I don't see the appeal

Rating: 6/10 (3 July 2017)

My vote is for the technical achievements. It would be higher if the plot and characters were more appealing to go along with those, but unfortunately they aren't.
I guess the Civil War is thought of romantically by some, which I find odd. I'm old enough to remember the miniseries "North and South" that you absolutely could NOT get away from when it was on TV. Everyone but me seemed to be watching it.
I'm not overly offended by the portrayal of slavery in GWTW... it's inaccurate for sure, but it's no worse than that portrayed in "Song of the South" which has been banned and shunned for decades. Why is GWTW still worshiped? I don't know. Scarlett can threaten to beat Prissy with a strap and that seems to be okay, but God forbid Uncle Remus tell a few morality tales about a cartoon rabbit to a little boy. But I digress.
My real problem with GWTW is that all of the characters are either unpleasant or stupid... sometimes both (hello, Prissy). It's hard to sit there for four hours without being invested in what happens to anybody because they're so difficult to care about. Scarlett is cruel and selfish, Rhett is cruel and selfish, Ashley and Melanie are so dimwitted one wonders how many generations the Wilkes cousins have been intermarrying.
In short, it's beautifully filmed, but leaves me almost entirely cold.