What stories from history would you like to see made into movies?

[Argus Skyhawk]

What stories from history would you like to see made into movies? I would like to see an epic based on the life of Harriet Tubman.


She grew up in slavery in the 1800's, being beaten and receiving a head wound that caused seizures throughout her life. She ran away to freedom in 1849, and then returned to the south at least 19 more times, first to rescue her family members and then to rescue other slaves. She eventually helped dozens of people escape to freedom while being chased by slave catchers and bounty hunters, sometimes taking them all the way to Canada to avoid the Fugitive Slave Law. Then, when the Civil War started, she worked as a spy for the Union Army, and eventually guided the Combahee River Raid, which freed more than 700 slaves.


Someone ought to be able to make a gripping movie out of that.


I would also like to see a good one about Squanto. Yes, I know Disney made one back in the 90's, and it wasn't too bad, but it was rather lightweight and kid-oriented. I think that his tragic life could be filmed as something far more epic and heartwrenching. Other subjects I would like to see would include Albert Schweitzer and George Washington Carver.

 

[Davros]

The Ludlow Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

The Bonus Marchers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Marchers

 

[Harvey]

I'm sort of surprised that no one (as far as I know) has optioned Gene Roddenberry's life rights. Perhaps his heir(s) have been unwilling to sell?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I'd like to see a miniseries about the Jamestown settlement with modern historical eyes.

I know it'd be a pretty grim miniseries. A lot of freezing, starvation and cannibalism. But it'd be awesome.

 

[auntiehill]

This topic seems to come up at least once a year.

My standard answer has always been, and still is: the life of Alexander Hamilton. His contributions to America, and his sheer genius, have been mostly forgotten.

I would also add, for being horrendously under-appreciated, Rosalind Franklin. Her largely-ignored contributions to science were astounding and her tragically short life seems, to me, anyway, ready-made fodder for any movie.

 

[Dorian Thompson]

Two ideas come to mind that would make compelling miniseries or movies if the script and direction were in the right hands.

First --the Galveston hurricane of September, 1900 that killed more than 6,000 people. I can't believe it's never been put to film. They never did get an accurate body count. Galveston was a completely different city then. The storm and the subsequent discovery of oil in Houston in 1901 changed the course of the city forever. Galveston had more millionaires per capita than New York City in 1900. Beautiful magnificent southern mansions, racially diverse. Just beautiful. It was considered the Ellis Island of the Gulf. It had electric street lights since the late 1870s and great technology for the time.

It also had no sea wall and only sat 9 feet above sea level at its highest point. Issac Kline, the meteorologist that legend said saved the city, did no such thing. He didn't believe the storm coming was dangerous. He doubted it was coming at all. Issac's pregnant wife drowned as did untold thousands of others. It was a category 4 hurricane that hit a city completely unaware it was coming; the only train trestle that connected Galveston to the mainland was washed out by mid afternoon. After the storm and the discovery of oil in Houston which was considered safer because it was farther inland up the channel, Galveston ceased to be a cosmopolitan city of importance.

Second--an honest retrospective on the life of Theodore Roosevelt. A more contrary individual never lived. A conservationist at heart yet also someone who was desperate for war and combat. A devout family man, yet he left his infant daughter Alice alone for 2 years with his sister, Anna, because Alice's mother (also named Alice) had died from complications of childbirth and TR was too devastated to deal with his responsibilities. He would spend 2 years in the Dakota badlands even though he'd been the "soft" asthmatic child of an eastern millionaire. TR only brought his daughter back into his home when his second wife, Edith, insisted he do so after they were married when Alice was three years old. Then he never spoke a word about Alice's mother to his daughter--not ever. He'd named her Alice, but couldn't speak of the older Alice. She had to learn about her mother from her aunt, and Edith was fine with the arrangement because she'd been Theodore's childhood sweetheart and was devastated when Theodore had met Alice's mother and married her after he and Edith broke up. It was a twisted family history in the extreme and it's documented in several biographies. I'd love a SERIOUS treatment of the Oyster Bay Roosevelts. FDR and Eleanor were fascinating, but not nearly as twisted.

 

[Forbin]

Film & TV histories of WWII tend to leave out what my Dad did - he was a P-47 pilot with the 7th Air Force during its island hopping campaign across the Pacific, starting out as an alert fighter pilot on Hawaii, where he shot down a couple of Japanese balloon bombs; flying strike missions in the Marianas based on Saipan, with Japanese troops still holding out on the island; then on to Ie Shima & Okinawa where he flew long-range fighter-bomber strikes against Japan itself. Dad was in the air over Japan when the Nagasaki bomb went off and saw the flash and mushroom cloud. Because of their advance basing, his unit saw lots of ground fighting in addition to their combat flying. He ended the war with 9 Japanese planes shot down, and a few Japanese soldiers killed in ground combat. I would sure love to see a movie about the 318th fighter group's adventures and ordeals in WWII.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I'd also love to see a movie about Pompei.

The first half a hedonistic bathhouse romp, the second half a volcano exploding and destroying it all.

 

[Owain Taggart]

First --the Galveston hurricane of September, 1900 that killed more than 6,000 people. I can't believe it's never been put to film. They never did get an accurate body count. Galveston was a completely different city then. The storm and the subsequent discovery of oil in Houston in 1901 changed the course of the city forever. Galveston had more millionaires per capita than New York City in 1900. Beautiful magnificent southern mansions, racially diverse. Just beautiful. It was considered the Ellis Island of the Gulf. It had electric street lights since the late 1870s and great technology for the time.

Good call. I agree. Saw an episode of a show called Mighty Storms which told the story, and you're right that it would make for an amazing movie. Seems a lot of disaster movies you see are fictional.

Oh, here's something for you:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxHC-M8j_HQ[/yt]

 

[sidious618]

Something about African history as African history is rarely taught in U.S. schools. I think it'd make for a fascinating film.

 

[auntiehill]

^Pretty much NOTHING is taught about African history in American schools, unless it involved European colonies or basic anthropological facts.

 

[MacLeod]

I'd also love to see a movie about Pompei.

The first half a hedonistic bathhouse romp, the second half a volcano exploding and destroying it all.

Well there is a docu-drama about Pompeii, Pomepii: The Last Day


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeii:_The_Last_Day

 

[Gojira]

William I the Conqueror of England and his conquest for the throne.

I wrote about this topic in my blog. European History and American Movies

http://europeanroyalhistory.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/european-history-and-american-movies/

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I'm often wary of biopics because they tend to be bloated. That's why I'm going to suggest something entirely different.

I'd like to see Xenophon's Anabasis turned into a 300 Sequel. It basically reads like one anyway (it's seriously epic). You can call it "The March of the Ten Thousand[/url] or something like that.

 

[Dorian Thompson]

I like the song in that video, Owain Taggart. Powerful, resonant, emotional. Very honest. There's a great oral history in Galveston passed down about the storm. The story of what happened at that orphanage is beyond tragic. All the nuns and every single one of the children save three dead.

Drowning is so horrific. The nuns thought they were doing the right thing tying every one together with rope, but it was the instrument of their death when the building collapsed. One child went down and the rope pulled everyone else under water. The only reason the three survived was that the nuns had run out of rope. They miraculously were washed into a tree and held on for dear life for hours. In the pitch dark. Listening to the screams that the town's survivors said could be heard all night through the howling winds until they finally stopped. It's too horrific to contemplate. People don't like to see children dying en masse.

 

[Shurik]

William I the Conqueror of England and his conquest for the throne.

I wrote about this topic in my blog. European History and American Movies

http://europeanroyalhistory.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/european-history-and-american-movies/

Either this or any other event from when the Romans left Britain until William The Conqueror.

 

[Dorian Thompson]

William the Conqueror was a brutal son of a bitch when he was challenged. A bio of him would have to be unflinchingly honest. Didn't he order his army to lay waste to the populations of some northern villages who had dared rebel against his rule?

 

[Shurik]

William the Conqueror was a brutal son of a bitch when he was challenged. A bio of him would have to be unflinchingly honest. Didn't he order his army to lay waste to the populations of some northern villages who had dared rebel against his rule?

Yes, it's called Harrying of the North. Northern English lords, who were used to semi-independence and were basically half Scandinavian from many years of Viking rule, rebelled against Normans for several years until William went there with an army and burned half of Northumbria.

 

[Lowdarzz]

I'd like to see Xenophon's Anabasis turned into a 300 Sequel. It basically reads like one anyway (it's seriously epic). You can call it "The March of the Ten Thousand[/url] or something like that.

I completely agree. I've read a couple translations and the Long March always comes across as one of the best ancient action adventure stories that's never been adapted to film.

That said, I'm not sure about making it in the vein of 300. I'd prefer an adaptation similar to the 1950's epics.

 

[Dorian Thompson]

Ahhhhh, yes. The Harrying of the North. That's what I remember reading about. I find the entire history of the English monarchy after 1066 fascinating in the extreme. And before.

I'd love a movie/mini series that seriously treated the whole farce of Henry VIII divorcing Catherine of Aragon on the pretext that it was a sin she'd supposedly slept with her first husband, Henry's deceased older brother, Arthur. The examination of gender roles in the monarchy (a serious examination, not some romantic pseudo history slop like "The Other Boleyn Girl") would be riveting: Henry's desire for a male heir at all costs, Henry's all consuming desire for Anne Boleyn and, most significant of all, the historical falsity that Catherine, while a very good woman who loved Henry dearly, was too pious and pure to have told a lie about never having slept with Arthur. It's been genuinely accepted in academic/historical circles that Catherine never slept with Arthur.

The only problem with that is that more modern historians have finally been granted access to archived letters from Spanish sources from the time period written by female relatives and acquaintances of Catherine.....and every correspondence, though they don't say it outright, makes it obvious that Catherine did lie. They all reference a necessary falsehood. There is zero physical evidence that Arthur was too frail to have done the deed. It's a historical fiction invented by Catherine's duenna/governess after Arthur unexpectedly died four months after the marriage. She wanted to protect Catherine's place in the English monarchy and all the political advantages of a Spanish/English alliance. The bitch of it for poor Catherine was that, in the beginning, her in-laws didn't care if she'd slept with Arthur. Henry only started caring when he didn't have a male heir 20 years later. Catherine didn't want her daughter to lose her place and be declared a bastard. It was unthinkable. How could she admit after all those years she lied? It would have been humiliating and given Henry justification. It's hard not to feel for the poor woman.

To the modern mind, it's unjust and unfair, but it would have been the disgrace of Catherine and her daughter had she told the truth. All she did was sleep with her first husband. It's a sordid, fascinating, tragic tale that resulted in England splitting from the pope, all for Henry's desire to divorce. It changed history. It should get a serious treatment for once. No more of the theatrical treatment of Catherine, while a good person, as incapable of telling a lie. Also, it would be nice to see a physically correct depiction. She wasn't a swarthy, statuesque woman. Catherine of Aragon stood four feet ten inches tall, had fair skin, blue green eyes and strawberry blond hair so long she could sit on it if it wasn't pinned up. Every portrait of her depicts a petite, fair skinned, light haired woman.