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Just curious.......if you were a modern american movie director and wanted to make a movie about a famous war or battle, which would would you chose?
Someone I would like to see is a movie about John-Paul Jones. He's a character that is important to America, but somebody the average American knows almost nothing about, as say, compared to George Patton (and that thanks mostly to the George Scott movie!).

Well seeing as Canadian history is almost always completely ignored and/or re-written by Hollywood *cough*Argo*cough*, something which actually depicted Canadians fairly would be nice. Any battle would do, the only Canadian battle I can think of which was turned into a film was Passchendaele, and there was more love making than actual fighting (can't blame the Americans for that one one though).

I know it's been done, but I would love to see a modern epic blockbuster based on Trafalgar. The closest I can get is setting up a huge battle on Empire: Total War and that just ain't the same.

Fall of Constantinople.

That or the life of General Grant.

The Battle of Kursk, most likely. WW2 and the immensities in manpower, firepower and determination that came along with it endlessly fascinate me, and Kursk stands as one of the starkest examples of this.

Pearl Harbor if only to correct the train wreck that was Pearl Harbor.
It's not a good sign when VFW halls across the country walk out on your movie. Let me tell you, home on leave from the military sitting between someone (My grandmother) who was in on base housing listening to the war and wondering where my grandfather was (With his carrier and safe) and next to a Marine who had help run ammo for AA guns that day and watch them endure a sappy love story before the utter nonsense that was that movie? It still sticks with me.

Do it proper this time, start in 1940 show the leadup to the attack in twenty minutes, the failed peace talks, the blind optimism of the Japanese high command, the misgivings of individual officers who never the less went with the attack and once war began were fervent supporters. Then the attack itself, build the suspense. There's a state farm ad which pretends to be an add for something else for the first fifteen seconds of the ad as two guys drive along in a suburban street them WHAM car accident and this movie should be the same. Intro the movie, then spend five to ten minutes building up the attack on the Japanese side, then as they get closer do two minute shorts with characters we will follow in the coming attack. Then the attack, drop twenty million on CGI if you want to by get the scale right. Do what Saving Private Ryan did for Normandy for Pearl.

Want to end the movie? Fine last forty minutes lead up to and execution of Dolittle end with a what happen to them after the war stills during the credits.

That or the buddy Comedy movie that is Sherman-Grant, that would be very interesting to see.

Another one which might be considered "in poor taste"/"too soon", but I'll mention it anyway.

A movie about the war in Syria/Iraq and Daesh. Probably told from multiple perspectives. Say, four main characters. One's a western government official, one's a refugee, one's a Kurdish fighter in Kobani, one's based on those western kids who get recruited into Daesh over the internet and eventually try to back out. Something like that.

But probably the subject is just too politically loaded right now for a film to be a very good idea. Give it twenty years.

It would be interesting to see a WW2 movie done from the perspective of a good-hearted, idealistic Japanese or German soldier - just because they were our enemies doesn't mean all the soldiers were "bad guys".

Mr Bean wrote:Pearl Harbor if only to correct the train wreck that was Pearl Harbor.
It's not a good sign when VFW halls across the country walk out on your movie. Let me tell you, home on leave from the military sitting between someone (My grandmother) who was in on base housing listening to the war and wondering where my grandfather was (With his carrier and safe) and next to a Marine who had help run ammo for AA guns that day and watch them endure a sappy love story before the utter nonsense that was that movie? It still sticks with me.

Do it proper this time, start in 1940 show the leadup to the attack in twenty minutes, the failed peace talks, the blind optimism of the Japanese high command, the misgivings of individual officers who never the less went with the attack and once war began were fervent supporters. Then the attack itself, build the suspense. There's a state farm ad which pretends to be an add for something else for the first fifteen seconds of the ad as two guys drive along in a suburban street them WHAM car accident and this movie should be the same. Intro the movie, then spend five to ten minutes building up the attack on the Japanese side, then as they get closer do two minute shorts with characters we will follow in the coming attack. Then the attack, drop twenty million on CGI if you want to by get the scale right. Do what Saving Private Ryan did for Normandy for Pearl.

Want to end the movie? Fine last forty minutes lead up to and execution of Dolittle end with a what happen to them after the war stills during the credits.

That or the buddy Comedy movie that is Sherman-Grant, that would be very interesting to see.

I always thought Tora! Tora! Tora! was a pretty good depiction of Pearl Harbour, though a modern remake could work as long as it focuses on what's going on instead of romance.

Samar first and foremost, followed by Prokhorovka.

Mr Bean wrote:That or the buddy Comedy movie that is Sherman-Grant, that would be very interesting to see.

That I would pay to see. I mean the potential is most certainly there. A drunk and a madman who before Sumter were considered losers but somehow they formed a sorta symbiotic relationship. Through their friendship they became the men who saved the Union and tore the Confederacy a new asshole.

I'll admit I'm kinda fascinated by Sherman. He was a pretty cantankerous, didn't much care for slavery one way or the other, and seemed to fail at anything other then fucking shit up in the military. He also seemed to accurately predict the path that the Civil War would take well before the first shots were fired.

The Battle of Kursk, of course. Making a film about such a huge battle (many millions of soldiers, thousands of tanks) is bound to be hard, so one has to pick a character which would simultaneously be the observing point. I'd pick
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Maresyev

He is (1) a pilot, so you will get to see the battle from the air (2) has a terrible and powerful background (lost both legs but continued to fly). I understand that the biopic already exists (~1948), but with modern filmmaking technology you could make it 1000x epic.

From an interview with A. P. Maresyev wrote:Q: Have you ever met German pilots on the ground?
A: Only after the war. In Hungary. There was an international conference. One of the organizers told me that there are some former German pilots who are interested in me. We sat at the table. "Did you fly without legs?" they ask. "Yes, I did", I respond, "And shot down another seven of your planes". The eldest German in their group pulled a face. I understood that I was rude, so I corrected myself: "We don't need to fight again, make sure there is no war". So we couldn't really discuss things, but exchanged bows quite nicely.

biostem wrote:It would be interesting to see a WW2 movie done from the perspective of a good-hearted, idealistic Japanese or German soldier - just because they were our enemies doesn't mean all the soldiers were "bad guys".

Watch Letters of Iwo Jima.

The Romulan Republic wrote:Fall of Constantinople.

I second this. Byzantine is often missing from our pop culture understanding of history, and the story being told will be quite interesting. Although there's an issue with this being a rather politically charged movie, especially with Greece and Turkey. Then there is a chance this movie might end up telling people fear a Muslim invasion or something.

That's a tricky one. But if I had to pick I'd say one thing to depict would be the forging of the Mongol Empire. I mean, they forged an empire from China to Arabia and used a giant well organized and equipped combined army including sophisticated siege weapons and everything. They were intelligent, sophisticated and all that. And yet people just remember them as a horde of horse archers whose greatest cultural achievement is storing meat under their saddles. It's just wrong.

A movie about Toussaint l'Ouverture and the Haitian revolution would be pretty awesome. And it would have black people.

Has there been a movie of the flag wars of the Maori yet? that'd be funny.

I would be amused to see a war film about the Anglo-Zanzibar war, especially since it was so short you could show it in real time while still leaving time for the build-up and follow-up.

Eternal_Freedom wrote:I would be amused to see a war film about the Anglo-Zanzibar war, especially since it was so short you could show it in real time while still leaving time for the build-up and follow-up.

I could see the Coen Brothers pulling this off in dark screwball-comedy fashion (something like "Burn After Reading").

Balrog wrote:Samar first and foremost, followed by Prokhorovka.

Absolutely second the Battle of Samar. Even if only for the quote, "Dammit, boys, they're getting away!"

Taffy 3: The little ships that could!

Nuts!

Bloody Santa Cruz

ray245 wrote:

biostem wrote:It would be interesting to see a WW2 movie done from the perspective of a good-hearted, idealistic Japanese or German soldier - just because they were our enemies doesn't mean all the soldiers were "bad guys".

Watch Letters of Iwo Jima.

The Romulan Republic wrote:Fall of Constantinople.

I second this. Byzantine is often missing from our pop culture understanding of history, and the story being told will be quite interesting. Although there's an issue with this being a rather politically charged movie, especially with Greece and Turkey. Then there is a chance this movie might end up telling people fear a Muslim invasion or something.

Yeah, it would be politically loaded right now.

I don't think there's any way to make a movie about it that wouldn't generate outrage from lots of people.

Best case scenario, endless whinging in the media. Worst case, threats and/or attacks and it gets pulled like that comedy about assassinating Kim Jong Un.

Pity, because it could make an amazing story (ideally told with an emphasis on historical accuracy, not propaganda).

Is there a US war film outside of perhaps WW2 that wouldn't be politically loaded to some degree?

I would personally love to do a film about the Nixon, the press, and Vietnam, set around the My Lai massacre. Ideally, this would not a film about whether the boys on the Malabar front can secure a hill or something, but on the impact it was having on American political discourse. The key theme would be that of politicians crying war and how it corrupts societies from within and without.

I'd like to see a reasonably accurate movie about the battle of Thermopylae. There's an entire generation that knows only Frank Miller's version. The real battle was epic enough as it was, without having to fabricate 99% of it. The movie should spend the first several minutes giving background about why the Persians initially invaded Greece (not because they were evil conquerors, but because they wanted to stop the Greeks from fucking around with their Ionian subjects). The movie should accurately show the contribution by the entire Greek world (there were thousands of Greeks there, not just 300 Spartans), the brutality of the Spartans towards their own slaves, and the positive qualities of the Persians and of Xerxes himself. The movie could end in a similar fashion to Miller's version where the battle of Plataea is just getting started.

I'd like to have a movie be about The Battle of New Orleans, which took place two weeks after the War of 1812 ended. Show America's great victory over the British, the great fight that took place there, the lives lost on both sides, what all happened to make it possible after all this, the people who were made into heroes by this action, and then end with the realization as messages come through that the war is already over, and it was all utterly pointless. Fading on the remaining men standing there, looking at the spots where their friends should be, and tasting the bitterness of the battle's cost.

If you think the British would have given back New Orleans if they'd won you are sadly naive. The battle was important because it meant the US could still have control of the mouth of the Mississippi.

Borgholio wrote:I'd like to see a reasonably accurate movie about the battle of Thermopylae. There's an entire generation that knows only Frank Miller's version. The real battle was epic enough as it was, without having to fabricate 99% of it. The movie should spend the first several minutes giving background about why the Persians initially invaded Greece (not because they were evil conquerors, but because they wanted to stop the Greeks from fucking around with their Ionian subjects). The movie should accurately show the contribution by the entire Greek world (there were thousands of Greeks there, not just 300 Spartans), the brutality of the Spartans towards their own slaves, and the positive qualities of the Persians and of Xerxes himself. The movie could end in a similar fashion to Miller's version where the battle of Plataea is just getting started.

Tbh while your basic idea is good I'd think it would be wiser to avoid depicting the full extent of the brutality of the spartan culture to avoid being seen as "anti-300", showing that the persians weren't comic book bad guys and that the greeks weren't as selfless as the Miller version depicts them should be enough.