Should there be a modern remake of The Longest Day?

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How about Dunkirk from the German's perspective?

 

It would be interesting, for sure, I would watch it......

 

On the topic of new WW2 movies, I just heard about this new project from Tom Hanks. Seems promising.

Tom Hanks is teaming up with Dale Dye for a new D-Day movie No Better Place to Die

 

Dale Dye is a pretty good writer. His book about the battle of Hue, "Run Between the Raindrops" is an excellent book. So if he wrote the script it will be a good story. He also understands how the military works having spent 20 plus years as a Marine with multiple tours to combat zones, so he gets things right.

 

He also knows Hollywood as its his second career.

 

There he goes with the typical Brit/Euro anti-SPR/Hollyweird/US rhetoric. Full of the negative waves here. How many times must it be pointed out that SPR was focused on a small area of the Normandy Beach that was being assaulted, in particular, Omaha Beach, if memory serves me right (and I could be wrong, please someone out there correct me in my assumption), but Omaha beach was assigned to the Americans. Not a lot of English, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander, Greek, Danish, Polish, Czech, French, Dutch, Belgian, Luxembourgers, Brazilian, Mexican, Indians (dot, not feather), Rooskies, South Africans, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, or Norwegian troops were assigned to the Big Red One or the 29th ID or the Rangers or the USN shore parties. Did I leave anyone out? My apologies if I did. Wait, there were a lot of Germans there too, and a good bit of Ost units as well. Does every WW2 movie made have to have every nationality represented? Especially if it was made in America? Ensemble casts are fine, TLD, A Bridge Too Far, The Great Escape and those similar are excellent examples. But when the focus of the film is on a small unit, just the troops in that incident need be represented. Not the entire Allied Forces. And the bottom line is movie makers make movies to make money. Dollars, not Pounds, Euros, Rubles, Yen, Pesos or whatever. Dollars first, and when dollars count, American actors bring in those dollars, from American audiences. For a minute there I thought that I was over on the Talk, trying to get that point across (again).

I agree with most that this classic should not be remade. Or any remake for that matter. There were several bazillion incidents that composed WW2. Lots of colorful people and stunning actions that could be turned into a movie, or an HBO 10 part mini-series project to chose from. Do something original and write an original screen play about something not done to death. Or poorly.

 

Not a lot of Australians during D-day a couple of spitfire pilots, I think that's it)...I don't think we were invited...I don't think we would have accepted! Bloody Poms, leaving us in the learch! But nice to be mentioned in the same breath as D-day...

 

I was referring to the troops going ashore at Omaha Beach. Many men from many nations made up the air forces overhead and the naval units off shore were in support of the American troops going in there. No attempt on my part to slight those participating as such, just pointing out that some people just can't stand to see an American made movie about American troops fighting in a battle that only involved American units and who they were shooting at, and explaining why such movies are made.

 

I get your point, and agree...I thought it was pretty clear this was Omaha and an American affair...

 

CAC, even if Australia played a minimal role in D-Day, they made up for it in Greece, Crete, North Africa, Italy, the Skies over Europe (and Normandy), Kokoda, Imphal and Kohima, New Guinea, Okinawa, and the Pacific in General. Those engagements though not as glorious, popular, and renowned as D-Day, they were important in their own right. If I were an Aussie, I would be proud as hell (as I know you are CAC) to know Australia did it's fair share in fighting, often times fighting the battles the U.S and Great Britain didn't want to fight, in horrible places, conditions, and situations. I have a great respect for any and all nations that took part in the war, but Australia especially.

 

Pity I can only "like" this post...thanks mate. Remember though, IMO the US does not focus on many of the Pacific battles...the obvious ones for sure, but not all...and ive heard stories that put the Marines right up there with the Aussies in terms of true grit and never moving backwards...ive heard the enemy call the Marines "relentless"...no better compliment than that in battle...
You and all Americans can be truly proud of your Marine fighting force, they are feared for good reason.
And that's why USMCPrice laments the apparent watering down of this force...


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I always think of this video when thinking about the US Marines vs the US Army...

 

To be fair until recently we did always let the Brit's play the Heinies with their fake German accents!

 

On a more serious note you do not always need a Hollywood budget to make a good and effective film. While they were not about WWII Breaker Morant & Gallipoli are among the finest and most memorable war films I have ever seen.

 

Len was talking about this book

...which, after being hawked around Hollywood ...
became this film

SPR caused deep offense among some British WW2 Veterans. Many of the boat crews landing troops on Omaha Beach were British marines and sailors.

The only time that the British are mentioned in SPR is the comment that they are making tea in front of Caen. This is something that a bunch of isolated paratroops would not have known, and to add further insult the final scenes show American paratroops fighting off the kind of German armour that the British not they were fighting. There is a line of graves in Bayeux CWC of men who fell in a similar battle on around 13 June at :Lingevres. SPR was designed to appeal to American national pride if not outright chauvanism.

Directors like Spielberg don't do anything by accident. The US centric film and the deliberate omission and slur on the British was an appeal to the US national mode of the 1990s. It was a time to question and distance america from the internationalism and the institutions by the US led United Nations which mounted Op Overlord. Is there a partisan angle? Is there a view that the international institutions were the product of a Democrat President? Was SPR a way-marker on the way from Roosevelt to Trump?

 

American chauvinism...British chauvinism...It's all the same.

I don't think a Joe McCarthy was in "The Dam Busters", but it has been a wile since I have seen it.