noguaranteeofsanity
Posts: 257
Joined: 11/24/2009
From: Sydney, Australia
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
The story-telling problem with historical movies is that the history is iron-bound in macro terms. Midway = huge US win. Pearl Harbor = huge steaming pile of US loss. The general audience knows this, at least about these two events. (Not so much Leyte.) So, if Midway has to follow history, and it's fiction and thus must have conflict, or, said another way, something at stake, how does a poor screenwritter handle that? Same way as Shakespeare did. Introduce family strife. To anyone who has read The Bard, either Heston or his son was toast the moment both walked on stage. Just as either Affleck or the other guy was; we just didn't know which one. That movie could have gone either way, which is why I give it a C- and not an F.
But Midway is "easier" to write because it has a triumphant end. Yes, people will die, and you'll know some of them well when they do. That's drama. But with Midway the creators can send the audience home happy, and they'lll tell their friends. The creators of "Pearl Harbor" felt they had to add that abortion of a Doolittle Raid because if they'd ended with smoke and death and destruction at Pearl Harbor--you know, history---they'd have torqued off their US audience, especially the female portion who got an aborted love arc AND death and destruction with no redemption. Pearl Harbor is prehaps the most difficult modern US wartime subject matter. To volunteer to make a movie of it is . . . odd, from a moviemaker's career standpoint.
Leyte is hard too, for different reasons. It recalls that classic movie "Bambi vs. Godzilla." No matter how you portray Taffy 3, the Japanese were going to get creamed. There's no doubt of that, and that's hard to do from a storytelling POV. What every fiction writer wants is a fair fight between credible opponents. That's one reason the technothriller genre in novels fell on hard times after the USSR fell apart. The might of the USA vs. Colombian drug cartels is Bambi Vs. the lizard.
Leyte could be written in a "The Pacific" manner. focusing on a few, tight character arcs, and showing the battle through their very narrow, local lens, but I doubt that would satisfy many of this forum's denizens. They want a god's-eye POV of maneuvering fleets and grand strategy, and that just isn't what Hollywood is good at. Or what modern audiences will pay for.
Agree. It is probably related to the recent war on terror as well, which doesn't allow for big, epic battles or stories with a triumphant end that has 'good' defeat 'evil', like you can portray in WW2 films. The studios would be looking to make wartime films, in part to uplift or give the American audience hope, but a war on terror story would revolve around religion, politics and threats to civilians, which too often than not, would only reinforce the audiences fears and be too sensitive a subject. Hollywood generally goes into propaganda mode whenever America is at war and would help explain why the original Midway film was made in 1976, despite the Vietnam War having just come to an end, as it provides a story of American redemption, triumph and an obvious victory during wartime.
< Message edited by noguaranteeofsanity -- 9/1/2010 12:44:40 AM >
|
Printable Version
RE: Slightly off topic - New Midway movie - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread