With all the talk of possible (wished) remakes of BofB and using CGI, I decided to take a look at Pearl Harbor’s BofB scene. Now that is one you are most welcome to pick holes in as far as I’m concerned. In noticed, just in this one viewing:

1) Ben Affleck was sitting, relaxing in a pub with a dirty face as if he’d just stepped out of his plane after an oil leak. No RAF officer would go to the pub without washing his face!

2) Yes, the last point may have been a bit tongue in cheek, BUT his English mate is drinking at the pub with his Mae West over his shoulder. What were Bruckheimer and Bay thinking? Did they think pilots had to carry them at all times like a gas mask???? I mean, yes, have it handy while on the station and on duty, but they didn’t take the bloody thing to the pub!

3) This might be picky, but given their huge budget, it annoys me that they have Hurricanes and Spitfires together in the same dispersal with all different codes. OK, maybe this did happen, but it just looks a little unprofessional on the filmamker’s part not to do a little cosmetics.

4) Here, HERE, is your mixture of three and four bladed props! (not that this really bothers me, but it is so much more blatant than the one fleeting scene in BofB that has been mentioned.)

5) That nerk Affleck saying crap on the intercom like “Hammer Down” for no reason, what rot!

6) Pilots not wearing their mask or goggles in combat, yet hearing each other perfectly (saying “Hammer Down!!” repeatedly it seems) despite the intercom microphone being nowhere near their mouths.

7) Affleck’s wingman who is there to protect him simply sits back and then says that there’s fighters all over his tail. Oh, good work mate.

8) After Ben shoots holes in the canopy it is seen totally intact again

And that was just the tiny Battle of Britain part. We all know much of the film is full of descepancies. Imagine if they’d set out to actually remake BofB though rather than Tora, Tora, Tora. Oh God!

Where were the Pearl Harbor BofB scenes filmed? Was that actually done in Britain? I mean it looked like british Spits and Hurricanes, but with US-based Heinkel and I don’t know where the Bf109e came from. Was it mostly CGI? Or were they US-based Spits and it was all in California? Most of the combat seems completely computer generated. Pause the DVD and often the planes are simply blurs and streaks. I do have to say I liked the fact that when the guns fired you saw the tracer and the cordite smoke. That’s about all though.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by JDK
Connery as Urquhart, Fox as Horrocks, Dirk Bogarde as Boy Browning and Hopkins as Frost all were cited as being very like the real charecters

I take back what I said then about the accents. I did know that many British officers spoke that way, but I had wrongfully assumed that this was another case of Hollywood getting the British actors to ham it up a bit.

JDK wrote:
And apart from the Sargent and young officer rescue, and Liv Ulman and Olivier’s charecter, almost everything else included is true. Some story!

I just watched the ‘making of’ documentary on disc 2, and according to that, the story of the Sergeant saving the officer IS true. It’s just no-one believed it. Apparently the US critics slated the film for making up a lot in the content. In this documentary they insist, and demonstrate, that the film was in fact telling the truth and through!. As usual, the critics were talking through a hole in their rrrrr’s

JDK wrote:
Er Gliders – actually, never snatch towed.

Well, you learn something every day – and it was only recently that I had read that they were snatch towed – having always thought previously they were towed as in the film. The article I read had photos of a Dakota snatching a glider – it looked very precarious. No wonder they DIDN’T use it in action.

cheers
Dave