Anyone ever watched God's and generals or Gettysburg?

Gettysburg is great, very true to the source material. The book, not the war.

Gettysburg follows its source material very well. Quite faithful to the book. Gods and Generals does not.

Ronald F. Maxwell's big mistake was turning Gods and Generals into a motion picture. It should have been a TV miniseries and it should have followed the book. It would have been great had it done so.

Instead they made it into a pseudo-Stonewall Jackson biopic and tried to give it the look, feel, and structure of a Shakespearean tragedy. Terrible decision.

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The Last Full Measure"

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what's that about

I liked Gettysburg.

Gods and Generals though was boring as all get out IMO. Took me several times to finish it.

Saw both of them in Theaters. Gods and Generals had an intermission. Only movie I've ever been too with an intermission.

Both gold movies though if you like that sort of thing. It's basically a 4 hour dialogue /history lesson/period piece

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Gettysburg follows its source material very well. Quite faithful to the book. Gods and Generals does not.

Ronald F. Maxwell's big mistake was turning Gods and Generals into a motion picture. It should have been a TV miniseries and it should have followed the book. It would have been great had it done so.

Instead they made it into a pseudo-Stonewall Jackson biopic and tried to give it the look, feel, and structure of a Shakespearean tragedy. Terrible decision.

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I will agree with all of this. I understand wanting/needing to change G&G because the book does not cover first Manassas from the battlefield, only from the perspective of those in Richmond. I own the uncut version of G&G and parts of it make it better (you get to see Antietam) but parts make it worse (you get a side story with John Wilkes Booth and you actually lose a little of Jackson's devout Christianity). I also feel like there were some parts that were added that were added only to make it slightly more politically correct.

I will say that as a biopic of Jackson, it is pretty well done.

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G&G was criticized by (surprise) certain members of society as being too 'pro-Confederate'. Apparently any movie about the war is supposed to portray the South as evildoers.

I don't think the 3rd film will ever be made.

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What bugs me is that if you read the books, they balance out. G&G is slightly pro Confederate, but the south was kicking arse and taking names at that time. Gettysburg is perfectly balanced, and Last Full Measure is slightly pro Yankee, but the tide had turned and the north was moving on to win. Read Sharaa's four books on the western theater and they are all slightly pro Yankee because they cover a theater where the south really never had much chance at victory.

Last Full Measure will never be made for a couple of reasons. Sharaa wasn't happy with how G&G turned out and I think would insist on being more involved with the screenplay. But secondly, Ted Turner doesn't have the money to finance the production (well, he does but doesn't want to spend it). I think if he had held on to his media empire and not sold out to Time Warner, we would have seen some version of Last Full Measure made. Probably a miniseries on TNT.

Thanks for the input guys. Anybody know where I can get gettysburg. Sounds like that's the boards consensus

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I don't remember what is included in the extended cut of this one

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The Gettysburg extended cut features:

- Two deleted scenes of Buford and his cavalry riding into and through Gettysburg
- An extended scene featuring Lee and his aide Major Taylor on the morning of the first day of the battle
- A deleted scene of Reynolds and Buford at the Lutheran Seminary
- An extended scene of Tom Chamberlain talking to a 2nd Maine mutineer about bugle calls
- An extended scene of Pickett's arrival at Longstreet's encampment
- A deleted scene featuring Pickett talking to Longstreet alone
- A deleted scene featuring Lee talking to Ewell and his subordinates about their failure to take Cemetery Hill
- An extended scene between Longstreet and Fremantle on the second day of the battle
- An extended scene between Longstreet and Harrison after the fighting on the second day
- A deleted scene of Trimble dictating to his aide a message for Longstreet during Pickett's Charge on the battle's third day

In all....there are 17 minutes of additional footage in the extended cut for Gettysburg. Compare that to the full hour of additional footage found in the Gods and Generals extended director's cut.