@Neal I agree. I would love to see a movie about the Wahoo and Richard O'Kane. As for das boot, I don't know what else they could do except make the convoy attack and the depth charge scenes look better perhaps.

A film about the Wahoo would be a bit problematic given the incident about the machine-gunning of survivors during one of the Wahoo's missions. There is still a lot of controversy over the whole incident and it appears some, if not all, of the victims may have been Allied POWs. It was that incident that is reputed to have led to the Allies, at US instigation, to not prosecute Doenitz or other U-boat personnel for war crimes for alleged similar incidents during WWII. The US was keenly aware defense counsel for the accused German defendants would bring up the Wahoo incident at trial, something the US was not very interested in being debated in a public international forum...


<O>

I agree with you, about attention span, but this kind of genre has not been introduced in few years. It was the hunt for red October that made me join the U.S. Navy! So maybe the kids today will like it!

Honestly I don't really see the point of remaking a great film like Das Boot, there's plenty of other war stories that could and should be made in movies (so long as the director isn't Michael Bay!), the only way I could see a remake of Das Boot having any sort of success would be for it to be a Hollywood style action flick. I also agree with what gmccabe01 said, aside from us sub lovers and people who like anything to deal with WW2 history, the average movie goer wouldn't sit around for six or so hours watching a bunch of guys sweating it out hoping that the next depth charge will be the last thing they ever hear.

Eh, maybe the remake will be more Midge-friendly. :hmmm:

:rotfl2:

Didn't think of that! :rock:

Truly.

I'd much rather have a new edition of Das Boot rescored versus a new film.

That said, I don't want to hold back any development of a new film about subs. Better too many, even a few bad ones, since the odds are a couple will be good.

You know...and I'm pausing here to really reflect on what I'm about to say...The Last Ship isn't that bad, and I used to equate Bay to Uwe Boll. Provided the reins were tight, he might be actually help to bring a modern (not classic, don't think he's right for that genre) sub film to light.

Then again, I'm not sure where they are taking The Last Ship now, since they kinda blew through most of the novel in season one.

I'm with Steve on this one - there is certainly actual room for good content in the remake, considering the gaps between the source novel and the film version. Buchheim himself voiced criticism of the film originally, especially what he felt like the more glorified and spectacular elements of it.

The problem of course is that I'm not sure any new movie would actually head away from (rather than towards) those spectacular elements, and then there's of course the shadow left by Das Boot itself - IMO the script of the film might've been different or better, but it's going to be very very hard to do better than the interior camera work and acting in that movie. In those two things, that movie holds as well today as it did 30 years ago. Both of those are not something that today's technology can make better in any meaningful way, and especially if you take Prochnow's performance as Der Alte - that is a hugely intimidating role to live up to.

You could compare this, of course, to something like Stanislaw Lem's novel "Solaris" and its best-known adaptations. Tarkovsky's 1972 adaptation, which was openly disliked by Lem himself (much like Buchheim who did not like Das Boot the film), is widely lauded as a cinema classic and a landmark art film. Soderbergh's 2002 adaptation, starring George Clooney, is technically closer to the content and spirit of Lem's novel - and very competently made - but it ended up totally forgettable, and never got out of the shadow its predecessor. And that's even though it never tried to copy its predecessor, treated source material with respect, and didn't have to deal with any of the technical (not to mention political) limitations that Tarkovsky had to work with. So make of that what you will.

I really suspect that even a well-meant and competent remake of Das Boot will end up just like that.

PS - also, Das Boot was by far the best of Wolfgang Petersen's films, and as a director his Hollywood output has been... underwhelming. In truth, everything he's made since Das Boot has been pure Hollywood cheese (even if it's sometimes fun cheese, as in the case of Air Force One). Even if he is attached to a Das Boot remake, that won't be much reason to celebrate - actually, that'll just make me worry more.

How about a film of the H.M.S. Safari P211.
They could read the book Crash Dive by Arthur P. Dickison.
The view from the ranks instead of an officers for a change

Welcome back
 

Yeah agree with Cybermat, worse case it will be a movie to just not watch,

My only doubts lie with special effects, these days many film producers are keen to show them off and make them a selling point. But the beauty of Das Boot was that 90% of the film is being stuck in side a sub with not much going on. so you get that feeling of claustrophobia, boredom etc. So that kind of worked well with limiting the crappy special effects from the 80's.
But we will see....

I dont see any reason why it needs to be remade. :doh:

The TV mini series of Das Boot is over 5hrs, the film version its painfully obvious that its runtime has been cut. The whole screenplay hangs together very well I'm not sure you can rush the story or cram it into 2hrs.

Good example was in 2010 when they tried to remake Edge of Darkness from the classic 80's TV mini series. One gets close to highest IMDB ratings of all time whilst the other just adds nothing, it didn't work.

If they are going to do it with Das Boot they somehow need to make the viewer feel part of the crew faster, probably have to ditch the La Rochelle scenes and have you start out on patrol braving the Atlantic weather.