by Josh Shepherd at The Federalist
In summer 2018, when a youth soccer team was trapped for 18 days deep within a treacherous cave system, the world became transfixed as events unfolded in real time through news reports.
In a phone interview from Los Angeles, British cave diver Rick Stanton related critical moments from four years ago — after hours underwater within the Tham Luang cave in northern Thailand.
“As we swam where no one had searched before, we were expecting to find 13 drowned bodies,” Stanton told me. “We couldn’t see, and we might literally bump into lifeless children.”
If he sounds blunt, the 60-something former firefighter isn’t much for pleasantries. In director Ron Howard’s latest true-life drama “Thirteen Lives,” which premieres Friday worldwide on Prime Video, lead diver Stanton is portrayed by Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn from “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy). And, in a statement, the actor describes his real-life counterpart as “gruff.”
“Rick calls it the way he sees it [which] can be a bit shocking,” said Mortensen, who spent significant time getting to know Stanton prior to and during filming. “He says in the film, ‘That’s not going to work, they’re going to die if we do this.’ He’s not social in the way most people are.”
Millions have since seen some version of the story told…
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