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I haven't watched that movie so I have no idea what people meant when they constantly referenced the title in the late 90s early 00s.
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Mar 6, 2024 07:09
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Looks like it means rowing a boat with your m1 garand. Id recommend using an oar or shovel or something but they were presumably hard up against it. Thus, doing a difficult thing with improper tools is "a bridge too far"
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Mar 6, 2024 07:11
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the cast is incredibly stacked. like just on the American side you've got Elliot Gould, James Caan, Robert Redford, and then Gene Hackman as the ornery Gen. Sosabowski that shot of Redford in the boat has him repeating the first line of Hail Mary over and over and over as he tries to make it across the Nijmegen because what the gently caress else are you going to do taking MG fire from an unsuppressed defensive position on the other side of an river crossing just a great movie
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Mar 6, 2024 07:47
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Lostconfused posted:I haven't watched that movie so I have no idea what people meant when they constantly referenced the title in the late 90s early 00s. they built the bridge wrong
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Mar 6, 2024 07:51
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Nijmegen also got bombed to poo poo by the US near the end of the war.gradenko_2000 posted:the cast is incredibly stacked. like just on the American side you've got Elliot Gould, James Caan, Robert Redford, and then Gene Hackman as the ornery Gen. Sosabowski Across the what now? Nijmegen is a city going back to Roman times (Noviomagus) and also hosted one of the palaces of Charlemagne, which was apparently his favorite place to stay. At the time the place was known as Numaga. The river the city is built next to is the Waal, which is a distributary branch of the Rhine, and one of the three great rivers crossing the Netherlands from East to West (Rhine, Meuse & Waal). Those also form the religious border between the Protestant part of the country (North) and the Catholic part of the country (South). Orange Devil has issued a correction as of 09:33 on Mar 6, 2024 |
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Mar 6, 2024 09:26
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Orange Devil posted:Across the what now? sorry, I knew Nijmegen was the name of the city, but I completely blanked on the the body-of-water actually being crossed. Thank you for the information.
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Mar 6, 2024 09:39
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Danann posted:movies like a bridge too far definitely have a different feel to it due to using a ton of actual people and props compared to war movies these days with a lot of computer images used and how the story focuses heavily on only a few people Well yeah these big epics of the 50s and 60s had these huge star studded casts just hit different and well they predate the cult of the operator. War was still seen as a thing big groups did, instead of something a small group did. It also helps that they were closer to the war than we are now so there was just more of those tanks and planes around. Like people have critized Masters of the Air for using CG B-17s, but well we had a massive crash recently of one of the still flying examples about so for these period peices you need to use CG. KomradeX has issued a correction as of 14:32 on Mar 6, 2024 |
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Mar 6, 2024 14:28
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I like the dweeby anxious intel guy who everyone ignores because they don't wanna admit their plan is hosed E: irl that guy got so pissed at being ignored he requested a transfer to a combat position which meant he ended up at the liberation of bergen-belsen, and then ended up as head of un peacekeepers under hammarskjold StashAugustine has issued a correction as of 14:38 on Mar 6, 2024 |
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Mar 6, 2024 14:35
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Also the signals guy who points out the radios aren't going to work, and iirc a meteorologist who points out that the schedule of drops may not be workable. Then there were all the guys in XXX Corps who identified The Island from Nijmegen to Arnhem as a problem, though I don't remember how much of that went into the film. On top of that, the poor weather meant allied fighter bombers couldn't fly for a good part of the time, and without radios, obviously, they were no use to the British paras. There were parts of the plan that seem like they were alright, Citino is surprisingly fair in The Wehrmacht's Last Stand. The problem is that the enemy gets a vote, and a single Western Allied corps had not been able to do anything like the plan called for at that point in the war, and in reality wouldn't be able to until the final allied offensive in Italy and the manoeuvres in Northwest Europe after the Rhine crossing. Even if the Germans had been old men and boys on bicycles, I think people should have known by late 1944 that the Germans would comb any nearby formation of anyone available - schools, naval detachments, anti-aircraft units, headquarters - and throw them into battle, which of course they did, and that would slow XXX Corps down enough that crossing the Rhine was not going to happen unless there was another corps in reserve as a follow on force. The allies had failed to destroy the Germans retreating from Anzio, from Falaise and up the Loire valley precisely because the Germans did not hesitate to grab every person they could find with a uniform and tell them to counterattack, hold key terrain, and keep lines of communication open - even if they did not know the allied strength, intent, direction of advance etc. iirc within 3 hours of the first reports of allied paras, the Germans were rushing groups of Dutch collaborators, the naval school detachment, and various typists to the DZ at Oosterbeek. You can't do much about that, and so you should assume that the Germans will slow you down at every step of the plan, which means you're not going to link up with far flung airborne forces even if XXX Corps could eventually overcome them. When XXX Corps artillery got within range of the airborne perimeter of Arnhem, they stopped the Germans cold and held the perimeter securely until the Canadians could evacuate the paras across the river. So, the fighting power was not the problem, the time it took them to get there was, and when you have a single road, obviously even the clerks and truck drivers the Germans form into ad hoc groups will be enough to derail the plan. DJJIB-DJDCT has issued a correction as of 16:03 on Mar 6, 2024 |
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Mar 6, 2024 15:57
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KomradeX posted:Well yeah these big epics of the 50s and 60s had these huge star studded casts just hit different and well they predate the cult of the operator. War was still seen as a thing big groups did, instead of something a small group did. It also helps that they were closer to the war than we are now so there was just more of those tanks and planes around. Like people have critized Masters of the Air for using CG B-17s, but well we had a massive crash recently of one of the still flying examples about so for these period peices you need to use CG. Probably wouldn't fly well today but Bridge too Far did have a lot of non-period vehicles standing in place of their authentic counterparts like the Leopard 1s and the T-6 Texans. Two and four-engine prop planes are going to be harder to mimic admittedly.
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Mar 6, 2024 16:01
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Watched the movie about a month ago for the first time. It hold up great. I definitely kept thinking "there will never be a movie like this again" when I was watching it. I think my favourite scene is either the end of near the end, where every decision-maker gives a different excuse for what went wrong.
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Mar 6, 2024 16:33
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KomradeX posted:Well yeah these big epics of the 50s and 60s had these huge star studded casts just hit different and well they predate the cult of the operator. War was still seen as a thing big groups did, instead of something a small group did. It's a movie, you can only focus on a small cast of characters so individualism will always be at the front. They did have some nice scenes with a lot of extras and tanks rolling around though.
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Mar 6, 2024 16:46
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I couldn't stand Battle of the Bulge's fake-rear end loving tanks duking it out in a springtime field
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Mar 6, 2024 16:53
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Also did I mention that the movie was doing a clean wehrmacht bit?gradenko_2000 posted:I couldn't stand Battle of the Bulge's fake-rear end loving tanks duking it out in a springtime field Ok tankie, it looks cool though. 
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Mar 6, 2024 16:54
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I always liked the sillier movies like The Guns of Navarone or Kelly's Heroes or The Dirty Dozen or The Great Escape. I'm pretty sure The Guns of Navarone made it into Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. Bring back Wolf: ET.
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Mar 6, 2024 17:00
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Kelly's Heroes rocks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR-jxuqfY2s
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Mar 6, 2024 17:02
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Lostconfused posted:Also did I mention that the movie was doing a clean wehrmacht bit? oh man only doing a Clean Wehrmacht bit seems positively quaint Minenfeld! posted:I'm pretty sure The Guns of Navarone made it into Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. the best game about The Guns of Navarone is Quake 2
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Mar 6, 2024 17:03
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The best ACW movie is Cold Mountain, because most if not everything else is some Lost Cause trash. I still enjoy Gettysburg but christ if it doesn't paint the confederates as saints
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Mar 6, 2024 17:07
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Tekopo posted:The best ACW movie is Cold Mountain, because most if not everything else is some Lost Cause trash. I still enjoy Gettysburg but christ if it doesn't paint the confederates as saints Someday I'll make an edit of Gettysburg with a laugh track every time a Confederate talks politics (Also Glory is pretty good imo)
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Mar 6, 2024 17:09
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Gettysburg has the immortal line of a confederate general going "The darkies, it's always the darkies!" EDIT: and yeah Glory is also pretty good
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Mar 6, 2024 17:11
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Tekopo posted:I still enjoy Gettysburg but christ if it doesn't paint the confederates as saints believe it or not that director's other Civil War films are even worse about that, Gettysburg is the least reactionary of his output Gods and Generals is pretty overt white nationalist propaganda that almost completely drops any pretext of a balanced portrayal in favor of casting the Confederates as the heroic protagonists of the war and the Union as sympathetic misguided villains The battle scenes are on about the same quality level as Gettysburg's (bad - this may be sacrilege but I don't think watching what amounts to home movies of a Civil War reenactment is all that interesting) and everything surrounding them is way worse. You can't even really watch the movie as an entertaining exercise in mockery, because it's also about four years long and most of it is just boring instead of funny
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Mar 6, 2024 17:19
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yeah, I have watched Gods and Generals and stopped half way through because the propaganda was so loving bad and the movie had 0 redeeming qualities
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Mar 6, 2024 17:23
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Danann posted:Probably wouldn't fly well today but Bridge too Far did have a lot of non-period vehicles standing in place of their authentic counterparts like the Leopard 1s and the T-6 Texans. Two and four-engine prop planes are going to be harder to mimic admittedly. Well you had what M-47 Patton's being the stand in for Panzers in The Battle of the Buldge, but again thats another movie I haven't seen in years, but I think Telly Salvalis was riding around in a real Sherman in the movie. But well the one advantage that modern CG can give you is more at least background vehicles so you don't have to keep using Bovington's Tiger that gets used in every movie and tv show
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Mar 6, 2024 17:27
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Lostconfused posted:Nah, I watched Battle of the Bulge like a month ago and it still focused on the officers. There's a whole side plot about the grizzled segreant and the and the green lieutenant or something and the sergeant is saying poo poo like "I could've taken those krauts if you just stayed loose". But its still a collective effort, Telly Salvais is your point of view character, its still a big massed battle that wins the battlez ahistorically, but a scene of the the air force just boming the german tanks isn't as dramatic. The Longest Day follows individuals through out the battle, but the end of the movie is still a whole mass of infantry swarming the now opened up beach defenses, individual heroics making collective victory possible where as now war movies are just the individual heroics, and culturally I don't think its out of place to see that as yet another expression of the indivivudalization of society under neoliberalism, but it is alsonan end result of armys cult of the operator over the last 20 years, which is also intertwined with neoliberalism
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Mar 6, 2024 17:33
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The big finally collective victory is three guys coming together to defeat the one supposedly competent wehrmacht officer. Movies might be worse now but they were never not that. Edit: Ok the one competent officer and the infiltration squad that got there and got cut down a scene earlier. Lostconfused has issued a correction as of 17:44 on Mar 6, 2024 |
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Mar 6, 2024 17:41
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Man, the first James Bond movie came out in '62.
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Mar 6, 2024 17:49
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The absolute worst part of Market Garden was that the Battle of the Scheldt got put on hold for that poo poo, allowing over a division of Germans to flee across the Scheldt (they were then encamped near Arnhem for rest and refit, guess what they ended up doing during Market Garden?) whom otherwise would've absolutely 100% been cut off and forced to surrender. Just giving up a slam dunk and delaying getting your most important port operational for a hail mary held together by wishful thinking is loving inexcusable. Well ok, maybe even worse is how badly the Poles got hosed over, but that's more of a moral thing rather than a direct effect on the war effort.
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Mar 6, 2024 18:13
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I'm not trying to pick a fight here. It's just that I'm not sold on this grousing about "operators". US hasn't been in a big war in a long time, so you don't get modern movies about big wars. You'll probably see something like those big set piece battles again if people manage to live through world war 3.
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Mar 6, 2024 18:14
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Orange Devil posted:The absolute worst part of Market Garden was that the Battle of the Scheldt got put on hold for that poo poo, allowing over a division of Germans to flee across the Scheldt (they were then encamped near Arnhem for rest and refit, guess what they ended up doing during Market Garden?) whom otherwise would've absolutely 100% been cut off and forced to surrender. Just giving up a slam dunk and delaying getting your most important port operational for a hail mary held together by wishful thinking is loving inexcusable. Listen, if any other country would like to step up and clear the waterways and estuaries of the Netherlands, they were welcome to it. Cutting off German divisions had already bloodied the Canadians and Poles in Normandy while the Dutch and Belgian brigades had a pretty comfortable war to that point.
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Mar 6, 2024 18:16
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DJJIB-DJDCT posted:Listen, if any other country would like to step up and clear the waterways and estuaries of the Netherlands, they were welcome to it. Cutting off German divisions had already bloodied the Canadians and Poles in Normandy while the Dutch and Belgian brigades had a pretty comfortable war to that point. I see words but no point.
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Mar 6, 2024 18:18
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Orange Devil posted:I see words but no point. If you wanted to clear the Germans out of the Netherlands you should have done it yourselves 
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Mar 6, 2024 18:19
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DJJIB-DJDCT posted:If you wanted to clear the Germans out of the Netherlands you should have done it yourselves A lot more Dutch people than we care to admit nowadays didn't really want the Germans cleared out of the Netherlands. Anyway the point wasn't to clear Germans from NL, Market Garden ostensibly would've done that to. It was to open Antwerp and destroy nazi divisions.
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Mar 6, 2024 18:20
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It was an unhappy accident of geography that the CW forces, alongside the Czechs and Poles, ended up hugging the flooded coastline while the French and Americans got to race up and down the plains, but I take your point. The long left flank: the hard fought way to the Reich, 1944-1945 When in August, 1944, the Allies broke out of Normandy, the world's attention became fixed on the dramatic British and American armoured thrusts into the Rhine. The war in Europe seemed all but over. Far to the left, along the flank of the Allied Expeditionary Force, almost unnoticed, a battle was beginning on whose outcome hung not only victory but the possibility of disaster Under-strength, neglected by Montogomery and denied by Eisenhower the supposed which he had promised, First Canadian Army paid an appalling price in casualties to clear the Channel coast and open up the great port of Antwerp. Commanded by General Harry Crerar , the army contained not only Canadians, but, for most of the campaign, more British troops then the Eighth Army at Alamein. Poles, Americans, Dutch, Belgians, Czechs and French served in it and were partnered in all their operations by the equally international No.84 Group, RAF. Their hard-won success in clearing the banks of the Scheldt and in capturing Walcheren Island was followed four months later by victory in the Rhineland. There, with almost every one of Montgomery's British Divisions under command, they smashed the best of what remained of the German Army and, with it, Hitler's last hope of defending the Rhine. The way was open for the Allies into the heart of the Reich. In the war's final phase, most of Crerar's British divisions were replaced with by Canadian formations newly arrived from their arduous campaign in Italy. Striking north and west after crossing the Rhine, they liberated Holland and drove east-ward into the heavily defended area of Germany. At war's end they had reached the Weser and were closing on the great naval bases of Emden and Wilhemshaven. Jeffery Williams won wide acclaim for his definitive biography Viscount Byng of Vimy. He brings the same assured touch to this lively and fast-moving account of a crucial aspect of the battle for North-West Europe which has hitherto been largely neglected by historians.
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Mar 6, 2024 18:28
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Mar 6, 2024 23:09
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Lostconfused posted:I'm not trying to pick a fight here. It's just that I'm not sold on this grousing about "operators". Thats all fair, and just for story reasons its easier to follow individuals. Like I'm not trying to argue that US war movies in thenpast were collectivist, but they at least still had the idea that wars were more than just those individuals. Or.maybe I was just over thinking it to avoid being bored at my maintenence job on a slow day
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Mar 6, 2024 23:40
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I do agree that the movies back then had a sense of scale, as I mentioned before. There's a lot of shots like  But I have to imagine part of is also the financial side of things. There's not enough experience setting up practical effects for large army battles, and most studios probably don't want to shell out the money for the CGI work needed to do all of that either.
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Mar 7, 2024 04:32
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The nice thing about Second Front being computerized ASL is that you can very easily try new strategies, which might otherwise take hours to run if you were implementing the rules manually via [virtual] tabletop, despite the fact that Second Front isn't a one-to-one emulation I thought, "okay, what if we leveraged fire combat to shoot enemies out of defensive positions, and would refuse to advance as long as there were still active defensive fire?", and I tried to come up with some principles to adhere to: - avoid going into melee yourself - since Second Front does not implement the "fire group" rule, allowing you to combine firepower across multiple hexes, your combined firepower has to be concentrated in single hexes, which means squads need to be triple-stacked, whenever possible - leaders are going to be more involved: ideally they'd be stacked with your shooters to improve their odds of getting a favorable result (whereas in a more aggressive, melee-heavy strategy, leaders would hang back and be ready to receive routed units, which is going to happen more often if you're running into defensive fire) the results of attempt number one:  this is three turns shorter than the full playthrough we did last month, and while the score is lower, that's because we took zero casualties - while some squads did rout, and some squads did "weaken", i.e. get reduced from Elite to Veteran, and even Veteran to Regular, no squads lost men per se. This meant that we triggered the 1.5-to-1 ratio of infantry strength very quickly, and we didn't kill nearly as many Germans as we had to the first time. There was only one melee engagement, and it was triggered by the Germans deliberately going into it (and then me dogpiling the one squad after the close combat was inconclusive on the first turn). the results of attempt number two:  one turn longer, and we did take at least one casualty reduction (squad to half-squad), but the score was much higher, and we killed more of the German force, including the tank, which I didn't get to do in attempt #1. Notably, according to the game's leaderboards, a score of 78 is within the top 100 of all attempts for this mission, and I'm pretty sure I missed an opportunity to drive it at least two points higher, which could have put us into the top 60. I may do another step-by-step playthrough of the process, just to show how it's done, but it's definitely promising, even if there's some variability involved.
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Mar 7, 2024 06:15
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you guys should check out the 70s mosfilm WW2 dramas, they're on the Mosfilm youtube channel in high quality, with English subs. they have that scope that comes with irl Red Army formations being used as extras. Plus, they have tons of long scenes of commanders going over planning, which this thread will love
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Mar 7, 2024 08:44
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tatankatonk posted:you guys should check out the 70s mosfilm WW2 dramas, they're on the Mosfilm youtube channel in high quality, with English subs. they have that scope that comes with irl Red Army formations being used as extras. Plus, they have tons of long scenes of commanders going over planning, which this thread will love can you make any specific recommendations? i followed that youtube channel but i don't know what i should look at first. those you mentioned sound like a good place to start.
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Mar 7, 2024 08:50
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tatankatonk posted:you guys should check out the 70s mosfilm WW2 dramas, they're on the Mosfilm youtube channel in high quality, with English subs. they have that scope that comes with irl Red Army formations being used as extras. Plus, they have tons of long scenes of commanders going over planning, which this thread will love My favorite scene in any of these is when a lady nurse bravely goes out into no man's land after a stalled attack to treat the wounded despite the dashing handsome sergeant telling her not to. A wily German squad start closing in on her, repeatedly crouch-strafing around to dodge the sergeant's hmg fire in an open field. Eventually this spurs the whole company to restart the assault and carry the day with terrible casualties. The brave sergeant runs over to the nurse, turns her over, the music swells, their eyes meet, and he backhands her in the face and tells her those men are dead because of her.
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Mar 7, 2024 09:09
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