plot than character development.

“Nautilus” also shows us how the system shapes white men—there’s Gustave Benoit (Thierry Frémont), the French scientist who builds the Nautilus and engineers its escape with Nemo rather than see his scientific creation become an instrument of horror. The company’s foot soldiers are generally there against their will, having chosen between starvation and conscription. And the leaders—Cameron Cuffe as Humility’s finance and would-be jailor Lord Pitt and Damien Garvey as the ultimate capitalist and company leader Director Crawley—are insecure snivels of men, certainly no one to envy.

It’s a compelling backdrop for an adventure. The stakes are high, the cause is righteous, and the villains are smarmy. The bad guys in “Nautilus” are akin to the ones in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”—powerful and terrible, driven by malice. It’s just a simple switch between imperialists and Nazis. One red military uniform for another.

And like Indiana Jones’ tale, Nemo’s is powered by escaping peril, not social commentary (even if that is baked in). And the adventure is thrilling. Yes, obviously, we grown-up viewers know that the ship that bears the show’s name will survive past the second episode, as will our leading characters. Yet the threats that face them feel real. My heart was pounding. That’s the magic of moving pictures, and it’s in full effect here, with these sympathetic and attractive characters achieving death-defying acts of physical strength and mental acumen to stay alive and eventually triumph.

The monsters—underwater and above land, human and creature, big and small—are terrifying. And the filmmakers know how to harness and hone in on what makes them scary, giving us the close-up of one’s giant eye in one episode and another’s insatiable gaping mouth the next.

Now, some of the beats are pat. The love stories are predictable and obvious, if satisfying. As are some of the deaths and plot twists. Certainly, if you have a favorite sea myth, expect to see it in this first season. But that’s not bad, just part of the genre.

With these well-worn, comforting beats, “Nautilus” is fun to watch and feels ever so slightly subversive.

It’s perhaps a bit rebellious to paint the historical British East India Mercantile Company as the Nazis of their time, particularly as fascism and ethnic cleansing rock any modern pretense we may have of peace. For those unfamiliar with the Company’s atrocities, there’s a lot to learn (or Google), with hopefully some of the evil of it sinking in. For those who are familiar with the history, it’s satisfying to see a visually rich, mainstream story utilize this moral framing.

Certainly, to have an escapist show following righteous fighters who take arms against imperialism feels good. And yes, “Nautilus” shows the human cost and terrible harm of the Company’s historical power grab. But it’s also a rocking good time, an adventure worthy of its budget, with a set of heroes worthy of our allegiance, attention, and admiration.

Full season screened for review. Premieres June 29 on AMC+.