'Valkyrie': Why Not Just Have Hitler Die?
Is there any reason the movies can't rewrite history?
Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere has offered up a fantastic way to make Valkyrie a much better film, "[Tell] the story of Cruise's Col. Claus von Stauffenberg as a realistic wish-fulfilment fantasy… Show Hitler being killed by the briefcase bomb, the subsequent coup d'etat succeeding, the Nazi higher-ups fleeing for their lives, a truce being struck between the new German government and Allied forces, and Russian troops agreeing to stand down and not invade Berlin."
Embargoes are still up on Valkyrie reviews as far as I know, but I will say the best part of the film is the second half and had they made the second half bleed more into the first half and gone down the road Wells suggests it would have been a phenomenal idea. One thing about a couple of this year's WWII films is they are going against the norm. The Reader dealt with German guilt following the war while Good (review coming soon) dealt with the Germans before the war. Valkyrie follows suit, but it also carries that one thing that I even heard a couple of people talking about heading into my screening, "Well we know they don't kill Hitler…" Just imagine if they had!
One of my most hated statements when people talk about Titanic is, "I already knew how it was going to end, the boat sinks." Well no shit Sherlock, if that is your approach to film you must have a grand ol' time every time you sit down in the cinema. I would have loved to see the faces on all the naysayers had the Titanic actually pulled into port in Cameron's #1 box-office hit, but that wouldn't have really worked in that instance, but how about this…
How about a film about the 2000 Presidential election and having Al Gore actually come out victorious? What if Jay Roach's Recount ended with the Supreme Court had ordered the recount to continue and finding Gore had actually won leaving Florida's Secretary of State Katherine Harris disgraced and in court facing charges of unethical behavior followed by the swearing in of Gore and the disappearance of George W. Bush from the political map. So much of our movies are fictional outings anyway, why not jumble it up a bit?
As for Valkyrie, there is more to the story, of course, but I will explore that in my review. I just thought this was too interesting to be left unsaid.
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I have had to delete an endless amount of comments regarding a specific film that will satisfy this request. Please stop posting about it so you don't spoil the film for others that haven't read said script.
Thanks.
This is really not the story to suddenly change to have a happy ending.
I think it would also be a slap in the face of the people brave enough to oppose and/or fight hitler especially the ones that lost their lives doing it.
Also sometimes a bit of history is gripping and interesting enough to tell as it was.
And in real life, things don't allways turn out for the better.
You'd like a disaster movie to be more realistic and kill off humanity but history you'd like to change into a disney.
In real life no American planes got off the ground during the attack at Pearl Harbor.
Yet because of the movie I bet half of the U.S. thinks this really happened.
Let's ignore what happened to make the viewer feel better and be more entertained.
Sometimes it's better to tell the ugly truth and maybe people will think and learn a lesson for the future.
Sorry, maybe it's because the subject matter (WWII) is very close to me but this idea of changing details just to entertain horrifies me.
I do like the "what if" thing if it's done on larger scale, like a docu i've seen about what if JFK wasn't killed or to stick to the subject just look up the game series: Command and Conquer Red Alert.
@rattler76: I don't see how it would be a slap in the face. Isn't Hitler despised by all rational thinking human beings? As for the ugly truth, it's all over the place, I don't see how one film exploring a "what if?" scenario would disrupt the myriad of WWII films that come out every year. The ugly truth is out there and exploring a different option is just that, a different option.
Would you actually be offended by the idea? When you say "Let's ignore what happened…", I think such an idea would do the exact opposite of that. It would be 100% entrenched in the truth, which is what would make telling something of a fantasy story so intriguing. It would raise even more awareness in fact since what everyone would be talking about is how they changed history and Hitler dies in the film even though it isn't historically accurate.
I'm not against the idea.
For me it's perhaps where you would put the change, if you do it towards the beginning and then explore the "what if" scenario yes I would be interested in that as well.
If you do it towards the end than it would turn more into just a happy ending instead of a "what if".
In the case of Valkyrie they seem to try to get really close to what happened and then it's just weird to change such a crucial part of the story.
It's really my personal feeling but if the whole movie was like it happened and they'd just change ending it would demean the sacrifice of these people in my eyes.
To keep it as close to reality completely honours them more.
Again these are just my personal opinions and feelings and they're based on having a family that fought actively against the nazi's and sufferd much because of them so thats why I'm not that open to the idea and very protective about their stories.
It's really about how they would do it. Like the game series I mentioned was brilliant.
In short they removed hitler before his rise to power to avoid the war which left the US (and allies) and the Soviets as powerblocks that inevitably came to blows.
So I'm not completely against it, I just have conditions.
I saw this movie and with the tone that is said it just isnt the type of fil you change history to. For example I think you can do it for a less serious type of film. If it happened here it would kind of turn this movie into a joke. Just my opinion. Not saying I loved this film though. It did what it needed to do but over all felt flat.
I'm against the idea. Just… really against it. In 500 years, maybe. After all, "Braveheart" takes gigantic liberties with reality. But that happened over 700 years ago. Hitler's history is way too recent and way too well-known for filmmakers to pull off that trick. It just plain wouldn't work, and the filmmakers would come off looking like idiots.
Of course, there are still bound to be people walking out of the theater saying, "What? They didn't kill Hitler?" Just as there were people who walked out of Titanic, saying, "The boat sank?"
I personally can't wait to see "Valkyrie," and I expect some good things from it.
@chewbaca69: You thought it was serious? I saw nothing but an action piece and while it is a "serious" actioner, I never got the impression we were looking at any serious historical outing.
@JM: I will say I respect your opinion, but I don't see what making it 1 year or 500 years after the fact matters. It's history no matter when you do it and I have a feeling I will be very interested in your opinion in the near future.
@Brad Brevet: I just think that if they had done that in the film it would of felt out of nowhere and interrupted to flow of the picture. I just think in order to change history you have to have the film set in a world where it would be believable to change history. Again, just my opinion but I think Brian Singer set out to tell this guys story how it happened.