It's the reviews that counts - not the previews, which have been few and those that have been shown have been skimpy. As for as historical films are concerned, your criticism are not as valid as they would have been 20 years ago. Films such as "Tora Tora Tora," "Seabiscuit," "Apollo 13," "Midway," and more recently "Flags of Our Fathers," have been extremely accurate. "We are Marshall" was given great praise by the people of Huntington who lived it. The only fictitious characters were a cheerleader and her father who were composites of real people. In addition, the climatic moment of the film where the game-winning touchdown was made was actually as not as climatic as the actual event. And you remark that the film's "main goal...appears to be to make women cry" is so obsurd and thoughless than it deserves no comments. Before criticizing a film it might be a good idea to go see it first, or at least read some reviews by those who have seen it.
call me crazy, but i can always tell everything i need from the previews. snopes tells me that the potrayals of seabiscuit was less than accurate: http://www.snopes.com/sports/horse/seabiscuit.asp as for your mention of tora tora tora being different than films 20 years ago, i dont follow, that film was made over 35 years ago. my friend who i saw flags with also read the book and said it was a terrible interpretation of the book, which itself wasnt actually a journalistic piece. yeah right, mr historian. what you mean is "i want them to be accurate". i am sure they love a fluff piece. are the made up characters supposed to support your argument or mine? since when do accurate retellings have "composite" characters? again, how is this an argument that the movie is accurate? you are telling me they are misrepresenting the reality, which is exactly my point. yes, it is an unfairly accurate statement on my part. have you seen it? (also i trust my opinion of the preview more than any reviewer)
Seabiscuit and the other films were extremely accurate. There may be some minor variations, but by and large they were very accurate. I know people who read the book "Flags of our Fathers" and said it was very true to the book. Being a former military historian, I also know a little something about Iwo Jima and know the facts were well represented in the film. Sometimes there relatively minor divergences from fact for creative reasons. For example, in "Midway" the only real historical divergence was the character Charlton Heston played. Honestly, I'm not sure why they did that and I believe the film would have been better had they not. But it was still a good, accurate film as far as all the details about the battle are concerned, and that was really what the film was all about. As far as "We are Marshall" is concerned, they included a couple of composite characters to represent the effects of the crash on the town, since they could not have possibly detailed the impact of the crash on all the townfolks. Using these two characters to telescope the impact of the crash on the town seems a good alternative. Since the film has not been released yet, I obviously have not seen it. But I have read the reviews of those who have. Reviews tell you a lot more than a few seconds of previews. Previews tell you very little.
