Will Fury (2014) Tank Battle Will Jump The Shark?

In this article, you are warned of SPOILERS nice and early.  So Fury is a WW2 tank movie, written and directed by Sabotage’s David Ayer.  It’s out this November.  You can read a screenplay review of it here.  It should be a good movie, or at least it has the potential to be.  There’s one problem with it though, something that niggles my mind now and again.

You see the problem is that there’s a tank battle around the middle of the movie.  Brad Pitt and his crew, in their Sherman Easy-Eight, along with two other Shermans, confront two Tiger tanks.  Quickly, this turns into a battle of one Sherman vs two Tigers.  Naturally, it’s Brad Pitt’s tank that is the single surviving Sherman.  Pitt, in his Tommy Cooker, destroys both Tigers.

Y’see, I have a problem with that.  As an individual unit, the Tiger was probably the second most deadly tank of WW2, the deadliest being the Tiger II.  The Sherman on the other hand, let’s face it, was a piece of shit.  The only benefit it had was it’s ease of manufacture.  All you needed was more men to drive the next one, as fodder.  So to have one Sherman take out not one but two Tigers, from an SS Panzer unit no less, stretches credibility.  And when it’s Brad Pitt doing it… it’s just kinda annoying.  Because, y’know… it’s Brad Pitt.

In a way, it kinda jumps the shark.

In it’s defense though, what is described in that screenplay, while not likely, isn’t entirely impossible either.  The Sherman’s agility is used against the remaining Tiger and the screenplay does point out that they go after the behemoth’s weak points.  The Sherman is also an Easy-Eight as mentioned, a late model Sherman capable of carrying more armor on its chassis.  Also according to Otto Carius, one of the deadliest tank commanders of the 20th century, he did witness sometimes shocking ineptitude from Tiger commanders on the Western Front in comparison to the discipline of those who fought earlier in the war, on the Eastern Front.  Something he puts down to strained logistics and basically having no time to train men properly.

So for my money, it could harm the movie, especially with Pitt’s smug head inside the turret.  Although I’m still hopeful.  This is a WW2 movie by David Ayer.  And the first time in cinematic history a real Tiger will be used in a war movie.  I guess we’ll see this winter…