By now you probably know the world’s most dangerous submarine is the USS Yorktown, a frigid, 30-foot-long sub that was sunk off the coast of California in 1995.
In the film, the USS is a target for a mysterious group of people who want to capture its crew and sell them as slaves for a profit.
The film’s director, John Woo, said that’s where he wanted to set up the sub.
But what’s it like to go on a movie set?
“It’s a lot of fun,” Woo told the New York Times.
“You’re in a small room, there’s a bunch of people, and it’s very difficult to get any sort of sense of where they’re coming from.”
Woo went on to say that the submarine’s crew are all in a very strange state of mind, as they are, as the film points out, in a “virus state.”
“We’re in very different situations, as we are, and I’m very, very happy with how the film turned out,” he said.
“The only thing I would add is that this is not a story about us.
It’s a story of the people that we’re trying to capture.”
What we’ve seen in the film is a very different story than the one we’ve heard about the USS.
The Yorktown was the first sub to sink off the East Coast, in 1992, and was a very rare submarine at the time.
At the time, the U.S. Navy had about 400 subs, and only four were built in the 1960s.
The USS Yorkhouse was built in 1966 and was first commissioned in 1966.
“It was the most powerful submarine in the world,” Woo said in an interview with The Atlantic.
The ship was equipped with nuclear weapons, including an anti-aircraft missile.
It was equipped to conduct submarine warfare, and also carried nuclear weapons for nuclear attack, he said, “but I think we also had a nuclear warhead on board.”
The sub is believed to have been built in a secret location off the west coast of the U, with the USS Essex, the most modern sub in the U of A. “If you were to build a submarine in Canada, you would be much more likely to have the Essex,” Woo added.
“And then the Yorktown is a special case.
They had to be built in an extremely clandestine location off Vancouver Island in the Canadian Arctic, because it was impossible to ship a sub out of Vancouver Island without getting permission from the British government.”
The Yorkhouse’s crew, which included a couple of officers, was taken aboard the ship in 1965 and brought to the United States, where they lived out their lives as a secret prisoner of war.
The submarine was decommissioned in 1990, but Woo says the crew was never put to work on the sub and were not ever allowed to leave the U., “because they were still classified.”
The film shows them being treated like slaves, and they were held in “very poor conditions,” Woo recalled.
“There was a constant stream of prisoners who were never allowed to get out of the ship, so that’s the only way they could escape,” he added.
In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Woo revealed the crew were kept alive by a small crew of prisoners, who lived in the “viral bay” where they were kept.
“They had a small pool of water for drinking,” Woo explained.
“We had the people who would wash our faces.
We had the men who would cook our food.
There was always a shower, and we’d shower and wash, and shower again.
The whole ship was built of wood, and that’s what you see in the ship.”
The crew was kept in the bow section of the sub, where it was more exposed to the elements, and were kept in a room with a large kitchen.
“I think we have some pretty disturbing scenes, that we couldn’t have done on film,” Woo continued.
“When they get back into the ship for the second and third night, they’re allowed to go outside and play, but they don’t have a bed.
They’re locked up in the kitchen.”
“I’m really proud of this film, because there are a lot more scenes and a lot less violence,” he concluded.
“In real life, there were lots of fights.
There were a lot worse things going on.”
You can see the USS YORKSHEET in action in the video above.