Questions about Fury

[lucas80]

Watched it for the first time last night. Why the recurring horse theme? It opens with Sgt. Collier chasing off the white horse. There is the ugly scene over dinner where the crew talks of the slaughter of horses post D-Day. At the end as Norman hides under the tank a white horse (The same one from the beginning?), runs by.
Why was the dinner scene played out for so long? Why suggest that Collier was going to rape the young German girl? Why the heck did she have to die? Death was all over the place already. Why that bit of ugliness?
And, were those elite Waffen SS troops so poorly led that they couldn't encircle one immobilized tank? Was there a reason they had to die so plentifully and incompetently?

 

[LuteHawk]

Sorry, thought this thread was about the Plymouth
Fury car manufactured from 1956 to 1978.

 

[INXS83]

The whole dinner scene was a metaphor for war. A civilized moment in the midst of chaos and death. The threat of the other tank soldiers coming to rape the girl except for the protection of Sgt. Collier. She was still violated, albeit by the young and innocent new guy whom she shared a mutual attraction to.

Moments later as the quiet lingers too long, the building they had been in gets hit by a shell and you see the young girl has died.

The soldiers silently continue on, wondering when its their turn to die.

 

[iCRUNCH]

there was a long thread on this movie some time ago. i believe someone noted that late in the war the SS were not that elite as many had already died. it was over the top, but there were similar type events that occured.

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

Originally posted by lucas80:
Watched it for the first time last night. Why the recurring horse theme? It opens with Sgt. Collier chasing off the white horse. There is the ugly scene over dinner where the crew talks of the slaughter of horses post D-Day. At the end as Norman hides under the tank a white horse (The same one from the beginning?), runs by.
Why was the dinner scene played out for so long? Why suggest that Collier was going to rape the young German girl? Why the heck did she have to die? Death was all over the place already. Why that bit of ugliness?
And, were those elite Waffen SS troops so poorly led that they couldn't encircle one immobilized tank? Was there a reason they had to die so plentifully and incompetently?

I thought that was a fault as well but.....by that time in the war the waffen ss was totally decimated and the new recruits didn't have much in the way in training.

During the battle of the bulge when the german infantry was clearing a path for the armor they took tremendous casualties due to poor tactics/training of the raw recruits.

That said.....a lone tank is very vulnerable to infantry and "fury": would have been dispatched rather quickly by a panzerfaust.

 

[downtown hawk redux]

Originally posted by lucas80:
Watched it for the first time last night. Why the recurring horse theme? It opens with Sgt. Collier chasing off the white horse. There is the ugly scene over dinner where the crew talks of the slaughter of horses post D-Day. At the end as Norman hides under the tank a white horse (The same one from the beginning?), runs by.
Why was the dinner scene played out for so long? Why suggest that Collier was going to rape the young German girl? Why the heck did she have to die? Death was all over the place already. Why that bit of ugliness?
And, were those elite Waffen SS troops so poorly led that they couldn't encircle one immobilized tank? Was there a reason they had to die so plentifully and incompetently?

A lot of questions. The tension in the scene you describe in the house was well done. As was the story about the retreat at the Falaise Gap (which I assume they were talking about -- slaughter of horses). The shelling and random civilian deaths were a huge part of the war. Funny, I actually didn't pay much attention to the white horse.

As to your final question, I think the producers fancied a kind of Audie Murphy type stand, but while Murphy fired at Germans from a damaged tank destroyer, he was also calling in artillery the whole time. This was the great equalizer in WWII. U.S. artillery had gotten very good over the course of the war and with newer and more advanced proximity fuses, it was deadly. Yes, in that that situation in the movie as a opposed to real life, the tank would have been encircled rather easily and probably destroyed, but it wouldn't make for a good movie though.

The rest of the movie (I love movies that take you inside so you're actually in the tank or the ship or the plane or the U-boat). The best scene is the battle with the Tiger to me. There's a pretty good companion piece on this movie (I can't remember if it was Smithsonian or Discovery or what channel) called The Tanks of Fury. That's a real Tiger in the movie. The only working Tiger left in the world. It's pretty interesting how they used it and all the prep that went into that scene.

 

[h-hawk]

Haven't seen the film yet. For those who don't know, the majority of the German army was still horse drawn. So the numbers of horses killed in the war was astronomical.
Also wonder if they are reminding people of the ties between the old horse cavalry and new armored divisions of the US. Many of the older officers in the armored divisions would have been in the cavalry when younger. And being from the old cavalry the men would have had a love for the horses that were being slaughtered in high numbers.

This post was edited on 3/17 2:00 PM by h-hawk

 

[downtown hawk redux]

Originally posted by h-hawk:
Haven't seen the film yet. For those who don't know, the majority of the German army was still horse drawn. So the numbers of horses killed in the war was astronomical.
Also wonder if they are reminding people of the ties between the old horse cavalry and new armored divisions of the US. Many of the older officers in the armored divisions would have been in the cavalry when younger. And being from the old cavalry the men would have had a love for the horses that were being slaughtered in high numbers.


This post was edited on 3/17 2:00 PM by h-hawk

I think that's possible. I think the continuous strafing by Typhoons and Thunderbolts when the Germans were desperately trying to escape through a relative small area near Falaise created untold carnage with German armored columns including the slaughter of horses as you pointed out.