What is the most realistic submarine movie? (2019)
usni.org
usni.org
- Office Space is the best submarine movie. TPS reports, multiple bosses, a defective printer, coming in on Saturday, the oversight team of “the Bobs” that are “there to help,” and the engineers are not allowed to talk to normal people. Incredibly accurate!
why?
Edit: Having been around for a while I’ve learned to appreciate PMs. You have to be very careful what you say in front of customers or focus groups. If you had two engineers and one customer chatting unsupervised it would turn into a brainstorming session, and after 45 minutes we’re building a flying police box that can travel through time.
Sometimes even asking the wrong question can cause an upset. Engineers are prone to thinking or even saying things like, "successfully delivering the project is more important than the ego of a middle ranking procurement manager in the client, right?"
That sounds the complete antithesis of agile to me.
Is a "agile" now a term like "woke", devoid of all useful meaning
My fave was the burb by Lieutenant Commander Jeff Vandenengel (U.S. Navy).
WikiPedia's list of submarine films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_films
It is? By what metric?
Yes, Das Boot is a fantastic movie, but it came out around 1980; that's about 45 years ago now!
The new AQotWF movie has great reviews too. It just came out within the last year I think.
That's two great movies in a 50-year period. This is not what I would call "doing well".
There might be a few more examples of good German movies, but overall I would not call the German film industry world-leading by any means.
There’s also the rather interesting English-language Spanish stuff that Netflix has been broadcasting, and some great Scandinavian stuff (I preferred In Order of Disappearance to Cold Pursuit, even though the American version was quite faithful to the original).
I know that Hollywood has been doing a lot of of offshore development (just like Silicon Valley—for the same reason), which has likely been training non-US artists in American production techniques and sensibilities (just like Silicon Valley).
(also K-drama and telenovella plotting just absolutely trashes focus-grouped US streamer TV insipidness)
It's the same with everything in America these days.
I should note that Germans weren’t the only ones operating subs in WWII (but they were definitely operating the majority of them), so the submarine experience wasn’t unique to Germany.
I also really enjoyed the new Shogun limited series. It deserved every award it got. I heard that the Japanese they spoke was period-accurate, so it was maybe the equivalent of an English-language Shakesperian movie.
>> The new Shogun has been well received by Western audiences, but it’s been a monster hit among Japanese viewers — possibly because they know the story. They know who Tokugawa Ieyasu is, they know about his rival Ishida Mitsunari and the Battle of Sekigahara the show is building up to. It doesn’t matter that these characters and events have different names in Shogun. It’s not exactly clear why the author did that, but in James Clavell’s novel, Adams is named John Blackthorne and Ieyasu is Yoshii Toranaga.
Various people have pointed out that Japan makes a ton of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jidaigeki shows in a similar style (and with a similar vocabulary, making Shogun comprehensible to JP viewers), but for domestic consumption, and they don't really get exported. I guess having the character of Blackthorne as an anchor is critical for Western viewers.
While we're on the subject, this audience might like https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066473/ , which was a true Japanese-American co-production war movie. Bit of a specialist watch as it's nearly two and a half hours long. Some uncredited assistant direction was done by Kurosawa.
Didn't know about the Kurosawa angle.
Aboard a nuclear-armed submarine, crew members gradually begin to descend into madness. The cause: chronic inhalation of toxic paint fumes from freshly coated interior surfaces. The resulting disorientation leads them to mistake a routine drill for the outbreak of a real nuclear war.
If Down Periscope gets a honourable mention, The Fifth Missile should, too.
The TV version shows the monotony which transports the relief when finally making enemy contact a lot more. In the DVD versions the individual episodes are cut together into a continuing movie of more than 4 hours.
The director's cut however has improved visuals and sound, also worthwhile if you don't have the time for the big thing.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/yDvASSABhNQ?si=iVSqDKuIUlrh23IF
Apple commissioned director Edward Berger (Academy Award-winning "All Quiet on the Western Front") to make this story of a torpedo attack on a U.S. sub during WW2.
Talk about claustrophobia and fear....
Fun facts now: the cast of Das Boot was obliged to constantly stay indoors during the entire length of filming, forcefully as part of an effort to both give them a grossly pallid, sickly complexion like you'd expect from a WWII era submariner at sea for months, and to create a sense of claustrophobia that would percolate into more realistic acting.
Also, the mockup of the submarine's interior was built for maximum realism in its size and all usable physical details, with the actors rigorously trained to move through this space as naturally as possible (as a real German U-boat crew would)
The effort, along with the great script, fantastic cast and of course, memorable music, shows in pretty much everything, right down to the disgusting details of how they look and act after weeks at sea. One hell of a movie, and while my personal experience with submarines is zero, this is the one that feels like it should be absolute most realistic depiction of crewing a sub from that era. It fully deserves its rank as one of the most highly rated films of any kind on most movie ranking websites, like IMDB and etc.
I can also see why it's the most highly voted film among submariners. Even if modern nuclear subs are at a whole other level of comfort compared to anything from 85 years ago, certain basics stay the same: It's a claustrophobic, fully enclosed space with nothing but artificial lighting, observation almost entirely through instruments, and crushing, nearly inescapable, horrible death just a few inches of hull and a couple sudden mistakes away.
All this is the case in a way that just doesn't apply to the same degree with any surface vessel, where you can still somehow feel directly connected to and within reach of the wider, comforting world.
It probably has more in common with space travel than being out at sea in these characteristics.
Just watched this last week about the USS Oregon, and the crew were asked their favourite sub movies...
I didn't hear Das Boot even mentioned...
I've normally used OP (as in Original Post) but that can get confused with Original Poster (and the initial comment rather than the featured article).
TFA is more specific and now that I've learned it I think its valid to use on a board where it is likely to be a regular useful shortcut.
I mean, us as IT people ... how many of us have even heard of Dhunki, an 2019 Indian movie about morals and suffering in an Bangalore IT company?
Turns out it's on Prime Video:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/search?phrase=Dhunki&k=Dhunk...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07WJ34ZC5/ref=atv_sr...
I'm watching it tonight! Thank you for the tip.
The mention some alternative modern movies instead
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Boot
And after reading TFA I can see it's the most voted one. I don't know if it's the most realistic one but, sheesh, does it feel claustrophobic and stressful!