shows or movies with a focus on military tactics?

Input Cinephile Shodown
1

it’s been months since i finished legend of galactic heroes and i need my military tactics fix. political intrigue is a bonus. i am fine with watching things that are trashy (making my way through The Last Kingdom right now) and sort of expect it with this stuff. game of thrones (lol) and anything covering wars from the 20th century is banned from this thread, everything else is fine.

i should probably give ROME another try but my memory of it was that it pretty exhaustingly HBO

this is also a thread for @Tulpa probably

1 Like
2

ROME is more soap opera than military anything.

Its most obvious budgetary concessions seemed to come when they didn’t actually show any battles?

3

ah okay i didn’t know if that changed at all farther into the show. oh well

4

I could be misremembering. I probably haven’t watched the whole thing since the second season was actually airing, but all I can remember in terms of BATTLE is the beginning with Vorenus sentencing Pullo to death for breaking ranks to play the solo hero.

Which is a great scene, and shows a very stately, organized shield wall in action (!) but after I just remember some big buildups capped off with fadeouts to dead people.

If Max Pirkis being amazing (and he gets replaced eventually) isn’t enough to get you through the HBOness I wouldn’t tough it out for the stabbings.

5

I came in to suggest The Last Kingdom lol

6

i’m actually watching episode 5 right now

the protaganist is kind of an asshat even by prestige show standards, and there sure are a whole bunch of pointless sex scenes, but i mean, it panders to me enough that i like it anyway. the negotiation scene with ubba was pretty cool too

7

uhtred was the angsty atheist of his time imo

8

How much of a stupid idiot the main character is is really what sells me on the whole thing. I just feel it is very appropriate for a dude in the middle ages to just be a selfish asshole and do dumb things all the time.

1 Like
9

Generation Kill & The World at War

Military tactics is an extremely boring subject to include in a movie/TV show, but Hornblower & Sharpe do it OK.

1 Like
10

it’s like they were going for a greek tragedy “destroyed by his own pride” type thing but instead he’s just a really smart and competent warrior/spy/whatever who is occasionally an idiot for no reason. he’s like a video game protaganist who’s exclusively an idiot during cutscenes

11

i’m sorry we can’t be friends

12

Any adaptation of Romance of the 3 kingdoms is varying levels of fantasy, and the tactics are often nonsense but amazing nonsense

Highly recommended.

1 Like
13

i just watched the Timber Scene and this is what i gather picking a seemingly innocuous renegade option in mass effect must look like

14

@haley I love to learn about the typical deployment of peltast & how they would fare against Marian legionaries but I fear the ratings for Grudgematches of the Ancient Mediterranean East Side would be dire

15

Woops that version of my favorite rot3k scene had broken subtitles. Just edited my post to show the coherent one

16

I’d watch it.

Ditto Macedon Brings Longer Spears To A Bunch of Phalanx Fights (LOL)

1 Like
17

If manga is fine, Historie is very good.

18

The Last Kingdom starts with a bunch of people getting owned because they don’t know how to deal with a shield wall and then ends with a big dumb shield wall fight it’s great

19

Mann’s Last of the Mohicans can show you some things about the use of entrenchment and mortars against fortifications during the French & Indian War + british infantry tactics when ambushed just not working out.

Also some things about about how early-90’s Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe just get dreamier the more dirt gets caked on them D:

2 Likes
20

You also learn that when the gray hair is dead, Magua will eat his heart.