Aquanaut: A Life Beneath The Surface – The Inside Story of the Thai Cave Rescue

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Riveting...a powerful story written by a hero who lived it.’ —RON HOWARD, Oscar-winning director of Apollo 13 After he got the role, the actor applied his rigorous research methods to Stanton. Before shooting began, he spent close to five months talking to Stanton, building a rapport, and uncovering his quirks, including the slight variations of his speech. “He’s from Essex originally,” Mortensen says. “But he’s been living in Coventry for years, so it’s this sort of blended accent.” He read an advanced copy of Stanton’s 2022 book, Aquanaut: The Inside Story of the Thai Cave Rescue, in which Stanton describes himself as a grumpy old man with a life designed to avoid children and meaningless professional work. In the process, Mortensen started to grasp Stanton’s personality: gruff and confident, but devoid of hubris. “There’s a certain curtness,” Mortensen says of Stanton. “He’s not a man of a lot of words. He does things rather than talks about them.” Colin Farrell as John Volanthen, Joel Edgerton as Harry Harris, and Mortensen as Stanton in ‘Thirteen Lives’ (Photo: Vince Valitutti/Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures)

A plan was eventually formed to sedate the group of boys with ketamine so that they would not panic while being carefully pushed to safety through the water, wearing wetsuits and buoyancy aids. In a heartbreaking statement to i, he said: “As a personal recollection it was Dom whose unconscious body I swam with as I escorted him to safety on the second day of the rescue mission.How preposterous was it that there was a 57-year-old man flown out from England to take part in this rescue. It does seem a bit far-fetched.”

I’m very proud of the fact that I was partly responsible for his – you know – his life, in a way,” Stanton said of Samon, according to ABC. “And to see him make the most of the opportunities he’s had.”Samon said it was “just incredible” that Stanton’s intervention, as he and his Wild Boars teammates fought for their lives five years earlier, had afforded him the opportunity to graduate from prep school and gain admission into Vermont’s Middlebury College. Four middle-aged men wandering around with all this equipment and being the heroes of the day. How preposterous it must have looked from the outsiders looking into the rescue,” Stanton jokingly told me over another press junket call. “How preposterous was it that there was a 57-year-old man flown out from England to take part in this rescue. It does seem a bit far-fetched.”

He says: “Viggo is fun and we have a laugh but I’m not sure we have the same sense of humour. Mine is quite dry and it took him a while to understand that I was joking when I made certain comments. The world held its breath in 2018 when the Wild Boars soccer team and their coach went missing deep underground in the Tham Luang cave complex in northern Thailand. They had been stranded by sudden, continuous monsoon rains while exploring the caves after practice. Thailand, July 2018. Twelve boys and their football coach vanish into Tham Luang caves just as the monsoon rains hit. A mile from the surface they are trapped by rising flood waters. All attempts to reach them fail.Dr Harris was right behind me and we got him into the recovery position and we took an hour stabilising him before we carried on. I was the last one out that day. According to ABC, the head of the Masters School, Laura Danforth, said it was an easy decision for her institution to recruit Samon. The mission spearheaded by Stanton ultimately found the Wild Boars huddled together on a small ledge in a chamber of the vast cave system on 2 July 2018. Stanton and his colleagues gave medicine as well as foil blankets to the Wild Boars – and then led them to the surface over a three-day period culminating on 10 July 2018. Samon later received a full scholarship from the Masters School to study there and he became the captain of its soccer team. Elon’s engineers must have known it was not fit for purpose. I spoke to Elon on the phone and while I didn’t hang up on him, I told him, ‘I’ve got to go,’ which I don’t think he’s used to.”

I couldn’t help but ask Stanton what it felt like to be portrayed by such a beloved actor, who just so happens to be stupidly good-looking. “It’s not going to do me any harm, is it?” he replied. All jokes aside, Stanton said he and Mortensen became friends over the months of calls and shooting, and he was impressed by Mortensen’s commitment to researching the role. Director Ron Howard and his crew perfectly recreated the cave sections Stanton and his fellow rescuers said were the most difficult. (Photo: Vince Valitutti/Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures) THE ENTHRALLING INSIDE STORY OF THE THAI CAVE RESCUE FROM THE MAN AT THE HEART OF THE MISSION, AS SEEN IN THE SUNDAY TIMES Mortensen first learned about Stanton and his heroism when the rest of us did, glued to his television set watching the rescue unfold in 2018. When he first read the script, he was eager to portray a complex, brash man at the center of such an astonishing endeavor. And Mortensen knows how to fully commit to truthful portrayals of his characters. To become a Russian mobster in David Cronenberg’s 2007 film Eastern Promises, he traveled to Russia to read Russian novels and stayed in prison-gang-tattoo make-up while on set in London (and while frequenting a neighboring Russian restaurant, which, of course, completely freaked out all the diners). He got his open water scuba diving certification because of a single underwater scene in G.I. Jane, which eventually ended up on the cutting room floor. And he studied sword fighting so intently for The Lord of the Rings that legendary stunt coordinator (and former Olympic fencer) Bob Anderson said he was the best swordsmen he’d ever trained. In the aftermath, many learned that Samon was one of the few boys on the Wild Boars who could speak English. Teammates also recounted how he emerged as a leader among them in the days that their fates hung in the balance. One of the boys had a lung problem from being in a damp environment for two weeks and when I first surfaced, he was blue and barely breathing.

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It is this miracle,” Samon said. “I never thought I would come this far and I would be sitting here in the United States.” The film does portray the typical British banter between us and there is a lot of it. John’s ultra-tidy and I’m ultra-messy – I scatter everything while John has a nice and neat corner. In this story of breathtaking courage and nerves of steel, John reveals how responding positively to the statement, ‘But I can’t…’ by stating, ‘I can,’ led to one of the most incredible rescues of all time.