Not so inevitable movie plots?

It seems that with such narrow specifications, I don’t know why there would be such movies. Usually, “What if?” scenarios deal with the aftermath, creating a whole new history. Who would want to see “Valkyrie” that is exactly the same but it ends with Hitler dying? Such a movie would be totally trashed by critics.

I remember the reviews at the time, and The Final Countdown didn’t get trashed because they screwed with history-it got trashed because, after a large buildup, they copped out and didn’t change history. Many fiction books have changed history without getting ripped for it, so why haven’t movies made that jump?

Has that been made into a movie? The whole Thursday Next series is set in an alternate universe where Britain was fighting the Crimean War until just recently, and where the airplane was never invented in any case.

Nope, never filmed. Btw, it does have airplanes, Acheron Hades has one at one point, but zeppelins are used for transport.

From the IMDB’s goofs section on this movie:

I imagine that mistake completely destroyed the audience’s ability to suspend their disbelief.

Honestly, if Inglorious Basterds doesn’t make the cut, then I really have no idea what you’re looking for.

Even Better

Stupid mice!

Yeah. In Inglorious Basterds, they manage to kill Hitler. That didn’t really happen. So from the OP, common-sense notion that “The plot against Hitler will fail” was defied.

If we’re looking at time travel/alternate history, then there are whole bunch of instances, more than you can count. If we’re talking about that, then it’s gonna be a long list. If we’re not, it’s gonna be a much shorter but more interesting list.

I watch Nostalgia Critic too. :slight_smile:

Even at a half-hour with ongoing snark it was painful. :frowning:

I presume the OP means a historical drama that isn’t defused by our knowledge of what actually occured. Sort of like how it used to be that you knew the main character of a TV series couldn’t really be in danger of dying, because there’d be no show if he/she did- until the first time someone had the stones to do it.

Nitpick: The protagonist is an SS and not an army (Wehrmacht) officer. And the book is far, far better than the movie, IMHO: Fatherland (novel) - Wikipedia

Late apologies-For some reason I never made it back to this thread. Inglorious Basterds certainly makes the cut for the Hitler assassination.

In an epiosde of Quantum Leap, Sam leaps into the body of Lee Harvey Oswald. When he fires the shots, he then leaps into the body of a Secret Service agent. He fails to save the President, but Sam tells him that the first time, Jackie Kennedy was killed too, and he succeeded in his mission to save her.

Where is the historical inaccuracy in that?

Sort of the opposite of what I’m looking for, but interesting in that Cannell(spelling?) gave interviews at the time when some called him an apologist for the official version.

Further nitpick: Actually the protagonist was a Berlin detective (ex war U Boat officer). And yes, the book was very good.

March was an officer of the Kripo or Kriminalpolizei, assigned to Berlin. He was not an officer of the Berlin city police department, if that’s what you mean. At the time, the Kripo was under SS jurisdiction. The book (and the movie) correctly have him in the black uniform of the SS; here’s Rutger Hauer in the role: http://www.thefancarpet.com/uploaded_assets/images/gallery/3805/Fatherland_35717_Medium.jpg

Another example for the OP: in Ward Moore’s 1953 novel Bring the Jubilee, a time-traveling historian inadvertently, and to his horror, messes with the Battle of Gettysburg as it unfolds.

Ironically, in his original timeline, the Confederacy won the battle and then the Civil War, eventually becoming dominant throughout almost the entire Western Hemisphere, with the much-smaller U.S. living in its shadow. The historian starts a chain of events which results in the Confederacy losing the battle, in exactly the way it did in our own timeline. Pretty cool twist, I always thought.

Yet another example of the opposite of what the OP is asking for.