MovieChat Forums > The Patriot (2000) Discussion > As for why they don’t make Revolutionary...

As for why they don’t make Revolutionary War films


The Patriot Budget : $110 million
Box Office: $215 million

$215 million is a good showing, particularly for an R-Rated film in 2000. But on a $110 million budget, the profits are limited.

There is just so much work and expenses required to make a Revolutionary War look authentic. Hence, you don’t see too many films about the Revolutionary War

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I am not american but I like the history about the revolutionary wars in the american continent. I appreciate the staging of this movie.

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Right. The visuals, clothing, atmosphere in this movie was well-done: but there was a huge financial cost for the filmmakers. Hence, you don’t see many movies that try to portray the Revolutionary War period.

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Plus it's hard to make the British the villains. They are our allies now and have been for a long time.

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100% agreed ATG6.

It's also telling that the director behind this is a German, and he had a completely fabricated scene of British redcoats burning a building with people inside, as a 'tactic', when it was the Nazis (i.e. Roland Emmerich's fellow countrymen) who *actually* used such brute war 'strategies'.

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I wonder if CGI would bring the costs down now or just add to them. I'm not a fan of CGI but it would save them on location scenes and extras for the battle scenes.

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Depends on the director. Like maybe a Steven Spielberg or even someone like James Cameron if he ever got off his Avatar obsession.

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They don't make films about this particular war because it's the basis behind American Patriotism, and Hollyweird hates American Patriotism. They think it's a form of fascism to love your country and to be loyal to it.

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Don't be silly.

If there's one thing that US conservatives and US leftists can ever agree on, it's bashing the British. Cons love to do so because they think us Europeans are all terrible 'socialists', and it gives them a chance to bellyache over their superiority/exceptionalism, and libs love to do so because the Brits (and to some extent the Germans) are the *only* 'acceptable' non-American 'baddies', and it makes them feel better about their own country's sordid past to focus on *British* imperialism.

Maybe they just figure that in today's market, in which international BO figures matter as much, if not more, than the US BO, few people will want to watch films that bash foreigners (i.e. us non-Yanks). Look at a film like The Alamo. That film was a huge flop, because, apart from Americans, who's going to pay to see such a film at the cinema?

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Don't be silly.

Conservatives, in general, admire the British, and appreciate them as allies. Leftists, on the other hand, now condemn Churchill as a racist warmonger.

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I didn’t go see this one because I saw it as a blatant Braveheart knock off.

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