"Warhorse battle scene - what would you have done?" Topic

My biggest disapointment with war horse was the going over the top battle scene which was so so cliched. It was more like Richard Curtiss' final Black Adder scene on a bigger budget. Having said that our hero Albert was representing the Dorset Regiment so a big hurrah from me on that (my father's regiment during his NS.

The uniforms, set, period feel, tension etc are superb and that explosion which hurled bodies in to the air was quite efffective. But the sensless massed charge through barbed wire against the spandaus has been done better elsewhere and i didnt feel it represented 1918 tactics or even 1916 tactics. I think it should have better represented how tactics evolved, combined arms, fire and maneuver etc.

So how would you have scripted this late war battle scene?

I would have given the horses muzzle-mounted Vickers Machine guns. When the German came up to help the plucky Geordie I would had the horse neigh "Nooooooooo" and leap up and kick the German to death with his hooves. I would also have had a cameo appearance by the ladies of 'Sucker Punch' to add some much needed eye candy to the otherwise rather grey scene. And Poppies, poppies everywhere.

And the Horse woulda died in the end.

Pat

The horse would have bled to death after it's head long plunge through the wire,or at least from exposure,lying there all night.

I like the idea of a Vickers Gun…but perhaps mounted to fire over its head. We dont want Neddy to get powder burns on the muzzle!

I have not yet seen the movie. Although I having been trying to.

Unfortunately in all the WW1 movies I have seen the directors seem to have little or no understanding that by 1917 the British Commonwealth armies were using the tactics everyone used in WW2 and since.

Yup, the Over the Top Sequence was set in November 1918.

I went with my 9 year old as she wanted to see it. All three of us agreed we felt manipulated into tears without ever actually giving a damn about any of the characters.

Not a great movie by any means.

Pat

'The Light Horsemen' -now that's a good film about horses in the Great War.

For most moviegoers WWI is going over the top, even if tactics were slightly different in 1918 than in 1916 (though less than some historians claim, nonetheless). It's logical that the script reflects that preconception rather than a reconstruction of the real thing. Otherwise the moviegoers would feel disappointed, as the action scenes would not reflect what they were expecting to watch. In other words, being closer the real thing would be felt by the public as "non-believable". In this case, the decission is completely justified.

It was a children's story made into a movie, not a history lesson. I was happy they at least made an effort to get the uniforms, vehicles and guns right.

I would have liked seeing the piper joining the men after they all left the trench and playing on through the attack. I believe a Canadian film about Piper Daniel Laidlaw, the "Piper of Loos", is in the works.

The tactics had evolved by 1917 and 1918 but not to the extent of being 'the tactics everyone used in WW2 and since'. You only have to look at the difference in frontages to see that further significant evolution took place. In WW2, a platoon would cover the same frontage as a company in WW1. This is a fundamental mistake that many rules make – they assume that a WW2 set of rules can easily be converted to WW1.

Robert