It’s likely that of the three movies this year that deal with Operation Dynamo—Dunkirk, Darkest Hour, and Their Finest—two of them will earn Oscar nominations (Dunkirk in a variety of categories and Darkest Hour probably earns a Best Actor nod for Gary Oldman). With that in mind, a fan has mashed up the trailers for Dunkirk and Darkest Hour to imagine what it would be like if the two stories were combined.

It is somewhat impressive that both movies are so separate despite technically dealing with the same event. Churchill is a peripheral figure in Dunkirk, which largely opts for a borderline-experimental approach as Christopher Nolan attempts for experiential filmmaking. Meanwhile, Darkest Hour keeps the battles largely in the background, choosing to show the defeat at Calais but not the successful evacuation at Dunkirk.

But looking at this trailer, while it’s a nice way of highlighting both films, I’m kind of glad this particular movie doesn’t exist because it would deprive both Dunkirk and Darkest Hour of their specific visions. Although I’m sure there are some folks out there that would want a more comprehensive vision of these events, that’s what books are for rather than two-hour movies. I’m glad that we have a film like Dunkirk, which is all about trying to put you in the middle of the warfare as much as a PG-13 rating will allow; and that we also have a movie like Darkest Hour, which takes you behind the scenes and into the politics that led up to the evacuation.

Check out the fan trailer below. Dunkirk is now available on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD while Darkest Hour is in theaters. Also, Their Finest, which uses Dunkirk as a jumping off point for a movie about propaganda, is worth a rental if you want to check it out.

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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Focus Features
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Image via Focus Features