I recently had the opportunity to rewatch this - the 1989 film about the Black 54th Massachusetts Regiment that fought in the US Civil War.
The movie holds up big time, and man there’s some goddamn awesome actors, but two things always troubled me:
There’s too much emphasis of the regimental commander, Robert Shaw, and
Matthrew Broderick is TERRIBLE as Shaw. He is a distraction most of the time he’s on screen; he adopts an accent that just doesn’t work at all and is putting on a dreadful performance.
Robert Shaw is a hell of an interesting dude, don’t get me wrong, and his death at the age of 25 (and sadness of his wife, who had a broken heart the rest of her days) is terribly tragic juxtaposed against his genuine, deep, religious commitment to equality and the abolishment of slavery. His part of this story could be made deeply poignant. But he really shouldn’t be the main character. You could really get into the meat of the story of the 54th, give priority to the Black soldiers and their experiences, flesh more of them out as characters, and still have the Shaw story without making him the main character in a White Saviour tale (which is something Shaw and his family would have absolutely hated, based on what they said.)
And you can have a better actor than Broderick. Granted, you aren’t gonna improve on the murderer’s row of acting talent amongst the soldiers - Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Andre Braugher? Hard act to follow.
How about Dune? It’s been done as two movies (one a two-parter) and as a pair of TV-movies, but there’s just way too much going on here to try and jam into even two movies. This would work better as an extended series.
It’s similar, in some ways, to War and Peace. There are several movie versions, all of them too butchered, except for the seven hour Mosfilm version that takes too damned long to sit through (when they first showed it in the US, they split it into three parts on successive nights). But the BBC did an adaptation circa 1972 (starring Anthony Hopkins as Pierre) that split it into 20 bite-sized episodes that didn’t feel rushed.
I’m a fan of Stephen King’s horror, but have not yet felt compelled to read any of his ‘The Dark Tower’ series of novels. Still, I know there are a lot of fans of TDK out there, and the 2017 movie they attempted to make was pretty much destined for failure, trying to fit 8 novels into a single movie. This should be a good candidate for a series, as long as they decide on a definite arc and ending, and don’t pull an ‘Under the Dome’ treatment on it.
Thomas Harris’ first book, before he became well known for Manhunter and Silence of the Lambs, was Black Sunday. It’s a gripping story about a disturbed Vietnam vet / POW who flies blimps for a living and decides to bomb the Super Bowl. A Mossad agent hunts for him and attempts to prevent the attack.
It was made into a truly terrible movie starring Robert Shaw (not the one from Glory). I’m surprised nobody has ever remade this movie, or turned it into a mini-series. Harris is really good at creating characters with interesting back stories, but that tends to go the wayside in movies. A mini-series would allow time for that.
I have to mildly disagree about Glory. I think Broderick was fine in the role. The emphasis on Shaw is understandable because much of the script is based on his personal correspondence. Most of the other characters are made up. If you get away from Shaw you get into fiction and get away from the history. Nothing wrong with that of course. It’s done in historical fiction all the time. But in this case it was done so well with the Freeman, Braugher and especially Denzel that anything else would look bad in comparison. And you can’t Band of Brothers it by using the unit to show the story of the Civil War through the eyes of the soldiers. The 54th was in multiple smaller battles but never fought in any of the large historic battles. Basically I love the movie and think a tv show would be much worse.
There probably aren’t enough people in the 54th with good historical record but, if you look through the entire record of the Civil War, you could probably find a decent selection of black soldiers who had journals or were otherwise documented - you would just have to move them into the 54th.
You might also be able to find black farmers, slaves, etc. who experienced the war from the sidelines and show how it affected them. Not every character in a show needs to be in every episode. You can always put together something that focuses on different elements of the war, with no connection to the other parts, every episode. You can also do a mix, where you’ve got tight focus items on e.g. “a family’s home in the path of raiding soldiers and they decide to move West before they lose everything” intermixed with the longer story of the 54th.
Yeah the climax of the film only works if EVERYBODY on the police side is incredibly incompetent.
You’re telling me theres only one police helicopter allocated to watch over the Super Bowl where the President is attending? Or that the cops decide to fly alongside the blimp to shoot at the cabin instead of just flying over it and pumping holes into the undefended top?
The Good, the Bad. and the Ugly. The three lead characters obviously shared experiences prior to the events in the film. It could begin as far back as the California Gold Rush or the Mexican war.
My favorite book, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, was made into a rather forgettable animated movie in the 1970s. I think there’s enough in the book to lend itself to at least a mini-series.
Nah, I think the story of “Glory” has been done about as well as it can realistically be done in a fantastic movie.
Better to pick the exploits of another USCT regiment for a series/miniseries- maybe the 1st Louisiana Native Guard(Corps d’ Afrique), which was formed in New Orleans after the city was taken. You’ve got some of the Army’s first Black officers in the regiment, one of whom was among the first Black officers killed in action in the US Army. You’ve got a fair amount of historical evidence, and a lot of opportunity for dramatic storytelling, and some battle action as well.
My choice would be “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World”. There are twenty Aubrey-Maturin novels out there and part of a 21st that wasn’t completed. They could make a long series out of those, even if they condensed some parts.
Same thing for the Horatio Hornblower books- as good as the Ioan Gruffudd movies were, they’d make for a great reboot.
I would like to see some of the old matinee serials re-made. Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon, with a Game of Thrones budget. Dick Tracy or The Shadow, with a Boardwalk Empire budget.
Doc Savage has been in development hell for decades. George Pal wanted a TV series, but only got one movie filmed.
I’d like to see Matt Helm played straight, not parodied like those Dean Martin monstrosities.
I would like to see Mary Stewart’s Merlin stories re-made, with a bigger budget and better actors.
You’re effectively saying that if it’s not the movie Glory then…it’s not the movie Glory. And well…yeah.
And sure, it might not be 100% historical if you’re taking the lives of soldiers in other regiments and putting them into the 54th but…I mean, it’s still real history, from that time, serving for the Union army, and so on. Those might not be the lives of the guys that died trying to take Fort Wagner, but it just as well could have been - and wouldn’t that still have been a tragedy?
Historical reconstruction is based on taking good information from existing sources and gluing it into nearby locations where the record is more spotty. If it’s a good enough technique for archaeology and scientists, I feel like it should be a good enough method for the entertainment industry.
As a descendent of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw*, I’d just like to say that our family would throw a huge party for anyone who cast a non-Broderick in the role.
.
*As a kid, I could always get a reaction from Grandma by calling him “Bob Shaw”.
When I saw your thread title, I thought that’d be great, but make it about the troops, not Shaw. And then I read your post and I’m on board. The problem with the movie is they made it about Shaw as a white savior and factionalized the men in his unit.
Most were not escaped enslaved men, but had been born free. Two of Frederick Douglas’ sons were in the 54th. A series about the creation of the unit, the challenges they faced just to be given the chance to fight for America and the great risk they faced would be a very compelling story.
How they didn’t get that into the movie blows my mind. It would be like doing a story about PT-109 and neglecting to mention of of the guys on the boat was John F. Kennedy.
All of the soldiers were fictionalized in the story (not factionalized, my other typo). The movie, like a lot of movies about black Americans, became a story about the white guy. A show about all of them akin to Band of Brothers would be amazing.
