Historical events that should be turned into movies

Cafe Society
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This topic was posted by somebody on another message board I frequent, and I thought it was good enough to bring over here.

Preface: Yeah, yeah, I know, Hollywood screws everything up. Fact of life. But if they get the broad strokes more or less right, while messing around with details – say, Amistad, for example – it’s still a useful exercise. There are lots of great tales just waiting to be discovered by moviemakers, but, if you’re a purist, you may want to avoid this discussion, because you’ll just grind your teeth thinking about how Merriweather Lewis carried his journal in his coat pocket, not in his pack like the goddamn movie that couldn’t get it right grrr snarl snort – um, well, actually I don’t know that as a fact, I’m just making a little fun of the extremists’ view. Sorry.

Anyway, back to the topic. Good example: the Shackleton expedition. It’s an incredible story of survival, and it’s amazing to me it languished for so many years before Hollywood got around to it. (Wolfgang Petersen, director of Das Boot and most recently The Perfect Storm, is currently working on it.) If they even get it halfway correct, it’ll be amazing.

Another phenomenal survival story is in the book Arctic Grail. (If you’re a fan of history, and you haven’t read this, you must, must, must. Spectacular.) I don’t remember the names of the participants, but there was one expedition where a group of people got separated from their ship and drifted on an ice floe for several weeks. As I was reading, I kept thinking, holy crap, how come more people don’t know about this? If I ever get to be a moviemaker, I’m putting this one on my slate; it’s simply incredible. (In fact, on the other message board, I mentioned that the whole book Arctic Grail would make an amazing miniseries, a la HBO’s “From the Earth to the Moon.”)

The thing about historical events in movies is that they work best when they revolve around a single person. The recent Thirteen Days fictionalized and synthesized a minor character in order to give us an identifiable protagonist, and while the historians didn’t like it, I thought it was an intelligent and effective dramatic compromise that made the history more accessible. Other good examples of historical films that center on a main character are Lawrence of Arabia and Patton, of course, but for a better example of how a limited viewpoint can make a story work better, see Glory, which takes a complicated slice of history and focuses it down to the relationship between the commander and a couple of his men.

Also consider this year’s Pearl Harbor. Its huge historical canvas wouldn’t work very well as a straight movie (see Tora Tora Tora, which is interesting but dramatically fairly dry), so they made (in my opinion) the correct choice to create characters through whom we would experience the event. Unfortunately, of course, they did it really badly, and the movie stunk – but the approach, I think, was right.

By the same token, there are historical events that are so broad that they’d have to be significantly narrowed in order to work as a movie story. Take, for example, The Crusades. Which one do you do? Actually, which part of which one? Who’s the main character? What’s the arc?

So with all of this in mind, history buffs, what real-life events would you like to see on the big screen? Either because they’re just plain cool (they’re working on the Battle of Marathon right now, trying to capitalize on the success of Gladiator), because they’re important (likewise, somebody’s doing a biography of Alexander the Great), or because there’s some little-known incident that deserves to be brought back into the public spotlight (e.g. Sayles’s Matewan).

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There was a war in mid-17th century Ireland that even today historians are still having trouble sorting out. Basically, it was the Ulster Scots anti-royalists vs the Anglo royalists vs the Irish nobility vs the Catholic royalists vs the Catholic anti-royalists.

There’s a comedy classic in there somewhere.

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Give me the Third Crusade and play up the conflict between Richard and Saladin.

In fact, I’d use Saladin as the main character; he was always far more fascinating to me.

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It ought to be possible to make the life of the prophet Muhammed into a grand, sweeping epic along the lines of David Lean.

And the career of Luke Short, from the Dodge City War to the White Elephant saloon and the gunfight with Jim Courtright could be made into a top-notch Western. (If they could only resist the temptation to make him a square-jawed hunk and cast him as a witty little dandy like Short actually was).

The conflict between Marius and Sulla as a microcosm of the decline of the Roman republic could make a fine subject for a movie.

A number of movies have been made about Indian chiefs recently, but I don’t think one has ever done about Tecumseh; it could make an interesting allegory about how rarely people can set aside their petty differences to face a massive threat to their way of life.

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There was a movie called King Richard and the Crusaders with George Sanders as Richard and Rex Harrison (hurrah!) as Saladin. Not very historically accurate, but I found it very entertaining.

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The story of Alexander the Great, as we now know it, is abosolutely amazing. It’s got everything a blockbuster needs. He…

  • Was tutored by freaking Aristotle, fer crying out loud!

  • Tamed an untameable horse, which he rode throughout his life.

  • Was the guy who cut the Gordian Knot.

  • Personally led his troops into battle… from the front. Most accounts of his fighting abilities imply that he was a physical genius, of sorts, and more than a little crazy in battle. Once, he jumped into a walled city alone and fought the defenders off singlehanded until he passed out from loss of blood.

  • Killed his best friend–to whom Alexander owed his life–in a drunken argument.

  • Was most likely bisexual, but was also married to and madly in love with the hottest babe in Eurasia. Kiiiinky.

  • Once fought an elephant-mounted army led by a seven-foot tall king. When he eventually won the day, he allowed King Porus to remain the regent of his territory, because he was so bad-ass.

All of the above are more or less factual, as best anyone can discern. I’m telling you, it’s effing money in the bank! No, Richard Burton never did anything like this. Don’t bother to look it up.

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There needs to be a good movie about Cortez’s arrival in Mexico, maybe using the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz as a backdrop. It’s an incredible story - Cortez and his men were viewed by their peers as people of extraordinary bravery and courage, but history is less kind. You could do a fantastic story about this devastating clash of cultures, ideologies, beliefs, and germs.

And no, the Road to El Dorado does not count.

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Danimal, according to IMDB, there have actually been three films made about Tecumseh, but one was German and one was made-for-cable. He was an amazing guy with a lot of personality, as were a number of those who fought with him.

One of the most tragic stories I’ve ever read is about Chief Joseph and his attempt to lead his tribe into Canada. His retreat was a work of superb generalship, bringing along the women, children and old men along with him, but the tribe was cornered almost within sight of the border. Chief Joseph was said to have died of a broken heart…

Uncas was a bad-ass guy, a pretty bad guy, really. There’s actually a sort of courtroom drama in his story, where he defeated his arch-enemy Miantonomo in battle, and brought him before the Colonies in order to have him tried as a criminal. The Colony of Connecticut deferred to the United Colonies, who in turn handed the case off to a body of clergymen, who in turn decided that Miantonomo should die, but, um, not on Christian territory, please. Uncas, maybe a little disgusted with the English concept of justice, marched Miantonomo off, had him killed, then cut off a chunk of the guy’s shoulder and ate it. Niiiice.

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Sofa King: Chief Joseph’s flight was dramatized in the film I Will Fight No More Forever. Plays a little loose with a few facts, but it’s mostly accurate and a fairly effective bit of storytelling.

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The rise and fall of Brian Boru. A few years ago, when we had all the Braveheart and Rob Roy hoopla, I was convinced that Brian Boru would be next on deck, to tap into all that Irish American sentiment running around. Which of course goes to show you how good I am at predicting Hollywood.

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I don’t know if this really counts, since it’s currently being made into a movie, but the war-time exploits of Jasper Maskelyne (aka, the “War Magician”) should be interesting. However, the fact that they’ve already cast Tom Cruise in the lead role has me somewhat concerned…

Also, even though Pearl Harbor has been done, and it stunk, I think they could have made it everything it should have been if, instead of concentrating on a love triangle involving a couple of fly-boys, they concentrated on a group of men stationed on one of the battleships (Arizona, Nevada, or Oklahoma being prime candidates for lots of action and drama). It needn’t even be historically all-encompassing (like Tora, Tora, Tora tried to be).

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I’ve always thought the story of the Pacific Clipper would make an excellent movie. The Pacific Clipper was a Pan Am flying boat that was airborne en route to New Zealand at the moment the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Upon his arrival in Auckland, the pilot was told he was free to use any means at his disposal to get himself and his crew home. Unable to fly back across the Pacific, they began an amazing month-long journey flying west, around the world, with no navigational aids or support. It was the first circumnavigation of the world by an aircraft flying a route close to the equator and the first for a commercial aircraft. You can read a little about this story at this site.

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According to Coming Attractions, there are no less then three Alexander the Great biopics in production right now. A Dino DeLarentis version directed by Ridley Scott (maybe), a version directed by Chris McQuarrie of The Way of the Gun fame, and an Oliver Stone version. All three are in development hell right now, but the McQuarrie version has a screenplay.

Does this make you feel better or worse, Sofa King?

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The Anabasis (of course :wink: )

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Better… but only if McQuarrie gets it.

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The story of Hans van Meegeren, a Dutch painter who did forged works in the style of Vermeer. He sold or traded several pieces to the Nazis during WWII. After the war, he was arrested by Dutch authorities and charged with collaboration because of works he sold to Hermann Göring.

To save himself, he confessed that he was a forger, then spent two months painting another fake Vermeer to prove that he hadn’t actually sold Dutch national treasures to the Nazis. And he said that he should be considered a hero for having hoodwinked them, for that matter.

I’d like to see Jonathan Demme tackle that one.

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I think that must be the story of the USS Polaris. Beside the story of those stranded on the ice flow there’s also the likely murder by poisoning of the ship’s captain.

After seeing the impressive CGI effects used in Titanic I figured it’s about time someone made a film about the Battle of Trafalgar. The fact that there are only one or two replicas in the whole world that come close to reselmbling the 60-odd ships involved has made such a film impossible until now.

If Mr. Cameron is interested, I’ve got a script for him.

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I think the Norman conquest of England would make a great movie.
It’s already scripted on the Bayeux Tapestry.

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The Lusitania would make a DAMN good movie-the only one made about it was a silent in 1916 that was used as propaganda.

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I was getting ready for bed Tuesday night, when I noticed a bridge building documentary on PBS, and I had to stay up and watch it. So you will understand if I think that Tora! Tora! Tora! was a great movie and that its approach works very well. Which is not to say that a more personal approach wouldn’t also make a good movie.

1812: I know the novel is historical fiction, but it’s more history than it is fiction and damn, this is a book begging to be made into a 3 hour epic. The British overrun and burn Washington; Dolly Madison saving artwork from the White House, epic naval battles, the first American battlefield victory over an equal sized British force.