Is The Movie Fury Based On A True Story?

Director David Ayer and star Brad Pitt's tank film "Fury" is an uncompromising look into the heart of an armed conflict — specifically, the heart of a weary U.S. tank crew in the final stages of World War II. The 2014 film explores the brutality of war and its effects on the men stuck fighting it, in and out of the tank. Its central actors are fully committed to their roles, and the plot features so many memorable and tense moments that some viewers might start wondering whether the movie is based on a true story.

While its events are quite specific and tie into the real timeline of WWII, "Fury" isn't actually based on a true story. It's a fictional tale about an equally fictional tank crew, but is nevertheless inspired by real events. Although "Fury" isn't based on any individual moment in World War II, the makers of the movie did their level best to capture the kinds of experiences a tank crew might have in this time period. 

The makers of "Fury" put in a whole lot of work to reproduce the life of real, battle-hardened WWII-era tankers. Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal, and Logan Lerman sought advice from people who served in the era's tank crews, and shaped their performances after their experiences, camaraderie, and the physical and mental toll the veterans described. The actors bonded over a boot camp, spent days packed tightly inside a tank, and ended up smelling like a group that had done just that. They even learned to perform their characters' duties in the crew for real — Peña, for instance, actually learned to drive an old tank.

Along with the actors playing the tank crew, David Ayer and the crew strived to make the film as historically accurate as possible. "The way we worked was that we got Signal Corps photos, real photos from the period, and did our best to duplicate what we saw," the director said in an interview with Oregon Live. " There are mistakes in the movie, I promise it. But we did go to incredible lengths, because I'm a student of history myself, and I understand how dumb mistakes can take you out of the movie. We printed our own German camouflage scanned from actual German uniforms. We got the only running Tiger tank in the world in the movie, which is a first."

This dedication to detail and historical accuracy is the ace up "Fury's" sleeve. It's up to the viewer to decide whether the film ranks as one of the best war movies of all time, but it's definitely one of the better Brad Pitt movies out there — and it's hard to find a more impressive WWII film that focuses so tightly on tank warfare.