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Characters In War Movies You Didn't Realize Were Based On Real People
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Throughout its history as an industry, Hollywood has shown a remarkably enduring fondness for the war film. It’s easy to see why, as they often capture the horror and triumph of armed conflict, and the genre allows directors like Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, and Christopher Nolan to showcase their talent.
Many of the best war films are those that draw on at least some real history to add texture to their stories, whether the focus is on WWI, WWII, Vietnam, or some other conflict. Oftentimes, viewers don't even recognize that the characters in these harrowing stories are based on real people.
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The best war films are often those that don’t shy away from showing just how ugly and brutal combat is for those on the ground. One such example is Fury, which focuses on a tank crew as they encounter the bloody fields of Europe during the last days of WWII. Their intrepid commander is US Army Staff Sgt. Don "Wardaddy" Collier (Brad Pitt).
It’s clear throughout the film how competent Wardaddy is and how deeply he cares for his men. This is something the character has in common with his real-life inspiration, US Army Staff Sgt. Lafayette G. Pool, who was fiercely dedicated to his men and could always be relied upon to know what to do. Unlike Wardaddy, who has a hero’s death in Fury, Pool lived until 1991, when he passed at the age of 71.
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Mr. Dawson From 'Dunkirk' - Based On Commander Charles Lightoller
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Christopher Nolan is one of those directors who can work in almost any genre, and in 2017's Dunkirk he demonstrated his skill with the war film. As its title suggests, it focuses primarily on the efforts to evacuate British soldiers from Dunkirk, France. The film manages to be both awe-inspiring and bracing in its depiction of the horrors of war.
As with so many other Nolan films, Dunkirk works because of the talent of his cast. Mark Rylance, for example, delivers a strong performance as Mr. Dawson, who is based on Commander Charles Lightoller. Both Dawson and Lightoller were determined to take their own ship to Dunkirk, rather than letting it be commandeered by the Navy. Likewise, both men also relied on the advice of their late sons to avoid being sunk by the Germans.
An incredible footnote: In addition to his heroics at Dunkirk, Charles Lightoller was the most senior officer to survive the sinking of the Titanic.
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Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan combines both rousing action and intimate drama. Though the scenes depicting D-Day leave a strong impression on the viewer, there's also genuine human magic in the 1998 film’s focus on a group of soldiers trying to locate Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon); his brothers died in battle and he is being held captive behind enemy lines. Ultimately, the men succeed, but with significant loss of life.
This is effective for the drama, but the story of the film's inspiration, Frederick W. “Fritz” Niland, is a bit more prosaic. Two of his brothers were indeed killed in action - and one went missing over Burma - but Niland himself was evacuated to the UK, and then to the US, with minimal fuss. What’s more, the brother shot down over Burma, Edward, also survived imprisonment and made it back to the US.
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Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, like so many of the director’s other films, is filled not only with his usual stylized violence and snappy dialogue, but also takes some remarkable liberties with the history of WWII. Even so, it makes for compelling viewing, particularly with its focus on two efforts to take down the leaders of the Third Reich. The 2009 movie is also filled with memorable performances, including Daniel Brühl as German sniper Fredrick Zoller.
Inglourious Basterds is largely fictional, but Zoller is based on two real people: American Audie Murphy and Austrian Matthäus Hetzenauer. Murphy was one of the most celebrated and decorated soldiers in WWII, although he would become even more famous as an actor. Hetzenauer, on the other hand, was a sniper who killed more than 300 men. Zoller passes by the end of the film, but both of his real-life inspirations survived the war: Murphy perished in a 1971 plane crash, and Hetzenauer passed in 2004.
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Throughout his career, director Oliver Stone has repeatedly shown an interest in exploring the fraught nature of American history, and has been particularly invested in the Vietnam War. Platoon (1986) is his harrowing look at the experience of the conflict from the soldiers on the ground and features some moving performances, including Willem Dafoe as Sgt. Elias.
Elias was, according to Stone, based on US Army Sgt. Juan Angel Elias. The film character is remarkably idealistic, in marked contrast to some of the other characters, most notably Tom Berenger’s Sgt. Barnes. The real Elias was, according to Stone, a nice guy with whom most of the soldiers managed to get along. He perished in 1968 when a grenade went off. The film’s Elias, meanwhile, is first shot by Barnes and later killed by the North Vietnamese Army.
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While Roland Emmerich’s Revolutionary War epic The Patriot may take some noted liberties with history, it’s also a stirring piece of filmmaking. Part family melodrama and part war film, it focuses on Captain (and later Colonel) Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson), who reluctantly becomes involved in the conflict after one of his sons is killed. His nemesis is sinister, sadistic Colonel William Tavington, portrayed by Jason Isaacs.
Like many other characters in the 2000 film, Tavington is drawn from a real person - in this case, British Army Col. Banastre Tarleton. Like his cinematic counterpart, Tarleton was known for his ruthless approach to the war's execution, and he was particularly active in the American South. Of course, Hollywood gives Tavington a much more dramatic demise than what Tarleton experienced in real life. In the film, Martin kills Tavington in hand-to-hand combat, while Tarleton returned to England and eventually served in Parliament.
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Unlike many war films that tend to sideline the experiences of Black military members, Red Tails shines an important light on the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of Black men who served in the US Army Air Forces during WWII. The 2012 movie grounds its story in its individual characters, and one of the most complex of these is 1st Lt. Joe “Lightning” Little (David Oyelowo), who is as reckless as he is brilliant.
Even though Lightning is a fictional character, his personality and exploits are drawn from a real-life Tuskegee Airman, Capt. Wendell Pruitt. As Oyelowo noted in an interview, many of the Airmen with whom he spoke remarked upon his character’s similarities to Pruitt, particularly in his cocksure attitude. They felt likewise about the fierce competition that erupts between Lightning and Capt. Martin "Easy" Julian (Nate Parker).
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With 2012's Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathryn Bigelow demonstrated once again her ability to craft suspenseful films about some of the 21st century’s most complex conflicts. In this case, she focused on the efforts of American intelligence agencies to locate Osama bin Laden. It shows in particular the extraordinary lengths many intelligence officials went to in their efforts to find and assassinate the architect of September 11.
CIA intelligence analyst Maya Harris (Jessica Chastain) is one of the film's most crucial characters. There are few lengths to which she won’t go in order to get what she needs, and in one particularly haunting scene she observes the waterboarding of a potential Al-Qaeda informant. Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, the CIA agent on whom Maya was based, has been forthright in her belief in the value of practices like waterboarding, which she feels has been beneficial in curbing terrorism.
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Full Metal Jacket, like many other films of director Stanley Kubrick, is both darkly funny and yet bleakly tragic, showing his sense of cynicism about war and its impact on the young men forced to fight in it. At the center of the 1987 movie is Private (and later Sergeant) JT "Joker" Davis, who witnesses the full horrors of the Vietnam War both on the battlefield and off it.
The film was based on Gustav Hasford's 1979 novel The Short-Timers, for which he drew on his own experiences in the US Marine Corps during the conflict. However, one significant difference between Joker and Hasford is their military status. While Joker is shown to be Marine recruit, Hasford was a military journalist and Marine veteran, and had published pieces with several magazines prior to writing The Short-Timers.
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Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now remains one of the director’s best-known films; released in 1979, it aimed to give viewers an understanding of what the horrors of the Vietnam War were really like. It also features some haunting performances, particularly from Marlon Brando as US Army Colonel Walter Kurtz, a highly decorated officer who decides to go rogue.
Based on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness - though set in Vietnam rather than 19th-century Congo - the film also draws on the life of Anthony Poshepny (AKA Tony Poe) in its depiction of Kurtz, a megalomaniac intent on winning the war at any cost whose cruelty seems to know no bounds. Tony Poe was likewise known for his barbarity when it came to war; unlike Kurtz, however, Poe managed to survive. He was ultimately deported from Thailand back to the US, where he passed in 2003 at the age of 78.
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Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe star in 2003's The Last Samurai, which focuses on Watanabe’s Lord Moritsugu Katsumoto (the character of the title) and Cruise’s Nathan Algren, who befriend each other during a pivotal period in 19th century Japanese history. Like so much of Hollywood, it’s a film that skillfully blends the fictional and the actual, particularly when it comes to Algren.
The character is based on a real person, Jules Brunet, who did indeed visit Japan and come to identify with the cause of the Samurai and their war against the Emperor. However, unlike Algren, Brunet was not an American Civil War vet, but a Frenchman. He also ended up returning to France after the defeat of the Samurai, whereas Algren’s fate remains ambiguous in the film (though it’s hinted he returns to a village to be with his love interest).
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Directed by John Moore, Behind Enemy Lines stars Owen Wilson as US Navy Lt. Chris "Longhorn" Burnett who, as the title implies, ends up behind enemy lines in Bosnia during the Bosnian War (1992-1995). As the 2001 film unfolds, Burnett plays a key role in exposing genocide. He also shows himself as a man who refuses to take orders, and his recklessness comes very close to being his own undoing.
This portrayal earned the film some opprobrium from US Air Force Captain Scott O’Grady, upon whom Burnett's character reportedly is based. As O'Grady went on to publicly state, he wasn’t the type of pilot who would refuse to obey orders, and he also wasn’t as reckless as his on-screen counterpart. O'Grady ultimately filed a lawsuit against film studio 20th Century Fox.
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