Nothing substantive to add, but my pet peeve in movies & TV is when the superior always feels the need to say “that’s an order.” God, that bugs me. One of the first things I learned in bootcamp is when a superior anybody directs you to do something, it’s an order. Always. You don’t say “that’s an order,” because everything that comes out of your mouth should be taken as an order.
How do you feel about the back-talk from a subordinate that always leads to the “That’s an order” bit?
One of the false notes in Saving Private Ryan was the rescue squad, commanded by a Captain, walking down a road with one guy openly arguing about the merits of the mission.
levdrakon: That’s probably because characters in military-themed movies talk a lot more informally (I think) with superiors than they would in real life. They’re characters, and screenwriters have to make them seem interesting by having them talk about the things that would ordinarily make someone like them or feel like they knew them. Also, since ‘That’s an order!’ will almost always result in someone’s failure to follow that order, it has to be made clear that the order given was an order, and that the person refusing to do it is being insubordinate.
Anyone who has technical knowledge about any field will find faults in movies, as several others have said. But you’d think they’d get it right in areas where a lot of people have some knowledge. Most people know, for example, what a computer interface looks like, that dial-up Internet connections take some time to connect and are slow to download, that you don’t have to type constantly just to copy a file, and so on.
Similarly, anyone who’s been in the military would know what the uniforms should look like, and there are a lot of people who have some knowledge about military hardware. I can identify planes, and I notice when the aggressors are F-4s or F-5s. (Strangely, WWII movies get this right a lot more often. It must be easier to rent a Bf 109 than a MiG-21.) But this is acceptable – I don’t expect that filmmakers would be able to get a foreign aircraft and someone able to fly it according to a script. There are people who can identify guns, and they know how many bullets each gun can fire before being reloaded. Movies, of course, never get this right. And since so many movies have guns, or use the ‘how many bullets do I have left’ plot device, you’d really think they could do some research.
I’m prior service (Army), and I don’t notice the mistakes in many movies. I don’t really go looking for them, because I don’t really care that much (I’m trying to represent myself as one of the great, unwashed masses, despite knowing what’s “right”). Obviously gross errors stand out and screw up the whole suspension of disbelief thing, but for the most part military flicks are pretty good.
For example, I liked Courage Under Fire, and didn’t worry about the little details, or even the big ones – the story was enough.
I really, really liked Renaissance Man, and although I didn’t pay attention to the uniforms (they were usually in their T’s), I really like all of the details in the barracks, like authentic wall lockers, and how the laundry bags were tied to the bunks. Never mind that “Ft. Mclane” is really called Selfridge and is an ANG base, and that there’s no basic training of troops anywhere in Michigan, and I’ve never seen civilians eating in the dining facilities.
Oooh, I meant to add that it depends on the superior and type of unit, and the context of the situation. I imagine maybe grunts (tank drivers and infantry?) would be different, but I was always in air traffic control units. Everyone was pretty much on a first-name basis among NCO’s and junior enlisted, and sometimes with the officers in the proper context. Keeping “proper context” in mind, it didn’t hurt discipline at all, and being mostly ATC’s, did a lot for morale. I’m talking on the company level, of course.
movie sets are replete with people who basically know jack about their supposed area of expertise, but make a living out of knowing a little more than anyone else. Of course they may know a little about a lot of areas whereas you know a lot about one area. As one fellow I know who deals in collectible military uniforms and plays military types occasionally on screen says, “I can do this because I’ve been doing it for years. Ask me to do something else and I couldn’t do it” (he appears in ‘Michael Collins’ and ‘Saving Private Ryan’). Of course even the man who knows what’s what gets overuled sometimes. I recall another fellow who addressed a seminar on historical re-enactment telling us of his experiences on film sets arguing with directors “you are the military advisor and you have Advised Me. Now we are going to do it my way.” Of some productions he could say, “if you thought it was poor, you should have seen the script BEFORE I got to voice my views on it”. Wardrobe masters are given a budget, which is always less then they would like, and have to achieve miracles on that budget, while the director is chopping and changing his mind about what they are going to shoot tomorrow. Sometimes it’s surprising the end result doesn’t look worse.
Any of you seen that movie on late-night cable (no, not that kind of movie :rolleyes: ) that is set aboard the US aircraft carrier “USS Okla”. For you military types, it must drive you bonkers. First, they obviously changed the name of the ship after production started. Many of the characters are wearing caps that say “USS Oklahoma BB-37” on them, but the “homa” has been covered up. Then, there’s the “BB”, which is a battleship, not a carrier. And the USS Oklahoma was a WW2 battle ship (BB-37) sunk at Pearl Harbor. I don’t believe there are any carriers named for states. The USS Oklahoma City (SSN-723) is a submarine. Dialog in the movie was even changed during looping. The actors clearly say “Oklahoma”, but the sound says Okla. If they were that sloppy on major plot points, I can only imagine how terrible the rest of the show was. I can’t even remember the name of the movie.
Oh, the humanity.
ROTFLMAO
I hate the Sheen movie US Navy Seals…
I lived with a seal duty stationed in Virginia Beach, and i know the locations they shot it…and where the locations were supposed to be. And that wedding! NO military fiancee is going to let the hubby get away without the fast form of a wedding, expecially when the wedding is on base, by a navy chaplain and they have 30 minutes to get to a location that happens to be less than a quarter mile from the chapel.
I am forced to suspend reality in most movies about the military, or in many where there are subjects I actually know something about. Current boyfriend was a helo pilot for 9 years, and you should have heard him laughing when we watched ‘Die Another Day’ when they dropped the helo out the back of the plane, and they cold started it before it made like a lawn dart…
Heh… that was a kinda fortunate side-effect of Spain in the 40s having an entire Air Force outfitted with Luftwaffe gear. So quite a few survived. Then again there was many a WW2 flick where Texan trainers were used in place of enemy planes for close-up or ground work.
JMan, I feel your pain. . . or similar pain, anyway.
I spent 2 years in NMSU’s Pride band, a VERY GOOD band. Marching band members work their butts off. The talent and teamwork involved are no less than those on the football or basketball teams. Just as many hours of practice as a group–plus learning the music on their own time. But in the movies, the band is always depicted as the biggest bunch of idiots ever, or (maybe worse) comic relief.
I was pretty excited when I first saw the trailers for Drumline. Finally, a movie where the band members are the protaginists, so I thought. Big red x. The drumming was good, the visuals we’re great, but they still made the rest of the band look like shit, IMO. My highschool band had better fundamentals (uniform horn angles, marching in a straight line, etc) than the band they used in this movie. The sad thing is, I’d bet that for a rather small sum in the way of donation to a music program they could have gotten any college band in the country to be ‘extras.’
Oh yeah, the plot was cheese as well.
I just had to say that back in 1985, I ate at a dining facility at Selfridge as a civilian every meal for about a week . And there were other civilians in there as well, including High School students.
Be mindful, aruvqan.
The Charlie Sheen movie you are undoubtedly referring to is Navy SEALs, which also stars Michael “Hicks” Biehn and Bill “Hudson” Paxton (that’s like what, half the cast of *Aliens?**). We all loved it back in the day and still quote from it on occasion.
It must never be confused with US SEALs or its God-awful straight-to-video sequel, which consistently rate at the bottom for very good reasons.
-
- I guess we know what roles Biehn is cut out for. He plays a Navy SEAL in The Rock, Navy SEALs and The Abyss; plus a Colonial Marine in Aliens and a “time traveling soldier from the future” in The Terminator.
In his autobiography, Kirk Douglas describes a bit of stealth involved in filming a scene for *Seven Days in May* (1964). The story, about a bunch of military generals plotting a coup to seize the American government, required an establishing shot outside the Pentagon, but filming permission was refused. Douglas simply walked through one of the entrances in his colonel costume while being secretly filmed from a distance, was saluted by a sentry, returned the salute, waited inside for a few moments, then walked out and was saluted again. Strictly speaking, he’d committed a felony, but he got his two shots.
Douglas had been a navy officer during WW2, though, so I’d cut him some slack.