[punk-coder]

My grandfather was a medic and was part of the storm of Normandy beach on D-Day. He never really spoke of it and had a stroke and passed away before Saving Private Ryan came out. We wondered what he would have thought of the beginning of that movie, as someone who was there and was running around helping people the whole time.

[rightbyte]

My take is that Saving Private Ryan is "pro-war" movie like most Hollywood productions on the topic and not about 2WW really.

The give away is how the save Ryan squad seem to have agency and do like cool self-govern manouvers, like the storming of the 80mm AA gun hill, etc. More like a teenage boy fantasy. Band of Brothers is another good example of cool agency.

The opening assualt on the beach is some sort of low point for things to get better and under the protagonists' control.

A true to history version would be soldiers getting shrapnel wounds from indirect fire and being shot at by soldiers they can't see. Then they redo it somewhere else becouse someone said so.

[chiph]

Dad did not land at Normandy, but he was wounded during the Battle of the Bulge. He was hit by a ricochet in the neck. A relatively minor wound that if the bullet had hit him a little further to the left, would have killed him. He never saw his attacker. But as a radio operator he was specifically targeted by enemy soldiers.

> Then they redo it somewhere else becouse someone said so.

Yes. You follow orders when in the military. Freedom of movement is one of the things you give up when you join. Or are drafted.

> The give away is how the save Ryan squad seem to have agency

They had orders direct from General Marshall (Army Chief of Staff at the time) to go get Ryan. That gave them a ton of agency.

[1992spacemovie]

> A true to history version would be soldiers getting shrapnel wounds from indirect fire and being shot at by soldiers they can't see. Then they redo it somewhere else becouse someone said so.

No offense intended, but did you really watch Saving Private Ryan? Both of those things you mention occurred within the first 60 seconds of the start of the beach scene.

[bell-cot]

How about these, instead?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Quiet_on_the_Western_Front...

[wslh]

I wonder what WW2 reality is/was/means and how can you compress that in a movie? The Pianist? Dunkirk?

[nvy]

A lot of the maneuvers in Band of Brothers are realistic, especially the one where Speirs assaults the gun emplacements.