It seemed to me Pfluger was the Otto character, but two different actors, because Otto is introduced halfway thru the movie on the punishment mine sweeping duty, and at that point Pfluger is gone.. But the are both senior sergeants.. Very coincidental.
shareGreat observation! There seems to be some glaring plot holes in this movie. Otto is kind of a main character at the end and yet no mention of him until the mine sweeping scene. He's friends with the Captain who was not part of the unit until they arrived, and I could be mistaken but I think the Captain says to him "you were once an officer" towards the end. Very confusing.
shareMaybe Pfluger had some contract disagreements over money, then the producers brought in Otto.. It does happen a lot in film,unfortunately sometimes when re-filming half a movie without would be more costly.
Yes I recall the Captain saying that too, they definitely had a past, I always thought Otto was Plfuger in that Captain friendly sense because first scene with the Captain Pfluger is with him.
Great movie though.. One of the few war movies that actually captures infantry life realistically. I have this second to Platoon in that sense, then Beach Red, Bridge At Remagen, and Long Days Dying as honourable mentions. Come and See is great, but doesn't deal with infantry life directly.
Bit late to the party, but I don't think Otto's supposed to be a substitute for Pflueger.
Pflueger's actually killed in the surprise attack on the forward post (the one where the shaky truce with the Soviets took place).
Otto seems to have been in the penal battalion for some time, and the main protagonists just sorta gravitated towards him since their own "authority figure", Leutnant von Witzland's, is pretty shaken up himself and Otto's probably seen his share of the war and became a surrogate "leader" or "father" to them.
Remember Otto talking with the Hauptmann before the battle against the tanks? He mentions Brest-Litowsk, a fortress in Belorussia where the Germans encountered insanely harsh resistance from the Soviet defenders, and that he "told them back then" that they "didn't stand a chance", so it seems that Otto (who is a highly skilled tank hunter, remember the story he tells in the back of the truck) and the Hauptmann might have fought together in the Belorussia theatre in the year before Stalingrad...
Kung-Fu movies are like porn. 1-on-1 first, then 2-on-1, and then a group scene...
I just re-watched and Pfluger wasn't killed in the shaky truce scene. He survived unharmed until the next morning when Rollo got his dear john letter, then the Russians hit them with mines/grenades.. The lieutenant called for Pfluger to command the attack, we see him do that, then the rest of the team went into he sewers..
That was the last we saw of Pfluger.
I'm still convinced he dropped out of the movie so they replaced him with the Otto character, keeping that friendship with the major.