Dustin Byington

This movie failed to capture the emotion that gettysburg did so well. The music is not memorable, and doesn't engage with the movie at all. The battles were not well organized and they breezed through Antietam so fast I didn't realize they were talking about Fredericksburg. The first battle of bull run, historically, was more a brawl than a battle, and they made it look like it. It was messy and made me cringe. The actors that came back to play their same characters from Gettysburg have changed the personalities to the point I don't recognize the characters apart from the actors themselves. The spiritualism is overkill. I get they were very religious in those days, but I don't want to watch a four hour movie with enough spiritualism as a three hour church session. If they had spent less time on that an more time on the battle plans and strategies, it would have made the movie much better. The foreshadowing in the movie is too much. Spoiler alert: Jackson dies. They tell you this probably four times in the first hour of the movie through foreshadowing. I could be wrong, but my research suggested that Jackson was a stubborn, confident man. Not depressed and close to despair and surrender like the movie kinda hints at. Most of the stories in this movie are pretty anecdotal, but overall I thought it was mostly historically accurate. Not a great movie and if they ever get around to making the third book into a movie, if they haven't already (I just found this one), I hope they take some pages from Gettysburg, not gods and generals. My advice is to rent this movie before deciding to buy. I wish I did.