Alternate History Films - Moria Reviews.pdf

Alternate History Films - Moria Reviews

1. Alternate History Films
Alternate Histories are concerned with different outcomes of historic events had some
event in the past been changed. Examples might include the depiction of the world that
might have come about had Germany won World War II, what might have happened if the
dinosaurs did not die out or if the South won the American Civil War to name some of the
most common treatments.
The Alternate History has a long (and often surprisingly playful) history in science-fiction
literature but has not found much of a foothold on film and tv to date. This may well be
due to the fact that it is a genre that requires much more of a conceptual challenge and
awareness of history from its audience than most other science-fiction themes ie. you
cannot always get the references if you don’t have some understanding of the era being
diverged from.
Alternate Histories should be differentiated from the theme Alternate Timelines. Alternate

2. Timelines concern themselves with personal stories – how the events of an individual’s life
may have transpired differently had a crucial event been changed at some point or they
made a different decision leading them on a different pathway. Also on this page we
create the differentiation Alternate Realities, which are stories set the same world as this
but where one small but significant detail has been changed.
Full-Blooded Alternate History Treatments
There are few genuine alternate histories on screens. A perfect example of the conceptual
failure of the genre can be seen in tv’s Sliders (1995-2000) where the fascinating idea of a
group of people travelling through a different alternate world each week merely ended up
as a variant on Star Trek (1966-9)’s Society of the Week scenario and had the cast
dismantling/escaping from straw dystopias and no effort made to explore the historic
divergence of each. The number of genuine full-fledged alternate histories is few.
The first depiction of alternate history on the screen was (as far as one is aware) The
Twilight Zone episode The Parallel (1963) where a returning astronaut finds himself in a
world that is near identical but for some essentials details – no President Kennedy and
several historical figures are different.
Among alternate history fiction, one of the most popular themes is the scenario where the
Nazis win World War II and this has similarly become the most popular treatment on film.
The finest example of this sub-genre was It Happened Here (1965), a fascinating

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documentary-like depiction of England under Nazi rule. Other treatments of the Nazi Rule
alternate history can be seen in the British mini-series An Englishman’s Castle (1978),
another depiction of England under Nazi rule; Fatherland (1994) depicting a Nazi empire in
the 1960s as SS officer Rutger Hauer uncovers evidence of the Holocaust; the mini-series
SS-GB (2017), an excellent depiction of England under Nazi rule; and the tv series The Man
in the High Castle (2015-9) showing a USA divided between Nazi and Japanese rule.
The Nazis Win scenario also appears to a lesser extent in other works like Philadelphia
Experiment II (1993), The Triangle (2005), The 25th Reich (2012) and the Star Trek episode
The City on the Edge of Forever (1967). The animated Hitler’s Folly (2016) explores what
might have happened if Hitler had instead followed his career as an artist and become
employed by Disney Studios. There was even a puppet film Jackboots on Whitehall (2010)
about a Nazi invasion of England, while the anime Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1998) takes
place in a post-War, Nazi-ruled Japan. The animated Freedom Fighters – The Ray (2018)
was a superhero film set in a Nazi rule alternate history.

4. German stormtroopers marching in the streets of London in It Happened Here (1965)
One of the strongest alternate history works is C.S.A: The Confederate States of America
(2004), a mockumentary about the US if the South won the Civil War and we see how
historical events would have transpired if slavery existed to this day. The tv mini-series
The Plot Against America (2020) is set in an alternate 1940s where Charles Lindbergh
becomes the US President, running on a platform of not drawing the US into World War II
and then begins to introduce increasing Antisemitic policies.
White Man’s Burden (1995) postulates the idea of a US where Blacks are the majority race
and Whites are a socially disadvantaged minority. Both the tv play Fable (1985) and the tv
series Noughts + Crosses (2020- ) depict a present-day England where Blacks are a racial
majority and whites a minority. Honky Holocaust (2014) is set in an alternate timeline

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where the Manson Family actually succeed in igniting their race war, while The Sacrifice
episode of Tales from the Hood 2 (2018) briefly depicts a Louisiana where the Civil Rights
movement never happened.
Quest for Love (1971) is set in an alternate timeline where John F. Kennedy did not die and
World War II and the Vietnam War did not occur. The Red Dwarf episode Tikka to Ride
(1997) depicts JFK surviving the assassination only to be impeached and the presidency
inherited by J. Edgar Hoover.
The Good Dinosaur (2013) depicts a world where the dinosaurs did not die out, while
Super Mario Bros. (1993) visits an alternate timeline where dinosaurs have evolved into
human form. The laughable A Sound of Thunder (2005) briefly visits an alternate timeline
where apes and dinosaurs had evolved into a hybrid species following a time travel
accident in the prehistoric past.
Other notable examples of alternate history include:-
A Rift in Time (1974), an episode of tv’s The Tomorrow People, concerning an alternate
world where the Roman Empire has extended into the future
First on the Moon (2005), a mockumentary about a fictional Soviet Moon landing in the
1930s
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2015) set in an alternate 19th Century England where
magic is real
No Men Beyond This Point (2015), an hilarious mockumentary that depicts a present

6. where women rule following falling male birth rates
Counterpart (2016-9), a tv series where this world is engaged in a Cold War with an
alternate timeline that diverged in the 1960s
For All Mankind (2019- ), a tv series that takes place in a timeline where the Soviet
Union ended up being first to the Moon
Yesterday (2019), a romantic comedy where a man wakes in a world where The Beatles
never existed and is able to pass their songs off as his own
A popular branch of alternate history is the theme of Steampunk Films concerning
imagined technology that might have been built in the Victorian era. Most Steampunk
works are not full-fledged alternate history in that they only concentrate on throwing
some novel technological changes into the Victorian era and do not concern any wide-
ranging socio-political changes that might have resulted from these changes. One work
that does is April and the Extraordinary World (2016) that has an ending that shows how
history would have been different following its Steampunk world. There was also the anime
The Empire of Corpses (2015), which imagines a very different 19th Century based on the
widespread application of Frankenstein’s corpse resurrection science.
A number of Hayao Miyazaki’s anime seem to take place in alternate timelines, most
notably the world of airships and German soldiery that takes place in Laputa: Castle in the
Sky (1986), although no historical split point is ever mentioned. The anime The Wings of
Honneamise (1987) appears to be taking place in an alternate world depicting the first
space launch, as does The Sky Crawlers (2008) set in a present world where familiar brand
namessitalongsideclonechildrenengagedincorporatewarsThePlacePromisedinOur

7. names sit alongside clone children engaged in corporate wars. The Place Promised in Our
Early Days (2004) is an anime set in a Japan that has split between two countries, a Soviet-
dominated north and America-friendly south. The live-action anime adaptation Gintama
(2017) takes place in an Edo era Japan following an alien invasion.
One could also include here borderline cases like Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds
(2009) and Once Upon a Time in America (2019), which both rewrite historical events –
killing off the Nazi hierarchy and preventing the Tate killings by the Manson Family – in
ways that can be considered alternate history (or at least show hinge points that would
lead to huge implied historical changes).
Alternate History Via Time Travel
There is a whole sub-category of these works where alternate timelines emerge as the
inadvertent result of time travel. A number of the above examples – Philadelphia
Experiment II, A Sound of Thunder, The 25th Reich – depict the changes occurring as a
result of time travel.
Probably the first filmed work to do so was the classic Star Trek episode The City on the
Edge of Forever (1967) where a deranged Dr McCoy travelling into the past inadvertently
erases their present and Kirk and Spock must travel back to the Depression era where Kirk
has to make the choice to allow a woman he loves to die in order to save the world he
comes from. This briefly shows that her living would have created a pacifist movement that
wouldhaveledtoaNaziRulescenario

8. would have led to a Nazi Rule scenario.
The Stephen King adapted mini-series 11.22.63 (2016) has time traveller James Franco
travelling through a portal back to the 1960s and deciding to prevent the Kennedy
assassination. The end of the show briefly shows that this might have resulted in a
nightmare world, although frustratingly avoids depicting the events that would have led
there.
The Christian film Assassin 33 A.D. (2020) has an Islamic time traveller killing Jesus Christ
and briefly offers the glimpse of a world where there was no Christianity, resulting in a
post-apocalyptic present.. Like 11.22.63, this sets up a fascinating premise but entirely
avoids charting the course of historic events that would have led there.
Equally frustrating was The Final Countdown (1980) where a time warp transports a modern
aircraft carrier back to the eve of Pearl Harbor with enough firepower to stop the war but
brings them back before anything is changed, effectively avoiding the fascinating alternate
history scenario that would have resulted.
The possibilities of the alternate history due to time travel occurred in Back to the Future
Part II (1989) where Thomas F. Wilson’s Biff travelling back from the future to the 1950s to
give himself a almanac of sports results causes Biff to become the wealthiest man in the
world and created a dark version of the present. The other Back to the Future films
feature Marty returning to the present after his visits have affected minor changes to the
timeline.

9. Timecop (1994) and Timecop: The Berlin Decision (2003) concern a temporal law
enforcement agent set up to prevent criminals from meddling in the timeline. In the first of
these, the hero keeps returning to different presents as he discovers everybody around
him, including the temporal agency itself, has been edited out by the villain of the show.
The sequel features the attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler and prevent the Holocaust
from happening. A similar agency to prevent changes to history also appears in the tv
series Timeless (2016-8).
Sliders and the films The One (2001) and Parallels (2015) feature characters who move
through different alternate presents.
Alternate Realities and the Bizarre
The alternate reality is not so much an alternate history or an alternate timeline but the
same world we have now but where one crucial detail has been changed. These are not
stories that are concerned with depicting historical divergence points.
The most notable case of this was tv’s Sliders where the alternate timelines looked exactly
similar to our own but were worlds where women or youth rule, where men become
pregnant, intellect has become celebrity and so on.
The Invention of Lying (2009) was about a world where everybody tells the truth and one
man discovers he has the ability to lie. Aaaaaaaah! (2015) is set in a world that operates on

10. pre-verbal behaviour. Never Let Me Go (2010) takes place in an alternate version of the
1960s and 70s that had adopted medical advances that create an underclass of people
that can be harvested for their organs.
One of the most amusing alternate worlds by implication was the one in Who Framed
Roger Rabbit? (1988), which offered up the view that cartoon characters are real and
operate in a world where they are employed as actors by Hollywood and even had their
own suburb that operated on cartoon physics.
Bright (2017) and Onward (2020) take place in a present world where various magical
creatures co-exist alongside humans and/or exist in a society identical to our own. The
duo of tv movies Cast a Deadly Spell (1991) and Witch Hunt (1004) depict an alternate
1950s where magic works, magic creatures exist and H.P. Lovecraft has become a private
eye.
In more fanciful accounts, Perfect Creature (2006) concerns an alternate world where
vampires have grown up alongside humans; while Fido (2006) concerns a version of
history after a zombie outbreak in the 1950s.

11. The Great Martian War 1913-1917 (2013) – an alternate history retelling of World War I in terms of H.G. Wells
The War of the Worlds
The Lathe of Heaven (1980) concerns a man whose dreams alter the world around him
every time he sleeps and how an ambitious psychologist tries to use this to change the
world into a better place, seeking to eliminate racism and bring about world peace, only
for this to have unexpected consequences.
In a completely bizarre category was Yahoo Serious’s gonzo comedy Young Einstein (1988)
in which Albert Einstein grows up on an apple farm in Tasmania where he invents relativity
alongwithsurfingandrockmusicandthenproceedstoromanceMarieCurie;andSix-

12. along with surfing and rock music and then proceeds to romance Marie Curie; and Six
String Samurai (1998) set in a post-holocaust 1957 where Buddy Holly has become a
samurai warrior. John Dies at the End (2012) briefly visits an alternate timeline that shows
historic events enacted by human-animal hybrids.
Alternate Histories of Fictional Timelines
A popular trend that has grown in print science-fiction and fantasy is alternate histories to
fictional timelines that imagine popular fictional characters in changed scenarios or if
events had transpired differently. DC Comics has an entire imprint of comics Elseworlds
that offers alternate takes on their superheroic canon and Marvel followed with their What
If? line.
This trend has started to spill over onto film. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
imagines an alternate retelling of Jane Austen’s story in a Regency England but with the
addition of zombies. The Great Martian War 1913-1917 (2013) depicts an alternate version of
World War I if H.G. Wells’s Martian invasion had occurred instead, while the animated War
of the Worlds: Goliath (2012) shows various historical figures in the aftermath of the
Martian War.
Both Watchmen (2009) and Watchmen (2019) gave us an alternate version of the world if
superheroes had existed. Superman: Red Son (2020) was an adaptation of an Elseworlds
title that shows how 20th Century history would have changed if Superman had arrived in
theSovietUnion

13. the Soviet Union.
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (2010) is set on an alternate Earth where familiar
super-villains are the heroes and the superheroes are villains. Both Justice League: The
Flashpoint Paradox (2013) and Justice League: Gods and Monsters (2015) depict changed
worlds with very different versions of the familiar superheroes, while the tv series The
Flash (2014- ) seemed to begin each season with an altered timeline.
Recommendations
It Happened Here (1965)
White Man’s Burden (1995)
C.S.A: The Confederate States of America (2004)
The Great Martian War 1913-1917 (2013)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2015)
No Men Beyond This Point (2015)
SS-GB (2017)
For All Mankind (tv series, 2019- )
The Plot Against America (2020)
A full list of titles can be found here Alternate Histories