Custom AR-15s in the future of movies

[Excalibur]

I am starting to wonder if we'll be seeing more and more custom AR-15s than standard M4s in future movies? The recent trailer for John Wick 2 made me think of more and more armorers will start tacticooling a lot of their guns for a character's personal rifle in movies as time goes on. I wonder are we going to see less and less of the bone stock M4 with the fixed carrying handle or even the stock M4 with just an EOtech and replaced with different handguards and stocks from now on and when does it stop being an M4 and just a custom AR?

[AdAstra2009]

It should be classified based on the lower and upper i.e. Colt M4 with DPMS upper or something like that.

[MT2008]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

I am starting to wonder if we'll be seeing more and more custom AR-15s than standard M4s in future movies? The recent trailer for John Wick 2 made me think of more and more armorers will start tacticooling a lot of their guns for a character's personal rifle in movies as time goes on. I wonder are we going to see less and less of the bone stock M4 with the fixed carrying handle or even the stock M4 with just an EOtech and replaced with different handguards and stocks from now on and when does it stop being an M4 and just a custom AR?

Good question, and one which I have thought about myself. Yes, the marketplace for ARs is now full of different lowers/uppers/accessory configs that defy any simple typology (i.e. M4A1 vs. M933 vs. Mark 18 CQBR, which is how it used to be). And yes, this trend is carrying over to Hollywood and making it harder and harder to ID any given weapon we see in the media. (Indeed, given some of the exotic-looking ARs we are seeing in movies lately - i.e. those in "Suicide Squad" - I would be challenged to easily ID an AR unless I talked to the movie's armorers myself. The fact that I've lost track of the market doesn't help.)

Since we often won't know the make/model of the lower, I would think the most expedient approach is to use "Custom AR-15" as the catch-all, and describe make/model of accessories to the best of the IMFDB user's abilities.

[Excalibur]

Also to not confuse new comers to the site or those that don't know the difference, if a character is using a "custom" AR-15 and is firing full auto, we should point it out since an AR-15 is a civilian weapon originally and not a select fire weapon. Example is in Jack Reacher Never Go Back. In John Wick 2, he's shooting this rifle in semi.

[SPEMack618]

I like the idea of simply identifying "AR- platform rifle/carbine/what have you" and then try to identify the optics mounted to said platform.

[Excalibur]

I like to put it simply. "AR-15" is simple enough and then putting down what we think the furniture is attached is a good idea. But I will still like to emphasize since we're IDing a weapon as an AR-15 opposed to an M4/M16 type, it is a civilian weapon and if it is seen in the show in select fire, we should point that out for people of more...liberal views that might stumble upon our website and use it as a source and misunderstands that AR-15s in the real world aren't full auto typically or originally designed to be select fire weapon.

[MT2008]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

Also to not confuse new comers to the site or those that don't know the difference, if a character is using a "custom" AR-15 and is firing full auto, we should point it out since an AR-15 is a civilian weapon originally and not a select fire weapon. Example is in Jack Reacher Never Go Back. In John Wick 2, he's shooting this rifle in semi.

Originally Posted by Excalibur

I like to put it simply. "AR-15" is simple enough and then putting down what we think the furniture is attached is a good idea. But I will still like to emphasize since we're IDing a weapon as an AR-15 opposed to an M4/M16 type, it is a civilian weapon and if it is seen in the show in select fire, we should point that out for people of more...liberal views that might stumble upon our website and use it as a source and misunderstands that AR-15s in the real world aren't full auto typically or originally designed to be select fire weapon.

Dude, I think we're way past that; "AR-15" now refers to a type of firearm that is not necessarily select-fire or semi-auto only. The days when "AR-15" = semi-auto civilian rifle and "M16" or "M4" = select-fire military rifle are long gone now. And visually, it keeps getting harder and harder to tell the difference between civvie vs. LEO/mil-only ARs (with pinned flash hiders on 14.5" barrels becoming popular in the civvie market, even barrel length is no longer a distinguishing visual indicator.) I realize that this may confuse non-gun geeks, but it is inevitable due to current trends in the AR-15 market (there, I said it! )

Bear in mind that there has already never been a simple way to make this distinction in the world of AKs. The shorthand way to describe a Kalashnikov-pattern rifle has always just been "AK", regardless of whether said AK is a select-fire Eastern Bloc/ChiCom weapon or a semi-auto clone for the U.S. civilian market.

Also, engaging in word games for the sake of trying to educate anti-gun liberals is futile and not worth our time, IMHO.

[commando552]

Also, if you want to be really pedantic about the use of AR-15, the name was originally used for the granddaddy Armalite AR-15 which was select fire. As for civilian guns, I believe that Colt has the trademark on this term so the only guns that you should really call AR-15s are Colt manufactured civilian rifles.

[Excalibur]

I'm just saying that we live in a world were the use of terms can change how people view them and movies and fiction in general have done a lot of disservice to the gun community by portraying firearms usage and availability incorrectly like full auto guns being so common in gangster movies and how easy it is to actually get them or that no common civilian in movies own guns. Hollywood, while promoting the entertaining value of gun fights have also been anti-gun in how it tells us that guns are cool to look at but you shouldn't own one and we show you why with cool movies. It's a double standard.

Because we are a site meant to accurate tell our readers what gun is used and how it is used, it should be part of our "job" here to correctly inform the readers what they are looking at.

Hell, we nitpick different lowers on "M4s" and at least 1 time, the recent Siege of Jadotville pointed out the FALs were correctly portrayed as full auto. We are a site of nitpickers. We tell people if an MP5 is an actual MP5 or an HK94 that has the paddle release missing.

Hell, the Blackhawk Down page points out the one Ranger character firing his rifle in burst and says a Ranger wouldn't use the burst feature in combat.

The AK has a different history in America and name recognition than the AR-15 that had a very complicated start as "America's rifle". The AK started out with the common name "AK" because of it's creator but the AR-15 went through brand name changes, copy rights, etc. Even with AKs, we point out differences and will use correct names if we can properly ID it.

[MT2008]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

I'm just saying that we live in a world were the use of terms can change how people view them and movies and fiction in general have done a lot of disservice to the gun community by portraying firearms usage and availability incorrectly like full auto guns being so common in gangster movies and how easy it is to actually get them or that no common civilian in movies own guns. Hollywood, while promoting the entertaining value of gun fights have also been anti-gun in how it tells us that guns are cool to look at but you shouldn't own one and we show you why with cool movies. It's a double standard.

No argument there. Alas, as I have often emphasized in the past, we are fundamentally not a political site, so trying to fight that battle on IMFDB does not seem like a good use of our collective time and energy. There are other, better (dedicated) venues for that purpose.

Originally Posted by Excalibur

Because we are a site meant to accurate tell our readers what gun is used and how it is used, it should be part of our "job" here to correctly inform the readers what they are looking at.

Hell, we nitpick different lowers on "M4s" and at least 1 time, the recent Siege of Jadotville pointed out the FALs were correctly portrayed as full auto. We are a site of nitpickers. We tell people if an MP5 is an actual MP5 or an HK94 that has the paddle release missing.

Hell, the Blackhawk Down page points out the one Ranger character firing his rifle in burst and says a Ranger wouldn't use the burst feature in combat.

Again, no argument that our job is to inform viewers of inaccuracies where we see them, or to provide as much detail as possible on the guns. (i.e. if there is visual evidence that an AR-pattern rifle is a semi-auto civilian model, or was converted to full-auto from a rifle that was originally semi-auto only, I see no reason we can't point it out.)

This is fundamentally not probative to the issue at hand, which is the proper term of reference for an AR-15-pattern rifle, and whether usage of said term should be discouraged. My attitude is that it does not need to be, for reasons I have stated earlier.

Originally Posted by Excalibur

The AK has a different history in America and name recognition than the AR-15 that had a very complicated start as "America's rifle". The AK started out with the common name "AK" because of it's creator but the AR-15 went through brand name changes, copy rights, etc. Even with AKs, we point out differences and will use correct names if we can properly ID it.

Again, if you can ID it, then sure.

But the issue you brought up is whether we are misleading viewers by calling everything "AR-15", vice "AR-15" for civilian models and "M16/M4" for mil models. My point is that in practice, this is no different than calling all select-fire and civilian AK-pattern rifles just plain "AKs." If we accept the latter, we can accept the former.