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In Reply to: "Pearl Harbor" Reconsidered posted by mikenyc on August 11, 2002 at 11:45:24:
C'mon Mike, that movie was a travesty. The acting was cardborad, the dialogue was pedestrian, the relationships were sappy and worst of all it played fast and loose with history (i.e., Ben Affleck comes to the rescue of the RAF). About the only thing well done in this flick were the special effects which amounts to about thirty minutes of a 3 hr movie. I knew something was up when the studio (Buena Vista) made a publicity stunt of wining & dining veterans of the REAL Pearl Harbor attack for several days, then providing them a special VIP screening just before the movie openned wide. They did this because the History channel was geared up to heavily promote the historical film to the point of running a special episode of History VS the Movies on the eve of it's premier with those same veterans making the comparisons.Well, the veterans were polite during the program and several even liked the film, after all, Buena Vista had rolled out the red carpet for them. However, reading between the lines combined with comments of a couple of the more curmudgeonly vets made it very apparent that the movie wasn't anything like what they experienced. As for Pearl Harbor being "less complicated to understand, and more plausible" than other war films such as Midway, From Here To Eternity, Tora, Tora, Tora, etc., well, that's a stretch. If you mean by less complicated, less challenging, then I might agree, but plausible? The historical distortions in Pearl Harbor are Hollywood at it's worst!
>>> "...someday this film will get the due it deserves..." <<<
The only way that this film could get it's due, would be to refund some of the nearly $200 million dollars earned at the box-office to those who were suckered in by the hype.
>>> "...and the critics favorite punching bag, Michael Bay, perhaps, will get some respect." <<<
Can the critics help it if Pearl Harbor was a dud and the bombs hit the Bay instead? ;^)
Follow Ups:
What everyone is forgetting, is, is that it's a movie, NOT history. It was never meant to be anything more.
The problem isn't that movies made around historical events have to be 100% accurate (i.e., the love interests, the creation of fictional characters, etc.), but revision of the actual events themselves is abhorant even when in service of the fictionalized characters depicted in the storyline.> > > "What everyone is forgetting, is, is that it's a movie, NOT history. It was never meant to be anything more." < < <
Don't get me wrong, I like popcorn movies and am more than willing to overlook silly mistakes in science in SF movies. Historical movies are much more problematic for me. Just because a film is "NOT history" doesn't mean that the events depicted won't arouse a subliminal belief that that's the way events occured. Unfortunately, a lot of folks will see the picture and believe that it's an honest retelling of historical events or, sadly, if they were involved in those events, may be grossly offended by the inaccuracies. The fact that you are able to view this as purely entertainment is all well and good, but we must never overestimate the sophistication of a popcorn movie's audience.
There is too much critical viewing done in films like this, and, to me, it becomes an impediment to the film process.I feel this is a characteristic of our time and age, rather than something inherent in the film process. Even pre-9-11, we are a society of skeptics, and perrenial kill joys, who in our socalled "sophistication", are really not that sophisticated as we think we are. It's our loss, sadly.
(nt)
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