How Nicolas Cage’s 22-Year-Old World War II Movie Accurately Depicts One Key Element Explained by Historian

Historian John McManus of World War II was impressed by the portrayal of one particular element in Nicolas Cage Windtalkers. Cage’s character, Sergeant Joe Enders, is responsible for protecting Private Ben Yahzi (Adam Beach), who is a Navajo code talker in the World War II film. The Navajo Code Talkers were a group of Navajo men who used their native language to send coded messages, which proved inexplicable to the Allies during the war.

In a Inside video, McManus breaks down the historical accuracy of how the Navajo code talkers are depicted in Windtalkers. He explains that in addition to helping the Allies with their military operations in the Pacific, the Code Talkers were relied upon to sow confusion among the Japanese, who Windtalkers Does an effective job of illustrating. McManus is primarily impressed by how Windtalkers depicts the Code Talkers while acknowledging some of the film’s historical inaccuracies and limitations. Read his comments below:

Adam Beach is playing a Navajo code talker. They use specific words from their language to represent military concepts or words, and that would be relayed through the radio, as you see there. They might have called in some fire that way. This was one of the many, many valuable aspects of the Code Talkers. They are depicted here as a kind of forward observers in some respects. That wasn’t always the role these guys played. Many times it was just the worldly communications, back and forth between headquarters, to confuse the Japanese.

I like the part of the clip where you have the Japanese interception experts really confused by this. At this point in the war, Saipan, 1944, they are likely to know, if they are savvy, that there are native Americans in this kind of role speaking in their own languages ​​that are not English. It didn’t mean he could understand what they were saying.

And they are designed to kill other ships, other battleships, other surface ships in an enemy navy. That’s really what they’re there to do. But they have the ability to provide those of us on the ground with a lot of really intense fire support. In this case, Nicolas Cage and the other marines are portrayed as too far ahead. It is called danger close, is that area in between. In other words, if you are too close to where the shells are supposed to come down, you will probably take some friendly-fire casualties.

I will give it a 7 out of 10. I like that the clip shows the incredible contributions and what a force multiplier that the code talkers are. I think it’s a difficult thing to convey in film, and I think they did reasonably well with it.

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What this means for windtalkers

Historical and critical perspectives of Windtalker are varied

Despite McManus largely praised WindtalkersThe film was not well-receivedReceived a 33% critical score and 50% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics praised the staging of the action sequences but were less impressed by how the story of the real code talkers was handled and felt that it was a shallow exploration of the subject. In terms of the clips that McManus saw, he had the opposite assessment, emphasizing that the code talkers and their importance were mostly depicted well, while the action sequences with Cage’s character and the other marines demonstrated excessive risk for the sake of drama.

The juxtaposition between the critical and historical perspectives of Windtalkers is an important reminder of how a film can be enjoyed and analyzed on multiple levels What do not always align with each other. A film can convey the historical importance of a certain element while struggling to make the overall story cohesive. A fight sequence can be well-staged and thrilling to watch while also being realistically far-fetched. The varying perspectives are what can make a film like Windtalkers Worth rewatching and discussing decades after its release.

Our take on Windtalkers

The 2002 movie was an important step forward

Windtalkers was released before the stories of Native Americans were told as often in mainstream films. It deserves credit for helping to educate audiences about the Navajo code talkers and the essential role they played in World War II. If Windtalkers Were made today, Beach’s character would ideally be the protagonist instead of Cage’s character to make it more about the Navajo code talkers than the action. What is most important, however, is how Windtalkers Made the history of the Navajo code talkers better known and communicated the nature of their priceless contributions.

Source: Inside