"Why are there no movie replicas of WW2 tanks?" Topic

Continued from this thread
TMP link

I wondered why no movie studio has commissioned (sp?) the construction of a reaplica, prop tank of, say, a Tiger tank. Would it really be impossibly expensive to build a tracked vehicle that looks like a Tiger on the outside? There wouldn't have to be any high-grade materials, the "armor" would be just thin sheet steel, and so on. Batman: The Dark Knight had at least one fully-functioning custom Batmobiles/Tumblers build for millions of dollars, so a slow-moving tractor with a faux chassis should be even cheaper, no? Instead, we get either a Marder III (IIRC) dressed up as a Tiger in Saving Private Ryan, or the only Tiger tank still in running order loaned from Bovington Tank Museum for a movie production (Fury).

This goes for all iconic vehicles that are often used in movies but have no "survivors", so to speak. Also, if a replica historic vehicle gets built and not destroyed during shooting the movie, it can be rented to otzher studios, museums and so on to offset the commission costs.

It's been done, Kelly's Heroes, Band Of Brothers, etc. … And is being done … TMP link It comes down to $$$, most movie goers even though many today are much more in touch with history, etc. … Your average person which goes to a movie wouldn't know a Tiger from big bulldozer …

Kelly's Heroes' Tiger, just like SPR, was a T-34 dressed up to look like a Big Cat. I thought it was a good try and better than all the American tanks with German crosses in movies for decades before, but it did not satisfy any of the rivet counters at all. I still see people complaining about them all the time.

The reason no movie studio will do what you suggest is that it DOESN'T MATTER. 99% of the movie going public doesn't know a Tiger from a VW Beetle and could care less what kind of tank it is, or is supposed to be. To quote a TMP Great Man, "They don't make movies for History Geeks, and they never will." A movie made with all the right kit could (and probably would) still be a stinker at the box office, even if every WW II gamer geek went to see it ten times each.

I think SPR and Band of Brothers both did stellar work at least trying to get as close as possible. Fury looks like it will be as damn close to "right" as well. Will the story be good and not too Hollywood? Time will tell. But what type of tanks that it has in it will certainly NOT make it more profitable in any way…

As Nazrat says, the makers of SPR and BoB did incredible work in producing vehicles that did very much look like the originals. Particularly BoB, which turned FV-432s into StuGs, a T-55 into a Tiger and god-knows-what into a Jagdpanther. They even got some Cromwells into running order.

Because it is expensive, and the studios have more important things to do than cater to Wrong Tank syndrome rivet counters.

Do you actually think that they CARE what the 0.01% of movie goers who can tell the difference think?
It's more important to make Brad Pitt or George Clooney look good. FAR more important.

What's wrong with CGI? They didn't build a working Smaug, afterall.

I'm thinking CGI cancels the need.

The reason I put put that comparison with the Dark Knight Tumbler is because I wanted to show that it is possible, but the Batmobile is arguable a centerpiece in multiple key scenes and as such it needs to be very detailed. If a war movie about a German Tiger crew, akin to "The Beast" (or Fury) would be made, I think they'll go for a better Tiger as well becasue it would be in almost every scene and also being shown from near as well, instead of just being a target in a quick shot scene like, filmed with a shaky cam, like in SPR.

. If a war movie about a German Tiger crew, akin to "The Beast" (or Fury) would be made…

Why would Hollywood want to make a movie about that? Who would pay to see it?

follow the money. That explains everything.

It could just as well be a movie about a Pershing crew, or whatever ;) Or, god forbid, a German production that has more than 10 million euros to spent on the film :D

Edit: Or a Russian one! They make decent WW2 movies all the time :)

As Nazrat says, nobody cares except you guys. If the road wheels on a "tiger" in a movie reveal it to actually be a dressed-up T-55, does that make the movie worse? Would the road wheel difference make the movie $10 USDmil better? What if they had to drop an entire sequence with bombers and fighter planes, or a naval battle, and spend that money on making the tanks look 0.1% better for an audience that will never know the difference?

For that matter, you could have dropped an unmodified T-55 into Band Of Brothers and I bet far less than 1% of the people who watched it would ever have noticed any discrepancy.

At the end of the day, the specifics of the equipment are a tiny, tiny part of what made those movies amazing. It always kind of saddens me that people who are interested in history get all wrapped up in meaningless minutiae. Here's this mind-blowing historical spectacle where they have exhaustively interviewed the survivors to get the situations and characters right, and turned that into a coherent story, and all some people care about is road wheels on a tank.

/rant over

CGI still looks like CGI with more than just a passing glance.

You can't have an actor sit on a CGI tank.

The Star Wars films that were made entirely in front of blue screens – they didn't look as good as the ones that used sets and models.

You can't have an actor sit on a CGI tank.

I assumed he meant that they could selectively use CGI over the appropriate bits. Which would be great, but, yeah, as those guys said.

If Lucas had used (any?) mixed medium effects, his prequels would have been lot more tolerable. Probably.

If there is a will there is a way: link

The link is to a photo montage of a bunch of russians building a replica of a Tiger tank. So first off I really have to wonder how expensive it really could be?

IMHO the best way to go about it would be to start a movie prop company that rents out military equipment (there already is one IIRC), building the replicas and then renting them to movies.

Damon.

It always kind of saddens me that people who are interested in history get all wrapped up in meaningless minutiae. Here's this mind-blowing historical spectacle where they have exhaustively interviewed the survivors to get the situations and characters right, and turned that into a coherent story, and all some people care about is road wheels on a tank.

I understand that we're not a movie's intended audience, but we still can't help ourselves because we're conditioned to watch such movies with a different and more critical eye than the viewers who can't tell a Tiger tank from a VW Beetle.

And if a movie cares enough to get the 'situations and characters right' as it actually happened in history, it should also respect history and at least make an attempt to be accurate in detail. Since SPR, movies have gotten much better in pleasing the 'rivet counters' and I think the bar has been set and there's no going back. I added some pics and examples in another post earlier:

TMP link

As above, it is largely irrelevant, and for the directors and producers who do care, they either have a go themselves (like the Pz IIIs in Enemy at the Gates) or rent them from people who do care, re-enactors, vehicle collectors or museums.

My favorite war moves with historical German tanks are when they use that iconic German tank the M48 Patton painted light grey with very big balkan crosses all over them. Movies with Bradjolies and the like from their Horrerwood grind, meh! I'll wait for a shaky Russiacam copy, they usually are about touchy feely emotions. Again not what I want to se in a war movie.

The last 2 movies that I remember that had the producers trumpeting how historically accurate they were were The Patriot and the Heath Ledger The Four Feathers. Yup , they did.
So, we got Mel with his Betsy Ross flag on horseback, "Tavington" in that uniform from God knows where acting like the SS in France etc.
We got the British in the Sudan wearing red coats because the director wanted to make a statement about how they were in such an alien environment. The ironic thing is that in 1884 he was accidentally correct for SOME regiments even though he tried to be deliberately wrong.
Both movies were self touted as "accurate ".

So I have to laugh at statements like "the least they can do is be historically accurate". By whose lights? That of a pampered elitist movie moghul who is surrounded by yes-men telling him how accurate he is? He already thinks he is.
If you are so easily outraged at seeing a PzIV AusfF.2 substituting for a PzIII AusfM win the lottery and produce a movie based on your favorite battle of Byalistock-Babushka. 135 people will pay to see it. If that. But all the modeling magazines will praise it.
Seriously, no they won't. You will get the exhaust pipe wrong and all hell will break loose on the modeling and gaming community. You will feel as hurt and wounded and betrayed as Mel did.

There is only one reason to make a studio movie and that is to make a ton of money. History exists solely to provide a context for a script. Accuracy is good only so far as it can be wedged into the 2 hour format and makes the star whose production company purchased it look good.
If following history too closely interferes with these worthy goals, something has to give.
The whole point of a movie is to fill an audience with guys hoping to get lucky that night with their dates and getting the tanks right is peripheral to that goal.

War film – date – lucky

One of those doesn't fit!

Yes, the Tigers in Kelly's Heroes were based on T-34/85s hulls … you can tell by the suspension … The US ARMY at Ft. Irwin, CA. has a bunch of US vehicles with attachments, etc. … That makes the US vehicle look like former Warsaw Pact/USSR vehicles[and helos ?] from a distance called "Vis-Mods" … And they have/had a few actual USSR vehicles too … The US got a lot of USSR stuff from the IDF captured from the Arabs too … One time at the gym the pretty little gymnastics instructor, said, "Aren't all Tanks the same ? And was it nice inside the the little tanks [M113s] I rode in while I was in the Army ? Bless her heart …

CGI still looks like CGI with more than just a passing glance.

No, bad CGI looks like CGI. I work in visual effects and I see the shots that go through our pipeline, and 90% of them pass by the audience without them even knowing they've seen a cgi shot. If we sat down together and watched District 9 or Watchmen or Lone Survivor and I asked you to point out what existed in-camera and what was added or modified in a computer, you would be amazed at what you missed (or what you thought was CG, but actually wasn't).

You can't have an actor sit on a CGI tank.

You don't think so? Really?

And if a movie cares enough to get the 'situations and characters right' as it actually happened in history, it should also respect history and at least make an attempt to be accurate in detail.

Believe it or not, directors and production designers and VFX artists really do care about the films they create, and want them to be as good as they possibly can. A LOT of work goes into a film, in hundreds of areas you have probably never heard of (I have spent weeks trying to get the matchmove on one shot good enough to pass muster. Ever heard of that?). There's a lot to get right. And making sure that a mocked-up tank is absolutely perfect down to the last bolt, in order to satisfy complainers in some dark corner of the internet, is low on that list of priorities.

Budgets aren't infinite, even if they seem that way sometimes. Imagine that you're the producer on Band Of Brothers and you have the chance to build replica tanks so that they are as perfect as possible, instead of using modified tanks of a different model… but it's going to cost you so much, you will only have the money to make 9 episodes instead of 10. What do you do?

For me if they could make it close to looking like the real thing and no not down to the last nut and bolt but something resembling the real thing I would be very happy. But when they take M48's and paint them up and put German crosses on them to represent German tanks for me it loses alot. And I actually believe it would not cost that much money to do that. But the money they do have seems to have to be spent on overpriced actors.

There is a lot of "belief" in this thread. Film budgets are steadily going DOWN. The few blockbusters every year are getting fewer and fewer and every penny counts on most shows. That said, it doesn't make financial sense to build or buy something you can just rent. If the vehicles are out there and available, a good production will try to rent them. It makes no sense for some company to build a replica with the hopes of renting it to film production as they would never make their money back. The number of WWII films is not that high in the States at least. So the investment is not worth the meagre dividends that you might squeak out.

Add to that the egos and artistic vision of directors, producers and actors who may or may not care about the particular suspension on that German tank, and things get decided the "wrong" way.

Too much work and not so easy. In the east they were fortunate to have for a long time a lot of T34 to work and fiddle with. When one sees the French post war film "la bataille du rail", when they actually destroy a long train full of actual WW2 German vehicles, one just weeps at the money they could have got from them just a dozen years later.

many people have no clue, whether in films or outside. I remember telling an officer in Berlin in 1982 that they sat on a fortune: half the garrison (French )were soon going to dump dozens of WW2 German trucks still in working order. I exactly remember telling him: " any one thought about selling them to hollywood?" They looked at me as if retarded.

I saw a specially made Jap tank replica in Chino air museum C.A.(can't recall which)done for windtalkers.

I thought the charge of Lieut. Patton standing on the back of a Stuart tank into the WW1 german lines in the recent World Wars, extended version the most outrageous bad use of wrong vehicle. They show him standing next to a Renault but he rides the Stuart.

I've often wondered why they don't tap the folks who own the actual thing. Jacques Littlefield's collection included a number of runners, IIRC. I'm sure working German tanks are harder to come by (unless, of course, one asks the Germans), which makes the appearance of the Bovington Tiger such a treat.

Perhaps it will start a trend? Nah, we couldn't be that lucky.

Much of the Littlefield Collection is up for auction – I wonder if anyone with connections to the film industry are making bids?

I believe the upcoming movie Fury will have a number of original tanks in it. Including Tiger 131 from Bovington.

link

And that movie will be a cartoon.

But they are using 1960/70 modern IDF super Sherman for the main tank in the movie.

jcfrog, I remember that in Windtalkers. I think it was a Type 95 "vis-mod" .. . pretty good I thought … Better than Sherman with a Rising Sun painted on the side. I remember seeing in some old WWII movies …

In the movie the Big Red One, the Germans used an IDF Super Sherman as a Panzer of some sort …

by the looks of "fury's" muzzle break, its a 76mm gun, so not a "super sherman"…

It's a perfectly valid M4A3E8, not a Super Sherman.