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Solution to #1: Just film the battle as it happens. Your troop numbers will be perfectly accurate every time!

10,000 Fascists dressed as Romans vs 17,000 Soviets dressed as Napoleonic soldiers. Who would win?

I think another necessary inaccuracy are sword duels. There's no way to reenact a full-out, fast-paced, life-or-death sword fight without it being too dangerous for the performers. Not to mention actors don't have years to train in how to wield a weapon in a skillful, technically correct way.

I'm gonna have to say that CGI is extremely good at large crowds of people, it's just that too often the artists aren't given anywhere near enough time to do their job properly. But there are ample examples of CGI crowds looking amazing, you just aren't likely to notice them. A film like Dunkirk, with its budget, could've easily had gigantic crowds and the littering that the real Dunkirk beach did during the evacuation. It was purely an artistic choice not to do that and one that I feel pretty neutral about, though I would've preferred they showed the scale of the evacuation correctly. You notice CGI only when it's bad. You pay no attention to it when it's good. We are at the stages now where CGI is good enough to simulate crowds very well though, and there is no reason not to use it. It's a tool, like any other, and should be used to make movies better.

My dad would watch a movie and look at the guns or cars (depending on time period) and say the movie is set in 1876 and the gun didn’t come out until 1880. This movie set in 1965 and the car didn’t come out into 1967.

"Those are fascists, marching as Romans." To be fair, the very word "fascist" is based off of the Roman fasces...

I am an old US Army Abrams tanker, (19K). So for me, anytime I see modern armor on the screen, particularly tanks, I begin nitpicking.

I think the point about equipment is tricky. It essentially lays in the area between what the audience knows is incorrect and what the audience doesn't care is incorrect. So like in Patton most people don't really know what the kind of tanks the Germans were using in North Africa looked like so any tank that looked tankish would do just fine. However the audience would know that they didn't look like the British Mk V tank so that would be distracting. Every person depending on their level of knowledge would draw the line different somewhere, in areas where there is a large spread in audience knowledge it's quite difficult to get it right.

I wish we would make fully animated serious historical films and series. That could potentially fix most of these problems. Of course it would still require a lot of effort and money to look really good, but far less (especially of the latter) then even attempts to get close to that in live action. History really is a "foreign country" and I want to see the best approximation of how it looked like, with huge armies in accurate gear and wide shots of cities with crowds on their streets, all as close to how it looked in the bygone ages, as we can tell with our state of knowledge. I don't care if it's drawn and therefore "fake", it will always be fake! Why are the graphical arts generally more appreciated than the photography but when the pictures are moving it's suddenly the opposite? I can't understand why is animation treated the way it is in our culture.

It's kinda funny in Gettysburg how many times they show the exact same camera shots over and over and over to make it look like theres ten times as many cannons firing even though it's extremely obvious by the third or fourth time you see it.

One thing I expected to see here was some discussion about how the widespread use of helmets in ancient warfare is a necessary omission in film so that we can actually see which character is which and identify emotion on the actors' faces. I see a lot of history channels go in over the lack of helmets when the answer is always "you couldn't see their faces then". Tom Hanks has an excellent discussion of this in a behind-the-scenes feature for Band of Brothers, where he admits that they have characters remove their helmets too much so the actor's faces can steal focus.

There are channels like yours and there are channels that complain about the type of shoe laces people wear. Keep up the good work.

I do understand what you’re saying with ‘Dunkirk’, but ‘Atonement’s’ Dunkirk scenes were *_phenomenal_* - & that’s kind of what I expected... for a movie about *Dunkirk* ... at least at _some_ point- I thought that group arrived early, & slowly but surely the screen would fill up- it’d give us a kind of timeline- there’d be a sense of time running out, & panic for the possibility that people would be left behind. (& I believe there were) It’s not the accuracy of numbers I take issue with... it’s the sense of thing, the *feel*

For me, horsemanship is the one thing that cannot be shown in historical movies accurately. The necessary modern adaptations range from tack changes for safety (everyone has stirrups, sensible bits, treed saddles) - to animal cruelty changes (when have you ever seen a horse screaming - like REALLY screaming in pain and fear - in a movie?) It just can't be filmed accurately to the time period, and as viewers we are fine with that.

I know this is about Sci-Fi, not history, but your talk made me think of something Gene Roddenberry said in response to people pointing out that there shouldn't be sound in his space battles: "People might think there's something wrong with their television sets if they don't hear any sound." It's not quite the same as what you're talking about, but movies/TV are inherently about sight and sound and if you're going to have a battle, it helps to give the audience some way of orienting themselves, so they know where everyone is and how the fight's going.

While you mention guns in movies: The only film that immediately comes to my mind that portrays the loudness of guns in some manner is "Blackhawk down", where one of the characters suffers from hearing damage because the MG gets fired near to his head. As for the Eqipment inaccuracies: If you are interested in something that plays a role in a movie, you expect to see somewhat correct stuff. For example i was always interested in fighter planes, and when i got to see "Top Gun" as a teenager, i was utterly disapointed because i hoped to see russian aircraft or at least something "not american" representing the russian aircraft. But it was a Northrop F5 that not even slightly resembled anything russian. (yes it has wings and engines an the pilot sits in the front part of the plane...but so does a 737) I had no problem with the same aircraft representing a Mig in "Hot Shots" because of the kind of movie it was. But in a "serious" movie i expect somwhat serious consideration of equipment. The Spitfire thing you mentioned would have bothered me more than the BF109 variant too. (except if hey would have been able to have Hawker Hurricans as replacement for the Spitfires)

I like to play, "spot the re-enactor" in many shows. And really, when the background characters have better armor/costuming it can distract from the film.

I'd say one of my favorite movies, "3:10 To Yuma" (2007) is very accurate as far as it's weaponry is concerned. You can count every shot and reload. They even considered the financial states of the characters when outfitting them. The Hand of God is my favorite movie gun of all time. I even had a replica made from a real Colt.

CH: "Just the ability to see what's going on would stop it." Game of Thrones Cinematographer: "Hold my -beer- Starbucks."

I think equipment inaccuracy should be seen as you describe it something fun to notice. The storey should be more important.

Another reason not to nit-pick equipment in stories set in very recent times is that to get access to actual current military equipment you must get Pentagon (or a foreign DoD) approval of your script. This may require your script to compromise your message to a more jingoish version.

With Dunkirk, my personal opinion? The fewer troops gave the perspective of emptiness. So sure, it was inaccurate in terms of how many people were on the beach, it definitely gave a since of emptiness and hopelessness and loneliness.

13:09 I found myself looking at this for ages. No pun intended.

2:45 As a military history nerd I really loved that scene, actually. There is something about watching the various units move around that made one understand how Darius and Alexander were thinking of the battle. It was then contrasted by the brutal, dust-filled melee that broke out when Alexander tried to capture/kill Darius

8:17 “Plus the onions wouldn’t understand”

Military equipment is always a pain. For anything as big as a tank or an aeroplane, there are very few preserved ones in working condition, and even less from the losing side of the war (the winners often had surplus). The ones that are in working condition are usually prized exhibits of a museum somewhere, so they are very much not inclined to let a film put theirs together with the other working ones to show a real formation. This is especially the case for German and Italian WWII equipment, as it was mostly destroyed in their defeats - at least with the Allied side there was the substantial war surplus. What's even worse is that what is preserved is mostly "glamour" machines. If you want to show a typical wartime mix of equipment, then the regular tanks and planes are usually missing in preservation. There are 54 airworthy Spitfires; a few hundred airworthy Mustangs. There are 13 Thunderbolts. There are more Tigers and Panthers than MkIVs and Mk IIIs. There's an additional problem with getting anything from before about 1942, in that the technology changed during the war and no-one was storing older models for preservation during wartime. No film would be able to destroy or damage a preserved tank or plane (where a Fast and Furious film will happily trash a dozen or so cars in production). You'd have to build replicas if you want to do that, or fake it in another way. There are good replicas and bad replicas, of course - but a replica that will pass muster in a close-up would be expensive, likely to cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars - more if you want to build an airworthy plane. Accepting the real-world constraints of replica and preserved vehicles means that nitpicking is pointless. If you want to have a flight of Thunderbolts over a European battlefield in 1944/5, then you can't do that for real - there's only one airworthy Thunderbolt in Europe, and the 12 in the USA are not for sale or hire at any price if they'd have to cross the Atlantic. So you maybe use Mustangs, or you use the one you have and CGI the others, or you dress up some other aircraft as a Thunderbolt. There are similar problems with other "big" things - most preserved steam locomotives are ones that were in service until the end of steam or close to it, that is they were built in the 1920s or later. If you want a Victorian steam train, there are very few working-order locos from the right period. Ships, both steam and sail, are very rarely preserved. There's HMS Victory and there's USS Constitution, and that's about it for sailing warships, neither of which could you get permission to shoot at. If the detail matters to the plot, or if it's something that they reasonably could have got right and didn't (like uniforms; Hollywood budgets easily stretch to making replica uniforms) and it wasn't a deliberate artistic choice (like removing or cutting back a helmet to make actor's face more visible) then it is often a sign of laziness over accuracy that can stretch to the more important parts of the film like plot and characterisation. But if they've made a reasonable substitution, then the nitpicking is just pointless.

As a history nerd and aspiring filmmaker and writer, it's surprisingly difficult to make a story as good as possible and as accurate as possible in some contexts. Plus little details may fall by the wayside or some parts of history may be ambiguous and have to be somewhat improvised though later found to be inaccurate and such

hey when you say the soldiers are fascists i don't think that's very fair to say, my stepdad is a Spaniard and he's told me before how his dad was drafted into the army, and it seems like fighting your draft would land you to either be stuck in gallecia where you couldn't talk to anyone or in jail. although to be fair his dad was in Asturias just to the east of gallecia so maybe it was only for people very close by. also why is it bad for fascists to be playing Romans, i always thought they were relatively close in the sense that they were oppressive slavers and highly militaristic which lines up pretty closely to many people's ideas of fascism. I'm not saying fascism is right but i don't see what the big deal is good video though! :)

Don't forget stirrups. People complain about the presence of stirrups on horses before their time. However, it's as if people want actors to fall down and kill themselves.

About the omissions, here we see what netflix and other services like that are best for. We can have 10 hour miniseries with almost blockbuster-like production designs and A-list actors. There you can tell a good biopic. I remember the costume drama biopic-series from the 90s and 80s and they were mostly badly dubbed(because they were usually done as a collaboration project between about 10 different countries) and were full of bad acting, bad set design and cheesy music.

i recall reading that average engagement distance in World war Two was around 30 meters and i mean if we look at training sure they where trained to engage at long distance but from first had sorses you do see allot of very close range fighting in both world wars. so to some extent the closeness of combat isnt necessarily inaccurate i would argue?

I am pretty easy on movies myself (unless they are the ones that claim to be "the most accurate every created" like so many are). The one thing that really gets me is when the actors portray a character in a way that is ridiculous or when they behave on-screen in an equally ridiculous way. For example, I was watching this World War One movie were the actors were wearing a ridiculous amount of gear (so bad that you knew it all was fake stuff because the sheer weight of the real gear would crush their backs) including a gas mask that should have been worn on the front but was instead worn as a backpack.

Things I forgive Time squishing People squishing - where several people are squished into one or two major characters

I'd be interested in your opinion of Generation Kill. I thought they did a pretty good job showing some of the distances as well as the size of a single Marine Battalion and their gear. The best part was showing the boredom of the troops when not engaged in combat.

I understand SMALL little things in costumes and big budget equipment. Like if they couldn't get a real Panzer and dressed up an allied tank, that's forgivable, but glaring inaccuracies shouldn't be overlooked "if the story is good". I mean, we at IMFDB.org made it a hobby to point of firearms inaccuracies in media but that's our niche. If a historical WWII movie takes place but we see the British doing paratrooping missions or wielding firearms that haven't been introduced yet, us history buffs will nitpick it regardless if "the story is good"

My cousin who was in both the Marines and Army, told me Hollywood gets snipers completely wrong but also said he was glad because he said often when he would fire his weapon he wasn't aiming at his target but a spot to ensure the trajectory of the bullet hit it's target and if you did that in a movie it would be disorienting to the movie. As he said "People will get it and understand it but I don't think it actually makes the movie better nor does it really change the story or the point of the story."

"Viewers like you", way to be CBS educational television

enormous your green screen battles with sounds effects so modern while made a capella !!! looool excellent !! wont please serious peoples but for ppl like me it's enough to laugh a lottttttttttttttttttt , we want more of those "pew pew pew" ;) for the topic of your vid of today , i 'll add that the most important accuracy we want is obviously about facts and plots, about the humans' relationships involved, the material culture is just for exotism ( except , sure, if you give guns to romans yes, but even there if you portrait well individuals, instittutions and stakes , for me it's fine).history is about individuals confronted to their or others' society, it doesn't imply large numbers or fine garments , just give us the tale of what they did and why.

What's your opinion on the Tiger scene from Saving Private Ryan?

While I agree about the gunfights/battles, some movies like Hurt Locker do get it somewhat right, such as the sniper scene. It's an intense scene, it has a lot of suspense and action, but still portrays the idea of modern combat.

300 meters, brother.

to be fair afghanistan is kinda outlier as far as distance of engagement goes. There is a reason every military switched to intermediate caliber rounds instead of full power rifle cartridges.

Hey! Pedantry is its own point! :-P

Then again the glass behind you filled, emptied, filled.

I partially agree with you about the equipment issues. In the movie Patton it is true that finding PzKw IIIs and IVs would have been almost impossible to find in any numbers but portraying the Germans as driving M47s while the Americans drove M41s created something of a perspective of German armor dominance that really wasn't there in 1942. The Panzer IIIs and IVs were not greatly superior to the early M4s and M3s although the Germans were tactically more proficient. The comment attributed to Omar Bradley that the Germans were using Diesels was a flat out falsehood, no German tank in WW2 was diesel operated and as a technical advisor to the film Bradley knew that. It gave the impression that the equipment the US used was as much a cause for the defeat at Kasserine as US experience was. Yes, the Panther and Tiger were superior to the US M4 through the entire war, even the M4A3e8 was only marginally equal to a Panther but neither the Panther nor the Tiger was available in any numbers in 1942 or early 1943, at least not in Africa or Sicily. I am pretty sure that there were still enough M4s running around in tank inventories to probably get a few in the shots. It would have at least made the US forces look less puny and overmatched.

What about the air drop in A Bridge Too Far? Fantastic scene.

"pew pew pew"

Hearing the size of the movie battles, plenty of real battles have numbers under 20k. Problem is filmmakers don’t have the creativity to use any of the many examples of smaller scale battles to make a good film. Also tends to be that most of the big battles everyone does know are impossibly large for film.

Dunkirk has been represented more effectively several times. I agree Nowlan was probably right not to go cgi (although the Alexander debacle is not the inevitable result). My feeling is that he could not achieve almost any realism with the aerial shots he wanted. He chose to go with the aerial shots. Those shots greatly influenced the audiences sense of place and for my money looked beautiful but helped no-one. So, i agree that film is limited in its ability to attain realism, but lets not ignor the directors stylistic choices and their impact.

@The Cynical Historian 7:20 the part about distance i my self have never been to war but for someone like you, with all the adrenaline and with everything happening in a firefight doesn't things start to feel a lot closer then what they actually are like the perception of the distance to the enemy. ? sure a battle that happen like 500m away would not feel like 50m but i hope you understand my question.

About distance in combat: Lenses portray distance in different ways. I don’t really know what other to put it. If you take the same picture with different lenses, you’ll understand what I mean. I think 35 mm is the lenses that most closely mimics the human eye. Long story short, it’s not just an issue of distance but equipment as well.

I always go with the philosophy that things in a movieare allowed to be inaccurate, as long as long as the movie tells a larger truth. A great example is the Hurt Locker, I was in a combat engineer unit and folks were complaining about the unrealistic way they do Counter IED, but the point of the story is not how EODs operate, it is about solders suffering from mental disorder and becoming addicted to war, which is terrifiyngly on point. On the opposite end the is Act of Valor or whatever the movie is called, where they spend all their efforts on portraying SOF tactics somewhat accurately, but have nothing on offer but jingoistic flagwaving, which I didn´t experience at all during my Afghanistan deployment with either the German nor the American troops, I found the US forces I worked with to be very sober and sometimes even cynical about the war.

Where's that empire graphic timeline from at 13:08?

10k extras, if you paid them a decent rate is about 150k an hour. That adds up quick when you're making a movie.Then try to make it realistic with 170k extras, that's over 2.5m just to pay the actors a decent amount, nor that hollywood usually does that, but you can see how expensive it can be to make a movie.

13:04 when I saw this awesome informative time-location Empire history map I just had to find it from internet. Thanks

I disagree about World War I and II shooting distances turning off audiences. Peter Jackson just did a documentary with real WWI footage and the theaters were packed. Generally I'm on the same page as you though - films should get the historical moment right, not every detail

Could somebody inform me what that timeline at 13:05 is? It looks really interesting, and I'd love to see the source and zoom and get the nitty gritty of it.

I consider historical authenticity more important than accuracy, because historical accuracy is really impossible with billion dollar budgets for single scenes, and a film would never get that back.

Good call mentioning Waterloo. Thst was the first movie that came to mind when you said shear number of people in a battle scene. Imagine shooting a movie, though, where you've got a stadium's worth of people together, and you want them to move in a formation for your frame. You see this when people promote a concert or want to assemble thousands of people in one space. Very difficult to move so many people around on cue.

When you're two greatest loves are history and movies.

Portraying the size of an army accurately can be done just by hiring the right number of extras.

A very interesting video! However I have to disagree a little bit on what you say about combat distances or ranges. Sure, there are combat that takes place over several hundred metres, if not even close to a kilometer. Afghanistan is a great example of that. But you also have the exact opposite. The ranges can differ alot depending on what kind of battle we are talking about and in what time period. If you look at battles from the 17th, 18th and early 19th centure the combat distances were pretty close. 15 to 50 meters since the limitations of the muskets of the time. The Swedish soldiers for example, from the Thirty Years War until after the Great Northern War, were trained to advance and not stop to fire a single volley until they could see the white in their enemies eyes, at a distance of about 15 - 20 meters, sometimes closer, and then emediatly afterwards charge with sword, pike and bayonet. But even later battles have seen some pretty close distance fighting. Look at the western front during the First World War for exampel. The average width of no-man's-land was usually usually never exceeded a few hundred meters. In many cases a lot narrower. In the Argonne secter about 50 meters between the German and French front line trenches was an average. On Butte de Vauquois the French and Germans were 21 meters apart before the mine warfare was commenced. Then no-man's-land grew to about 30 to 50 meters due to the large mine craters along a stretch of front that was about 300 meter long. In the Forêt d'Apremont in the St.Mihiel salient you have a section of no-man's-land that is just ca 9 meters wide between the German frontline trench and it's French counterpart, at the D-stellung. Another part of this sector is about 20 meters wide. Extremely close ranges, and still the Germans managed to built their entire front line out of concrete here, with deep concrete dugouts, bunkers and machine gun nests. It's one of the best preserved parts of the entire western front that's well worth visiting. And there were plenty of other examples were the distances between both sides were very close. During the battle of Verdun in 1916 the French and Germans were usually just 15 - 50 meters apart, sometimes as far aaprt as 75 - 100 meters. They were fighting from shell hole to shell hole since there were hardly any trenches left due to the extremely heavy artillery bombardements. If we look at the Second World War there were plenty of battles taking place over long distances, especially on the eastern front or in North Africa. But you also had battles like Stalingrad, Kharkov, Caen, Arnhem, Aachen or Berlin were the fighting was conducted at extremely close ranges since it was battles taking place in an urban environment. You had a lot of very close range fighting in general in the Normandy area due to the bocage landscape there. The djungle fighting in Burma was also at some pretty close distances many times due to the dense jungle. The same during the Vietnam War. So what I'm getting at is that I have no problem with movie combat or battle scenes taking place at close range if its appropriate for the kind of battle and time period it's supposed to represent. Some movies does a good job at representing the right distances while others not so much. Well, now I've ranted on for a while haha. I really enjoyed your video though! Keep doing what your doing! Because you do it well! Cheers from Sweden

Well I could immediately see that those close-up shots of Spitfires were some radial-engined trainers, but I understand that they could not use the real Spitfires for these shots for some reason.

Have you seen "Atonement" it kinda debunks some of the stuff you said about troop size

I love the 13th Warrior. A favorite. But I think it would've been better to give the Vikings equipment that is a bit more accurate. It doesn't ruin the film at all. it just would have been a bit better.

I agree that it's silly to get nit-picky about things that don't make any real difference. Have fun noting them on the "Goofs" section of the Internet Movie Data Base, but don't harp on it unless there's a good reason to. Critics of the movie "Gosnell" latched onto things that were actually accurate that they just, in their opinion, didn't consider accurate. This even though they were taken from court transcripts, depositions, interviews with participants, etc. But I seem to be the only person who said, "Whoa! Now THAT'S jarring!" during the courtroom scene in which the actor portraying Gosnell's attorney picks up a pair of forceps, as the real attorney did in the trial, and describes how they would be used. If he'd picked up Hern or Sopher forceps when Gosnell actually used Bierer forceps it would be absolutely no big deal. I doubt that anybody, even somebody who uses those forceps on a regular basis, would determine a noticible difference in the brief span of time and at the distance. But the actor used obstetric forceps. It would be uterly impossible to perform the acts he described with those forceps. It's like holding up a lug wrench to describe something a person did with an allen wrench. Different sizes, different configuration, used differently.

On 13:09, what is that a graph or picture of?

In biopics about crime I understand that there's certain omissions or changes in the story like Mississippi Burning that the files are so redacted to protect certain people because they where still alive at the time. In Operation MiBurn the FBI used mob informants as muscle by the time the movie was going into production some of those informants where still alive. In Goodfellas nobody truly knows how Tommy D was killed but the popular opinion was John Gotti was there and took part in it because Billy Bats was a friend of his and Tommy didn't have a closed casket funeral, his body has never been found. So Scorsese has to change it up he can't implicate Gotti without concrete proof or he'd get sued or worse

While I get where you are coming from when discussing scale, for many battles, that probably isn't as big of an issue as it first seems. While there are certainly historical battles where everyone massed for one major engagement, armies take up a log of space, and you could always argue that what your seeing is only supposed to be one section of the battle, especially for a battle where defensive possitions and terrain are involved. If a movie can create the illusion of scale, that is generally good enough. It's movies that don't even try to create scale that create an issue for me as an observer.

Why is the KZfaq algorithm throwing me towards stuff stating that The Medium Is The Message(TM)(C)(R)?

movies cannot make you feel physical pain which is a real pity. I'd love to watch some people experience their favourite war movies.

Omissions can be handled by a line or two of dialogue I was wondering how you feel about composite characters. I think they are necessary to give an idea of the personalities involved And Finally - how about a collaboration with History Buff. It would be interés to see the debate between your two points of view

Pedants are always going to pedant, thinking that inane trivia matters more than the story. To me what gets me are the easy cultural and personal traits and actions that are entirely doable, as an example when every movie featuring modern US military has the person walk inside and keep their cover (hat) on, that is far more infuriating because it is such an easy thing to find out, and is such a part of US military culture (today), so it bothers me far more something like that than whether the model of M4 or M16 is "correct" (and even then, while my unit was issued M4s, we still had a few muskets lying around, not to mention the WW1 era telephone wire set, so what a pedant might see as inaccurate, I see as a possibility as military's are not video games where the old guns magically disappear when you research the M4 tech)

PLEASE review Gettysburg

Oh yeah, speaking of Red Dawn, I remember watching and seeing the movie tried to make some AK47s look like AK74s but the nitpickers can tell from the magazine shape

8:02 It would convey what the soldiers saw. 8:06 Why does it have to be *fun?* And why can't the movie generate excitement/drama *in some other way?* 8:30 So change their expectations.

Good you bring this up - I'm tired of wasting my breath defending films like 'Fury' for what they do right when fucking pedants are only concerned with what they do wrong - film is an inherently limited medium, this is true for movies and this is true for documentaries. A fantastic movie is not a replacement for a good documentary, and a good documentary is no substitute for a decent book, that's just how it goes.

Im very familiar with the battles of the second world war. While watching Dunkirk I remember thinking they are short about 390,000 extras.

I didn't know you were a vet. Respect.

Someone might be able to make a realistically sized Battle of Hastings. Conservative to moderate estimates are within the range of people deployed on the field in some of the movies you mention here.

All good points; I only disagree in the degree. For instance, I think it is possible to get the scale (both human and geographic) right and not all CGI is horrible; however, I agree that falling short doesn't mean that the story is bad. I would say that a movie that goes out of its way to get a detail right, such as a strange practice in a medieval marriage ceremony, deserves credit and recognition for that effort, especially if it can be done without sacrificing the accuracy or entertainment value of the story.

Essentially we've learned that different sorts of accuracy matter to different people!

That spitfire which was fake at the end didn’t even have the “rolls Royce merlin engine” in the plane when the pilot burnt it. Im sorry spitfires and me 109 are few and far between. Go to RAF cosford though and you will see the last few that remain

Afghanistan and Iraq were 2 different wars practically and how they were conducted. The Marines that I knew that were in Baghdad or Fallujah will tell you about the close quarters fighting, door to door. Sure before we got there, it was deserts while wearing woodland mopp suits (still wondering why we invaded a country wearing the wrong colors), but once in urban area, it did get tense and when it didn't get tense, it got scary because unlike open deserts where you can see for miles, the city is cramped and tight and guys were literally coming through the walls. Sure, the Marines teach us at 500 yards (I know, not a competition, soldier) but some movies like "We were Soldiers" did portray the close in fighting very accurately. So yes, a lot of battles do take places from long distances, technically 300-500 isn't even that far in the grand scheme of things but some movies are ok with showing fights "within stones throw" I think the misconception is because "modern warfare" during and post WWII displayed major armies battling in close quarters and thus negates the use of long range marksman, people think ALL wars today is fought from close quarters when that's not really the case. Our tactics for dealing with CQB has evolved but it isn't like the US military forgot how to engage guys from far away

It seems the Hurt Locker captured distance accurately, and I'd say actually made it more exciting.

"brought to you by Viewers like You"... where's my tote bag??

With the distance in battles, it depends on the time of day, year and place...

When it comes to anachronisms how recent can an something in the film be before it actually is a problem. For example if a movie was set in 1973 and someone has a car from the 80s. That may be excusable. But the 2000s I don't think so.

I get that we can never fully recreate the scale of large armies but that doesn't mean movies shouldn't try. History Buffs channel talked about Dunkirk as well and the other movie pointed out at least look like it was a crowded beach vs Nolan's what? 100 guys on set, a couple hundred? It was too quiet on the beach and not enough urgency. Forget that they used model fighter planes too and some of the ships weren't 100% authentic. They at least tried to make them look the part. The assembly on the beach was just...dull

Speaking of sitting through 10-hour movies, I did enjoy watching the John Adams miniseries. Of course I did break it up to more than 1 sitting.

Watch Waterloo (1970) for stunning battle scenes with large numbers of actors involved.

Im surprised that you didn't mention firefighting movies . In real life you likely will see nothing but thick smoke or total darkness , not good for movie goers

Apocalypto is highly inaccurate, but that didn't stop it from being a great movie. It was an entertaining movie that I rewatch.

You gotta do a response to idubzzz’s Presidential Tier list

Your "distance of action" point is actually quite wrong. Basically every major Army after every war has done a lot of studying regarding this. Afghanistan (like the Mongols) as always is the exception, but outside of that the vast majority of small arms engagements are less than 100 yards.

I've heard one thing to never never goof up are military uniforms including insignia, service ribbons, and buttons. There's so many people out there that will nitpick everything. I wonder if these days it is more work for technical staff on movies as there are less veterans than back in the days when many more had military service. Probably 90% or more cannot tell difference between officer and NCO let alone rank. Seems to me just about every movie or TV show has an officer saluting first, enlisted returning salute (or higher officer rank saluting first then lower rank) when it should be the other way around. The other day watching SG-1 on late night TV, I happen to realize Capt later Major Carter always addresses Col. Oneill as "colonel" or "sir." But Oneill can address Carter by her first name. I guess they are consistent with military rank and privileges as done in the services. You lecture that Hollywood should stay with the story and not cradle to grave but realistically any of those guys that make that decision will watch your channel? Interesting about all those Soviet troops in Waterloo. There is a YT video about that describing these troops also learned how to handle a musket, march and protocol like 19th century troops. Someone commented a son asks his dad (or granddad) what he did when serving time in Soviet army, "I fought at Waterloo." Speaking of CGI, downfall is Hollywood no longer makes spaceship models so nothing to display in museums or sell at auctions years later.

How do you feel about compression of time?

I would sit through 20 hours of Band of Brothers, Generation Kill, The Pacific, etc.

If you want cgi troop battles “attack of the clones” from star wars is an example of why not to use cgi