Probably because it’s really really good, and by all accounts really bloody historically accurate. I’d only just seen it for the first time recently and I was shocked how good it actually is. Though I understand the Trek comparison, to a point. Star Trek II is pretty much a navy film in space.
It IS a good movie, and one of Russell Crowe’s better in his pre-jerkdom days. It’s just fans evangelizing it to others as if it was the ONLY big-ship movie ever made that my sense of movie literacy calls into question…
Can’t watch everything I guess, plus many youngsters just have an aversion to watching older stuff I suppose. Not saying it’s right, though some films can age more than others. Hell, Master and Commander is what, 22 years old now, so it’s not exactly new.
A really good chunk of that has the Enterprise and Reliant playing cat-and-mouse with each other, similar to the Surprise and Acheron. Plus the captain and doctor being pals is another aspect they have in common.
I’ve enjoyed some of the classic naval films over the years, but none of them feel quite as authentic as Master and Commander, in the same way Das Boot is by far ahead the best film set on a submarine. THAT’S the naval film I’d point younger people to next tbh.