You've been all over me of late, to include your deliberate baiting of me, despite numerous direct requests from me that you stop doing so, in a thread I started specifically to appease others who were complaining that I'd made too many posts. You knew full well when you did it that I wasn't allowed to so much as mention the things you brought up. Additionally it's readily demonstrable that you've been on me for years. I called you no name whatsoever. Rather, I addressed the behavior of both you and LukeFF. It's very ironic that you savage me over and over again with no thought whatsoever for me, my feelings, or even the effects your savage campaign has had on me and my creaky and fragile health. I'm not supposed to be stressed, you know this, yet you deliberately do things which cause me great stress. If you ever said something about your family and sensitivities related thereto, I must've missed it. That you should complain about being insulted after what you've been doing to me for a very long time is rich beyond words. Lying about me is okay with you. Slandering me is okay with you. Deliberately mischaracterizing me is okay with you. Conducting character assassination of me is okay with you. This set of observations must be true, because you've done, and continue to do, all those things and more. I've done everything but stand on my head to get you to behave appropriately toward me, but you won't do it. You might back off briefly, but that's all. Yet you're demonstrably capable of being socially appropriate with other Forumites. But you insist on coming at me like a rabid dog.
Now, let me set you straight. Steve never gave me an infraction. I got one from Moon over a year ago because you, in your typical perverse style, went over to a place I must not name, came back, made some outrageous set of accusations based on that, and I, placed once again in a situation in which I was under yet another vile attack from you, sought to defend myself by showing what was really said by me and got so worked up I inadvisedly posted a link to a certain place. That got me the Moon rocket, so to speak, because of the rule prohibiting commercial links. I worked my way eventually out of that. Steve has asked me in the past not to start posts on certain hot topics after you et al. went nuclear time and again in response to them. Nor have you ever let me off the hook for several technical mistakes I made regarding V-2 installations, mistakes I've several times publicly admitted. It has served you well in your endless efforts to discredit and humiliate me. You even went so far as to wreck a 2012 CMA thread in which several of us had a great discussion going on Russian lasers, one in which there was a serious military-technical discussion being conducted. Since any topic along the lines you know quite well automatically led to enormous Forum upheaval from you et al.,, Steve, in my estimation, decided to avoid future board explosions by not having certain things discussed. That's his prerogative. As the old SEAL Team Six saying goes "Thou hast not to like it, thou just hath to do it." Which is what I've been doing ever since.
Thus, I am in full compliance with the Forum Rules, and I rigorously honor Steve's request. Additionally, and with no rule existing requiring me to do so, I'm not allowed to so much as mention a certain endeavor of mine quite well known to you. That's from ChrisND, I deem it unfair, but there's nothing I can do about it. So now, I'm under the Forum Rules plus two other strictures. I got the warning because, and again not from any rule violation, I dared to state that information of a category I'm not allowed to state anymore (unless, per Steve's statement, I publicly provide my sources) confirmed a certain widely viewed YT vid. Again, I violated no Forum Rules and was shocked to get a Warning out of the blue. Thus, you go around breaking Forum Rules like twigs, go way out of your way to conduct a broad array of prohibited direct and indirect ad hominem attacks against me, make my life, both on the Forums and at home, very stressful and unpleasant. Because of you and your (insert strong pejorative here) ilk, I'm now forced to operate as though I'm walking in pitch black, on thin ice. Heavily mined thin ice. Practically afraid to sneeze. Unless and until someone at BFC starts subjecting you and certain others to the same standards which have practically stifled me for some time now, you get to operate without a care in the world while I, despite disabilities, a brain injury from which I'm recuperating, and a bunch of other things, have to always exercise profound care what I over say and how I say it. Else, I'll be gone, not you and your brethren. Which, I have to say, very much appears to be your real objective in assailing me the way you do.
Frankly, Wicky, for you to come at me as an injured, aggrieved innocent party is like the boy who murdered everyone in his family and when arrested, brought to trial and convicted, threw himself on the mercy of the Court. Why? On the grounds he was now an orphan! You have led a very charmed life on the Forums, and by any reasonable review of the vast evidence of your ongoing malefactions, ought long ago, in my considered view, to have been banished for good. Why you're still here is a great mystery to me.
A reason why he's been running amok posting here is that he's desperate to prove himself as somekind of world renowned expert (with super secret sources ) from his bedsit assisted with a wonky mac and google. As he's been linking from his own woo website to threads here on the battlefront forum so he gets some relected glory from this site's good web reputation to enhance his own and uses them as backing for his super secret Kettlerlian conspiracy theories. JK is simply a bore.
The reason for this thread is that John's good intentions, prolific reading and general enthusiasm for BFC games has drawn criticism from other forum members who don't share John's degree of wonderment with the world at large.
My opinion is that John should just say something like "Suck it up, princess" in response to the other posters' criticisms, but the apparent level of catharsis it brings him from 'brain dumping' in this forum keeps him wary of being banned or something, and thus on his back foot, and leads him to put too great of a weighting to others' negative opinions.
In summary, keep posting, John! Either in this thread or in the forum at large. Whatever works.
My initial thoughts...this movie will bite the big one.
I didn't bother to go see it in the theater. I read about a dozen "professional" reviews, and literally hundreds of wargamers' and military history buffs' reviews on this and several other forums. I knew it would suck--from all the hype it received. I knew it would suck when I saw the trailers--from the grim seriousness of the actors' portrayals (and the actors' commenting on the making of the film. I knew it would suck because it is a Hollywood production with no doubt an anti-war message as big as the Goodyear blimp. I knew it probably would suck when my youngest son and his girlfriend said it was great and that I really should go see it. (He's never been interested in military history or wargaming, and is quite the pacifist, bless his heart.) And I knew it would suck when I read about the crossroads battle scene. I knew it would suck because in one way or another, every Oscar-bait Hollywood movie usually does.
Last week, when it became available on Pay-per-view, I figured I would give it a shot just so I could take the moral high ground when dissing it later (can't do that if you don't actually watch the movie).
I wish I had gotten over myself and seen it in the theater! I really, thoroughly enjoyed it.
LemuelG and slysniper hit the nail on the head, as far as I'm concerned. The crew was surprising believable...2nd Armored, been in the war since North Africa, would tend to have an older crew, and with the ravages of war, they look close-enough to late 20's for me. (My Dad was 23-24 years old in the Pacific, and the pictures of him after hostilities ended on Saipan show a man somewhere between 30 and 40.) There in-fighting at the dinner table rings true to me, just like my extended family when we get together on the Holidays... someone is always bitching about /fighting with someone else--usually over politics--but woe to the outsider who tries to diss one of us. I wonder about the forced execution scene, and how likely that type of thing would occur, but who knows. More importantly, the war-is-hell and we are gonna have to take it to the enemy with balls to the wall sentiment rang true to me. Again, only going by my Dad's experience, his outfit had that attitude in spades in the Pacific. can't imagine it would have been much different in Europe at the end..."let's kill as many of these bastards as possible, as quickly as possible, and get this damn thing over with. I want to just get home already."
The overall dialogue was way above what I thought it would be. Face it, SPR's dialogues was mostly hokey, corny and cliched as hell. And Matt Damon just plain sucked. Band of Brothers and even The Pacific did a much better job in that department. And frankly, so did many of the great movies listed above (and I like or love them all). To me SPR is only good in the first 20 minutes and the last battle scene. And come on, both have WTF? moments--in the landing scene, a German in sandbag emplacement on the ridge gets shot, falls forward, and the whole emplacement just falls apart by the weight of his body. How the hell did it stand up to the pre-invasion bombardment, fer chrissakes??? And the last battle scene, unhistorical and relatively improbable to boot. But regardless, both those battle scenes were excellent eye candy, and were so far ahead of any depiction of WWII combat than anything before it, who can not enjoy them?
Fury does that for armored combat, in spades! (Battle of the Bulge, anyone?) Those freaking awesome AP ricochets were freaking awesome, the crews' teamwork was well done, and to be expected in a crew that survived that long together, and the tension and intensity of combat was well depicted and believable.
Note to sound modders...Oddball, Waclaw and AKD and anyone I missed...I hope you are thinking of lifting sounds from this movie. There's a particularly good, close-up rrrrriiiiippppp-ing MG 42 in the crossroads battle, hint, hint. And did I mention those awesome AP ricochets?
And seriously, even if you didn't care for the movie, you gotta hand it to the set directors and costuming departments--everything just looked right, tanks, equipment, uniformsoy the sets, uniforms, etc., etc. Those 41st Armored Infantry fellows looked like I would expect them to after just coming through a gruelling winter campaign in NE Europe. (As an aside, I loved the armored company CO. Well done.).
So for me, grog factor, production and drama, as LemuelG categorized the movie elements, all worked for me in this movie.
That said, a lot of the tactics sucked, as they do in most war movies. But even there, there is some saving grace. The attack straight at the AT guns, as has been pointed out, was done to cover and pull out a trapped infantry platoon. I really liked the tactic they used--uncovering the platoon, and having them get behind the tanks, but of course could be argued that they should have tried flanking the German line. Who knows, maybe more enemy covering their flanks? And, apparently, Wardaddy did came at them from a flank, or at least not directly at them down the road which the ATG's had covered (his comment to the infantry company CO).
The Tiger scene was believable in that they were ambushed and then were backed up against a tree line, with only one recourse left...to charge forward and hope to get a flank shot. Those trees looked pretty skinny, and should have been easy to retreat through (but I assume there were heavy forest tiles underneath ). The worst part was the Tiger's tactics. It was in a covered position. If they wanted to get out from the smoke, then they should have reversed and gone left or right and sat there, blasting the 3 Shermies as they advanced. And was it supposed to have come direct from the factory...no camo, unit markings, or anything? In fact, the paint scheme looked like it came direct from Sicily.
The crossroads battle was preposterous as executed, but their orders were to stop the SS battalion from getting to a supply column. What ya gonna do? A wiser course would have been to blast them with all guns blazing while they were in march column, set charges to blow the tank, and run like hell before the Germans regained their composure. But it's a movie, and many others (SPR for example) suffer from the same type of unbelievability in parts as well. And for what it's worth, the actual number of German casualties depicted in that fight appears to be around 50-60, which if they had blasted them in column could probably be about right...just saying. When I saw Pork Chop Hill as a wee lad in the theater, I remember thinking that practically the whole company was wiped out in the initial attack up the hill--how could they have gone on and captured and held it? (It was after all, basically a true story.) When watching it again years later, I counted the actual number of men depicted as being hit, which was only about 25--manageable under the circumstances, it would appear. If you assume that the SS troops were likely green and yet fanatical, I can see their initial tactics actual being as depicted, and casualty numbers reasonable. I remember one story from A Bridge Too Far, and many from books about the Bulge, that relate green German infantry committed to similar disastrous frontal attacks. Still, I have to agree with the detractors of the movie that it was just too much of a stretch.
So, overall, I wanted to hate the movie before i saw it, and ended up truly, thoroughly enjoying it. In fact, I purchased the full HD package off Netflix, and it is well worth it if you liked the movie. I have watched the first two battle scenes (but not the last battle ) about 8-9 times over the last week. There are about 50 minutes of deleted footage, too. None are added battle scenes--well, there's an extended scene showing the plastering of the plaza area when the girl and her apartment block get blown up, that shows the armored infantry CO getting killed. But there is an important 7 or so minutes of exposition when Wardaddy and Norman are shooting the **** sitting on top of the tank as they are headed to what will be their confrontation with the Tiger, in which Wardaddy reveals why he has taken a bit to Norman, wants to toughen him up, etc....has to do with Wardaddy's girlfriend and his younger brother...and it goes a long way toward explaining Wardaddy's motivations. It is one scene that I think should have been included in the final cut.
Anyway, I rambled more than I planned, but put me in the column that enjoyed the movie--really enjoyed it. I have seen almost every known WWII movie in existence that I could get my hands on over the last 55 or so years, including many foreign language ones. I own about 45 on DVD, last count (Belle and Blade video is an excellent source for all war movies of any era). Many of them are overall better in either screenplay, or acting, or whatever, but this one will remain solidly near the top, despite my initial desire to hate it.
I have very low esteem and I am trying hard to get my score up, ( When I first saw them I did not even understand what they were, I clicked on them wondering what the heck are they for)
