History YMMV / Dunkirk

** [[spoiler: Peter is visibly shaken when he was told that his best friend George died from his head trauma...for about two seconds, [[StiffUpperLip then he gets back to helping the soldiers like normal.]] He doesn't comment on the fact again until he arranges for George to be lauded a hero in the newspaper after he got home.]]

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1VJ39nVIBk "Supermarine"]] (named after the Supermarine Spitfire fighter plane) is appropriately tense in regards to both the intensity of the dogfights over the English Channel and the race against the clock the gigantic evacuation is.

** Surprising pretty much nobody, Farrier has emerged as the clear favorite character among many fans of the movie despite never interacting physically with a single other actor, due to being played by Creator/TomHardy and his feats of supreme AcePilot badassery like [[spoiler: shooting down a German bomber after his plane has already ''run out of fuel.'']]

* SpecialEffectsFailure: Farrier's burning Spitfire on the beach is rather obviously an empty shell with a huge void where the engine should be, with the propellor hanging comically from a pole in the center.

* WTHCastingAgency: Quite a few people objected to Music/HarryStyles being cast as a main character in ''Dunkirk'', given that, at the time of casting, Styles was still a member of One Direction, and that ''Dunkirk'' was supposed to be a serious war movie. Christopher Nolan insisted he had no idea about Styles' music career before casting him and did so solely on the strength of his audition (as well as his "old fashioned face".) This initial objection disappeared after the movie came out.

* RetroactiveRecognition: Creator/TomGlynnCarney as the son of the Little Boat owner who rescues the soldier played by Creator/CillianMurphy, five years before he was Aegon II Targaryen ''Series/HouseOfTheDragon''.

* SugarWiki/HeReallyCanAct: Music/HarryStyles - best known for his music in Music/OneDirection - was given some praise for his first acting role here.
* JustHereForGodzilla: Many have come to see the film just because of Harry Styles, most of them teenage girls who would otherwise be disinterested in a war drama.

* WTHCastingAgency: Quite a few people objected to Music/HarryStyles being cast as a main character in ''Dunkirk'', given that it's supposed to be a serious war movie and Styles is best known as a teenybopper pop singer. Christopher Nolan insisted he had no idea about his music career before casting him and did so solely on the strength of his audition. However, some of the initial objection disappeared after the movie came out.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: Nolan confirming that the film will have "little dialogue" has seemed to win over people who felt Nolan's previous films relied too much on expositionary dialogue.

* EightDeadlyWords: Several critics complained that the minimal characterisation of the main cast had the side effect of making it hard to get invested in their story. Nolan himself commented on the lack of characterization, feeling that in a film about a major, desperate event about surviving and characters that barely know each other beyond this event, their personalities and backstories are irrelevant in the face of survival.

* WhatAnIdiot:
** [[spoiler:The Heinkel bomber crew who despite successfully sinking the British vessel going around for another pass to presumably finish off the men in the water, despite losing its fighter escorts and being tailed by a Spitfire.]]
** [[spoiler:Alex and the Highlanders stubbornly trying to plug the holes leaking water into the Dutch trawler when it becomes a target practice for Germans, ''even when the Germans are still firing''. This causes one of the Highlanders to get shot in the process, and his painful scream could've alerted the Germans that there are people inside the trawler. When this fails, they try to force one of their own off the ship to lighten the weight, even when it's clear that there's too much water leaking into the ship for that to make any difference]].
** Tommy's infantry section in the opening carelessly wanders about an urban battlefield down the middle of a street instead of at least cautiously moving from house to house to minimize their exposure. When they are promptly spotted by the Germans and fired upon, they panic and sprint along the street instead of immediately barging into the doors and windows of the buildings they were next to. [[CurbStompBattle Unsurprisingly]], they are cut down in seconds with Tommy as the sole survivor due to the virtue of climbing over a wooden gate in time.