I don’t think you had to be a marketing genius to figure out what would be the image on the poster for Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima movie, Flags of our Fathers, would be. It’s the iconic moment of the raising of the American flag on that Pacific Island during the fifth day of fighting. That flag raising doesn’t mark the end of the battle – it’s essentially the beginning of the five weeks that would cost 6824 American lives

It turns out that the famous image isn’t the flag raising after all, by the way. Photographers showed up when the original flag was being traded for a bigger, easier to see flag. The heroes who originally planted that flag were never photographed.

The movie opens October 20, with a companion film told from the Japanese point of view coming next year [Note from Nick: Probably not to be called Frags of our Fathers].