Plot Holes in World War II - Page 2

Fear the Turtle · #51 03-22-2012, 01:27 PM

(Fade In: Pitch meeting for new mini - series, World War Two: Electric Boogaloo. Less Grossman is pitching his episode.)

LG: OK. We'll give the bad guys an 'unsinkable' battleship, the most powerful in the world . Name it after a former leader that unified the country. Act 1 - ship engages the good guys and sinks a battlecruiser with one shell - no survivors.

Anonymous exec: C'mon!

LG: OK - 3 survivors. Act 2. Cat and mouse in the North Atlantic. Skirmishes with the good guys then the ship heads for safe harbor

AE: C'mon. The good guys have the most powerful navy in the world, and radar. And the bad guy's codes!

LG: Still, the BB is heading for safe harbor - one day out. The good guys laucnch obsolete planes against it. I know - let's make 'em biplanes to show how obsolete they are...

AE: C'mon!

LG: ... and inexperienced crews. Let's show 'em attacking one of their own ships by mistake...

AE: C'mon!

LG: ... to show how inexperienced they are. Then, on the last possible sortie...

AE: C'mon!

LG: ... before the ship is safe, one of the airplanes launches its torpedo. The ship turns away, dramatic tension ensues. Can the ship turn in time? Will the torpedo hit? Dum, dum, dum ....BAM! The torpedo hits the rudder ...

AE: C'mon!

LG: ... as the ship just barely fails to turn completely in time. Now that the ship is disabled the good guy's navy can come in and finish it off.

JohnT · #52 03-22-2012, 01:29 PM

C'mon!

billfish678 · #53 03-22-2012, 01:41 PM

I'll give the WW2 producers one thumbs up. No freaking vampires or zombies.

Wargamer · #54 03-22-2012, 01:42 PM

And can you believe the scene where the Americans have just gotten in the war, and the British say, "Umm, you might want to start convoying your ships on the Eastern Seaboard. We've had two years experience in this war and we remember almost losing WW I." and the US admirals blow them off? Like that would really happen.

Gedd · #55 03-22-2012, 01:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by billfish678

I'll give the WW2 producers one thumbs up. No freaking vampires or zombies.

They're saving that for WW3.

well he's back · #56 03-22-2012, 01:47 PM

and they lost me when they threw in the token black guys from Tuskegee and the token Indians creating an unbreakable code. c'mon.

billfish678 · #57 03-22-2012, 02:03 PM

Wasn't there some over the top scene where a bomb was dropped right down a ship's smokestack? Common now, the only thing missing there to take it totally over the top was a womp rat reference (preferably referencing Texas).

And the whole "going green" angle bugged me. You have massive industrial powers fighting and if folks recycle, car pool, turn in used pantyhose, and start backyard gardens thats gonna help you win the war? Really?

kunilou · #58 03-22-2012, 03:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by well he's back

and they lost me when they threw in the token black guys from Tuskegee and the token Indians creating an unbreakable code. c'mon.

Don't forget the token Japanese-Americans. They start out by getting blamed for what those other Japanese did, and are put in camps out in the desert. Then a few of them are let out so they can fight for the good guys, and they respond by being some of the fiercest fighters and winning a bunch of medals and stuff. As a reward. . . well, there isn't really a reward. Their relatives still have to sit in camps out in the desert until the war ends.

Andy L · #59 03-22-2012, 03:20 PM

You guys all missed the original series ("The Great War" - later renumbered (Lucas-style) into "WWI"), which had all those slapstick moments - starting with the assassination attempt that succeeds only because the Grand Duke's motorcade takes a wrong turn and happens to drive right past the guy who had been trying to assassinate him all day long, and gets one last chance The fighter-pilots were also pretty broad comedy - throwing bricks at each other mid-flight, (trying) shooting through the propellers only to shoot the propellers off, or accidentally kill themselves with ricochets, etc. If you watch carefully, you'll see the villain of the sequel has a bit part as a corporal in the prequel.

Wargamer · #60 03-22-2012, 03:35 PM

And that bit with the evil Germans, as the war is winding down, using their limited rail capacity to continue their genocidal work of shipping victims to the concentration camps rather than, you know, railing reinforcements to the front?

bucketybuck · #61 03-22-2012, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gedd

They're saving that for WW3.

WWZ, surely?

Derleth · #62 03-22-2012, 03:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wargamer

And that bit with the evil Germans, as the war is winding down, using their limited rail capacity to continue their genocidal work of shipping victims to the concentration camps rather than, you know, railing reinforcements to the front?

The whole Holocaust subplot was frankly overdone. Yes, yes, we get that the Nazis are the Bad Guys and you're playing up their use of previously-established European hatreds to gain power. Right. But, somehow, the previous bunches of Jew-haters were content with the occasional pogrom when things were especially bad, and otherwise left the Jews alone in their ghettos. They never had to mechanize the process and turn it into something from a Nine Inch Nails music video. You know what? I take that back: Reznor has too much self-control to do something like that. It's pure Marilyn Manson/Rob Zombie nonsense.

And then we get Anne Frank. She gets shit on 24/7, she spends her time hiding in an attic, and she still says that she believes people are fundamentally good as she's being lead off to die? I don't buy that. No kid would be that Pollyannaish. Totally blows the whole tone of the piece.

billfish678 · #63 03-22-2012, 03:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wargamer

And that bit with the evil Germans, as the war is winding down, using their limited rail capacity to continue their genocidal work of shipping victims to the concentration camps rather than, you know, railing reinforcements to the front?

That was explained by a subplot that was cut and never shown in the original release. Two characters, played by Will Smith and Jeff Goldbloom in (When Good Plans Go Wrong), hack in the Nazi's superadvanced computer system that dispatches trains. The purpose was to cause the whole system to break down. But instead it just put the Jews at the front of the shipping que. The producers thought this would bring some gritty realism to the movie, but test audiences didn't like the good guys causing bad things to happen. But because they had shot the movie out of sequence, they were still commited to showing the Jews getting shipped off for some strange reason.

GIGObuster · #64 03-22-2012, 04:08 PM

Heh, I also live this thread as I love history and movies.

Now if one accepts the view of some modern historians to declare WWI and WWII as being part of the same great war...

Look at that big ass intermission! Those theaters (of operation

) really want to get their money's worth at the lobby! And don't get me started about how stupid was to have Italy to switch sides 4 times during the conflict!

Spoke · #65 03-22-2012, 04:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnT

Well, the Pacific side of the story was a bit draggy after all... how many islands does one have to hop to get to Japan, anyway?

Well they did try to juice it up a little bit with that subplot where a ship goes down and the survivors get attacked by sharks. Pretty cliched, though. What's next? Pirates?

JohnT · #66 03-22-2012, 04:30 PM

Yeah, they stole that shit straight from Jaws.

phreesh · #67 03-22-2012, 04:37 PM

Super-happy they kept the tanks from WW I. Those things are AWESOME.

I missed the zeppelins, though.

The whole Japanese sub-plot felt like an excuse for the big special effects scene at the end.

TriPolar · #68 03-22-2012, 04:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

Heh, I also live this thread as I love history and movies.

Now if one accepts the view of some modern historians to declare WWI and WWII as being part of the same great war...

Look at that big ass intermission! Those theaters (of operation

) really want to get their money's worth at the lobby! And don't get me started about how stupid was to have Italy to switch sides 4 times during the conflict!

WWI sucked. As will WWIII. Only the even numbered sequels are any good.

JohnT · #69 03-22-2012, 04:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by phreesh

Super-happy they kept the tanks from WW I. Those things are AWESOME.

I missed the zeppelins, though.

The whole Japanese sub-plot felt like an excuse for the big special effects scene at the end.

Yeah, and they screwed the visuals of that up by not having the main hero, Jimmy Doolittle, leap away from the explosion into a ditch just in the nick of time.

Well, at least they didn't have him hiding in a refrigerator.

Babale · #70 03-22-2012, 07:23 PM

I got wooshed when I first opened this thread. I was sure it was a Holocaust Denier!

Koxinga · #71 03-22-2012, 08:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derleth

The whole Holocaust subplot was frankly overdone. Yes, yes, we get that the Nazis are the Bad Guys and you're playing up their use of previously-established European hatreds to gain power. Right. But, somehow, the previous bunches of Jew-haters were content with the occasional pogrom when things were especially bad, and otherwise left the Jews alone in their ghettos. They never had to mechanize the process and turn it into something from a Nine Inch Nails music video. You know what? I take that back: Reznor has too much self-control to do something like that. It's pure Marilyn Manson/Rob Zombie nonsense.

And then we get Anne Frank. She gets shit on 24/7, she spends her time hiding in an attic, and she still says that she believes people are fundamentally good as she's being lead off to die? I don't buy that. No kid would be that Pollyannaish. Totally blows the whole tone of the piece.

And in the epilogue where the Jews are shown founding their own country and going on to be total badasses* with a rallying cry of "Never Again" ? That felt really tacked-on, and frankly did nothing to ameliorate the torture porn of the previous 90,000 hours.

(*Not only kicking ass militarily, but hunting down, kidnapping and _executing_ a number of their WWII tormentors? That's what really snapped my suspension of disbelief, and at the very end of the series, too.)

kunilou · #72 03-22-2012, 08:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by billfish678

. . .test audiences didn't like the good guys causing bad things to happen.

France shot first!

Little Nemo · #73 03-22-2012, 08:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fear the Turtle

LG: OK. We'll give the bad guys an 'unsinkable' battleship, the most powerful in the world . Name it after a former leader that unified the country. Act 1 - ship engages the good guys and sinks a battlecruiser with one shell - no survivors.

Anonymous exec: C'mon!

"Admit it. You just stole that idea from that blimp thing they ran on Discover last season."

Little Nemo · #74 03-22-2012, 08:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by billfish678

I dunno. I really like the use of the "shaky cam" footage. If I hadn't know better I would say all that footage was taken during an actual war. I also like how they didn't bow down to modern sensibilities and shot most of the movie in black and white for artistic effect (and the obvious moral implications of course).

Just a bunch of Jim Jarmusch wannabees trying to look "indy". Save that stuff for Sundance, kid.

President Johnny Gentle · #75 03-22-2012, 10:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

The Vice President wasn't an important role so they apparently didn't bother casting a regular in it. If you pay attention you can see three different people playing Roosevelt's Vice President.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

It was pretty obvious towards the end that they were setting everything up so that they could do a World War III series with Britain and America fighting Russia. But I guess World War II didn't do well enough and they never made the sequel.

They tried to deal with these in a really lame follow-up miniseries. They start by taking Roosevelt's VP and make him out to be extremely unpopular. So, of course, when the next election rolls around, the big twist is that the guy wins the election somehow. The writers obviously knew it was a stupid move, since they hung a huge lampshade on it.

All through the miniseries, they play up the competition between the US/UK and the Soviet Union. At the end of every episode, the two sides are on the brink of war. Of course, the whole situation gets defused at the start of the next episode.

But don't even get me started on the finale. The end of the series played like a bad parody of Shyamalan. The whole series has this underlying morality play aspect to it: good vs. evil and all that. The US leader (as an easter egg, he shows up on some movie posters in the background of WW2) even declares the Soviets to be an "Evil Empire". The Soviets are made out to be evil, invincible, and have an unbreakable will. So obviously the Americans are shown to have no chance of beating them. So how to the writers get out of this corner? The Soviets somehow lose a war in this incomprehensible subplot in Afghanistan and then decide they've had enough and just give up. The writers actually had the Soviet leader step down and break the USSR up into 15 countries, just to emphasize that were truly no longer a major threat.

Malacandra · #76 03-23-2012, 10:45 AM

How about that retarded episode where France has just fallen, there's like a third of a million Brits stuck in France and the whole German army, navy and air force bearing down on them, and apparently they get their men home in everything from Navy destroyers down to rowing boats, or so it seems, while as far as anyone can tell the Germans are just sitting around drinking plundered French wine and scarfing sauerkraut. I'm guessing they were originally going to write Britain out of the story at the same time as France, then realized they needed something ongoing over the next year or so till they brought in that "Barbarossa" plot twist

and they needed to explain why the British still had an army to send off to Greece, Crete, North Africa and everywhere else where they needed good guys talking without subtitles.

RickJay · #77 03-23-2012, 11:18 AM

My big problem with the series was the entire Pacific War side story. What the fuck did it even contribute to the series? I was waiting for that story to connect with the main plot, but it never did; we heard some vague dialogue about how the Nazis and the Japanese were allies but we never saw them BE allies. SHOW, DON'T TELL. We saw the Nazis and the Italians working together, so that made sense. But not once did Germany and Japan actually DO anything as allies, and nothing about the Pacific story arc really had much of an impact on the European arc (and why the fuck were the Soviets not at war with Japan? If it's a world war, that makes no sense at all; they even said the two sides had fought before and hated each other. What the hell?) And because it was a sub-story they ran out of time and ended it with the Magic Weapon. It was worse than "The Stand."

Really, the Pacific War thing should have been a standalone story - you still have the bullshit ending, but I kind of liked other aspects of the plot, and you could fix the ending.

willthekittensurvive? · #78 03-23-2012, 11:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gedd

They made Hitler a very unbelievable character IMHO. Really, .

the thing that pisses me off is not that they stole the whole act from Charlie Chaplin, but they forgot to make him funny!

MOIDALIZE · #79 03-23-2012, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koxinga

The whole feminist "Rosie the Riveter" subplot was anachronistic and jarring. Come on, author, this was almost three quarters of a century ago, barely after women had even gotten the vote. Way to project modern values there. And that whole plucky women's baseball thing? My eyes about rolled out of my head.

That was tasteful and believable compared to the blatant fan service that was the Soviet sniper girls and the Night Witches. Wait, I'm sorry, the "Nachthexen", because they wouldn't be cool if they didn't have some sinister-sounding German name.

Imago · #80 03-23-2012, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy L

You guys all missed the original series ("The Great War" - later renumbered (Lucas-style) into "WWI"), which had all those slapstick moments - starting with the assassination attempt that succeeds only because the Grand Duke's motorcade takes a wrong turn and happens to drive right past the guy who had been trying to assassinate him all day long, and gets one last chance The fighter-pilots were also pretty broad comedy - throwing bricks at each other mid-flight, (trying) shooting through the propellers only to shoot the propellers off, or accidentally kill themselves with ricochets, etc. If you watch carefully, you'll see the villain of the sequel has a bit part as a corporal in the prequel.

This. This made my day.

Scumpup · #81 03-23-2012, 12:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willthekittensurvive?

the thing that pisses me off is not that they stole the whole act from Charlie Chaplin, but they forgot to make him funny!

What about the out-of-place characterizations for several of the secondary villains? An obese, morphine-addicted, art thief with a penchant for flamboyant dress? Why didn't they just have Dean Martin do a cameo as Matt Helm to kill him instead of that whole suicide in prison thing? How about Floyd the Barber's evil genocidal twin? I kept waiting for Andy Griffith and Don Knotts to show up and set him straight. And I really, really think that the role of the Italian leader should not have been played as so broadly comedic. It was like the actor had studied the entire oeuvres of both Curly Howard and Jack Oakie as the basis for his performance.

pravnik · #82 03-23-2012, 01:07 PM

The Audie Murphy character is just a rehash of the Alvin York character from the first one. Oh, another crackshot farmboy from the American south who singlehandedly takes out dozens upon dozens of Germans? That's really original, and just as plausible this time.

The other thing was the whole Indianapolis subplot. When did this go from a tense thriller about the end of the war to a bloody horror flick about sharks? It's like they switched directors midstream like Tarantino and Rodiguez did in From Dusk Till Dawn. It's extremely jarring to totally abandon one story line for a totally different one.

YogSosoth · #83 03-23-2012, 01:09 PM

Plot holes from real life!

I love this board!

RealityChuck · #84 03-23-2012, 01:38 PM

You'd think that with the budget, they could have afforded to film the entire thing in color. I've seen some color test footage, but who made the decision not to do the entire film that way?

JohnT · #85 03-23-2012, 01:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RealityChuck

You'd think that with the budget, they could have afforded to film the entire thing in color. I've seen some color test footage, but who made the decision not to do the entire film that way?

Verisimilitude and expense. The first because most of the film stock from that era is B&W (GWTW notwithstanding, most films were B&W), second because with lack of trying for the exact colors of things that existed during that era, B&W allowed them to significantly reduce their makeup, wardrobe, and F/X needs, and therefore, budgets.

silenus · #86 03-23-2012, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RealityChuck

You'd think that with the budget, they could have afforded to film the entire thing in color. I've seen some color test footage, but who made the decision not to do the entire film that way?

Look, it worked for Wizard of Oz, didn't it?

Voyager · #87 03-23-2012, 02:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by President Johnny Gentle

But don't even get me started on the finale. The end of the series played like a bad parody of Shyamalan. The whole series has this underlying morality play aspect to it: good vs. evil and all that. The US leader (as an easter egg, he shows up on some movie posters in the background of WW2) even declares the Soviets to be an "Evil Empire". The Soviets are made out to be evil, invincible, and have an unbreakable will. So obviously the Americans are shown to have no chance of beating them. So how to the writers get out of this corner? The Soviets somehow lose a war in this incomprehensible subplot in Afghanistan and then decide they've had enough and just give up. The writers actually had the Soviet leader step down and break the USSR up into 15 countries, just to emphasize that were truly no longer a major threat.

This whole thing was stolen from a novel "The Third World War" by a real general, which end with the Soviet Union disintegrating at the end of a war with NATO. But these clowns didn't get the budget to even stage the war, (I guess they couldn't afford the extras and the sfx) and so used this plot point without the war.
The great adversary crumbling with one push? Way to write a realistic and scary villain, guys.

Malacandra · #88 03-23-2012, 02:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RickJay

My big problem with the series was the entire Pacific War side story. What the fuck did it even contribute to the series? I was waiting for that story to connect with the main plot, but it never did; we heard some vague dialogue about how the Nazis and the Japanese were allies but we never saw them BE allies. SHOW, DON'T TELL. We saw the Nazis and the Italians working together, so that made sense. But not once did Germany and Japan actually DO anything as allies, and nothing about the Pacific story arc really had much of an impact on the European arc (and why the fuck were the Soviets not at war with Japan? If it's a world war, that makes no sense at all; they even said the two sides had fought before and hated each other. What the hell?) And because it was a sub-story they ran out of time and ended it with the Magic Weapon. It was worse than "The Stand."

Really, the Pacific War thing should have been a standalone story - you still have the bullshit ending, but I kind of liked other aspects of the plot, and you could fix the ending.

That, IMO, was partly down to this desperate need they had to get the Americans into the war with Germany after all. They'd painted themselves into a corner over this American isolationism they'd written in, so the only way they could get the fancy US hardware they'd decided to give the good guys into the European theatre - where it could face off against all those "cool Nazi"

panzers and planes - was to get Hitler to declare war on America. Obviously even the writers couldn't be so dumb as to have him do it for no reason at all, and they didn't want to rehash that dreadful cliche from The Great War (you know how they got the US into Europe that time, of course?

) so they decided to make Hitler an "ally" of the Japanese so he could get the US-Germany show on the road.

I mean, for my money, the European war worked fine as a story without the Americans - you had the Russians for the big land battles once you got past the fall of France, and the British for the naval and air actions, also some admittedly cool-though-contrived desert sequences - but if you want to get the dollar revenue you've got to put the heroic Americans front and centre. Crass commercialism, but let's not pretend the series would have made the big bucks without it.

GIGObuster · #89 03-23-2012, 03:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RealityChuck

You'd think that with the budget, they could have afforded to film the entire thing in color. I've seen some color test footage, but who made the decision not to do the entire film that way?

Hey, give them a break! The classic Combat! was not in color until their last 5th season.

*Useless bit of trivia: Besides salary demands from stars like Vick Morrow, the increased cost of the switch to color was also a reason for the end of the show.

Normal Phase · #90 03-23-2012, 03:16 PM

The whole Pearl Harbor thing was such a transparent sop to the "Hate America First" crowd, because no way can Hollywood ever let the American military be competent for a WHOLE war. No, you have to have the whole Pacific command sitting around with their thumbs up their asses instead of, you know, paying any attention AT ALL to the warmongers across the Pacific. And then of course they can't even take it to its logical conclusion, because if the whole fleet gets trashed you lose half the plot. So all the carriers are oh-so-conveniently off ... somewhere. Yeah that's plausible.

Don't even get me started on the internment camps. Yeah, we get it Hollywood, we're no better than the Nazis. Fuckers.

RealityChuck · #91 03-23-2012, 03:20 PM

And, of course, the leader of the blond Aryan race had dark hair. Why would anyone follow him if he didn't match the image?

silenus · #92 03-23-2012, 03:20 PM

Did they actually think people would buy boarding parties in the 20th Century? The very idea that a modern naval commander would order "Away all boarders!" is insane. USS Pillsbury? Nice product placement, guys. Real subtle.

phreesh · #93 03-23-2012, 03:31 PM

The whole Italian subplot was also a mess. Why not just keep them part of the Allies and simplify the whole thing the Hitler character being the primary lead with the Hirohito character the secondary lead? The Italian thing was superfluous.

Also, I echo RealityChuck. Leader of the 'Aryan' army has dark hair and is slightly built? WTF? Too confusing.

silenus · #94 03-23-2012, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by phreesh

The whole Italian subplot was also a mess. Why not just keep them part of the Allies and simplify the whole thing the Hitler character being the primary lead with the Hirohito character the secondary lead? The Italian thing was superfluous.

Comedy relief and aesthetics. The fat one balances out the two skinny ones.

shiftless · #95 03-23-2012, 03:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malacandra

I mean, for my money, the European war worked fine as a story without the Americans - you had the Russians for the big land battles once you got past the fall of France, and the British for the naval and air actions, also some admittedly cool-though-contrived desert sequences - but if you want to get the dollar revenue you've got to put the heroic Americans front and centre. Crass commercialism, but let's not pretend the series would have made the big bucks without it.

You have to remember that America was the star of the whole story. Other countries were involved in supporting roles, sure, but the overarching theme was America (God bless her) taking on evil. Personally, I didn't think they need two years of build up before the main star came on stage. They could have just cut out the whole first year where some small countries with odd names did something or other, who remembers, and get straight to America coming to the rescue. America should have had bigger tanks too, with lazers.

Malacandra · #96 03-23-2012, 03:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RealityChuck

And, of course, the leader of the blond Aryan race had dark hair. Why would anyone follow him if he didn't match the image?

Oh, the hair's the least implausible part of it. What we've got circa 1930 is this peaceful Weimar Republic trying to live down the misdeeds of the Kaiser's little adventure, and as we know the Germans are industrious, scientific and rational to a fault. So we're asked to believe that this funny-looking guy who's already been in the slammer for his political views is going to take control of the country on the strength of some pot-boiler he's written that makes Atlas Shrugged look like great philosophy, and a talent for screaming at people by torchlight until there are flecks of spittle at the corners of his mouth and you'd be uncomfortably convinced he was creaming his pants. Yeah, right.