Ken Annakin
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Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced by The Longest Day (1962)
Themes Visuals
"Private Ryan" makes "The Longest Day" look like "Beach Blanket Bingo."
Though the film runs close to three hours and includes a large cast of extras and several large, meticulously staged battle scenes, it is by no means a vast, impersonal epic in the tradition of "The Longest Day.
Those recreations, which set a high standard for WWII action not fully eclipsed until Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, are the film's enduring achievement.
Considered violent and realistic when it was made, how does The Longest Day compare, in terms of both tone and on-screen brutality, to more recent combat films ( Saving Private Ryan , Lone Survivor )?
"Ryan" is more of a piece with Ken Annakin's 1962 epic, "The Longest Day," featuring an all-star cast in a retelling of the Allied invasion of Normandy--a re-creation of historical events emphasizing the actuality of battle more than an exploration of the lives of its combatants.
Nothing the soldiers do to escape or fight back is of any avail -- in fact, their efforts backfire with diabolical irony, the kind of cruel poetic injustices that mark the lumbering D-Day epic The Longest Day (1961), and more cynically that underrated paean to World War II disillusionment, The Victors (1963).
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012)
Directed by Brad Peyton
influenced by Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
Plot
The story is an agreeable, scattershot affair combining notions from several of Verne's fantasy adventures with a "Swiss Family Robinson" formula of puppy love and family bonding.
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Directed by James Cameron
influenced by Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
Plot
It’ll also earn them some mockery from the locals, especially Tonowari and Ronal’s own teenage children, in a story that sometimes plays like a teen surfing movie by way of “Swiss Family Robinson.”
Rambo: Last Blood (2019)
Directed by Adrian Grünberg
influenced by Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
Plot
The explosive finale is booby traps galore, but unlike the family friendly pratfalls of “Home Alone” (1990) or “Swiss Family Robinson” (1960), this one is the gory culmination of an overly graphic film.
The conceit here is that back in 1982, NASA launched into orbit a capsule that contained numerous examples of our then-contemporary popular culture as a way of reaching out to possible alien life forms that might be curious to know about that thing that we on Earth called "The Pirate Movie," including a cassette chronicling a video game championship featuring young arcade masters showing their skills at the top games of the era.
It’s a breath-taking reveal, yet ideas of Saving Private Ryan or The Longest Day are quickly dissipated as Dunkirk then cleaves into three distinct parts and timelines.
Christopher Nolan’s new film may be his The Longest Day, but it’s very close to being his shortest film.
It doesn’t sprawl over several star-studded hours, like “The Longest Day.” It’s not even about a daring assault.
By making a big and bold tentpole war movie in the mold of The Longest Day or A Bridge Too Far, told about a battle or campaign and not a character-centered story using the battle as thrilling backdrop, Nolan left himself no escape hatch.
The big trick that “The Longest Day” used, and it became the primary casting solution for battle movies ever since, was to cast big-name and familiar actors into small parts that fit their public persona.
Criminally under-represented in the annals of movie history, the wartime evacuation of Dunkirk has been crying out for a classic film interpretation to rank alongside genre leaders The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far and Saving Private Ryan.
Captain Fantastic (2016)
Directed by Matt Ross
influenced by Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
Plot Themes
It's "Swiss Family Robinson," or that 1970s series of films about "The Wilderness Family."
In the tradition of “The Mosquito Coast” and “Running on Empty” (and going back further, “Swiss Family Robinson”), “Captain Fantastic” is all about a family that has gone off the grid in a big way and is now living off the land, isolated from the modern world and all its evil entrapment.
Written and directed by Matt Ross (“28 Hotel Rooms”), the film at times suggests a Disney movie in the “Swiss Family Robinson” mode with enough Oedipal conflicts to fill a five-gallon bucket.
For this cinematic clan, life is something like The Royal Tenenbaums meets Swiss Family Robinson , with traces of The Great Santini mixed in.
The CGI-ed thousand ships en route to Ilium evoke a chill, but for my money (considerably less than Troys budget of a quarter of a billion), Ill take the first glimpse of the Allied armada in The Longest Day.
And in 1962, he co-directed “The Longest Day”.
Firstly, it recalls to mind older war film classics like The Longest Day, which also featured a large ensemble of the era’s hottest stars, only to end up subverting the expectations of those war-film roles.
The late author Jones, who also wrote the novels that inspired From Here To Eternity and The Longest Day, would be proud to see this highly thoughtful version of his work.
…there's George Clooney! is this The Longest Day?), the performances range from drab uniformity (everyone looks the same; everyone utters, in relentless, Southern-accented voiceovers, the same pseudo-philosophical apostrophes) to jarring cameos.
A man stranded on a desert island has served as the premise for classic literature like Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson, and has even figured into the recent fad of wildly popular and intellectually barren TV shows like Survivor.
However, it works by virtue of viewer identification with the situation: you constantly ask yourself what you would do in a similar situation, since it�s a notion anyone bred on a diet of Swiss Family Robinson and Gilligan�s Island has entertained on occasion.
Incorporating disparate genre archetypes (the movie mixes "Swiss Family Robinson" with "Ten Little Indians" by way of "Alien"), "Pitch Black" provides a thrill ride from its chaotic opening scenes (in which a transport vehicle is forced to make a crash landing) to its surprising outcome.
"Apollo 13" is the squarest movie Hollywood has made since "The Longest Day," and in many ways it celebrates the same values: teamwork, labor, valor and commitment to mission.
The Glade is also well conceived, as a Swiss Family Robinson meets The Lord of the Flies social order of wooden huts and towers amid grassy fields and a forest.
Essentially, "Trainspotting" is to "Braveheart" what "Lord of the Flies" was to "Swiss Family Robinson."
Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)
Directed by Gareth Edwards
influenced by Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
Plot
…it forces in a Swiss Family Robinson subplot with the uninteresting Delgado family…
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)
Directed by David Yates
influenced by The Longest Day (1962)
Plot
In any event, one way to look at this is as " The Longest Day " of wizard movies: It's a grand battle, everybody shows up, various strategies are tried and abandoned, the price of the sacrifice is assessed, and so on.
''Terminator 2: Judgment Day'' may include the largest and most varied arsenal ever employed in one film, and that includes ''The Longest Day.''