"Fetih 1453 aka Battle of the Empires " Topic

Who can comment on the two versions of this recent Turkish movie on the siege and fall of Constantinople, sold as Fetih 1453 in the original language (w/ English subtitles, according to the Amazon listing) and in an English-dubbed version titled Battle of the Empires? I note that Amazon shows the dubbed version as about 30 minutes shorter than the original -- is this accurate, that the dubbed version has been cut?

And what else would you say about the film? Amazon reviews are a mixed lot, seems that a certain amount of partisan boosterism on the part of the Ottomans is to be expected. But there's really nothing else out there on this subject, as far as I know.

The film is essentially the Turkish equivalent of a Hollywood blockbuster.So you are getting Hollywood history in Turkish.

Its presentation of the Ottomans is pretty good, its presentations of the Byzantines so so to problematic. Battle scenes are epic. It even has a Turkish and Venetian macho men who fight.

The script is kinda boring, and takes many liberties in order to make the Ottomans look as good as possible (oh my god the Orban story-line….i wanted to weep. WEEEP).

That said it is ok fun. I thought of it as entertainment. Laughed out loud at many points, and especially with the last scene. Soo bloody disingenuous and funny (hey man we all brothers now tamam!) :p

So if you go in it with a attitude this is Hollywood in which the bad guys are crusaders and Byzantines and the good guys are Muslims, then you will have fun. The costumes, fx, and cinematography are top-notch.

Finally my general principle is to avoid dubbed versions like the plague. I bet they cut some scenes that made crusader look like animals (not that some of them were not).

Also this is Erdogan Hollywood so religion also gets a main part. Some people might hate it , some might love it, and some might just be ok with it.

Again, its not bad. Its just derivative Hollywood.

Ah yes, there is also an older Kemalist movie on the same topic. Would be interesting to watch both and compare.

Its just derivative Hollywood.

As derivative as Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam?

Good to know! Thanks for the scuttlebutt. I've got both versions on order, for comparison. I would normally avoid a dubbed version, too, but want to hedge my bets in case the long-form PAL original does not include subtitles for some reason or fails to respond to my region-free DVD player.

I've always wanted to build a Byzantine army for this period, but there is a general lack of information. Would this be a decent source for what they looked like?

Grelber

"They" looked like 15th century Europeans. Mail and plate. Lots of Italians as the main troops/garrison. A bit of iconic addition to banners and insignia a la. Eastern Orthodox would ID the Byzantine troops….

A good book for this period of the Byzantines is The Late Byzantine Army: Arms and Society, 1204-1453 (Middle Ages Series) by Mark Batusis. Amazon has it for sale.

Also, Osprey Publishing has published a number of books that include pictures of the Late Byzantine Soldiers. Just go to the Osprey site and look up their medieval titles.

Grelber. No I fear the film would not be a good source for the Later Byzantines.

The army was really a collection of mercenary forces each in their own national dress or practical military conflict. Osprey has a couple of books that can help you with that. Some troops would look Ottoman (Turkish mercenaries) and some western (Latin arguebusers). Lots of Albanians, Cumans etc.

Frankly the last Imperial field army took the field in 1390 for a civil war between Palaiologians. The last Byzantine field army were the Morean armies of 1420-1440. Neither Constantinople nor Trapezunta (Trezibond for you barbarians :p) fielded field armies in the last 2 decades of their existence.

I also recommend the Osprey titles "The Walls of Constantinople AD 324-1453" (Fortress series) and "Constantinople 1453" (Campaign series). Useful illustrations and maps and schematics!

Sidenote: I have always been intrigued by the mysterious Johannes Grante, the engineer who served the Byzantines with distinction and is noted in the histories as a German, although his name bespeaks a Scottish origin. Did he survive the siege, escape from the falling city, or was he lost and presumed killed at the end?

I am afraid I have no idea there. He definitely does not show up in the film.

Darn! An interesting character, possibly a true soldier-of-fortune in the Scottish tradition.

And I can't help but still wish for the Byzantines to win, just the same. Lousy history!! This is going to be a sad film to watch.

Well sure I wanted them to win as well. Though no idea what win means in the situation they had. Its not like the first Ottoman siege that would had failed. Off with the Sultans head, new Sultan. Goes off and beats up some Hungarians. Huzzah for the Padishah. Goes for the siege again.

See I am mean. I would had preferred if the Byzantines had won 1204 :p Much different history then.

@KT: Same thing as the Ottomans, the "Franks" would just come back later, with even more of a vengeance. The growing public feeling was "anti-Greek"….

Maybe, but there still was an Empire in 1204, not just a city as 1453. And an empire can find allies. Indeed the empire survived many coming for a second and third and fourth round (Avars, Persians, Arabs, Bulgarians, Normans etc). We say it was doomed to fall but we are talking about a state the survived 900 years until 1204. The UK still exists, France still exists, Germany still exists, Poland still exists. The Empire might had survived if 1204 had not gutted it. And of course it is not just the fault of Franks. Above all it is the fault of those damned Angelloi. %@%!%@^^!!&!&&!&@**@

People only say it was "doomed" now, with 20/20 hindsight. Sure, it may have been doomed AFTER 1204 (in which case, it was not so much doomed as murdered), or after 1400 or so, on its own depleted resources. But there's ways to speculate that history spares the Byzantines. The Ottoman state might have collapsed into smaller units (the Balkanization of Asia Minor, perhaps?), or the Byzantines might have united their crown with a powerful protector (Hungary? Poland? An Italian state?) and remained in Christian hands, at least. The western or central Europeans might have found common cause long enough to block the Turkish conquest, or pushed it back (in which case Constantinople might have become a holding of some other non-Greek power rather than the Ottomans'). The Turks might not have produced such an energetic series of sultans when they did. All sorts of might-have-beens are at work in this.

Well, I finally got to see the Turkish, full-length, subtitled version, and it's quite instructive. I never knew before, for example, what a family man Sultan Mehmet was… or that Emperor Constantine XI maintained a harem of German serving wenches… or that Hassan the Super-Turk and Giovanni Giustinianni fought a mano-a-mano duel to the death among the abandoned ruins of Byzantium… or that Joan of Hungary/Turkey played such a crucial part in the forging and operation of Urban's bombard… and that is only a few of the insights that remain with me after my initial viewing (on the sad anniversary of the fall of the city). It's not wretched, but it's not terribly good… I suppose it lives down to expectations, is the kindest review I can post. It's big and bloody and boisterous, but is it good history? probably not. But it's all we have.

PS: I think Johannes Grante is seen briefly as "John of Germany".