# Plot Holes in World War II **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 22, 2012, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463 "2012-03-22T02:30:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/81 "2012-03-23T17:16:52Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/82 "2012-03-23T18:07:10Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/83 "2012-03-23T18:09:20Z")
Plot holes from real life! 😃 I love this board! ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/84 "2012-03-23T18:38:45Z")
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? ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/85 "2012-03-23T18:54:21Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/86 "2012-03-23T19:10:41Z")
> [@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? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/87 "2012-03-23T19:36:12Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/88 "2012-03-23T19:51:00Z")
> [@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” :rolleyes: 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? :smack: ) 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. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/89 "2012-03-23T20:15:58Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![Normal\_Phase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Normal\_Phase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Normal_Phase)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/90 "2012-03-23T20:16:18Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/91 "2012-03-23T20:20:16Z")
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? ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/92 "2012-03-23T20:20:55Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![phreesh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@phreesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phreesh)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/93 "2012-03-23T20:31:38Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/94 "2012-03-23T20:40:37Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/95 "2012-03-23T20:52:09Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/96 "2012-03-23T20:53:11Z")
> [@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. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/97 "2012-03-23T20:58:05Z")
I missed WW II the first time around? Will it ever be replayed in full? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/98 "2012-03-23T21:05:26Z")
> [@Imago](#): > > This. This made my day. Glad you liked it. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/99 "2012-03-23T21:06:45Z")
> [@Ike\_Witt](#): > > I missed WW II the first time around? Will it ever be replayed in full? If it ever comes again to a town near you it will be hard to miss 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/100 "2012-03-23T21:14:01Z")
People have been saying for years that if they ever made a sequel it would bomb big-time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463.md?page=6)