Gods and Generals (2003)

The rise and fall of legendary war hero Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson as he leads the Confederacy to great success against the Union from 1861 to 1863.

Director:

Ron Maxwell (as Ronald F. Maxwell)

Writers:

Jeff Shaara (book) (as Jeffrey M. Shaara), Ron Maxwell (screenplay) (as Ronald F. Maxwell)

Stars:

Stephen Lang, Robert Duvall, Jeff Daniels

1 win & 3 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Donzaleigh Abernathy	...	Martha
Mark Aldrich	...	Adjutant
George Allen	...	Confederate Officer
Keith Allison	...	Capt. James J. White
Royce D. Applegate	...	Gen. James Kemper (as Royce Applegate)
Bruce Boxleitner	...	Gen. James Longstreet
Bo Brinkman	...	Major Walter Taylor
Mac Butler	...	Gen. Joseph Hooker
Robert Byrd	...	Confederate General (as Robert C. Byrd)
Shane Callahan	...	Bowdoin Student
Billy Campbell	...	Gen. George Pickett
David Carpenter	...	Rev. Beverly Tucker Lacy
John Castle	...	Old Penn
Jim Choate	...	Gen. Bernard Bee
Martin Clark	...	Dr. George Junkin

Storyline

The rise and fall of legendary war hero Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson as he leads the Confederacy to great success against the Union from 1861 to 1863.

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Plot Keywords:

george washington character | gen robert e lee character | john wilkes booth character | stonewall jackson | year 1862 | 

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Taglines:

An unforgettable story of the Civil War, from the Director of "GETTYSBURG"

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Genres:

Biography | Drama | History | War

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for sustained battle sequences

Details

Official Sites:

Sonnet Digital Media Corporation Warner Bros. [United States]

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

21 February 2003 (USA)

Also Known As:

Dioses y generales

Filming Locations:

Maryland, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$56,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$4,675,246, 23 February 2003, Wide Release

Gross USA:

$12,870,569, 27 April 2003

Company Credits

Production Co:

Turner Pictures (I), Antietam Filmworks, Esparza / Katz Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

219 min 280 min (director's cut)

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Martin Sheen was in the Washington, D.C. area the week of September 11th filming scenes for The West Wing (1999). He was prepared to fly the Tuesday morning Dulles to LAX flight if Warner Brothers agreed to his demand for one million dollars to reprise his role of Robert E. Lee from Gettysburg (1993). It was only because Warner Brothers passed, that Sheen was not on Flight 77 the morning of September 11.

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Goofs

The style of the stone wall at the sunken road in Fredericksburg is that of the 1930s reconstruction, not that of the original wall. (The stones are larger in cross-section in the reconstruction rather than the original flatter stones.)

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Quotes

[first lines]
Title Card: A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of the earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one's own homestead. - George Eliot

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Crazy Credits

No reenactors were credited individualy, rather there was general thank you to all the reenactors who participated in the filming.

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Connections

Featured in The Andrew Klavan Show: Amnesty Don??? (2017)

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Soundtracks

Going Home
Music and Lyrics by Mary Fahl, Byron Isaacs and Glenn H. Patscha
Performed by Mary Fahl
Violin solo by Mark O'Connor
Courtesy of Sony Classical/Odyssey Records

User Reviews

Revisionist hooey! A rich man's attempt to "buy" history.

"Gods and Generals" is a horrible disservice to people trying to understand American history, and to the millions of real people who suffered pain, death, heartache, etc. during our Civil War. I have heard it said that history is written by the victors--- and that's probably true. But who is the victor now? Well, the very VERY rich Ted Turner seems to be one of them. And he seems to have used his power and wealth to re-write history to suit his own self-identity process. He first made the awful "Gettysburg" with its hideous paste-on beards and "high school play" production. Now he has taken his megalomania to new depths with "Gods and Generals"--- a thoroughly misleading and trite piece of revisionist crap.

Briefly--- some rich Southerners (Americans from the formerly slave-holding states, for you folks in other countries) are now claiming that the Civil War was not about slavery. They say it was "states' rights." Well, yes--- but a scholarly and careful study of the times reveals that the specific "right" in dispute from 1790 or so up through 1861 when the war broke out was the right to allow slavery. Check out the scholarly studies of those times, and it is clear that "states' rights" meant "rights to own slaves." The Civil War really was fought on this contention.

Note that fighting on the side of the Union did NOT mean that the white soldiers "liked" the Africans, necessarily. Many DID have what modern folks would call a prejudicial and discriminatory view of the black race. But they DID also believe slavery was wrong, and they fought for the right of the federal government to outlaw and ban slavery, because it was un-Christian and otherwise morally wrong. Note also that Huey Long, part of the 1930s power dynasty in Lousiana (senator, governor, etc.) reported that his family refused to fight for Confederacy during the Civil War. He said his family thought, "Why should we fight and die so some rich man could keep his Negroes?" The war was seen then as a slavery issue.

As much as we may be uncomfortable with who we as a nation were in those days--- isn't it better to tell ourselves the truth about that? And then come to terms with it? Perhaps the over-enthusiastic flag-waving versions of the conflict we all got in grade school was over simplified and even jingoistic. Maybe our mass-culture story about it shows the situation as being more clear, more "good versus evil" than it really was. But the modern attempts to twist history to suit modern agendas (and plays for personal power) that have come from some black civil rights activists and rich and powerful Southern men like Ted Turner are even more off-base. Given their blatant falsification of historical events, they are even more harmful.

Compare this movie with the amazing classic "Glory" (1991-ish). Or Ken Burns masterpiece from PBS, "The Civil War." Those both showed a fuller and truer picture of what was really going on. There were heroic aspects, angelic qualities, good and bad people, brave and cowardly actions, big and small minds, loving and bigoted qualities to everyone. It was a human time, with flawed humans, but overall it was a struggle to make things right--- however imperfectly that might have been achieved. Hey--- we're all still working on it. But Ted Turner and his "b** s***" is disgraceful, and, well... just plain wrong.