Posted on 05/23/2019 5:09:10 AM PDT by srmanuel
I heard about this a week or two ago.
I've watched the movie countless times, but for some strange reason that I can't remember I never saw it on the big screen.
That's going to change on June 2, bought my tickets yesterday.
Really looking forward to it, even though the wife is dreading it.....she hates blood and guts war movies.
“strange reason that I can’t remember I never saw it on the big screen”
One trip to your local theater and you will remember the reason - immediately.
Now that really big TV screens of high quality have gotten pretty cheap, I don’t miss going to the theater at all.
I stop watching after the landing scene because Hanks’ and the American translator’s characters are embarrassing as hell.
To me it was worth seeing at least once, for the D-Day landing alone. No other movie I’ve seen comes close to that quality.
After that, it reminded me a bit of Bat 21, of which I felt the plot was about as equally stupid as Ryan’s, more so perhaps, because Bat 21 was true.
Just my opinion.
That, too.
Thanks for sharing. My son is taking his family to France for this year’s D Day anniversary. His grandfather (my Dad) served in France (Marseille) during WWII.
Somewhere I read that vets had to walk out of the D-Day landing scenes for awhile. Same thing for the AF bombing support for “We Were Soldiers.”
” I don’t miss going to the theater at all.”
Agree. Too convenient to not stay home, If I gotta go to the little boys room I just hit pause and don’t miss anything. I don’t need to see a movie when it just comes out, I can wait. Not to mention the obscene price of drinks and snacks at the theater.....sheesh.
Also, theres not much coming out of hollywood I care to see anyway.
Now that sounds like a fun date - take your beloved to something you know she will hate.
When any of us sees something in cinema that doesn't line up with our area of expertise (whatever that might be), we need to remember it's NOT A DOCUMENTARY - it's just entertainment for the masses.
(And not a training film)
Full Metal Jacket. Boot Camp, then absolute crap.
But less crap than Saving Private Ryan. Everyone remembers 'Me so horny' and 'Get some!', but nobody remembers Edith Piaf or sticky bombs.
But those are movies. Full disclosure, my dad landed on Utah Beach, and a few decades later, I landed on Parris Island.
I don’t think anyone is confusing the two....for me WW II history is a passion, last year I spent two weeks in Europe on a Stephen Ambrose Historical Tour, it followed the Path of the Band of Brothers, thru England, France, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Austria....Fantastic Trip.
Movies are entertainment, they are not the real thing...
Some people have much too high expectations in life and are routinely disappointed.
I expect very little and am seldom disappointed....
These things are indeed entertainment.
But I do believe they are valuable, at least things like “Saving Private Ryan” or “Band of Brothers”.
My young nephew who saw “Saving Private Ryan” remarked that “the stuff on the beach never happened” and I told him that, what really happened was far, far worse than what they showed in the movie.
Hollywood cannot relay effectively the atavistic and terrible aspects of violence and war, because there is only the audio and visual in a theater, there is no REAL sound, concussion, pain, overwhelming fear, devastating crushing fatigue, or...smell. From what veterans say, the smell of things is sometimes the worst of it. You can close your eyes or plug your ears, but there is no way to escape the smell.
That, and Hollywood, no matter how hard they try, cannot help themselves by injecting things that are just stupid. I have been somewhat of a student of the naval battles that took place in the Pacific in WWII, and due to my job, have had the opportunity and time to speak over the years with many veterans of it, including several remarkable hours I spent with one of the officers who survived the sinking of the USS Indianapolis.
So when the movie “USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage” came out, even though my expectations were not high, I was looking forward to seeing it.
I watched perhaps 15 minutes of it and shut it off. It was one of the stupidest war movies I had ever seen, they made it all about race relations, at least in the part I watched. Totally worthless Hollywood pap.
My favorite war movie (and favorite movie overall) is “The Best Years of Our Lives” which won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1946. That is a timeless movie, IMO.
One of my favorite quotes of all time is from “Tales of the South Pacific” by James Mitchener:
“These men of the South Pacific...like their victories, will be remembered as long as our generation lives. After that, like the men of the Confederacy, they will become strangers. Longer and longer shadows will obscure them until their Guadalcanal sounds distant on the ear like Shiloh and Valley Forge.”
The time for Guadalcanal to become obscure and sound like Shiloh has already come and gone, and there are now multiple generations of people who have little or no knowledge of Guadalcanal, never mind Shiloh (or even Chosin or Hue City) and movies, if done reasonably well, can provide a pathway to real knowledge. Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers were not perfect, but they are far better than Platoon or Apocalypse Now.
It was a nod to the Niland Brothers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niland_brothers), which is a true story.
It also brings to mind the Sullivan Brothers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullivan_brothers)
I would love to visit Normandy for D-Day commemoration. I’ll get there next year, maybe.
Instead, I’m going to Bedford, VA, to the National D-Day Memorial. (https://www.dday.org/)
I disliked “ Saving Private Ryan “ because it was another Hollyweird warping of history! I viewed it as typical Hollyweird arrogance our (meaning Hollyweird writers!) fictional drama is better then the actual real drama of history. The actual saving of private Ryan was pretty low key. “...The individual that inspired the Private James Frederick Ryan character, Frederick Niland, wasn’t ever lost and no search party was sent out to find him. ...” https://www.history.com/news/saving-private-ryan-real-life-dday-back-story
The courage, the sacrifice, and yes the horror of D-Day was story enough, they didn’t need to add nonsense!
Too too many people think what Hollyweird portrays is history.
A very good friend of ours just sat quietly for about 10 minutes after the movie We Were Soldiers. His 82nd Airborne unit in VietNam had been overrun in a fierce fire fight. He was one of 12 survivors.
We saw it together at his request as he did not want to see it alone.
His one comment afterwards was, "They got everything right, but the smell."
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