To me, one of the great missed opportunities in movie history was the movie “The Final Countdown.” For those of you who missed it, the short form is… the modern nuclear aircraft carrier USS Nimitz enters a weirdass mystery storm out at sea, and winds up a few hundred mils from Pearl Harbor on December 6, 1941. The Captain hems and haws about what to do, and finally decides to launch his combat planes the following morning to go swat the Japanese aerial attack force. But this being Hollywood, the storm returns just then, and all the planes return to the ship, and everybody goes home.
How much better it would have been had the F-18’s and F-14’s showed up over Pearl just as the Zeros started their run, and then blasted ’em to flinders. Perfect setup for the awesomest sequel in all movie history, as the Nimitz leads an unstoppable force directly to Tokyo Bay. But it wasn’t to be.
Well, there’s apparently another movie in the works that actually plans on carrying this sort of story all the way through: “Rome, Sweet Rome.” Short form: a modern US Marine Corps expeditionary unit vanishes from the outskirts of Kabul and appears near the Tiber River in 23 BC, and promptly decides to take down the Roman Empire.
Heh.
Heh heh.
HA!
BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!!!!
Rome, Sweet Rome: Could a Single Marine Unit Destroy the Roman Empire?
8 Responses to “A-W-E-S-O-M-E”
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John Birmingham did pretty much the same thing in his Axis of Time trilogy.
Yes, it was a good idea, just a shame Birmingham is not exactly a good writer.
That’s exactly what bugged the pants off me about Final Countdown: the moviemakers chickened out. We got 90 minutes of airplane porn, and at the end of it nothing at all has happened. None of the characters has changed, the world is unaffected, nada. A Grumman promotional video about the F-14 would have been just as good.
As to the Rome, Sweet Rome project: unless this Marine unit includes reservists who work in the petroleum industry, their tech advantage will be gone in a week. Can a movie really show the effect of tactics, unit organization, and styles of thinking? I doubt it.
Vage memories ’bout the “Final Countdown”. I read somewhere that the F-14 in the Zero v Tomcat scene had such a low pullout that you could see the exaust churning the surface of the water.
Vage memory only, I don’t remember seeing it.
Final countdowns f-14 vrs Zero dogfights weer worth the cost to buy the movie.
As for “Single Marine Unit Destroy the Roman Empire” .. Marines don’t carry that much ammo!
😉
> Marines don’t carry that much ammo!
Seems to me there’d be two ways of going about it.
1) The story indicates that they show up right near Rome. A lightning campaign straight into the city, wiping out all organized resistance and taking the Emperor and a bunch of Senators hostage would put the Marines in a position to dictate terms.
2) Leverage. 200 Spaniards under Cortez stood no chance against the Aztecs. 200 Spaniards under Cortez, backed up by hundreds of thousands of pissed-at-the-Aztecs indians were perfectly capable of taking out the entire Aztec empire. Similarly, 2000 US Marines, backed up by tens of thousands of former slaves given their freedom, training and the promise of both revenge and a better future just might be able to do it.
In both cases, the trick would be to proceed quickly. The Marines need not fight the *entire* Roman military, most of which was located months to years away from Rome itself. By the time reinforcements got to Rome, the Stars and Stripes might be proudly flying over the city.
The military aspects of the situation are of less interest to me than the social upheaval it would cause. The Roman economy was based on slave labor, which the Marines would abhor. Although more advanced water-powered, and even rudimentary steam-powered, mechanization could replace much of that, it would take time to implement – time during which the slave labor would need to remain in place.
> time during which the slave labor would need to remain in place.
I suspect that if the Marines made a real inroad, a slave rebellion would sweep across the empire just as fast as it could. As in the “1632” series (for those on you who have somehow missed out on this, a town in 2000 West Virginia gets sent back to 1632 Germany, smack in the middle of the 30 Years War), where the serfs of Europe flock to the free zone the American set up, the existence of a technologically advanced, militarily powerful and culturally advanced nation would be a hell of a draw to the downtrodden and enslaved.