Well the complaints are that there wasn't character development and I didnt feel attached to the characters. IDK if youve seen it but there's prolly less than 100 lines in the movie and most of the characters names were never even said.
So that was very clearly a choice by Nolan that he didnt want there to be character development. Its not like he tried and failed, he made a conscious effort not to.

So when people complain about it its kinda like Ok youre right, but he didnt want you to feel attached....

So why should we care about any of the characters? Obviously it was a choice that Nolan made, but in my mind it was a pretty bad choice.

So it's impossible to "get it" but still not like the movie?

And thats fine, but some of the posts itt seem like they thought Nolan tried to develop the characters and failed

well no, you didnt read the second part of my original post

Yes I did.

So he successfully made the movie he wanted to. Is anyone other than a film student supposed to care?

Sounds like some of you got lost on the way to the theater showing the latest Lifetime Original Movie.

I get the criticism of this movie but I think it was awesome. It was kinda like if you had History channel of the old days just take a tiny segment out of the war and give them a huge budget and Chis Nolan. It didn't matter about the characters it was just about how ****ed the situation was and the only hope was escape and luckily it came with the civilian response. I think the civilians coming to rescue is the star of the movie and the entire point of it and not making any characters that important.

It was pretty awesome and can't wait to see it again.

Characterisation is mainly done by the actors. It's kind of their job. Audiences hardly ever know the characters' names and usually refer to the characters by the names of the actors playing them.

Anyone who knows The Longest Day will remember the Red Buttons character, the US paratrooper stuck hanging by his chute lines from the church tower at Sainte Mere Eglise while his buddies are wiped out by the Germans in the square below. Red was of course playing a real person, but very few will know his name. They just remember the look on the actor's face as his character watches the trouble going on below. (And if just one German looks up and spots him...)

Which reminds me: in The Longest Day, Richard Todd of course plays Major Howard, who led the British airborne attack on Pegasus Bridge. Zanuck actually asked Todd if he'd like to play himself, since Todd also fought at Pegasus Bridge. Todd said he did not want to do an Audie Murphy and he'd rather play Major Howard, thank you.

Interesting direction Nolan took with the film. He just allowed the fight to stand on his own merits and not make it a character-driven narrative like we see in other movies like Saving Private Ryan. Unlike SPR, the battle took front and center and I was glad that it did. Hell, there was barely any dialogue for a movie this long. That in itself is an interesting, creative decision.

Granted, I didn't think the film was perfect. I felt that the end was stretched out. The finding the shell-shocked soldier who killed the boy was a weird element to include in the movie. I also feel that the movie diminutized the enormity of the effort that privateers took to evacuate the soldiers. They made it look like a tiny offshoot of ships that made this journey.

I saw this tonight. I have a few questions, but one thing in particular bothered me, I'll put it in spoilers



I saw this at the Hollywood Theater in Portland, 70mm, if that helps. It looked good and sounded exceptional (except for the dialogue). Also, I was very high for the film, which made it remarkably enjoyable, but also might explain my confusion with the above. There were a couple other things like the older civilian who was bringing his boat over having a seemingly endless knowledge of odd things (who knows the by-the-book technique to maneuver your civilian boat out of enemy airplane fire?) that made me chuckle a bit, but overall good stuff. Definitely a movie I'd recommend in a good theater, watching at home later would probably be disappointing.

The Longest Day was 10 times the movie this one is.

lol at comparing Bastogne and Dunkirk.

It was not that enormous.

Most of the privately owned ships that participated were actually requisitioned and staffed by members of the navy.

That there was a massive armada of small ships crewed by their owners who saved the day is a myth of Dunkirk.

The Longest Day is certainly a fine piece of work. The landing on Omaha Beach, for instance, is far more realistically portrayed than in Saving Private Ryan. The 2nd Rangers did not storm fearlessly off the beach in 20 minutes as Spielberg pretended -- they let themselves be pinned down for hours like everybody else, lying there all morning because of a single German machine-gunner who inflicted most of the US casualties, and only moved in the end because Brig Gen Norman Cota of the 29th Division, played in The Longest Day by Robert Mitchum, started kicking Rangers up their behinds and telling them to do their job and get forward (though The Longest Day doesn't show that, it just shows his verbal commands).

Fuller's The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller landed with the 1st Infantry Division on Omaha, alongside the 29th) and even Hiller's comedy The Americanization of Emily both give a more realistic (and less 'patriotic') depiction of the Omaha landings than Saving Private Ryan does.

Incidentally, the character played by Red Buttons in The Longest Day is Private John Steele. He is still commemorated at Sainte Mere Eglise by an effigy hanging in parachute lines from the church tower.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steele_(paratrooper)

I don't think either of you know what "enormity" means.

Irregardless, I could care less what you think. Also, I wasn't talking about "enormous".

Not being a pedantic nit nut low of posters, I was able to look past an incorrect use of a word where the meaning, derived from the correct use of enormous was absolutely obvious.

Seriously, your internal processes must suck hard if they motivate you to make the above posts.

Amazing.

LOL you post like a a robot running a thesaurus app.

Yet to see it, but reviews so far are much alike my feeling going out of Inception. Visually stunning in a cinema but I cba about any of the characters nor the plot.

I see the criticism that there was little character development in the movie, but I think that was deliberate and a good decision. The soldiers trying to GTFO of there don't know each other's names, and they do not really appear to want to know; they only care about getting themselves out. You are talking about a bunch of cornered rats that initially had about a ninety percent chance of dying on that beach. Self-preservation is the only thing on their minds, and I think that was conveyed well. Frankly, I think it is refreshing to have characters in a war movie that aren't heroes.

I think the fact that there was so little dialogue throughout the movie to be one of the best things about the movie. The scenes I liked the least were the scenes where there was dialogue, like the scene aboard the little boat which was being used for target practice.

protip: IMDB ratings are 100% worthless when a movie first comes out.

Always.

They can drop several full points between release date and like a year or two later.


I thought seeing this was a great experience. Super intense. Solid 8/10 from me.

The shaky-cam crap needs to stop, though. Just the absolute worst.

It was kind of a one trick pony. They aimed to maximize suspense / tension through their scoring and camera work, and to that end were highly successful.

NGAF about the characters though, and dialogue was non existent. This can be said about no great movie.

I hate to agree with Rex Reed but I wasn't that impressed. Maybe it was the super high expectations I had going in but I came away kind of disappointed. 6.5/10

I have to disagree with some here about NGAF about characters. The story really centered around 3 main characters (Tommy, Farrier and Mr. Dawson) and I was vested in their story. I just didn't find the story THAT compelling.

It was also my 1st experience with reserved seating and a plush recliner. Almost too comfortable.