Analysis on Empire of the Sun

Play With Light, Leads to War Movies are always trying to duplicate what actually happened in real life. The directors have to read and learn about the specific time and the events that they want their movie to be based upon. During WWII, there were many critical moments that could be historically accurate or inaccurate. Empire of the Sun directed by Steven Spielberg, is a historically accurate movie because it depicts what is what like for a younger child to live in a concentration camp during the middle of a war. The movie is a true story based on the memories of J.G. Ballard who is portrayed as Jamie in the movie(Berardinelli 1). At the beginning of the movie, while the main character Jamie is in his hotel room, he sees that the Japanese ships are attacking American ships that are docked at the harbor in Shanghai(Berardinelli 1). Japan also used aircrafts to bomb China(Dunn 1). Like most Americans, when a war begins they are scared, running for shelter and trying to get out of harms way. At any place or time when a war would begin, the actions of people would be the same as this movie portrayed it to be. In Empire of the Sun, people were screaming, running down streets and ducking from bullets as they were flying through the air. Since the war took place in 1941 the ships are very old, not as equipt as they are today nor are they technologically advanced as the ships are now. Airplanes in this movie were also less sophisticated then they are today. The older aircrafts randomly dropped bombs in hopes of hitting a target, since then,aircrafts can drop bombs with pinpoint accuracy(Dunn 2). In one scene, when planes were flying so low Jamie had to duck while he was standing on a balcony. Today’s airplanes can be thousands of feet in the air but still get the job done on the ground. Near the middle of the movie, right after Jamie meets two American Merchant Seaman named Franks and Basie, all three get captured by the Japanese soldiers and are sent