Realistic Battle Scenes

[Allie]

I kind of liked Wicked Spring but it's very small budget and shows it. Compared to a college project it's great, compared to an actual movie it's sort of poor. I thought it was a little movie with a lot of heart.

The Hobbit and LOTR have proven that realistic numbers can be convincingly done using CGI; it's about time people stopped trying to shoot the same herd of reenactors in dense mist or smoke or next to a convenient cliff or any of the other tricks to make a tiny crowd into a big one. Even an enormous crowd of reenactors pales in comparison to the size of most battles, and the larger the crowd, the more likely several reenactors won't look the part. Stop it. Just put the right number of people in with CGI, dress up some convincing skinny young guys and put them in the close-ups.

 

[Waterloo50]

Great observations throughout. We do tend to romanticize the war but yes it was a bloody savage mess. And consider that as bad as the battlefields were, more men died from disease back at camp than from combat. So add that to your reenactment protocol too

Charles Reade: War is sweet to those who have never experienced it

 

[John Winn]

Just watched the clip - sorry if this point was made already but would there really be that much helping the wounded? It sounds harsh but I would think at that point it's everyone for himself and let the wounded sort out afterwards.

You're probably right. Corporals accompanied the line whose job it was to keep everybody on task and to tighten up the line when guys went down. Dealing with the wounded was not the immediate task. In a situation where a unit got out of touch with others or scattered then that might not happen. But as long as everybody was mostly in view and in line I don't think there'd have been much getting out of line to help wounded. I really doubt that the guy casually smoking his pipe behind a tree would have been tolerated either.

That said, helping the wounded did happen and I've seen it mentioned more than once that a technique used to shirk was to help somebody to the rear. Of course, in the scene depicted, that wasn't the case. So "near" Hollywood is not much different than Hollywood I suppose.

Gosh, now I'll never be able to watch Wicked Spring ever again.

 

[Waterloo50]

Just watched the clip - sorry if this point was made already but would there really be that much helping the wounded? It sounds harsh but I would think at that point it's everyone for himself and let the wounded sort out afterwards.

Plus there wasn't near enough screaming to be accurate

I don't think its harsh to imagine that it would have been every man for himself, I think that dealing with the wounded after a battle would have been the reality. Most of the accounts of battles that I have read talk about the screaming and the cries from the wounded and dying. The most common thing that seriously wounded men call for is their mother, war is extremely harsh, I guess that's why we don't focus on that aspect of war to often.

 

[matthew mckeon]

War movies have conventions. After everyone was blown away by Private Ryan's Omaha scene, every movie had the jerky camera, the stuttering film speed, the desaturated(almost washed out) colors. Occasional lingering shot of gore exploding in slow motion. You can't smell anything, you aren't killing anyone and there is no chance of you personally getting hurt. All the killed and wounded get up again. Its ****o graphy. Battle scenes are so intense, so exciting, that they tend to overwhelm the movie. That's the "good parts" of a war movie. All war movies are supposed to be antiwar movies...but they aren't. Because the battle scenes are so much fun.
Show me a war movie set in a hospital. That's an antiwar movie.

 

[Waterloo50]

I think that many movies that depict battles fall into four distinct categories,
1. Historical Movies, (Waterloo and Gettysburg, We were Soldiers). Historically accurate.
2.Movies that portray the reality of war and use historical accuracy to tell a story (Saving Private Ryan, )
3. Movies based within an historical time period but are for pure entertainment (Patriot, Fury, Zulu)
4. Comedy, any war film made during the 1960s.

Waterloo

 

[Waterloo50]

War movies have conventions. After everyone was blown away by Private Ryan's Omaha scene, every movie had the jerky camera, the stuttering film speed, the desaturated(almost washed out) colors. Occasional lingering shot of gore exploding in slow motion. You can't smell anything, you aren't killing anyone and there is no chance of you personally getting hurt. All the killed and wounded get up again. Its ****o graphy. Battle scenes are so intense, so exciting, that they tend to overwhelm the movie. That's the "good parts" of a war movie. All war movies are supposed to be antiwar movies...but they aren't. Because the battle scenes are so much fun.
Show me a war movie set in a hospital. That's an antiwar movie.

We were Soldiers and All quiet on the Western Front, definitely anti war movies.

 

[M.Warren]

War movies have conventions. After everyone was blown away by Private Ryan's Omaha scene, every movie had the jerky camera, the stuttering film speed, the desaturated(almost washed out) colors. Occasional lingering shot of gore exploding in slow motion. You can't smell anything, you aren't killing anyone and there is no chance of you personally getting hurt. All the killed and wounded get up again. Its ****o graphy. Battle scenes are so intense, so exciting, that they tend to overwhelm the movie. That's the "good parts" of a war movie. All war movies are supposed to be antiwar movies...but they aren't. Because the battle scenes are so much fun.
Show me a war movie set in a hospital. That's an antiwar movie.

You hit the nail on the head with those words. If there was such a thing as smellivision the "realistic" combat scene would probably cease to be. The sights of battle are only a part of the big picture and not even the worst part, IMO.

 

[matthew mckeon]

We were Soldiers and All quiet on the Western Front, definitely anti war movies.

Its been so long since I've seen "All Quiet" I can't comment.

"We Were Soldiers" unfortunately could have been a John Wayne movie from the 40 or 50 years ago. Plenty of all American heroism, an ocean of it, while waves of screaming Asiatics flourish their bayonets and die by the bucket full. Whenever one bright eyed GI burbles to the reporter, "My kid has just been born" I knew he'd get shot and sure enough. More blood than you generally see in a John Wayne flick, but I didn't believe a minute of it, a second.

Its a cowardly movie as well, as cowardly as most recent war movies. The focus is relentlessly on close combat, and the derring do of our heroes, and the awesome price they pay as they make the ultimate sacrifice. We can't widen the lens to ask ourselves, what are we doing here? Stop drugging yourself on the violence and heroism for a second, and ask why are we doing this, why are we here?

 

[Allie]

Re: "realism" in combat movies. Just curious how many here have been in combat?

War movies go through fashions. Right now the fashion is, Oh, real war was horrible, it's not exciting or fun like Hollywood makes it out to be. But Hollywood didn't come up with the idea that war is fun. There's a 14th century French knight who rhapsodizes at some length about how much fun it is to kill people, hear horses screaming, and so on. To us sitting here on the sofa reading the internet that sounds like sociopathy, but in fact the opposite is true, normal human beings are wired to do this, or we wouldn't keep doing it after so many millennia. My husband's training sergeant used to say combat was better than sex.

My Civil War relation Charles Stephen Olin Rice said in his memoirs he wouldn't sell his memories of the war for a million dollars, or take a million dollars to do it again. I think it's important to remember that for many perfectly normal men it's both - the most alive they have ever felt, the most fun they have ever had - and the greatest horror they have ever experienced. Discarding either half paints an equally untrue picture.

If watching violent movies is like a drug, I'm cool with that. I would much rather people get their jollies watching a war movie than fighting a real war.

 

[drezac]

I think that many movies that depict battles fall into four distinct categories,
1. Historical Movies, (Waterloo and Gettysburg, We were Soldiers). Historically accurate.
2.Movies that portray the reality of war and use historical accuracy to tell a story (Saving Private Ryan, )
3. Movies based within an historical time period but are for pure entertainment (Patriot, Fury, Zulu)
4. Comedy, any war film made during the 1960s.

Waterloo

I will have to differ with you on Gettysburg. The book Killer Angels (which it was based on) was Historical Fiction. Now I will give great credit that it did follow historical events very closely and used actual individuals that were engaged in the battle, but still was a fictional story based around historical facts. Shara (I know, I don't have it spelled right) did an excellent job of research, and kept very close to historical accuracy filling in the blanks with fictional story. Lets face it, if he stuck to just historical records, you would not have much of a movie - he used a very accurate historical framework and filled in the rest with a good story. In my opinion, Gettysburg would fall into the same category as your #2. Not bashing Gettysburg ( I still love watching it), we just need to keep in mind it's not a documentary, but a story that was built on a very strong framework of historical facts.
Another movie I like is The Mountain men. It deals with the fur trade era. It also is historical fiction. but it was based on a much looser historical framework. It follows 2 fictional mountain men, with some historical events mixed in ( one character actually has a true historical event happen to him). For this movie, the writer used a loose historical framework to set the time period and tell the fictional story.

 

[E_just_E]

I know its a big question but in your opinion, what are the movies doing or getting wrong?

The numbers. They are too thin. 10-50x too thin.

Cannot have a regiment of 30 people and call that realistic by any means.

FWIW there were 160,000 combatants at the Wilderness...

 

[Henry Whitworth]

Its been so long since I've seen "All Quiet" I can't comment.

"We Were Soldiers" unfortunately could have been a John Wayne movie from the 40 or 50 years ago. Plenty of all American heroism, an ocean of it, while waves of screaming Asiatics flourish their bayonets and die by the bucket full. Whenever one bright eyed GI burbles to the reporter, "My kid has just been born" I knew he'd get shot and sure enough. More blood than you generally see in a John Wayne flick, but I didn't believe a minute of it, a second.

Its a cowardly movie as well, as cowardly as most recent war movies. The focus is relentlessly on close combat, and the derring do of our heroes, and the awesome price they pay as they make the ultimate sacrifice. We can't widen the lens to ask ourselves, what are we doing here? Stop drugging yourself on the violence and heroism for a second, and ask why are we doing this, why are we here?

I think there's something to what you said about it being hard to make an anti-war movie with 'exciting' combat scenes. They almost inevitably play as entertainment. It's why I liked Private Ryan when it first came out. The crowd I saw it with didn't have fun. They shuffled out of the theater quietly with tears on their faces. Seems like that's what watching what happens in war should do to people. But then that film seemed to spark a new interest and new production of "action" war movies including this ridiculous Mel Gibson thing that, as you point out, was anything but an anti-war film.

Maybe it's true that the only real anti-war film would just leave out the combat altogether? Ever see "The Victors" from 1963? It followed a group of GI's through the European campaign without ever actually showing them in combat. It had one of the most haunting movie images I remember from my childhood with a soldier being shot for desertion with "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" playing as the soundtrack. That was an anti-war movie. But notice that it kind of disappeared too because it's in black and white and it aint much fun.

Not sure what a really good Civil War movie would look like. I keep thinking I'm going to see one in my lifetime. Seems like it has always been a tricky subject because of the still partisan nature of American audiences. We wind up with goofy revisionist stuff like "Lost Shoes" or reenactor pageants like "Gettysburg." I hope the right filmmaker with millions in their pocket gets a hold of the right screenplay some day and really blows people away with some of the reality of the Civil War.

 

[drezac]

I'll jump on my spherical case box on artillery -

1. can't the special effects crew hook a cable to the gun with an air ram and make it recoil? (at least for the close shots)

2. The constant overtaking of guns, fully loaded with a primer and lanyard in place. When a gun is loaded, from the time the primer is placed in the vent to the gun firing is only seconds. In addition, if the crew was going to abandon the gun without a chance to spike it, no doubt they would take all equipment needed to fire it with them (they are wearing it, or it's in their hands )- would they really just drop it,or bother to take off the belt with the primer pouch and run so they could be shot with their own gun? at least in one scene in Gettysburg, a gun crew was killed, but someone ran up and pulled the lanyard - much more likely to happen.

3. too many ground bursts. all cannon (smooth-bores are cannon) would have been air bursts. you shoot shell or spherical case over the target, and set the fuse to explode overhead. for Rifles, only shell would have been percussion fused. Case still used the time fuses in rifles, as it was more effective if exploded over the targets.

4. Where are the horses? all you see are guns and limbers. How did the guns get there? did the artillery fairy just drop them off? and do replacement limbers with full chests of ammunition just appear? how else do they get there without horses.

 

[matthew mckeon]

I think there's something to what you said about it being hard to make an anti-war movie with 'exciting' combat scenes. They almost inevitably play as entertainment. It's why I liked Private Ryan when it first came out. The crowd I saw it with didn't have fun. They shuffled out of the theater quietly with tears on their faces. Seems like that's what watching what happens in war should do to people. But then that film seemed to spark a new interest and new production of "action" war movies including this ridiculous Mel Gibson thing that, as you point out, was anything but an anti-war film.
.
Maybe it's true that the only real anti-war film would just leave out the combat altogether? Ever see "The Victors" from 1963? It followed a group of GI's through the European campaign without ever actually showing them in combat. It had one of the most haunting movie images I remember from my childhood with a soldier being shot for desertion with "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" playing as the soundtrack. That was an anti-war movie. But notice that it kind of disappeared too because it's in black and white and it aint much fun.

Not sure what a really good Civil War movie would look like. I keep thinking I'm going to see one in my lifetime. Seems like it has always been a tricky subject because of the still partisan nature of American audiences. We wind up with goofy revisionist stuff like "Lost Shoes" or reenactor pageants like "Gettysburg." I hope the right filmmaker with millions in their pocket gets a hold of the right screenplay some day and really blows people away with some of the reality of the Civil War.

George peppard and another guy. A very, very young Robert Redford. I remember it.

We had "Glory" and "Lincoln" which were both good. One of the reasons it that they were about something.

 

[John Winn]

I'll jump on my spherical case box on artillery -

1. can't the special effects crew hook a cable to the gun with an air ram and make it recoil? (at least for the close shots)

2. The constant overtaking of guns, fully loaded with a primer and lanyard in place. When a gun is loaded, from the time the primer is placed in the vent to the gun firing is only seconds. In addition, if the crew was going to abandon the gun without a chance to spike it, no doubt they would take all equipment needed to fire it with them (they are wearing it, or it's in their hands )- would they really just drop it,or bother to take off the belt with the primer pouch and run so they could be shot with their own gun? at least in one scene in Gettysburg, a gun crew was killed, but someone ran up and pulled the lanyard - much more likely to happen.

3. too many ground bursts. all cannon (smooth-bores are cannon) would have been air bursts. you shoot shell or spherical case over the target, and set the fuse to explode overhead. for Rifles, only shell would have been percussion fused. Case still used the time fuses in rifles, as it was more effective if exploded over the targets.

4. Where are the horses? all you see are guns and limbers. How did the guns get there? did the artillery fairy just drop them off? and do replacement limbers with full chests of ammunition just appear? how else do they get there without horses.

YES. I'm so glad I'm not alone.

See my post #37.

 

[7th Mississippi Infantry]

Oh God no, don't let Quentin Tarantino anywhere near Gettysburg, He would have Robert E Lee running around with a pink beard and green eye patch.

Waterloo

It might be interesting . . . I'm sure Tarantino would have a scene for Uma Thurman running around the battlefield barefoot.

 

[AUG]

War movies have conventions. After everyone was blown away by Private Ryan's Omaha scene, every movie had the jerky camera, the stuttering film speed, the desaturated(almost washed out) colors. Occasional lingering shot of gore exploding in slow motion. You can't smell anything, you aren't killing anyone and there is no chance of you personally getting hurt. All the killed and wounded get up again. Its ****o graphy. Battle scenes are so intense, so exciting, that they tend to overwhelm the movie. That's the "good parts" of a war movie. All war movies are supposed to be antiwar movies...but they aren't. Because the battle scenes are so much fun.
Show me a war movie set in a hospital. That's an antiwar movie.

Right, that's the hypocrisy of it. People often walk away from these movies (SPR, Fury, etc.) thinking "war is hell" but when it comes down to it, the main reason why many went to see a war movie, and continue to do so, is to see the battle scenes! I know I and I'm sure many others here are "guilty" of that.

I think one of the best anti-war movies I know of is "The Thin Red Line". It does have some big battle scenes, however the battle scenes are not the main focus of the film, but the stark contract between nature and war. Imo, in comparison to other war films, the cinematography in Thin Red Line is the biggest reason to watch the film, not the battle scenes in particular.

 

[robert hayden]

Would a Confederate soldier have called out "corpsman" when looking for medical help for his buddy?

that's an excellent question,..as well as would the corpsman have been wearing a red armband ? I thought most of the combat scenes from "Wicked Spring" were far better than any other CW film, low budget or not. I had heard the survival rate for gut-shot CW soldiers was almost nil, & wondered if that had any bearing on the corpsman in the film almost totaly ignoring the wounded Confederate companion.

 

[Lost Cause]

Right, that's the hypocrisy of it. People often walk away from these movies (SPR, Fury, etc.) thinking "war is hell" but when it comes down to it, the main reason why many went to see a war movie, and continue to do so, is to see the battle scenes!

I think one of the best anti-war movies I know of is "The Thin Red Line". It does have some big battle scenes, however the battle scenes are not the main focus of the film, but the stark contract between nature and war. Imo, in comparison to other war films, the cinematography in Thin Red Line is the biggest reason to watch the film, not the battle scenes in particular.

"When Trumpets Fade" is a lesser known movie that focuses on the Battle of Hurtgen Forrest. Although it does have battle scenes, the film certainly took the glory and patriotism out of war.