Production Costly! The costs of vising the wreck twelve times for research and footage, not to mention the cost of the film production overall. The extreme profitability of this film and James Cameron in general. Classism First, second, and third class on the same ship. Titans of industry. Runaway capitalism. The class divide and point of view before The Great War. The modern “royalty” by virtue of their wealth. Technology The pace of technological development in industries,...

The movie It was really good! One-shot gimmicks of the past and appreciating the technical complexity of what was done here. People The demographic makeup of the British military. Young average infantryman age. “Pals battalions” and serving alongside your friends. The Great War The scale of WWI versus what came before. Rising contemporary appreciation for the study of this conflict. How much was the war a “modern war” and how much did it help usher in the modern world? Horses and...

Meta Versions! So many versions. The best version of the film: The Ultimate Cut. Setting the scene Ancient Greece after 300. The Peloponnesian War (which Ryan is in the middle of on his show!). The rise of Philip. Olympias. Philip Putting Macedon at center stage in ancient Greece. Technical and logistical innovations. Planning the invasion of Persia right before his suspiciously untimely death. The purge Alexander and Olypmias. Purging royal competition in the ancient world....

Mel Gibson history movies. The invention of the rocking chair. Smooth-bore and rifled firearms. Militias. The "swamp fox." Gambling away your inheritance. War crimes. Slavery.

Crime in 19th century New York. Building the Five Points. Irish influx. The real Bill the Butcher. Period dialects. Surprising living conditions. Draft Riots!

Japan emerging from isolation and integrating the west. Saigo Takamori. Seppuku and Bushido code. Bad samurai poetry. And samurai with guns!

One Small Step Worrying the minimum amount about your speech. The difficulty of quoting noisy radio transmissions. Because it is haaaahd Recognizing the small temporal distance from the first powered flight to the first moon landing. The cutting edge of the early space program. Test piloting. Gemini. The edge of space Defining the edge of space. The “Karman Line”: transition from atmospheric lift to orbital velocity. Complications and redefinition of where “space” begins. Geopolitics,...

This film Zach Snyder’s strengths in creating comic book panels on film. Slo-mo blood spatter. Abs and glistening man-meat. Western civilization Ancient Greece and “western civilization.” The birth of “democracy” in nearby Athens. Juxtaposing your historical culture with the “other.” Like George Washington crossing the Delaware but with way less man-meat. And 100% less codpieces. Sparta The dawn on the Spartan state. The nature of the Helot slave class. “Land-bonded” slavery vs chattel....

Criticisms and controversy So yeah, Mel Gibson is bad. But then the movies are… really good? Trying to get past his framing. The tug of war between historical accuracy and entertainment. Anthropological criticism. Deciphering history The problem with burning nearly the entire written history of a people. Deciphering scant ancient texts. The remaining resources: art, stelae. Mayan hieroglyphic writing. Periods The Maya pre-classic, classic, and post-cassic periods. The scale of the height...