Gettysburg

This is entertaining. I will not deny that. However, the factual errors are outrageous. One of the former reviews accused those who don't like it as armchair historians. I have my Master's in History, and have done my theses on Gettysburg (particularly cavalry actions there). I must say that this is highly inaccurate. Watch it if you want to see blood, gore, and action. It is great at making the story intense. Just do not take it for the gospel.

Ignore the reviews about inaccurate historical details, this film is very, very good. The action *must* be like it really was. Watch it. What a joke the reviewers here say about inaccurate historical details... they're just armchair historians giving poor reviews because they're obsessed with details about who did what and when. Who cares about who did what and when? It was such a chaotic battle, no one will ever really know the truth of what happened and when.

The action in this film blew me away. My great great uncle fought there, and I'm sure he'd agree that this is the way it was. One of the best CW films I've ever seen, maybe THE best. It's the combat scenes that make it and that's what I, and most other guys, want to see realistically depicted.

This film is simply the best. Ignore the nit-picking reviews. Darn the wannabe historians who think they have a corner on what the Civil War was about... Jeez.

You can make the case that the grammar of the regular enlisted man for North or South would be very basic, their vocabulary severely limited by a lifetime of not receiving any education.

But even the Generals and other officers, particularly those on the South, are speaking gibberish, not one discernible English phrase. And it takes away from me taking this program seriously to any degree.

I mean, do the actors get paid less if they just speak gibberish instead of English? Is that in the union contract or something? Case in point: Barksdale, he is shouting orders out that are in a language totally foreign to anything heard on planet earth. It really bothered me too because this was a pretty important commander in the "history" of the South, something the "history" channel doesn't take as seriously as most people, which in itself is confusing. Showing this man to be an illiterate buffoon that can't even muster a single properly structured sentence let alone a few words to his own troops does him a disservice.

Just nonsense. History Channel has produced another winner here.

I'm not going to claim that I am an expert on the American Civil War, however I am a lover of history and as such I've studied it quite closely. Before watching this "documentary" I read up on the battle of Gettysburg and watched videos made by the tour guides who work there.

It made me very interested to learn more and then found this "documentary". Figured it couldn't hurt to see it. Right? What met me was a disjointed, uninteresting, muddled portrayal of the events that took place at Gettysburg. You have Rebel soldiers dressed in rags, not uniforms. You've got people running all over the place pretty much never staying in any kind of formation. Not to mention all the things they get wrong both big and small in terms of history.

The cinematography is sub-par to say the least, the camera is constantly shaking, it's cut up to all hell, using slow-motion as well as extreme close-up shots WAY too much.

Even with them trying to focus on specific soldiers to portray whatever story they were trying to tell the whole thing is hidden by a 20 inch layer of vaseline.

I have no idea what they were going for with this. It's boring, disjointed and impossible to follow from start to finish. Whoever says that this is a good or great film/documentary clearly have no point of reference because this is EASILY the worst historical portrayal of any kind I've EVER seen.

Then again, what else should I have expected from a History Channel production?

I'm a cultural historian, and I've don't a good deal of work on representations of history. To expect that a movie will offer a completely accurate representation of events is to ask too much. Still, this one drips with inaccuracies. The devil is truly in the details. For example, maybe some would argue that showing LTG Richard S. Ewell arriving on horseback is forgivable, even though he really arrived in a carriage and his wooden leg was promptly shattered by a Union minie ball. Unfortunately, though, the arrival on horseback supports the idea that Ewell was eager to take vengeance for the leg he had lost. There's nothing to support this. Historians have found plenty of evidence that he was not fighter he had been. MG Isaac Trimble almost begged Ewell to order an attack on Culp's and Cemetery Hills on July 1, before Federal troops had entrenched and solidified a position. Ewell refused. There are similar gaffes throughout. It's not clear what point the producers wanted to make here; if it were, perhaps the reason for the easily avoided errors would be clear.