Both are very cliched characters. I groaned when Norman was introduced in Fury because it's just lazy screenwriting. One of the reasons SPR didn't win Best Picture IMO.
Most soldiers were civilians in uniform in most armies. They often had the most basic training to make them soldiers. One of the reasons that Allied PoWs were able to even attempt to escape is because their civilian jobs- tailor, engineer, surveyor, etc -were skills professional soldiers didn't have.
Does Upham get a raw deal? In some ways, yes, because he is morally right when it came to not shooting their prisoner, although as I've said numerous times before they would have (regretfully) shot him IMO because leaving him alive or sending him back to their own lines with an escort would otherwise compromise the mission.
Upham is terrified at his first tastes of battle- he is meant to be the "everyman" figure there, as is Norman in Fury. Upham's two biggest mistakes though is shooting S/Willie dead merely for the man doing his duty and then letting the other he'd taken prisoners go, perhaps to return to their own units (or other units) to carry on killing Allied soldiers. You'd think he'd have learnt that lesson by then. Why didn't he keep the Germans he had just captured under gunpoint? There were new arrivals coming to relieve him.
Trust me. I know what I'm doing.
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joekinplaya
8 years ago
I interpreted Upham's character more of a way for audience to relate. No doubt Upham represented the "ethical standards" that us viewers had. It was the "right" thing to do but when most people question ethics or ethical dilemmas about our own, people don't seem to understand that there are consequences to "doing the right thing" and in war that consequence is the "right thing" causing your buddies to die. It was a contrast between Upham and the men in the unit searching for Ryan; the men looking for Ryan felt they were VERY different from when they were civilians like they almost didn't deserve to go back home at least after Miller mentioned he was a school teacher. Whereas Upham was already a civilian who still has his innocence of civilian life. He wil think and behave like most audience might behave and think.
I do think these kinds of characters ruin these kind of films. I mean we've seen this before millions of times. The Pacific DOESN'T really do this and thus I thought was much better.
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