Red dawn was one of my favorites as a kid too. We often talked about it while out camping and bow hunting. I had a pretty good group of friends that would make plans for the invasion. Over 30 years later and they all still know the places to meet in the woods. Although these days they may use them to hide from the commies that are already here.
I’ve been watching Tora Tora Tora clips on YouTube, marveling anew, those are all real aircraft being flown mere feet above the ground.
I still recall how everybody in the drive in cheered when those two P40’s got off of the ground.
Amazing. Ain’t shown in this clip, but I still recall the condensation contrails spinning off of the wingtips of that hard-turning P-40 in a dogfight with a Zero.
"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744
IMO war movies — particularly the battle scenes — is a genre that gained the most by computer-generated imagery. An analogy might be the artist who paints in an impressionistic manner because he doesn’t have the talent to paint realistically — to produce a painting that looks like a beautiful photograph, that looks real.
For me, then, “B of Brothers” (does a series count) and “Ryan” take the cake because of the gut-wrenching realism. It doesn’t mean there isn’t great acting or production in older war movies, but that they just didn’t have the technology to fixate you.
