Surely Top Gun fits the bill of, if not being pro-war, then at the very least being pro-military. The whole film is basically a 2 hour long advertisement for the US Navy - even if some of the stats around the increase in recruitment numbers are somewhat embellished.
It's why in both movies they never say which wars they were in. They are just fighting against a faceless, nameless "enemy," making it easy for the audience to adopt the pro-war stance of rooting for the US military characters to win.
And pro-war, beyond pro-military can also take the position of "just war theory" stating the *necessity* of war, as though it has always been a necessity rather than to profess other options may have been available. So a film can look anti-war, as in war is hell, too bad about the deaths, while still advocating for the use of war.
If you buy into the notion that the military exists strictly for defensive measures rather than aggression (I don't), then I could see the through-line to making that distinction in Top Gun's case. I agree though, that it would require looking at its depiction of the military with some heavy blinders on.
how can something be pro-military but anti-war though? It seems conflicted messaging to me. The US military existence is impossible to divorce from the US aggressive foreign policy, considering *both* top guns were directly financed by it.
Top Gun is made in close conjunction with the US Dept of Defense. Filmmakers don't get access to multimillion dollar equipment just to make the military look bad to unattractive.
Oh yeah, good call. Makes me think there should be a subcategory that's not necessarily pro-war, but pro-american military complex. Movies that seem like the US military both spent a ton of money to show off a bunch of gear on screen, and for that reason also seem to be involved in every aspect of the movie decision-making making process.
First one that comes to mind is Transformers. All the high tech gear. All the military people are so squared away, handsome, never panic, and work terrifically as a team.
They even gave Jon Voight the line; "they're marines. They don't know how to lose."
I thunk that just perfect, considering that anybody can sign up to be a grunt marine right out of high-school. Not taking anything away from Marines, but it was clearly intentional on the writers part to specify them as marines, and not some other ultra selective special operations force with a 95 percent wash out rate.
"So remember kids, if you want to be preceeded by your reputation for being unable to fail, head on in to your local recruiting office!"
> The whole film is basically a 2 hour long advertisement for the US Navy
[Top Gun director Tony Scott (brother of Ridley) was known for his commercial work](https://www.wbur.org/news/2021/05/14/top-gun-35-years-tony-scott-tom-cruise)
That’s it - there are some filmmakers who create work that is shallow, superficially “cool” looking and glamourise war by accident, or because they themselves aren’t thinking that deeply about it and on some level think it’s “cool”.
Then you have the Mel Gibson and latter-day Clint Eastwoods of this world, who seem to sincerely believe that while there is a human cost to war, the US military is a flight of Demi Gods sent to purify the earth. American Sniper is possibly the most offensively pro American military movie ever.
This was the first one to come to mind for me. It is very much thinly veiled military propaganda. Not to say the movie is bad, but its intensions is to highlight that lifestyle in a glamorized way that makes it sound appealing.
Francis Ford Coppola gave an interview on Apocalypse Now and was quoted as saying:
>."No one wants to make a pro-war film, everyone wants to make an anti-war film,” he says. “But an anti-war film, I always thought, should be like [Kon Ichikawa’s 1956 post-second world war drama] The Burmese Harp – something filled with love and peace and tranquillity and happiness. It shouldn’t have sequences of violence that inspire a lust for violence. Apocalypse Now has stirring scenes of helicopters attacking innocent people. That’s not anti-war.”
He pitches his own alternative, by way of counter example: “I always thought the perfect anti-war film would be a story in Iraq about a family who were going to have their daughter be married, and different relatives were going to come to the wedding. The people manage to come, maybe there’d be some dangers, but no one would get blown up, nobody would get hurt. They would dance at the wedding. That would be an anti-war film. An anti-war film cannot glorify war, and Apocalypse Now arguably does. Certain sequences have been used to rev up people to be warlike.”.>
So it's interesting that he made specific sequences knowing that would "rev up" audiences, but at the same time has the complexity of Kurtz ostensibly being the linchpin of the film's morality. He's the most fascinating character, but one that needs to be killed and thus continues the war even though Kurtz was creating a war hungry rationale with the Vietcong.
So whilst I look at his statement regarding the military attacking innocents not being anti-war as puzzling, he believed that the Ride of the Valkyries scene showing war actually encouraged war, and that to be anti-war, you cannot show war even when it's happening.
It's his reading/intention, so I can't begrudge him, and I adore the film.
It’s refreshing to see a filmmaker have an honest and self-aware take like this. I think in a very similar vein, there are a lot of movies that depict the rise and fall of bad people, yet the interest and focus is clearly on the rise, and that is what resonates with people. Film has been around long enough, and we have seen audience reactions for long enough, that we cannot really play dumb and act surprised when people “misinterpret” these movies.
Scarface, for example, is a movie that I would say glorifies crime. You can talk all you want about how “it’s the entire point that it doesn’t, tony pays for what he does!” but of course people are gonna latch on to him as a badass criminal mastermind because that’s the focus. Wolf of Wall Street I would say glorifies corporate greed/Wall Street sociopathy in the same way.
The rise of the Valkyrie scene in apocalypse now is probably the most famous and memorable scene, and it’s not surprising that people in the military have actually played that going into battle, just like they’ve written “born to kill” on their helmets.
David Simon does a great commentary on “paths of glory” where he talks (about 6 minutes in) how he thinks it’s almost impossible to do an anti war film without it becoming pro war in some way. Soldiers he worked with on generation kill would love to quote lines from full metal jacket. He says that at some point the heroism and camaraderie of the soldiers just undercuts the anti war message. Great interview
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FR9Kc7U4mzE
One movie I think does very well at not glorifying it's villain protagonist is Killers of the Flower Moon. I haven't seen the Irishman, but Goodfellas, Casino, and Wolf of Wall Street all show the cool highlights of the life.
KotFM just made me hate Hale and Ernest. They were genuinely the most despicable and pathetic humans I have ever seen on the silver screen. The whole movie I wanted them to die as soon as possible.
> He pitches his own alternative, by way of counter example: “I always thought the perfect anti-war film would be a story in Iraq about a family who were going to have their daughter be married, and different relatives were going to come to the wedding. The people manage to come, maybe there’d be some dangers, but no one would get blown up, nobody would get hurt. They would dance at the wedding. That would be an anti-war film. An anti-war film cannot glorify war, and Apocalypse Now arguably does. Certain sequences have been used to rev up people to be warlike.”.>
wow, I love this.
I agree with him that *Apocalypse Now* is not an anti-war film, but not because any specific scene is potentially rousing. It's a movie that laments its violence, but creates a central conflict with no apparent solution other than violence. Kurtz' brand of war-worship must be stopped, but the only solution is Kurtz' death. It is arguably positioned against the conflict in Vietnam specifically, and it finds humanity's warlike nature tragic and maddening, but it doesn't take up the position of the alternative.
Idk the context of his comments, but to me they sound like he's maybe looking back on the film and seeing how some people respond to it and realizing it didn't work the way he expected - leading him to conclude you just can't show combat at all.
That's the way I interpret it. His way to show the depravity, the terrible tragedy, has instead become, unfortunately, certain peoples weak minded glorification.
I never saw that film and thought: "You know how cool it would be drop napalm in the jungles of some country?"
It was terrifying, because it absolutely, was awful. Only a sickly mind would find that something to make war glorious.
Nothing good came of it. Its message wasn't of success after killing Kurtz, it was of nothing,
"Darkness."
The 'victory' was hollow. The tragedy real, and the terror would be in the destruction inevitably left behind, or worse, brought home.
Edit: fixed errors, added commas, and last qualifying word since I remembered how it was said from the director himself.
Further addition: [Lite reading material about the films Col. Kurtz being based on a real person, who did the stuff shown in the film.
I remember talking to a crazy guy who came back from 'Nam whom had served on some 'missions'. When I inquired about it (being there, what it was like for him, etc...) His response was: "you've seen Apocalypse Now? That was what I was involved in. Scary stuff."
Even crazier to me, he said that he got put in prison, later during a closed trial, the judge gave him the option to "serve the country's need again, or spend 25 in prison." Given the fact he'd been there already. He said he of course took the deal, which required him to spend a "quiet" year inside, then be shipped out.
He said that the second year, they(military) shipped him back off, but not to Vietnam, 'other places nearby'. That's when he said things got really crazy and he couldn't ever 'get those things out of his head'.
When he yet again came back to the states, he managed to get into trouble again. The third trial he said was strange because the judge one day said that his military records being sealed gave him cause for concern, concern enough, that he felt it was better to allow him to be remanded to military tribunal (some of the words escape me now). Which he then was turned over to a pair of waiting MP's (he said that pretty much everyone hates MP's), they drove him back to the nearest airbase.
Whilst in the hold without being told anything, he assumed he was about to be airdropped over some jungle after a reup instead, when he heard the news about the withdraw orders being given. The same MP's came back a little bit later, drove him to a street in San Francisco, pulled him out of the car, put $10 in his pocket, told him to "get lost".
To make this story a little stranger, he reiterated that he was always told that he needed to keep his mouth shut. Later I found out he disappeared (years after I had spoken with him) and it was under 'suspicious circumstances' eventually being declared dead.
I don't know how much I believe him, but it wasn't until he'd had a few drinks that he told me all this. (I also am pretty sure they did find him even later, dead of a drug induced heartattack, heroin.) ](https://taskandpurpose.com/culture/10-things-you-probably-never-knew-about-apocalypse-now/#:~:text=Marlon%20Brando's%20Colonel%20Kurtz%20is,a%20form%20of%20psychological%20operations.)
I honestly take people at their word, no matter how counterintuitive it might be unless they actually say something to directly contradict it.
One of my favorite films is Grave of the Fireflies. To me, it’s a beautifully tragic movie about how war destroyed a country and forced its resources to be spread so thin that countless people had to die of starvation. It’s about how so many people went through similarly tragic circumstances and we just happen to zoom in on two of them.
But to the director? He says the movie is about how you should listen to your elders. Like ok, I guess. Thank goodness I’m allowed to have a different interpretation of art than the artist had in mind.
I agree with this take. Most anti-war movies, like the 2022 All Quiet on the Western Front, still have [exhilarating action sequences](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkI1Fxne8AY) where the main character kills enemy soldiers in a way that's blood pumping and entertaining for the audience. Not that the filmmakers intend for the audience to cheer while people get mowed down, but these moments of violence nonetheless tickle a part of your brain that gets you riled up, morbidly curious, and kinda excited.
This might be a pessimistic take on the human condition, but I think there's an innate pleasure to exerting violent power over others (at least for men). Because of this, we derive pleasure from watching a protagonist, or someone whose perspective we're viewing the movie through, killing or hurting other people. I think that's what Coppola means when he says "a sequence of violence that inspires a lust for violence".
That's why I always go back to the movie Come and See being a true anti-war movie. The main character *never* kills a Nazi in the movie, despite wanting to. We barely even see any on-screen violence until the climax. Instead, we just see the devastation and suffering that the violence leaves in its wake.
I think it's at least sometimes possible to strike a balance. The last act of Bernhard Wicki's *The Bridge* is full of well-crafted, exciting action and everything that happens in it *sucks*.
To innocent people, war is unimaginable. Film brings imagination to life. By that logic, depicting war as anything but a destructive hurricane gives the concept glory where there was previously none.
Almost always true, but one counter example that comes to mind is the movie and book, Catch-22. Even though it was set during what was arguably America’s most moral war, WW2, the book is full of venal, cynical, and selfish officers and men, and the book’s protagonist is an open coward for all the right reasons. There is no glamorizing war in any shape, form, or fashion. It’s just treated as the idiotic, value destroying enterprise that it is.
There is an insane courtroom drama that came out in 2000 called Rules of Engagement where a group of American soldiers, including Samuel L Jackson, are put on trial for gunning down an unarmed peaceful protest of men women and children outside an embassy in Yemen. But the movie later reveals that killing all of those civilians was justified because every single person on the street was armed, including a little one-legged ten year old girl with a 44 magnum revolver. But the soldiers still go to jail because the American government wants peace in the region and doesn't want the public to know the truth.
Christ, that's an incredible example of sincerely jingoistic pro-war garbage. The idea that the government would cover up "the truth" that everyone was a terrorist and so was a justified murder, has proven time and again to be utterly false.
You should see the comments under the movie on YouTube which is apparently free to watch this month. 1:36:55 for kids with guns.
Also I just realized Friedkin directed this...
First movie I thought of when I saw the thread's title.
They build up the case that the people were unarmed and then at the end it's like nope, everyone had guns. Kids got guns. Grandmas got guns. What was the rest of the movie for? I think they wanted you to think the soldiers were bad and then it's "SHAME ON YOU!"
I'm pretty sure something like Zero Dark Thirty is broadly seen as pro-war. But, then something like the Iron Man or Avengers movies are pretty pro-USA military that can be interpreted as pro-War. And even if you don't think that's the threshold, couldn't something like American Sniper, or most James Bond films fall into the pro-war camp?
You gotta hand it to them. they really go out of their way to make the U.S. military and their toys look cool as f\*ck. Wouldn't be surprised if there was a "Top Gun effect" of seeing a rise in enlistment numbers after those movies came out.
Yep, film makers that want to make a movie that's more critical of the U.S. military need to look elsewhere for assets. For example, Apocalypse Now, which, granted, could only be shot in a tropical location anyway, was shot in the Philippines with the use of Philippine army helicopters.
The Transformers and Avengers are both more fascistic then pro-war
To maximize global appeal there is no articulated position, only threats and responses to the threat.
Iron Man, to me, is incredibly pro war. A billionaire arms dealer has a change of heart & decides to improve the world by (checks notes) building a superweapon & using it to kill foreign bad guys.
It's basically an extension of the neocon "foreign policy through bombing" concept. Have you noticed that any time something bad happens overseas the media starts openly speculating about who we could bomb to make the bad thing go away?
The guy could build schools & hospitals. He could open factories in impoverished areas & pay fair wages. He could sponsor refugees to come to America. He could get homeless vets off the streets. But, no, he just builds a superweapon & goes to war.
Pretty neat insight, you just gave me a whole new perspective of the movie. I guess because it was more "popcorn" fare I didn't necessarily go into it with as critical an eye so this sorta analysis escaped me. Well done.
I enjoyed it as dumb fun in the theater (opening weekend). Years later, I started thinking deeply about how pop culture frames the debate:
"Crime is something that Batman can beat into submission. Terrorism can be defeated militarily if we'd just spend more (& did ya see how cool that flying carrier looked?). Sometimes torture is ok if the stakes are high enough."
Never even explores the possibility that the solution isn't violence.
Isn't this the whole premise of a lot of Alan Moore's work like the Watchman? The concept of superheroes and their stories having inherent fascist elements behind them?
His change of heart also isn’t motivated by the deaths of civilians (of which he’s killed many,) but by injury to himself and the soldiers he was directly friendly with.
And Yinsen. I guess. Who still falls under ‘a person he has a personal investment in.’
Tony being an elitist egomaniac with a propensity to just…disregard how ‘the little people’ actually feel about his ‘help’ is from his comic characterisation. But it’s weird the movies never really address it. ‘Age of Ultron’ style fuckups in the comics usually resulted in at least some sort of consequence or redemption, not just…bickering with Steve for a minute before doing the same thing again?
But it’s okay, because it luckily turned out fine the second time. All’s good.
I swear to god, Marvel movies are like Golden Age comics with characterisation sometimes. When they were aimed at small children, and had stuff like Superman ‘Oh no!’ accidentally killing his parents for like…a page before leaping into the next adventure with nary a mention again.
In Iron Man, doesn’t Tony Stark have a revelation about how his weaponry has harmed countless innocent people while making him wealthy? And then becomes Iron Man in an effort to help right those wrongs and protect the innocent?
Comic books and superheroes in general pander to the fantasy of a world simple enough for the problems to be punched or blown up. Some have argued that this is inherently a fascistic worldview. Even if your particular superhero is the good guy in the story. You're not going to see Iron Man or Batman go after wage theft or institutionalized racism, because you can't punch those into submission. The real world is rarely amenable to such solutions, since not all problems are armed, have slogans and flags, etc.
It’s been a bit since I’ve seen it but I don’t know if I’d call Zero Dark Thirty “pro-war.”
It doesn’t come down against the killing of Osama Bin Laden, but it also spends a considerable amount of time examining the human cost of the search for him.
The main criticism leveled at the movie had to do with the depiction of Bush-era torture being instrumental in discovering Bin Laden's location. Like, yeah, it shows torture as horrible and dehumanizing and fucks up the people involved, but in the movie they got the name of Bin Laden's courier out of the nephew they tortured, whereas in real life that guy gave up nothing and nobody they tortured produced any usable intelligence.
The overall impression of the movie is "this is hell and we're now all damned, but in the end we got our guy and everyone can get some peace out of that," so if you consider the CIA's role to be one part of the larger War on Terror effort, then ZDT is not dissimilar from pro-war movies that conclude that war is hell, but good can come out of it.
I'm going to need to see "Zero Dark Thirty" again because I thought it was both a great procedural and an argument against the War on Terror.
Maybe this is invoking the cliche that you get out of a movie what you put into it but what I got out of the last scene was just exhaustion: "Well we got Bin Laden but at the cost of our souls and it's not like he's going to be the last terrorist. What was the point?"
I think the issue is how many people took that scene (some of the writers as well) as: wow, fighting terrorism is hard. It's like for every Osama we kill there's ten others. We need to work harder and make sure our sad troops get the support they need.
Obviously it didnt actually say this, but it's an inherently pro war piece of propaganda and there's without a doubt some involved with the film who wanted to push this point.
In what way is Marvel pro-military? In the Iron Man movies Tony fights tooth and nail for the military to not get a suit, and when they do a massacre breaks out. Cap has to go AWOL In order to actually make a difference in WW2. The military tries to nuke NYC in Avengers. The entire plot of Civil War is that the military and UN wants to get rid of the Avengers, a decision that heavily helps Thanos’ victory in Infinity War. In Black Widow, Incredible Hulk, and Ant-Man 2 the main characters are straight up running from the military. Explain to me how this is pro-military.
I would Zero Dark thirty is just pro killing Osama Bin Laden, as far as I remember the film portrays the military as not being a perfectly run organisation
*13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi* is a newer example. Not a great film but one that has been very widely viewed and is therefore potentially more influential than some more classic examples. The film is critical of the state department bureaucracy (naturally), shows for-profit military contractor *agencies* in a positive light, and presents the contractors themselves as heroes. I'm not going to disagree with that last characterization because I have no personal context for it. But I do believe the contractors are probably very skilled and brave.
Chris Pine was in a movie last year called "The Contractor." This presents a much different view of military contractors and the companies that they work for. I wouldn't call it an anti-war movie I don't think, but it certainly is critical of the way that contractors are used.
To me, the quintessential pro-war film is The Green Berets (1968), a film specifically produced to promote the idea of a full-scale invasion of Vietnam.
You have several speeches from the good guys that lay out the case for American intervention. You have a reporter character who starts out anti-war and then changes his mind after seeing the situation on the ground. You have sympathetic portrayals of a few South Vietnamese characters to contrast against the evil actions of the characters from North Vietnam. You have a final line where John Wayne tells a little South Vietnamese orphan boy that he's what this whole war is about.
At the same time, there are unavoidable signs that the film was made by idiots, a common trait of most pro-war films. None of the lead actors know how to hold their guns. They're constantly pointing M-15s at each other's heads and crotches. Most of them also appear to be drunk. They wear helmets in exactly one scene and then bury them. The above-mentioned little South Vietnamese orphan boy is named Ham Chunk.
Other pro-war films include Red Dawn (1984), Rambo III (1988), Rambo IV (2008), We Were Soldiers (2002), and One Shot (2021).
> We Were Soldiers (2002)
iirc there's a weird throwaway line at the end where gibson says "We'll never win the war, this is their home" or something iirc...
And he's brushed off..
That was a deleted scene, though maybe there's an extended cut where it's included. We Were Soldiers was one of my favorite movies as kid. I watched it again recently and while it does still have some great moments, there are also many other moments where it feels like a straight up cliched propaganda movie. It just didn't land for me the way it used to, which I guess shows I've grown a bit since my teenage years.
We Were Soldiers at least pretends to offer the viewpoint of the other side. I certainly won’t argue that it does a good job, but an attempt is better than nothing
Anti war films are always full of stupid mistakes too.
Generation kill is one of the few things I've watched that's close to being a realistic depection of the military.
You should give the 5 part mini series called the "unknown soldier" it's in finish but it's an incredible realistic selection of Finland and the continuation war
Rambo 2 is super pro war, even indulging in the myth of American troops being kept and tortured by the Vietnamese after the war to justify more conflict. Idk why you call Rambo 4 pro war though it's more a vigilantism flick
Rambo IV was a movie about the 2007 Burmese conflict where Rambo led a group of mercenaries and the Karen Liberation Army to fight against the Burmese Army. How is it not a war film?
In Rambo 2 and 3 he is working for the American government and the plot is promoting US imperial policies of the day. Rambo 4 is incredibly cynical and Rambo is just working as a mercenary against a country that the US was not attacking at the time
This is basically how I see these ones, too. Rambo 4 he is an unenthused mercenary, and basically complains the whole time about how the military made him a monster. Then we get cool cow guts exploding at the camera for 20 minutes. Which is half ridiculous and half "Are you not entertained!"
It's in competition with First Blood for my favourite Rambo film.
I've no idea about that world but it does seem more realistic that he'd do that than 2 and 3 (which to be fair have a kind of camp value now)
And yes, the fights are amazing haha
I picked out the Rambo movies that were specifically made to motivate American intervention overseas. As jingoistic as First Blood Part 2 is, the political position they're pushing for is just to pressure Vietnam harder on locating American POWs.
Rambo IV was made to bring attention to the plight of the Karen rebels in Myanmar because of a weird misunderstanding where American right-wingers believed that the Karens were being oppressed for their Christianity. They wanted to bring the issue to the public and force the government to take action. Then, later, they found out that most of the Karens are Muslim, and they lost interest.
The trick is to get some friends over and make a drinking game out of it.
Drink every time they casually point their guns at each other or themselves. Take a shot every time there's some kind of accidental gay innuendo. Take a sip every time somebody acts noticeably drunk in a scene. Finish your drink for every noble death.
>To me, the quintessential pro-war film is The Green Berets (1968), a film specifically produced to promote the idea of a full-scale invasion of Vietnam.
It's commonly speculated, I believe fairly, that it was made not just because John Wayne is a full-on American imperialist looking to do his part but also out of guilt for having dodged any kind of service during WWII.
It’s always fun to compare John Wayne to Jimmy Stewart for folks who just know them by their movies. Jimmy Stewart was America’s nice guy, John Wayne was a rootin’ tootin’ cowboy, according to movies. And yet Jimmy Stewart volunteered for WWII and refused to be solely an entertainer, flying bomber missions for the Army Air Corps (later the US Air Force), retiring as a Brigadier General after years of reserve service after the war. John Wayne, unlike a huge percentage of his contemporaries, avoided military service.
I’m not a huge fan of US militarism, but WWII was such a huge communal effort that it’s remarkable that John Wayne didn’t serve, even in the USO. 11% of the US population served in the war, which is pretty incomprehensible for those of us who weren’t born yet.
I'm not so sure about Red Dawn. Its characters are defending themselves from Russians and Cubans who, several times, talk about what a waste it all is.
I don't see how We Were Soldiers was pro war in any sense.
We see horrific suffering of soldiers. We see main characters die. We see the suffering of their wives (which is rarely, if ever, shown in war movies). We see an enemy soldier actually have a wife that he loves. The enemy general is never really portrayed as evil - he doesn't say anything that makes you think he's this terrible villain, he's simply the opposing general. We see what war would do to a civilian who sees it with the reporter. And we see the main character (and opposing general) both agree that it's basically pointless; all the death won't matter in the end.
*Battle Los Angeles.* It's about a group of marines and, I think, one member of the Air Force fighting against aliens in LA and then figuring out the weakness needed to defeat the entire invading force.
In other words, the US military saves the world.
I kinda sorta thought about visiting a Marine recruiter after watching that movie. It's super pro-military.
Reading so many of the comments here (and really, whenever this subject comes up), it's interesting to me how often people consider movies anti-war simply for lamenting the violence of war and its effects. The reasoning seems to go that it depicts a situation you'd never want to be in, therefore it is ideologically positioned against this thing, which just does not track. Many World War 2 movies depict the horrors of battle in ways that might work as an anti-recruitment tool, but I can think of very few that are positioned against that war effort. Very often (not always), the horrors of war in film carry the implication is that that effort was paid for in trauma which must be recognized, not that the trauma necessarily negates or invalidates the value of that war-effort; or that the methods used were not always justified, even if the cause was a just one. Movies about war are very often positioned against its war's aggressors, or against some facet of that war, but it's rare, and I think difficult (though certainly not impossible), for a movie about war to take a generalized anti-war stance.
We very often use fiction to recognize the hard aspects of things we don't (and don't want to) experience ourselves, without actually taking a position against those things. We can go all the way back to fiction from almost three thousand years ago to see this. The Iliad is absolutely not--not in any conceivable way--an anti-war story, and yet it is absolutely a lament of lives cut short, of people forced into no-win situations, of the kinds of dehumanizing cruelty that it inspires, and of sons who will not come home to their fathers.
Black hawk down
It doesn't even attempt to address the realities and nuances of the Somali civil war, instead the Americans are unquestionably honourable heroes who are simply trying to survive amidst the onslaught of Somali savages.
It is a very well made film, but it's pure propaganda. How many other countries charge their citizens to watch propaganda?
Old joke:
> A Russian is on an airliner flying to the US. An American next to him asks “What brings you to the US?” The Russian replies “I’m studying the American approach to propaganda.” The American asks “What propaganda?” The Russian says, “That’s what I mean.”
> Black hawk down
>
> It doesn't even attempt to address the realities and nuances of the Somali civil war, instead the Americans are unquestionably honourable heroes who are simply trying to survive amidst the onslaught of Somali savages.
this is the first movie that came to mind as well. the dehumanization of the Somalis is particularly shocking. they're depicted like enemies in a video game, just wave after wave of nameless creatures running, shouting, shooting and being gunned down.
The book, which was painstakingly researched interviewed and cross checked by author Mark Bowden shows that the Somalis pretty much acted like this. If anything, they toned it down for the movie.
I really loved that film but it's insane when you think about it. I remember even at the time being a bit shocked, like I was invested in it and was cheering the Americans on, but they are just blowing away civilians left right and centre and you are meant to be upset by 2 of them dying
Yeh, I always found the paragraph of text that comes up at the end really jarring. It says something like "13 American serviceman were killed" and it gives their names and ranks. Then it just says however many thousand Somalians were killed and it's just such an absurd contrast in the numbers.
The filmmakers really dehumanised the Somalians in that film.
In the book, there's accounts of when the armed "civilians" take advantage of the rules of engagement the US was forced to abide by, by having women and children crowd around or even lay on top of armed men actively firing at American soldiers. This was of course to take advantage of how you weren't allowed to fire at unarmed women and children.
I really don't have any commentary on why we were there, although it's well established that Somali warlords were not good people, but let's not pretend these were just guerrilla forces resisting.
I don’t think that changes the moral core of the issue. If someone was invading my country, and then a group of armed invaders crashed a helicopter in my neighborhood I would shoot them
The UN was in Somalia to deliver humanitarian aid. Warlords on both sides of the civil war were stealing the humanitarian aid. Using military force to shut down the people who are stealing the food that's being donated to keep you from starving isn't exactly an invasion.
Inserting ourselves in the middle of a civil war was a bad idea. Continuing to send food that was going straight to the people fighting that civil war would have been a bad idea. Just saying fuck it, discontinuing the aid so it wouldn't go to the warlords, and letting Somalis starve would have been a bad idea. There was no good answer, but the older I get, the more I find myself leaning towards fuck it let them starve if it means not putting US lives in danger.
It definitely valourizes the americans involved and doesn’t do much to nuance the Somalis (to whatever extent is reasonable) but you also don’t come away saying “war is fun and good and we should do more war in Somalia” it makes the effort seem pretty futile and not worth the human cost
Gotta push back on some of this...
>It doesn't even attempt to address the realities and nuances of the Somali civil war
Agreed but it never pretends otherwise - it's a boots-on-the-ground movie about a specific mission that is specifically not about the wider context.
It's also, to me, pretty pointedly anti-interventionist, by not providing the wider context the viewer is left wondering what the hell we're doing there and how pointless the mission was.
>How many other countries charge their citizens to watch propaganda?
All of them? At least all of them with any semblance of a film industry.
Propaganda exists everywhere but at least we have freedom of speech and free press.
I watched this in the theatre when it came out, and I was truly irritated by the nonsensical propaganda and the lack of nuance.
After over 21 years, this is the first film that jumps to my mind when I hear 'pro war'.
The Somalians in that film are depicted the way some films depict zombies, just mindless hoards of people attacking the protagonists. Even though it's not exactly in favour of the conflict itself, it's so blatantly racist it almost doesn't matter.
I haven't seen it for a while but after my comment I realised that none of the Somalis had names.
So I checked IMDb and it looks like two Somalis have names, but the rest are just billed as Somali kid/father/son/son with gun etc.
But given how many Somalis died in the movie obviously most people playing Somalis didn't even get a credit.
It's doubly dehumanising; their characters don't get a name, and the actors don't even get a credit.
>It is a very well made film, but it's pure propaganda. How many other countries charge their citizens to watch propaganda?
All. Particularly, It is not like cinema in communist countries were for free. You had to pay as well. The only difference is that government funded propaganda film 100% so naturally in most cases they were much less entertainment as less matter how many people actually were going to watch. Another thing that because there were censorship and foreign films were rarely screened so choice was limited and you had to watch what they gave.
I think Braveheart might be a solid example: all of the main character’s actions are justified in the name of Scottish nationalism (he repeatedly refuses to negotiate for peace and is affirmed by the narrative for doing so; he effectively becomes a serial killer by the end and this is never framed as a descent) and the opposing side is either cartoonishly evil or nameless cannon fodder save for the princess he has a sexual relationship with.
On a metatextual level, the alterations the film makes to actual history serve to make the story more jingoistic, basically grafting modern ideals of independence onto a feudal conflict and giving Wallace a fabricated tragic backstory, as well as inventing atrocities on the British side (Scotland had not been subjugated for decades at that time, prima noctis was never implemented, bagpipes were not banned, etc.)
My brother and I loved that movie as kids (I still watch it purely for childhood nostalgia sometimes), but as adults we have often laughed about how over-the-top cartoonishly villainous they made the British in it lol. Crazy to think how many people actually do think of the world and history in such a simplistic, black-and-white way.
Ironically, there are plenty of *other* instances where the British are indeed this ridiculous - say, India - but by exaggerating here it cheapens those examples.
There is a film called “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”, which shows a lot of atrocities from the British in Ireland, but is historically accurate. British critics hated it, and accused it of being all lies and similar to Nazi propaganda.
It got pretty good reviews in the UK. Some tabloids did their normal thing of shitting the bed whenever the empire is criticised, but the movie was generally well regarded. Even The Telegraph gave it a glowing response.
I mean if we were to really be able to go back with a time machine and see firsthand all of the events of history, there are horrendous acts and atrocities on pretty much all sides I feel, that's just humans in general. And you'll find there can be "good guys" on the "bad side" and "bad guys" on the "good side" and innumerable other gray areas and variations in between black-and-white poles. I'm certainly not engaging in apologetics for Britain, or for anyone else. I know they've done their share of dirty stuff as a massive colonial power. I'm just making a larger point about the way people tend to get stuck in really simplistic ideals when thinking about history, when the reality is infinitely more complex and messy.
I haven't watched it since i saw it in my middle school social studies class (not dure why they were showing it in a Canadian school (or at all)). But i distinctly remember the movie having to twist itself into knots to try and make the british look villainous for offering freedom to enslaved people who joined their cause while making the main character a southern planter who only employed free black labour, which as far as i'm aware has zero historical precedent.
haha yeah that's right, of course they have the main guy as a benevolent progressive abolitionist in the 18th-century Deep South. They make sure to include a scene where one of the black field hands explicitly clarifies that they are not slaves.
If you need a snarling, scowling, over the top British villain, Jason Issacs is your man. Makes that movie more entertaining than it has any right to be.
A looooooot of people don’t realize Britain is the united island, not just England, so you’ll see lots of people mistake the two. Then you get more confusion with the addition of Northern Ireland to make it the UK
The most pro-war movies usually are fantasy/science-fiction movies where war is more often than not depicted, not only as necessary, but as the only solution. Think about Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Avatar, Independence Day, etc... Historical movies usually adopt a more complex stance.
Lord of the Rings has always been interesting because Tolkein himself struggled with making the orcs and Uruks (hai) irredeemable. Obviously, when the films were released around the time of the War on Terror, it was prevalent that some bad faith criticisms were launched at the "propaganda" of the enemy soldiers being irredeemable.
Obviously, Catholic morality doesn't believe anyone is inherently irredeemable.
In truth, there isn't much round the orc problem as Tolkein's emphasis was more on Sauron taking away any free will of people, which, by proxy, made the orcs unsaveable. In the books, Aragorn forgives the orcs, and in the films, some of them are hilarious, which gives them some semblance of humanity.
Star wars is definitely pro war
But the interesting thing to me is in an analogy to modern day, the empire is the US/UK and the rebels could be any number of countries we've invaded, but we would certainly call them terrorists and not rebels.
Top Gun is the story of a dude who thinks he's cute and laughs too much, he falls in love with a bigger woman, his co-worker dies in an accident, he gets sad and decides to make catharsis by killing all the communist bastards. Love that film, it's something that could only work on Reagan America.
This may be controversial, but Saving Private Ryan. Yes, there is the one short scene depicting the Americans unjustfully killing the Czech prisoners, but other than that the movie is completely pro-american and pro-war. It really never gives any face or personality to the enemy soldier - in fact the only German character we ever meet turns out to be a liar and a coward who takes advantage of the American's mercy every chance he gets. The film never questions the purpose or justification for war, and depicts the main characters as honorable and brave heroes fighting a just cause.
Idk how popular or unpopular this opinion is but... loved it when I was 12, can't take it seriously nowadays. It isn't a deep film in any way, and goes nowhere near any kind of real insight into, well, anything. It's just very superficial and melodramatic to me, a mass-appeal, dumbed-down, emotionally manipulative, stupefying, jingoistic take on war and human nature. But boy are those battle scenes spectacular! Nearly 3 hours of all that is just a dreary bloated slog to me.
I think you’re being a little harsh here. The movie is certainly (IMO) pro-war, as are almost all American-made WW2 productions, but it is no more emotionally manipulative than any other movie in which characters die sad and/or preventable deaths. SPR is well acted and extremely well shot and at least doesn’t shy away from brutality of war despite unabashed pro-Americanism
Sure, it's competent on a technical level, and has a shitload of talented actors in it, but to me this movie is just dripping with the shallowest, most un-challenging Spielbergian sentimentalism. The story sounds like some human interest piece that would be cooked up in a PR think tank. Simple tearjerker with a backdrop of the good guys VS the bad guys. The emotions are cheap and unearned, and nothing truly significant or thought-provoking is broached about humanity or war or the connection between the two, which to me just makes its wallowing in massive brutal battle scenes all the more cynical and cheap because it's just an empty spectacle when all's said and done. You could get the same effect from watching someone play fuckin Call of Duty.
Thank you for pointing out the part about the German soldier! I think that part is always overlooked, especially when he's literally murdered at the final battle when he surrenders again. I can't recall the character's name that killed him, but I recall him being treated as a coward through the whole film up until that point. At least to me, it feels like the movie is glorifying both his act of "revenge" and his new found wiliness to fight/kill.
I won't argue over the intention because I haven't seen the movie in a while, but the first time I saw it, I remember thinking that him killing the POW seemed like an even more cowardly act than doing nothing all. Just him trying to make up for his inaction when it didn't matter anymore and there were no consequences.
Well it is very hard to make film about second war like All Quiet on the Western Front because:
A. Holocaust
B.Appeasement. Big indirect fault for Holocaust had understandable fear against next big war in western societies and politicians which let tolerated aggressive geopolitical politics of Hitler definitely too long which gave him time to build pretty powerful army.
C. The biggest victims of second war on contrary to first were civilians. Not only Jewish. Germans brutality in eastern Europe was exceptional as well.
It has been argued that there are no anti-war films. Because even if you show the horror of war, it still looks a bit epic. [This article](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20140710-can-a-film-be-truly-anti-war) attributes the quote to Truffaut. Even Come and See, as horrifying as it is, is still beautiful in many ways. It doesn't make you yearn for war, but there's still a brutal romance to it.
I was about to post a similar comment until I scrolled down and saw your comment. I agree. A film may not glorify war but even "anti-war" films are about the "necessity" of getting your hands dirty and potentially making the ultimate sacrifice in defense of an ideal/way of life.
A true "anti-war" film would need to send the message that war is never necessary and needs to be avoided at all costs. Idealistic, but an impossible message to convey in my opinion especially in the context of any movie depicting WW2 (Should you avoid war even if you got attacked, like what Japan did to us at Pearl Harbor? Good luck sending that message.)
There are tons of pro-war films out there which have "advisors" from the military working on the production, to ensure the story follows their agenda. Anything from Top Gun, Transformers, Battleship, Tomorrow War, to the latest Marvel schlock.
This is actually so common that you have probably become desensitized to their influence and don't think twice about pro-war cliches... like for example an adventurous montage of soldiers shpping off to uplifting music, or privates hooking up with hot and exotic women while on leave, or Americans always dying a hero's death with a line about "Give this letter to my mother.."
A lot of films are even partially financed by the military, on the condition that the movie shows off some new tactical vehicle or weapon.
It's all done to keep the patriotism and morale high, while manifacturing support for the latest war effort and making sure a steady flow of new reqruits are signing up. This is also the reason to why violence doesn't seem to hurt in American war movies.
There's a really great documentary on all this called "This film is not yet rated" which also shows how the military are behind the MPAA-rating system and thus make sure pro-war films don't get blocked from impressionable kids.
Hacksaw Ridge explicitly proclaims to be anti-violence but pro-war. It centers around the idea of the US being the rightfully morally correct side in the Pacific theater, but that the violence being committed to solidify that position is wrong.
This is terribly misguided, jingoistic and arrogant. And even in its supposed message of being anti-violence, the film completely fails. Because it unironically basks in the dehumanization of the Japanese and their violent and visceral slaughtering.
If you tend to disagree, watch the film again with this in the back of your head. It is edited, scored and filmed like a propaganda piece while the writing dares to suggest it isn't. Absolutely distasteful.
The main character's heroic deeds don't inspire pacifism, it's just used as a motivator for the Americans to attack the ridge again.
There's a montage at the end showing the American soldiers wiping out the Japanese soldiers including a scene where an American blows up a tunnel and there's a shot of at least fifty Japanese soldiers being engulfed in flames over heroic music.
There's also a scene where an American soldier picks up the torso of a dead America soldier and uses it as a shield. He then goes on to kill five soldiers while running and holding his 20 lb machine gun in one arm. It's a ridiculous movie.
yeah, they use doss' pacifism as a way to make you feel bad about the american soldiers lol.
"it was a shit storm up there, we killed and they killed. but now that doss showed us the light.... nothing changes". you can now go up there and kill as many japanese soldiers as you want because you heard a sermon before you did it. meanwhile showing japan's religion as basically just... committing suicide lmao
Sorry, are you saying that the US was not the morally correct side in the Pacific theater? Do you actually know what the Japanese had been doing for the past decade?
Isn't the most obvious example the Top Gun movies? I didn't see them mentioned but maybe I missed it.
The first one caused a massive spike in recruitment, I'm sure the second one did too. These guys look cool as hell, there's epic music playing and even the deaths are treated with such reverence that it really makes you feel like you, yes you, with your insignificant life will either be a rock star hero or die a heroes death and live on as an eternal legend.
Hurt Locker. American Sniper. Any MCU movie.
In reality the differences are more nuanced, there aren't many "pro war" movies, but there are a fair few "war is bad because invading American troops got PTSD", with no regard for the people on the other side of that conflict who obviously, obviously had it worse. Jarhead and multiple Vietnam movies come to mind.
Most American war movies set in Vietnam to the present day more or less skips over the "why" when it comes to the war itself because asking that question opens up a whole can of worms that the DoD might not like. Instead, they tend to focus more on the bond between soldiers and as you mention, PTSD in an abstract sense and the "hard decisions" that the troops have to make. The real tragedy here is that having to drop bombs and shoot civilians is making our soldiers *sad.*
It falls perfectly in line with most pro-war American sentiment in the years following the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan once a lot of the initial patriotic fervor wore off. *Don't question why the troops are there, but make sure that you support them because they're going through a lot.*
American Sniper's basically a testament to USA's psychopathic obsession with guns & the military. In one of the early scenes during his training the main character actually complains that he can’t hit the targets because they're “not alive”. It's basically a story about a psychopath whose dreams come true; he joins the US military to get to kill men, women & children & get praised for it. The guy barely shows any emotion thoughout & all the killing is framed as justified protection of the American way of life or some shit. It's all so every day he's even given a satellite phone so he can call his wife back home whilst he's out killing.
Then after the war he finally returns home & decides the best way to help mentally ill soldiers treat their ptsd is to take them out to shoot stuff, because in his mind shooting stuff (especially stuff that's alive) makes him feel better. Only he doesn’t see the inherant danger in the fact that US military are cool with giving men with a range of mental illnesses guns, training, then shipping them off kill. That is until one of them shoots him & his friend in the back at their makeshift shooting range. It would be preposterously hilarious if it weren't all a true story.
Rambo 1 id call anti war, it's a fun action film that also shows the dark side of PTSD and how people where treated.
Rambo 2/3 etc where propaganda films for the American Army, I dont know if there pro war but they are pro USA/Army.
The military has a long lasting link to Hollywood, be it direct funding or free use of hardware or just advice/script changes and lack of red tape.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93entertainment\_complex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93entertainment_complex)
[https://www.spyculture.com/dod-hollywood-collaboration-database-excerpts/](https://www.spyculture.com/dod-hollywood-collaboration-database-excerpts/)
I suspect every country has some kind of PR outreach program to media Film/TV/books etc
edit the list of films with DoD co-scripted on wiki/spy Culture covers a lot you may not expect I Am Legend, Jurassic Park 3, The Karate Kid 2/3, Last Action Hero, Star Trek 4, Wonder Woman 1984.
Funny thing the link to over 400 DoD funded films is broken, found a working copy archived [https://web.archive.org/web/20200323015526/https://www.mintpressnews.com/hollywood-propaganda/247154/](https://web.archive.org/web/20200323015526/https://www.mintpressnews.com/hollywood-propaganda/247154/)
I wish they would stuck with the book and killed Rambo at the end of First Blood. Good film and the first film of it's type i showed my daughter years ago. She was really surprised when he broke down and bawled, when it all caught up to him. After First Blood they just threw that character away.
The third movie's affinity for the mujaheed is definitely supportive of the CIA operation to supply them arms against the Soviets. It aged extremely poorly because they're all treated like freedom fighters, but really the CIA was supplying every Afghan group they could in the region including warlords which later formed Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Also, fun to know: The CIA put out a lot of jihadist propaganda in the region, but assumed that the movement would only ever be directed at the Soviet Union.
*First Blood* is undoubtedly a more nuanced look at the after-effects of war and what it does to people psychologically, but I wouldn’t call it anti-war. It doesn't take much of a position on war at all beyond acknowledging that it comes with trauma. It definitely does argue for a greater sense of compassion for those returning from war though.
Lone Survivor, Murph, American Sniper, Battleship, Transformers, Avengers. I think any movie that romanticizes an over inflated, hyper funded, hyper advanced US military is pro war. The people here saying there’s a difference between pro military and pro war are crazy. To be pro-military is to be be pro-war
The Longest Day perhaps? It’s been a while since I saw it, but it’s about D-Day, and as far as I remember it didn’t depict much that was overtly horrific or brutal (e.g. no killing of surrendered soldiers like in Saving Private Ryan.)
Not true. *The Longest Day* did have the scene where the German tried to surrender with his hands held up as he pleaded, "Bitte! Bitte!" ("Please, please"). The American shot him anyway and made a sarcastic remark about the German supposedly showing his fresh washed hands and being ready for supper.
In a sense most modern war films tend to be pro-war.
Filmmakers tend to rely on the military to get footage of jets, tanks, etc. One of the caveats is the military will not provide access to that type of equipment if the film paints the United States military in a negative light. You can't show an American soldier committing war crimes, for example, if you want to get them to let you shoot footage of their equipment.
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
Not just a pro-war movie but a pro- total war movie. It makes the case that war can no longer be fought in a gentlemanly ‘clean’ fashion
Some enemies are so evil; their defeat so paramount. That any means no matter how unpleasant, underhanded, or morally repugnant should and must be used
Also interestingly a war movie where almost no fighting is show on screen
That's a weird take on the messaging of the movie, I always viewed it as more of an anti-war movie, but art is subjective I guess: [https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230615-the-life-and-death-of-colonel-blimp-the-war-film-that-churchill-tried-to-ban](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230615-the-life-and-death-of-colonel-blimp-the-war-film-that-churchill-tried-to-ban)
A better example, from around the same time, would be Casablanca: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/casablanca-at-75-still-a-classic-of-wwii-propaganda-humphrey-bogart-ingrid-bergman-morocco-a8076041.html
Churchill opposition seems to me not be complaining that the film is anti-war but that it shouldn’t be criticising military brass’ methods and humanising Germans. Also I have got to believe he was perturbed by how much of the titular characters life mirrors his own.
“"The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" is a film of balance and insight--a civilized film, which even in a time of war celebrates civilized values. What it regrets is the loss, in two World Wars, of a sense of decency and fair play that had governed the European military classes. Near the film's end, the German refugee corrects the sentimentalism of the old general, telling him from first-hand experience that Nazism is the greatest evil the world has ever known, and saying there is no point in playing fair when the enemy plays foul, if that means you lose, and evil wins. “ - Ebert
The earlier wars in the film are depicted as a civilised duels between nation (pro-war imo) then WWii as a manichean struggle in which no quarter will or should be given (pro-war even to the point of staining one’s own national soul)
Theo warns Candy, "This is not a gentleman's war. This time you're fighting for your very existence against the most devilish idea ever created by a human brain – Nazism. And if you lose, there won't be a return match next year..."
Street Fighter The Movie.
Hear me out. There's a scene where Guile (played by JCVD) and his UN troops are preparing to launch an invasion again M. Bison. The UN security councilcomes in, says they're negotiating peace, and calls off the attack.
Guile tells the UN liason that he lost his balls.
Guile gives a speech to his troops to let them know "the war is cancelled." When he says they can go home, there's sad music lol. Guile then rallies them to "keep fighting", as he tells them he's launching a one man invasion and that anyone interested can join him. His troops cheer and they attack Bison to victorious music lol
Green Berets 1968
John Wayne's pro-Vietnam war film imspired by the Finnish Larry Thorne. Was immediately panned for it's soecific stance.
I hope that this meets the length standards this sub seems to think is always relevant to the discussions.
A bit of a deviation from your original question, but Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. It takes glee in its violence and makes no qualms or introspection about the methods of violence used. It isn’t a ‘pro’ war film but it never condemns it either.
I think Inglorious Basterds is very self-awarw about its use of violence. Throughout the whole movie we see Basterds killing nazis in very gruesome ways and it's shown that they have fun doing it. And I was having a fun to when I was watching it, especially during the scene in cinema.
But I think what is important is what movie nazis are watching in cinema - it's a propaganda movie about sniper that glorifies violence. And this movie is, in a way, very similar to the Inglorious Basterds. Nazis in this cinema are basically us having fun while watching a violent movie.
Tarantino films are always super meta. It's absolutely about propaganda films more than the actual war, and the coolest character by a mile is Christoph Waltz nazi. Everyone is pretty good in it, but the Nazi is the best character by a mile
The violence in inglorious Basterds did not hit me the same way. It bothered me, especially the palpable joy the killing. I don’t think quintin is so much anti nazi as he is pro violence. He doesn’t have anything to say that isn’t cruel and shallow
I don't really agree. Inglourious Basterds has a ton of introspection on methods of violence and on war films in general. Even if it is definitely gleeful. I think it is especially about drawing some parallels between Nazi and American propaganda/culture. The idea that an audience can be made to accept or cheer for anything, given the right circumstances or presentation.
The whole conversation at the start about the way people perceive a rat vs. a squirrel despite them being basically the same thing is very important to the film imo.
The methods the Basterds use which are the methods used by America's historical "enemies" like Indian scalpings, terrorism, suicide bombings. Then obviously the entire sequence in the cinema where we see a Nazi audience enjoying a big massacre on screen, mirroring us as the audience enjoying seeing them get massacred.
The most "honourable" person in the whole film is the Nazi who refuses to point out position on a map and gets his brains smashed in. And it's all very enjoyable.
I don't think QT is saying Nazis should have more sympathy. Far, far from it. But that audiences in America often don't think of what they watch as propaganda or manipulation, that they are just as susceptible to it as the Germans were, and he tries to kind of "show you the strings" that he's pulling. The fact the film feels gleeful or pro-violence is part of that. Like he is saying this is all great fun but if we were all living in in 1930s Germany I could use exactly the same techniques to make you cheer the Nazis and you'd enjoy it too.
Final shot is the audience having the POV from Landa after being branded with a Swastika. I don't think QT was trying to be subtle.
I think it's interesting, because to me it always showed how war, or at least those in the war, are essentially office politics for those in charge.
Hans Landa is always looking for the deal best for him, even if it involves betraying his Commanders and country.
The Little Man is essentially Aldo's secretary and gets treated like a lackey despite being seemingly 2nd in charge.
Also kills a man and thinks it's fine because he'll get chewed out by his boss but not punished. The amount of times I've thought about that line at work is funny lol
It definitely takes glee in its violence but I think it's pretty negative of war.
I think it'a s pro "pro war" film. In the sense that it justifies and celebrates violence in movies rather than violence is real life (as a pro-war film would do).
The 2023 film Свидетель (The Witness) is quite literally the closest thing you can get to a pro-war film. It's filled with propaganda and meant to make the war in Ukraine seem justified. I haven't seen it for obvious reasons, but if you want pro-war propaganda just take a look at the Kremlin's filmography.
Probably gods and generals. Not only is it basically me looking very propaganda but the way they use battle seems as always and epic. Like this one scene where the union army are retreating from the field and as we are just being massacred shot at point blank bayonetted running and screaming from the field The music isn't sorrowful it's uplifting and epic like slaughtering people is supposed to be this great thing or something.
I know that movie has been trashed ad nauseam over and over again across the internet but sincerely fuck that movie.
You’ll be hard pressed to find ANY hollywood blockbuster that isn’t heavily tied to the military industrial complex through consultants, equipment and prop acquisition/product placement, let alone blatant war films that feature the military that aren’t unabashedly pro-war and pro-military.
My vote is for Inglorious Bastards. Who doesn't love celebrating the destruction of filthy Nazi scum. Quentin Tarantinos' writing and execution and knack for stylized violence makes war look like a blast and certainly a worthy cause.
Honestly superhero movies, most action movies, many epic blockbusters, generally films with an over abundance of routine violence, could be said to be pro-war in sentiment. Most movies explicitly about war illustrate its negatives.
Pro-war films, imho, are simply war films in which the viewer sees the protagonist in a positive way and the protagonist is not a victim of his circumstances. I would also classify films like Top Gun as pro-war because you don't come away lamenting the dead. When the final credits roll you're meant to celebratet the bad guys dying in spectacular fashion and the protagonists supreme skill.
I would consider Hacksaw Ridge, for example, to be pro-war. Even though the horrors of war are on full display (and the protagonists endures a lot of them), at the end you're cheering for him because of his bravery and for overcoming great odds to survive and benefit his fellows. The war itself becomes incidental to the protagonists great deeds. The end of the film celebrates the protagonist, who has the very admirable quality of being incredibly humble about his experiences. You're meant to love the guy.
On the other hand, Saving Private Ryan shows the horrors of war with equal intensity, but the story focuses on the horrors of war in a wholly different way. Rather than ending on a positive note the protagonist relives the horrible experience while standing over the graves of those died to save him. You're supposed to mourn the dead and feel sympathy for the protagonist as he reflects on their sacrifice. That seems decidedly anti-war to me.
American submarine movies are almost always pro-war. They're designed to instill a sense of national pride. It's always about the mission or the heroism of the crew. Off the top of my head I can only think of two American submarine films that end in tragedy for the crew. I wish I could remember the names, lol.
Foreign submarine films go either way.
Propoganda films sponsored by the military in times of war are obviously pro-war. Virtually every WWII film made with the assistance of the Army or Navy is pro-war.
I'm just rambling now....
\[edited for content and clarity\]
Battle: Los Angeles was pro war and an overt recruiting tool for the army. Premise: how would the us military respond to an alien invasion? Enemy is scary and enigmatic, can’t be bargained with. The squad of soldiers get their asses handed to them until the Inspirational Speech halfway through the film. Suddenly their M-16s can’t miss and are 100% effective against alien armor. From that point on there is no doubt that through discipline and teamwork, the army can’t lose. And look! It all turns out that the aliens are drones so if you kill the boss monster, they all fall down dead. Just like in real life.
I mean it wasn’t a terrible movie, for what it was. But they weren’t subtle about it.
The difficulty is that most films, even Full Metal Jacket and Platoon, have to be interesting to be successful. Therefore, no matter the intent, the film will make its subject and setting interesting. When I joined the military as a teenager, films like Platoon were just as influential as a movie like Rambo or Commando. Or even moreso as it depicted a "coming of age" story. War was a way boys became men.
So nearly every successful film will inadvertently end up glamourizing war irrespective of the authorial intent.
To take another obvious "pro-war" movie for example, 300. Many have seen it as a very jingoistic portrayal of the Spartans representing America and the Persians representing a foreign horde.
At the same time though, could the Spartans be seen as a disciplined society of indigenous people like the Taliban fighting a cosmopolitan, decadent and far more powerful invader like the United States?
Are the Spartans like the Ukrainians fighting against the odds against the invading Russians or are the Spartans the Russians sending a last stand attack against the corrupt Western powers?
Whatever the interpretation, it depends on what the audience members expect and want to believe.
Starship Troopers
I think the point is to satire fascism but it is too subtle. I definitely didn't see the layers my first time watching. At face value, it looks like a lot of 80's meathead action movies. I think your average person won't ever look too deep and never see it as anything but pro war.
I think most movies depict war at least in an exciting way. Like 1917 made a whole videogamey spectacle out of it even when it tried to show the horror. Most war movies id say are pro-war. American Sniper, Top Gun etc
I can’t remember seeing any “pro war” movies, outside of some during/about WWII and II. Many glamorize the military, but that’s not the same as saying, “War is great! Let’s go pound our enemies into dust!” For a lot that people think may be pro war, they’re just set during a war and so might seem to be glorifying the war itself when it’s just a standard “these are our heroes and aren’t they badasses” kind of movie.
Surely Top Gun fits the bill of, if not being pro-war, then at the very least being pro-military. The whole film is basically a 2 hour long advertisement for the US Navy - even if some of the stats around the increase in recruitment numbers are somewhat embellished.
Pro-war is debatable, pro-military is undeniable. And the proof is in the pudding, recruitment did increase materially after the film.
What’s the military do though? I get there’s a distinction, but with Top Gun, I don’t think there is
It's why in both movies they never say which wars they were in. They are just fighting against a faceless, nameless "enemy," making it easy for the audience to adopt the pro-war stance of rooting for the US military characters to win.
And pro-war, beyond pro-military can also take the position of "just war theory" stating the *necessity* of war, as though it has always been a necessity rather than to profess other options may have been available. So a film can look anti-war, as in war is hell, too bad about the deaths, while still advocating for the use of war.
Sure Saving Private Ryan is very pro war even if it also has a "war is hell" message.
They openly fought the Soviet Union MIG fighters in the first, and the countries just denied it
If you buy into the notion that the military exists strictly for defensive measures rather than aggression (I don't), then I could see the through-line to making that distinction in Top Gun's case. I agree though, that it would require looking at its depiction of the military with some heavy blinders on.
how can something be pro-military but anti-war though? It seems conflicted messaging to me. The US military existence is impossible to divorce from the US aggressive foreign policy, considering *both* top guns were directly financed by it.
Because a pro-military stance can also be pro-war, but it isn't inherently pro-war. That's why I said debatable.
It’s VERY pro-fighter jet, certainly…
Top Gun is made in close conjunction with the US Dept of Defense. Filmmakers don't get access to multimillion dollar equipment just to make the military look bad to unattractive.
DoD provides advisors, equipment, etc to lots and lots of movies that show the military in a good light
They also review the script in advance.
Oh yeah, good call. Makes me think there should be a subcategory that's not necessarily pro-war, but pro-american military complex. Movies that seem like the US military both spent a ton of money to show off a bunch of gear on screen, and for that reason also seem to be involved in every aspect of the movie decision-making making process. First one that comes to mind is Transformers. All the high tech gear. All the military people are so squared away, handsome, never panic, and work terrifically as a team. They even gave Jon Voight the line; "they're marines. They don't know how to lose." I thunk that just perfect, considering that anybody can sign up to be a grunt marine right out of high-school. Not taking anything away from Marines, but it was clearly intentional on the writers part to specify them as marines, and not some other ultra selective special operations force with a 95 percent wash out rate. "So remember kids, if you want to be preceeded by your reputation for being unable to fail, head on in to your local recruiting office!"
I am on board with almost everything you're saying, but I would argue that being pro-American industrial complex is inherently being pro-war.
It is 100% pro war. The defense contractors are a big reason we are involved in so many wars as we are.
Yeah I agree. Just trying to highlight that its not a movie about an actual "war", but its a subtle difference.
Yep totally, and Transformers really is the perfect example there
> The whole film is basically a 2 hour long advertisement for the US Navy [Top Gun director Tony Scott (brother of Ridley) was known for his commercial work](https://www.wbur.org/news/2021/05/14/top-gun-35-years-tony-scott-tom-cruise)
That’s it - there are some filmmakers who create work that is shallow, superficially “cool” looking and glamourise war by accident, or because they themselves aren’t thinking that deeply about it and on some level think it’s “cool”. Then you have the Mel Gibson and latter-day Clint Eastwoods of this world, who seem to sincerely believe that while there is a human cost to war, the US military is a flight of Demi Gods sent to purify the earth. American Sniper is possibly the most offensively pro American military movie ever.
This was the first one to come to mind for me. It is very much thinly veiled military propaganda. Not to say the movie is bad, but its intensions is to highlight that lifestyle in a glamorized way that makes it sound appealing.
It was funded by the US navy as well as the navy providing ships and aircraft. It's pure propaganda
It's one of the propaganda films OP is talking about, funded by the military, a two-hour war ad.
Francis Ford Coppola gave an interview on Apocalypse Now and was quoted as saying: >."No one wants to make a pro-war film, everyone wants to make an anti-war film,” he says. “But an anti-war film, I always thought, should be like [Kon Ichikawa’s 1956 post-second world war drama] The Burmese Harp – something filled with love and peace and tranquillity and happiness. It shouldn’t have sequences of violence that inspire a lust for violence. Apocalypse Now has stirring scenes of helicopters attacking innocent people. That’s not anti-war.” He pitches his own alternative, by way of counter example: “I always thought the perfect anti-war film would be a story in Iraq about a family who were going to have their daughter be married, and different relatives were going to come to the wedding. The people manage to come, maybe there’d be some dangers, but no one would get blown up, nobody would get hurt. They would dance at the wedding. That would be an anti-war film. An anti-war film cannot glorify war, and Apocalypse Now arguably does. Certain sequences have been used to rev up people to be warlike.”.> So it's interesting that he made specific sequences knowing that would "rev up" audiences, but at the same time has the complexity of Kurtz ostensibly being the linchpin of the film's morality. He's the most fascinating character, but one that needs to be killed and thus continues the war even though Kurtz was creating a war hungry rationale with the Vietcong. So whilst I look at his statement regarding the military attacking innocents not being anti-war as puzzling, he believed that the Ride of the Valkyries scene showing war actually encouraged war, and that to be anti-war, you cannot show war even when it's happening. It's his reading/intention, so I can't begrudge him, and I adore the film.
It’s refreshing to see a filmmaker have an honest and self-aware take like this. I think in a very similar vein, there are a lot of movies that depict the rise and fall of bad people, yet the interest and focus is clearly on the rise, and that is what resonates with people. Film has been around long enough, and we have seen audience reactions for long enough, that we cannot really play dumb and act surprised when people “misinterpret” these movies. Scarface, for example, is a movie that I would say glorifies crime. You can talk all you want about how “it’s the entire point that it doesn’t, tony pays for what he does!” but of course people are gonna latch on to him as a badass criminal mastermind because that’s the focus. Wolf of Wall Street I would say glorifies corporate greed/Wall Street sociopathy in the same way. The rise of the Valkyrie scene in apocalypse now is probably the most famous and memorable scene, and it’s not surprising that people in the military have actually played that going into battle, just like they’ve written “born to kill” on their helmets. David Simon does a great commentary on “paths of glory” where he talks (about 6 minutes in) how he thinks it’s almost impossible to do an anti war film without it becoming pro war in some way. Soldiers he worked with on generation kill would love to quote lines from full metal jacket. He says that at some point the heroism and camaraderie of the soldiers just undercuts the anti war message. Great interview https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FR9Kc7U4mzE
One movie I think does very well at not glorifying it's villain protagonist is Killers of the Flower Moon. I haven't seen the Irishman, but Goodfellas, Casino, and Wolf of Wall Street all show the cool highlights of the life. KotFM just made me hate Hale and Ernest. They were genuinely the most despicable and pathetic humans I have ever seen on the silver screen. The whole movie I wanted them to die as soon as possible.
> He pitches his own alternative, by way of counter example: “I always thought the perfect anti-war film would be a story in Iraq about a family who were going to have their daughter be married, and different relatives were going to come to the wedding. The people manage to come, maybe there’d be some dangers, but no one would get blown up, nobody would get hurt. They would dance at the wedding. That would be an anti-war film. An anti-war film cannot glorify war, and Apocalypse Now arguably does. Certain sequences have been used to rev up people to be warlike.”.> wow, I love this.
Sorta reminds me of anti-war ads
I agree with him that *Apocalypse Now* is not an anti-war film, but not because any specific scene is potentially rousing. It's a movie that laments its violence, but creates a central conflict with no apparent solution other than violence. Kurtz' brand of war-worship must be stopped, but the only solution is Kurtz' death. It is arguably positioned against the conflict in Vietnam specifically, and it finds humanity's warlike nature tragic and maddening, but it doesn't take up the position of the alternative.
Idk the context of his comments, but to me they sound like he's maybe looking back on the film and seeing how some people respond to it and realizing it didn't work the way he expected - leading him to conclude you just can't show combat at all.
That's the way I interpret it. His way to show the depravity, the terrible tragedy, has instead become, unfortunately, certain peoples weak minded glorification. I never saw that film and thought: "You know how cool it would be drop napalm in the jungles of some country?" It was terrifying, because it absolutely, was awful. Only a sickly mind would find that something to make war glorious. Nothing good came of it. Its message wasn't of success after killing Kurtz, it was of nothing, "Darkness." The 'victory' was hollow. The tragedy real, and the terror would be in the destruction inevitably left behind, or worse, brought home. Edit: fixed errors, added commas, and last qualifying word since I remembered how it was said from the director himself. Further addition: [Lite reading material about the films Col. Kurtz being based on a real person, who did the stuff shown in the film. I remember talking to a crazy guy who came back from 'Nam whom had served on some 'missions'. When I inquired about it (being there, what it was like for him, etc...) His response was: "you've seen Apocalypse Now? That was what I was involved in. Scary stuff." Even crazier to me, he said that he got put in prison, later during a closed trial, the judge gave him the option to "serve the country's need again, or spend 25 in prison." Given the fact he'd been there already. He said he of course took the deal, which required him to spend a "quiet" year inside, then be shipped out. He said that the second year, they(military) shipped him back off, but not to Vietnam, 'other places nearby'. That's when he said things got really crazy and he couldn't ever 'get those things out of his head'. When he yet again came back to the states, he managed to get into trouble again. The third trial he said was strange because the judge one day said that his military records being sealed gave him cause for concern, concern enough, that he felt it was better to allow him to be remanded to military tribunal (some of the words escape me now). Which he then was turned over to a pair of waiting MP's (he said that pretty much everyone hates MP's), they drove him back to the nearest airbase. Whilst in the hold without being told anything, he assumed he was about to be airdropped over some jungle after a reup instead, when he heard the news about the withdraw orders being given. The same MP's came back a little bit later, drove him to a street in San Francisco, pulled him out of the car, put $10 in his pocket, told him to "get lost". To make this story a little stranger, he reiterated that he was always told that he needed to keep his mouth shut. Later I found out he disappeared (years after I had spoken with him) and it was under 'suspicious circumstances' eventually being declared dead. I don't know how much I believe him, but it wasn't until he'd had a few drinks that he told me all this. (I also am pretty sure they did find him even later, dead of a drug induced heartattack, heroin.) ](https://taskandpurpose.com/culture/10-things-you-probably-never-knew-about-apocalypse-now/#:~:text=Marlon%20Brando's%20Colonel%20Kurtz%20is,a%20form%20of%20psychological%20operations.)
I honestly take people at their word, no matter how counterintuitive it might be unless they actually say something to directly contradict it. One of my favorite films is Grave of the Fireflies. To me, it’s a beautifully tragic movie about how war destroyed a country and forced its resources to be spread so thin that countless people had to die of starvation. It’s about how so many people went through similarly tragic circumstances and we just happen to zoom in on two of them. But to the director? He says the movie is about how you should listen to your elders. Like ok, I guess. Thank goodness I’m allowed to have a different interpretation of art than the artist had in mind.
I agree with this take. Most anti-war movies, like the 2022 All Quiet on the Western Front, still have [exhilarating action sequences](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkI1Fxne8AY) where the main character kills enemy soldiers in a way that's blood pumping and entertaining for the audience. Not that the filmmakers intend for the audience to cheer while people get mowed down, but these moments of violence nonetheless tickle a part of your brain that gets you riled up, morbidly curious, and kinda excited. This might be a pessimistic take on the human condition, but I think there's an innate pleasure to exerting violent power over others (at least for men). Because of this, we derive pleasure from watching a protagonist, or someone whose perspective we're viewing the movie through, killing or hurting other people. I think that's what Coppola means when he says "a sequence of violence that inspires a lust for violence". That's why I always go back to the movie Come and See being a true anti-war movie. The main character *never* kills a Nazi in the movie, despite wanting to. We barely even see any on-screen violence until the climax. Instead, we just see the devastation and suffering that the violence leaves in its wake.
The only time he fires is gun is at the framed picture of Hitler. Which I find so poignant.
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*Eye in the Sky* did a great job of showing (drone) warfare and glorifying absolutely none of it
I think it's at least sometimes possible to strike a balance. The last act of Bernhard Wicki's *The Bridge* is full of well-crafted, exciting action and everything that happens in it *sucks*.
To innocent people, war is unimaginable. Film brings imagination to life. By that logic, depicting war as anything but a destructive hurricane gives the concept glory where there was previously none.
Almost always true, but one counter example that comes to mind is the movie and book, Catch-22. Even though it was set during what was arguably America’s most moral war, WW2, the book is full of venal, cynical, and selfish officers and men, and the book’s protagonist is an open coward for all the right reasons. There is no glamorizing war in any shape, form, or fashion. It’s just treated as the idiotic, value destroying enterprise that it is.
Keep in mind Apocalypse Now was also written by hardcore right winger John Milius, who’s on record saying he considers it to not be anti-war
There is an insane courtroom drama that came out in 2000 called Rules of Engagement where a group of American soldiers, including Samuel L Jackson, are put on trial for gunning down an unarmed peaceful protest of men women and children outside an embassy in Yemen. But the movie later reveals that killing all of those civilians was justified because every single person on the street was armed, including a little one-legged ten year old girl with a 44 magnum revolver. But the soldiers still go to jail because the American government wants peace in the region and doesn't want the public to know the truth.
Christ, that's an incredible example of sincerely jingoistic pro-war garbage. The idea that the government would cover up "the truth" that everyone was a terrorist and so was a justified murder, has proven time and again to be utterly false.
You should see the comments under the movie on YouTube which is apparently free to watch this month. 1:36:55 for kids with guns. Also I just realized Friedkin directed this...
Mr Friedkin what're you doing!
Everyone! Go and watch William Friedkin’s “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial”. Right now!
First movie I thought of when I saw the thread's title. They build up the case that the people were unarmed and then at the end it's like nope, everyone had guns. Kids got guns. Grandmas got guns. What was the rest of the movie for? I think they wanted you to think the soldiers were bad and then it's "SHAME ON YOU!"
I'm pretty sure something like Zero Dark Thirty is broadly seen as pro-war. But, then something like the Iron Man or Avengers movies are pretty pro-USA military that can be interpreted as pro-War. And even if you don't think that's the threshold, couldn't something like American Sniper, or most James Bond films fall into the pro-war camp?
I like learning new things.
Any film using US military assets are required to give the pentagon script supervision as far as I know.
I like to travel.
You gotta hand it to them. they really go out of their way to make the U.S. military and their toys look cool as f\*ck. Wouldn't be surprised if there was a "Top Gun effect" of seeing a rise in enlistment numbers after those movies came out.
“I make movies for thirteen-year-old boys.” Michael Bay’s self-defense, in proper context
Yep, film makers that want to make a movie that's more critical of the U.S. military need to look elsewhere for assets. For example, Apocalypse Now, which, granted, could only be shot in a tropical location anyway, was shot in the Philippines with the use of Philippine army helicopters.
The Transformers and Avengers are both more fascistic then pro-war To maximize global appeal there is no articulated position, only threats and responses to the threat.
Iron Man, to me, is incredibly pro war. A billionaire arms dealer has a change of heart & decides to improve the world by (checks notes) building a superweapon & using it to kill foreign bad guys. It's basically an extension of the neocon "foreign policy through bombing" concept. Have you noticed that any time something bad happens overseas the media starts openly speculating about who we could bomb to make the bad thing go away? The guy could build schools & hospitals. He could open factories in impoverished areas & pay fair wages. He could sponsor refugees to come to America. He could get homeless vets off the streets. But, no, he just builds a superweapon & goes to war.
Iron Man 2 has elements from Atlas Shrugged too.
“I have just privatized world security” should have been something a villain says.
Pretty neat insight, you just gave me a whole new perspective of the movie. I guess because it was more "popcorn" fare I didn't necessarily go into it with as critical an eye so this sorta analysis escaped me. Well done.
I enjoyed it as dumb fun in the theater (opening weekend). Years later, I started thinking deeply about how pop culture frames the debate: "Crime is something that Batman can beat into submission. Terrorism can be defeated militarily if we'd just spend more (& did ya see how cool that flying carrier looked?). Sometimes torture is ok if the stakes are high enough." Never even explores the possibility that the solution isn't violence.
Isn't this the whole premise of a lot of Alan Moore's work like the Watchman? The concept of superheroes and their stories having inherent fascist elements behind them?
His change of heart also isn’t motivated by the deaths of civilians (of which he’s killed many,) but by injury to himself and the soldiers he was directly friendly with. And Yinsen. I guess. Who still falls under ‘a person he has a personal investment in.’ Tony being an elitist egomaniac with a propensity to just…disregard how ‘the little people’ actually feel about his ‘help’ is from his comic characterisation. But it’s weird the movies never really address it. ‘Age of Ultron’ style fuckups in the comics usually resulted in at least some sort of consequence or redemption, not just…bickering with Steve for a minute before doing the same thing again? But it’s okay, because it luckily turned out fine the second time. All’s good. I swear to god, Marvel movies are like Golden Age comics with characterisation sometimes. When they were aimed at small children, and had stuff like Superman ‘Oh no!’ accidentally killing his parents for like…a page before leaping into the next adventure with nary a mention again.
In Iron Man, doesn’t Tony Stark have a revelation about how his weaponry has harmed countless innocent people while making him wealthy? And then becomes Iron Man in an effort to help right those wrongs and protect the innocent?
Comic books and superheroes in general pander to the fantasy of a world simple enough for the problems to be punched or blown up. Some have argued that this is inherently a fascistic worldview. Even if your particular superhero is the good guy in the story. You're not going to see Iron Man or Batman go after wage theft or institutionalized racism, because you can't punch those into submission. The real world is rarely amenable to such solutions, since not all problems are armed, have slogans and flags, etc.
>Batman go after wage theft Scenes of Batman choking out my boss for not giving me sick leave. The hero we deserve. 😂
So what he does is builds another weapon, maintains monopoly on it, and enforces peace through superior firepower.
The "innocent people" he realized he's harmed are occupying US soldiers.
It’s been a bit since I’ve seen it but I don’t know if I’d call Zero Dark Thirty “pro-war.” It doesn’t come down against the killing of Osama Bin Laden, but it also spends a considerable amount of time examining the human cost of the search for him.
The main criticism leveled at the movie had to do with the depiction of Bush-era torture being instrumental in discovering Bin Laden's location. Like, yeah, it shows torture as horrible and dehumanizing and fucks up the people involved, but in the movie they got the name of Bin Laden's courier out of the nephew they tortured, whereas in real life that guy gave up nothing and nobody they tortured produced any usable intelligence. The overall impression of the movie is "this is hell and we're now all damned, but in the end we got our guy and everyone can get some peace out of that," so if you consider the CIA's role to be one part of the larger War on Terror effort, then ZDT is not dissimilar from pro-war movies that conclude that war is hell, but good can come out of it.
I'm going to need to see "Zero Dark Thirty" again because I thought it was both a great procedural and an argument against the War on Terror. Maybe this is invoking the cliche that you get out of a movie what you put into it but what I got out of the last scene was just exhaustion: "Well we got Bin Laden but at the cost of our souls and it's not like he's going to be the last terrorist. What was the point?"
I think the issue is how many people took that scene (some of the writers as well) as: wow, fighting terrorism is hard. It's like for every Osama we kill there's ten others. We need to work harder and make sure our sad troops get the support they need. Obviously it didnt actually say this, but it's an inherently pro war piece of propaganda and there's without a doubt some involved with the film who wanted to push this point.
In what way is Marvel pro-military? In the Iron Man movies Tony fights tooth and nail for the military to not get a suit, and when they do a massacre breaks out. Cap has to go AWOL In order to actually make a difference in WW2. The military tries to nuke NYC in Avengers. The entire plot of Civil War is that the military and UN wants to get rid of the Avengers, a decision that heavily helps Thanos’ victory in Infinity War. In Black Widow, Incredible Hulk, and Ant-Man 2 the main characters are straight up running from the military. Explain to me how this is pro-military.
I would Zero Dark thirty is just pro killing Osama Bin Laden, as far as I remember the film portrays the military as not being a perfectly run organisation
*13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi* is a newer example. Not a great film but one that has been very widely viewed and is therefore potentially more influential than some more classic examples. The film is critical of the state department bureaucracy (naturally), shows for-profit military contractor *agencies* in a positive light, and presents the contractors themselves as heroes. I'm not going to disagree with that last characterization because I have no personal context for it. But I do believe the contractors are probably very skilled and brave. Chris Pine was in a movie last year called "The Contractor." This presents a much different view of military contractors and the companies that they work for. I wouldn't call it an anti-war movie I don't think, but it certainly is critical of the way that contractors are used.
Ah yes, the Michael Bay approach to filmmaking.
To me, the quintessential pro-war film is The Green Berets (1968), a film specifically produced to promote the idea of a full-scale invasion of Vietnam. You have several speeches from the good guys that lay out the case for American intervention. You have a reporter character who starts out anti-war and then changes his mind after seeing the situation on the ground. You have sympathetic portrayals of a few South Vietnamese characters to contrast against the evil actions of the characters from North Vietnam. You have a final line where John Wayne tells a little South Vietnamese orphan boy that he's what this whole war is about. At the same time, there are unavoidable signs that the film was made by idiots, a common trait of most pro-war films. None of the lead actors know how to hold their guns. They're constantly pointing M-15s at each other's heads and crotches. Most of them also appear to be drunk. They wear helmets in exactly one scene and then bury them. The above-mentioned little South Vietnamese orphan boy is named Ham Chunk. Other pro-war films include Red Dawn (1984), Rambo III (1988), Rambo IV (2008), We Were Soldiers (2002), and One Shot (2021).
> We Were Soldiers (2002) iirc there's a weird throwaway line at the end where gibson says "We'll never win the war, this is their home" or something iirc... And he's brushed off..
That was a deleted scene, though maybe there's an extended cut where it's included. We Were Soldiers was one of my favorite movies as kid. I watched it again recently and while it does still have some great moments, there are also many other moments where it feels like a straight up cliched propaganda movie. It just didn't land for me the way it used to, which I guess shows I've grown a bit since my teenage years.
We Were Soldiers at least pretends to offer the viewpoint of the other side. I certainly won’t argue that it does a good job, but an attempt is better than nothing
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Ham Chunk 🤌
I laughed too hard at that. That’s hilariously fucked up.
Anti war films are always full of stupid mistakes too. Generation kill is one of the few things I've watched that's close to being a realistic depection of the military.
You should give the 5 part mini series called the "unknown soldier" it's in finish but it's an incredible realistic selection of Finland and the continuation war
Wait, it's a mini series? I watched it as a 3 and a half hour movie.
The miniseries is like an extended director's cut I believe, like what they're doing with Ridley Scott's *Napoleon*
Rambo 2 is super pro war, even indulging in the myth of American troops being kept and tortured by the Vietnamese after the war to justify more conflict. Idk why you call Rambo 4 pro war though it's more a vigilantism flick
Rambo IV was a movie about the 2007 Burmese conflict where Rambo led a group of mercenaries and the Karen Liberation Army to fight against the Burmese Army. How is it not a war film?
In Rambo 2 and 3 he is working for the American government and the plot is promoting US imperial policies of the day. Rambo 4 is incredibly cynical and Rambo is just working as a mercenary against a country that the US was not attacking at the time
This is basically how I see these ones, too. Rambo 4 he is an unenthused mercenary, and basically complains the whole time about how the military made him a monster. Then we get cool cow guts exploding at the camera for 20 minutes. Which is half ridiculous and half "Are you not entertained!"
It's in competition with First Blood for my favourite Rambo film. I've no idea about that world but it does seem more realistic that he'd do that than 2 and 3 (which to be fair have a kind of camp value now) And yes, the fights are amazing haha
I picked out the Rambo movies that were specifically made to motivate American intervention overseas. As jingoistic as First Blood Part 2 is, the political position they're pushing for is just to pressure Vietnam harder on locating American POWs. Rambo IV was made to bring attention to the plight of the Karen rebels in Myanmar because of a weird misunderstanding where American right-wingers believed that the Karens were being oppressed for their Christianity. They wanted to bring the issue to the public and force the government to take action. Then, later, they found out that most of the Karens are Muslim, and they lost interest.
I've tried to watch the Green Berets at least four times and it's just boring as hell
The trick is to get some friends over and make a drinking game out of it. Drink every time they casually point their guns at each other or themselves. Take a shot every time there's some kind of accidental gay innuendo. Take a sip every time somebody acts noticeably drunk in a scene. Finish your drink for every noble death.
>To me, the quintessential pro-war film is The Green Berets (1968), a film specifically produced to promote the idea of a full-scale invasion of Vietnam. It's commonly speculated, I believe fairly, that it was made not just because John Wayne is a full-on American imperialist looking to do his part but also out of guilt for having dodged any kind of service during WWII.
It’s always fun to compare John Wayne to Jimmy Stewart for folks who just know them by their movies. Jimmy Stewart was America’s nice guy, John Wayne was a rootin’ tootin’ cowboy, according to movies. And yet Jimmy Stewart volunteered for WWII and refused to be solely an entertainer, flying bomber missions for the Army Air Corps (later the US Air Force), retiring as a Brigadier General after years of reserve service after the war. John Wayne, unlike a huge percentage of his contemporaries, avoided military service. I’m not a huge fan of US militarism, but WWII was such a huge communal effort that it’s remarkable that John Wayne didn’t serve, even in the USO. 11% of the US population served in the war, which is pretty incomprehensible for those of us who weren’t born yet.
Ya John Wayne was a piece of shit. The fact that he was an idol for many gen x and boomer males says a lot about how vapid their heroes are.
We were soldiers made it look like utter hell idk what you’re talking about
I'm not so sure about Red Dawn. Its characters are defending themselves from Russians and Cubans who, several times, talk about what a waste it all is.
Red Dawn is a camping movie with some explosions.
I don't see how We Were Soldiers was pro war in any sense. We see horrific suffering of soldiers. We see main characters die. We see the suffering of their wives (which is rarely, if ever, shown in war movies). We see an enemy soldier actually have a wife that he loves. The enemy general is never really portrayed as evil - he doesn't say anything that makes you think he's this terrible villain, he's simply the opposing general. We see what war would do to a civilian who sees it with the reporter. And we see the main character (and opposing general) both agree that it's basically pointless; all the death won't matter in the end.
*Battle Los Angeles.* It's about a group of marines and, I think, one member of the Air Force fighting against aliens in LA and then figuring out the weakness needed to defeat the entire invading force. In other words, the US military saves the world. I kinda sorta thought about visiting a Marine recruiter after watching that movie. It's super pro-military.
Reading so many of the comments here (and really, whenever this subject comes up), it's interesting to me how often people consider movies anti-war simply for lamenting the violence of war and its effects. The reasoning seems to go that it depicts a situation you'd never want to be in, therefore it is ideologically positioned against this thing, which just does not track. Many World War 2 movies depict the horrors of battle in ways that might work as an anti-recruitment tool, but I can think of very few that are positioned against that war effort. Very often (not always), the horrors of war in film carry the implication is that that effort was paid for in trauma which must be recognized, not that the trauma necessarily negates or invalidates the value of that war-effort; or that the methods used were not always justified, even if the cause was a just one. Movies about war are very often positioned against its war's aggressors, or against some facet of that war, but it's rare, and I think difficult (though certainly not impossible), for a movie about war to take a generalized anti-war stance. We very often use fiction to recognize the hard aspects of things we don't (and don't want to) experience ourselves, without actually taking a position against those things. We can go all the way back to fiction from almost three thousand years ago to see this. The Iliad is absolutely not--not in any conceivable way--an anti-war story, and yet it is absolutely a lament of lives cut short, of people forced into no-win situations, of the kinds of dehumanizing cruelty that it inspires, and of sons who will not come home to their fathers.
Black hawk down It doesn't even attempt to address the realities and nuances of the Somali civil war, instead the Americans are unquestionably honourable heroes who are simply trying to survive amidst the onslaught of Somali savages. It is a very well made film, but it's pure propaganda. How many other countries charge their citizens to watch propaganda? Old joke: > A Russian is on an airliner flying to the US. An American next to him asks “What brings you to the US?” The Russian replies “I’m studying the American approach to propaganda.” The American asks “What propaganda?” The Russian says, “That’s what I mean.”
> Black hawk down > > It doesn't even attempt to address the realities and nuances of the Somali civil war, instead the Americans are unquestionably honourable heroes who are simply trying to survive amidst the onslaught of Somali savages. this is the first movie that came to mind as well. the dehumanization of the Somalis is particularly shocking. they're depicted like enemies in a video game, just wave after wave of nameless creatures running, shouting, shooting and being gunned down.
The book, which was painstakingly researched interviewed and cross checked by author Mark Bowden shows that the Somalis pretty much acted like this. If anything, they toned it down for the movie.
I really loved that film but it's insane when you think about it. I remember even at the time being a bit shocked, like I was invested in it and was cheering the Americans on, but they are just blowing away civilians left right and centre and you are meant to be upset by 2 of them dying
Yeh, I always found the paragraph of text that comes up at the end really jarring. It says something like "13 American serviceman were killed" and it gives their names and ranks. Then it just says however many thousand Somalians were killed and it's just such an absurd contrast in the numbers. The filmmakers really dehumanised the Somalians in that film.
Nearly 300,000 innocent people starved to death because of internal politics. Starvation was a weapon used by Somalis against each other.
>they are just blowing away civilians left right and centre You means the civilians with guns?
Americans own guns too. What do you think would happen if USA got an invasion?
Anyone with a gun is a combatant.
In the book, there's accounts of when the armed "civilians" take advantage of the rules of engagement the US was forced to abide by, by having women and children crowd around or even lay on top of armed men actively firing at American soldiers. This was of course to take advantage of how you weren't allowed to fire at unarmed women and children. I really don't have any commentary on why we were there, although it's well established that Somali warlords were not good people, but let's not pretend these were just guerrilla forces resisting.
I don’t think that changes the moral core of the issue. If someone was invading my country, and then a group of armed invaders crashed a helicopter in my neighborhood I would shoot them
The UN was in Somalia to deliver humanitarian aid. Warlords on both sides of the civil war were stealing the humanitarian aid. Using military force to shut down the people who are stealing the food that's being donated to keep you from starving isn't exactly an invasion. Inserting ourselves in the middle of a civil war was a bad idea. Continuing to send food that was going straight to the people fighting that civil war would have been a bad idea. Just saying fuck it, discontinuing the aid so it wouldn't go to the warlords, and letting Somalis starve would have been a bad idea. There was no good answer, but the older I get, the more I find myself leaning towards fuck it let them starve if it means not putting US lives in danger.
Ah but you see, they're of a darker skin tone and not American therefore they exist only to get blown up by cool rockets and machine guns
It definitely valourizes the americans involved and doesn’t do much to nuance the Somalis (to whatever extent is reasonable) but you also don’t come away saying “war is fun and good and we should do more war in Somalia” it makes the effort seem pretty futile and not worth the human cost
Gotta push back on some of this... >It doesn't even attempt to address the realities and nuances of the Somali civil war Agreed but it never pretends otherwise - it's a boots-on-the-ground movie about a specific mission that is specifically not about the wider context. It's also, to me, pretty pointedly anti-interventionist, by not providing the wider context the viewer is left wondering what the hell we're doing there and how pointless the mission was. >How many other countries charge their citizens to watch propaganda? All of them? At least all of them with any semblance of a film industry. Propaganda exists everywhere but at least we have freedom of speech and free press.
I watched this in the theatre when it came out, and I was truly irritated by the nonsensical propaganda and the lack of nuance. After over 21 years, this is the first film that jumps to my mind when I hear 'pro war'.
The Somalians in that film are depicted the way some films depict zombies, just mindless hoards of people attacking the protagonists. Even though it's not exactly in favour of the conflict itself, it's so blatantly racist it almost doesn't matter.
I haven't seen it for a while but after my comment I realised that none of the Somalis had names. So I checked IMDb and it looks like two Somalis have names, but the rest are just billed as Somali kid/father/son/son with gun etc. But given how many Somalis died in the movie obviously most people playing Somalis didn't even get a credit. It's doubly dehumanising; their characters don't get a name, and the actors don't even get a credit.
The firsthand accounts from the people on the ground all confirm that the Somalis acted pretty much like a horde of zombies.
>It is a very well made film, but it's pure propaganda. How many other countries charge their citizens to watch propaganda? All. Particularly, It is not like cinema in communist countries were for free. You had to pay as well. The only difference is that government funded propaganda film 100% so naturally in most cases they were much less entertainment as less matter how many people actually were going to watch. Another thing that because there were censorship and foreign films were rarely screened so choice was limited and you had to watch what they gave.
I think Braveheart might be a solid example: all of the main character’s actions are justified in the name of Scottish nationalism (he repeatedly refuses to negotiate for peace and is affirmed by the narrative for doing so; he effectively becomes a serial killer by the end and this is never framed as a descent) and the opposing side is either cartoonishly evil or nameless cannon fodder save for the princess he has a sexual relationship with. On a metatextual level, the alterations the film makes to actual history serve to make the story more jingoistic, basically grafting modern ideals of independence onto a feudal conflict and giving Wallace a fabricated tragic backstory, as well as inventing atrocities on the British side (Scotland had not been subjugated for decades at that time, prima noctis was never implemented, bagpipes were not banned, etc.)
You could add Mel Gibson's The Patriot to this, which is very similar, but swapping Scots for Amercian Revolutionaries.
Braveheart II: *Bravehearter*
Still ends up with a ton of dead Englishmen
My brother and I loved that movie as kids (I still watch it purely for childhood nostalgia sometimes), but as adults we have often laughed about how over-the-top cartoonishly villainous they made the British in it lol. Crazy to think how many people actually do think of the world and history in such a simplistic, black-and-white way.
Ironically, there are plenty of *other* instances where the British are indeed this ridiculous - say, India - but by exaggerating here it cheapens those examples.
There is a film called “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”, which shows a lot of atrocities from the British in Ireland, but is historically accurate. British critics hated it, and accused it of being all lies and similar to Nazi propaganda.
It got pretty good reviews in the UK. Some tabloids did their normal thing of shitting the bed whenever the empire is criticised, but the movie was generally well regarded. Even The Telegraph gave it a glowing response.
I mean if we were to really be able to go back with a time machine and see firsthand all of the events of history, there are horrendous acts and atrocities on pretty much all sides I feel, that's just humans in general. And you'll find there can be "good guys" on the "bad side" and "bad guys" on the "good side" and innumerable other gray areas and variations in between black-and-white poles. I'm certainly not engaging in apologetics for Britain, or for anyone else. I know they've done their share of dirty stuff as a massive colonial power. I'm just making a larger point about the way people tend to get stuck in really simplistic ideals when thinking about history, when the reality is infinitely more complex and messy.
I haven't watched it since i saw it in my middle school social studies class (not dure why they were showing it in a Canadian school (or at all)). But i distinctly remember the movie having to twist itself into knots to try and make the british look villainous for offering freedom to enslaved people who joined their cause while making the main character a southern planter who only employed free black labour, which as far as i'm aware has zero historical precedent.
haha yeah that's right, of course they have the main guy as a benevolent progressive abolitionist in the 18th-century Deep South. They make sure to include a scene where one of the black field hands explicitly clarifies that they are not slaves.
If you need a snarling, scowling, over the top British villain, Jason Issacs is your man. Makes that movie more entertaining than it has any right to be.
There was no "British side". Britain didn't become a thing until 300 years later. And Scotland was in it.
A looooooot of people don’t realize Britain is the united island, not just England, so you’ll see lots of people mistake the two. Then you get more confusion with the addition of Northern Ireland to make it the UK
To be fair, the English are still cartoonishly evil.
Does me think of 300 and the sequel. Spartans are heroes, Persians are evil and evil
The most pro-war movies usually are fantasy/science-fiction movies where war is more often than not depicted, not only as necessary, but as the only solution. Think about Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Avatar, Independence Day, etc... Historical movies usually adopt a more complex stance.
Lord of the Rings has always been interesting because Tolkein himself struggled with making the orcs and Uruks (hai) irredeemable. Obviously, when the films were released around the time of the War on Terror, it was prevalent that some bad faith criticisms were launched at the "propaganda" of the enemy soldiers being irredeemable. Obviously, Catholic morality doesn't believe anyone is inherently irredeemable. In truth, there isn't much round the orc problem as Tolkein's emphasis was more on Sauron taking away any free will of people, which, by proxy, made the orcs unsaveable. In the books, Aragorn forgives the orcs, and in the films, some of them are hilarious, which gives them some semblance of humanity.
Star wars is definitely pro war But the interesting thing to me is in an analogy to modern day, the empire is the US/UK and the rebels could be any number of countries we've invaded, but we would certainly call them terrorists and not rebels.
Star Wars is explicitly a Vietnam War film, this is absolutely the intended interpretation of the text
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war!
Top Gun is the story of a dude who thinks he's cute and laughs too much, he falls in love with a bigger woman, his co-worker dies in an accident, he gets sad and decides to make catharsis by killing all the communist bastards. Love that film, it's something that could only work on Reagan America.
This may be controversial, but Saving Private Ryan. Yes, there is the one short scene depicting the Americans unjustfully killing the Czech prisoners, but other than that the movie is completely pro-american and pro-war. It really never gives any face or personality to the enemy soldier - in fact the only German character we ever meet turns out to be a liar and a coward who takes advantage of the American's mercy every chance he gets. The film never questions the purpose or justification for war, and depicts the main characters as honorable and brave heroes fighting a just cause.
Idk how popular or unpopular this opinion is but... loved it when I was 12, can't take it seriously nowadays. It isn't a deep film in any way, and goes nowhere near any kind of real insight into, well, anything. It's just very superficial and melodramatic to me, a mass-appeal, dumbed-down, emotionally manipulative, stupefying, jingoistic take on war and human nature. But boy are those battle scenes spectacular! Nearly 3 hours of all that is just a dreary bloated slog to me.
I think you’re being a little harsh here. The movie is certainly (IMO) pro-war, as are almost all American-made WW2 productions, but it is no more emotionally manipulative than any other movie in which characters die sad and/or preventable deaths. SPR is well acted and extremely well shot and at least doesn’t shy away from brutality of war despite unabashed pro-Americanism
Sure, it's competent on a technical level, and has a shitload of talented actors in it, but to me this movie is just dripping with the shallowest, most un-challenging Spielbergian sentimentalism. The story sounds like some human interest piece that would be cooked up in a PR think tank. Simple tearjerker with a backdrop of the good guys VS the bad guys. The emotions are cheap and unearned, and nothing truly significant or thought-provoking is broached about humanity or war or the connection between the two, which to me just makes its wallowing in massive brutal battle scenes all the more cynical and cheap because it's just an empty spectacle when all's said and done. You could get the same effect from watching someone play fuckin Call of Duty.
Thank you for pointing out the part about the German soldier! I think that part is always overlooked, especially when he's literally murdered at the final battle when he surrenders again. I can't recall the character's name that killed him, but I recall him being treated as a coward through the whole film up until that point. At least to me, it feels like the movie is glorifying both his act of "revenge" and his new found wiliness to fight/kill.
I won't argue over the intention because I haven't seen the movie in a while, but the first time I saw it, I remember thinking that him killing the POW seemed like an even more cowardly act than doing nothing all. Just him trying to make up for his inaction when it didn't matter anymore and there were no consequences.
Well it is very hard to make film about second war like All Quiet on the Western Front because: A. Holocaust B.Appeasement. Big indirect fault for Holocaust had understandable fear against next big war in western societies and politicians which let tolerated aggressive geopolitical politics of Hitler definitely too long which gave him time to build pretty powerful army. C. The biggest victims of second war on contrary to first were civilians. Not only Jewish. Germans brutality in eastern Europe was exceptional as well.
It has been argued that there are no anti-war films. Because even if you show the horror of war, it still looks a bit epic. [This article](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20140710-can-a-film-be-truly-anti-war) attributes the quote to Truffaut. Even Come and See, as horrifying as it is, is still beautiful in many ways. It doesn't make you yearn for war, but there's still a brutal romance to it.
Paths of Glory? Nearly all of it is depicted at a clusterF at one level or another?
I was about to post a similar comment until I scrolled down and saw your comment. I agree. A film may not glorify war but even "anti-war" films are about the "necessity" of getting your hands dirty and potentially making the ultimate sacrifice in defense of an ideal/way of life. A true "anti-war" film would need to send the message that war is never necessary and needs to be avoided at all costs. Idealistic, but an impossible message to convey in my opinion especially in the context of any movie depicting WW2 (Should you avoid war even if you got attacked, like what Japan did to us at Pearl Harbor? Good luck sending that message.)
There are tons of pro-war films out there which have "advisors" from the military working on the production, to ensure the story follows their agenda. Anything from Top Gun, Transformers, Battleship, Tomorrow War, to the latest Marvel schlock. This is actually so common that you have probably become desensitized to their influence and don't think twice about pro-war cliches... like for example an adventurous montage of soldiers shpping off to uplifting music, or privates hooking up with hot and exotic women while on leave, or Americans always dying a hero's death with a line about "Give this letter to my mother.." A lot of films are even partially financed by the military, on the condition that the movie shows off some new tactical vehicle or weapon. It's all done to keep the patriotism and morale high, while manifacturing support for the latest war effort and making sure a steady flow of new reqruits are signing up. This is also the reason to why violence doesn't seem to hurt in American war movies. There's a really great documentary on all this called "This film is not yet rated" which also shows how the military are behind the MPAA-rating system and thus make sure pro-war films don't get blocked from impressionable kids.
Hacksaw Ridge explicitly proclaims to be anti-violence but pro-war. It centers around the idea of the US being the rightfully morally correct side in the Pacific theater, but that the violence being committed to solidify that position is wrong. This is terribly misguided, jingoistic and arrogant. And even in its supposed message of being anti-violence, the film completely fails. Because it unironically basks in the dehumanization of the Japanese and their violent and visceral slaughtering. If you tend to disagree, watch the film again with this in the back of your head. It is edited, scored and filmed like a propaganda piece while the writing dares to suggest it isn't. Absolutely distasteful.
The main character's heroic deeds don't inspire pacifism, it's just used as a motivator for the Americans to attack the ridge again. There's a montage at the end showing the American soldiers wiping out the Japanese soldiers including a scene where an American blows up a tunnel and there's a shot of at least fifty Japanese soldiers being engulfed in flames over heroic music. There's also a scene where an American soldier picks up the torso of a dead America soldier and uses it as a shield. He then goes on to kill five soldiers while running and holding his 20 lb machine gun in one arm. It's a ridiculous movie.
yeah, they use doss' pacifism as a way to make you feel bad about the american soldiers lol. "it was a shit storm up there, we killed and they killed. but now that doss showed us the light.... nothing changes". you can now go up there and kill as many japanese soldiers as you want because you heard a sermon before you did it. meanwhile showing japan's religion as basically just... committing suicide lmao
Mel Gibson can’t make any point that isn’t drenched in blood, which is a pretty damning characteristic.
Still an incredible film regardless
Sorry, are you saying that the US was not the morally correct side in the Pacific theater? Do you actually know what the Japanese had been doing for the past decade?
Isn't the most obvious example the Top Gun movies? I didn't see them mentioned but maybe I missed it. The first one caused a massive spike in recruitment, I'm sure the second one did too. These guys look cool as hell, there's epic music playing and even the deaths are treated with such reverence that it really makes you feel like you, yes you, with your insignificant life will either be a rock star hero or die a heroes death and live on as an eternal legend.
Hurt Locker. American Sniper. Any MCU movie. In reality the differences are more nuanced, there aren't many "pro war" movies, but there are a fair few "war is bad because invading American troops got PTSD", with no regard for the people on the other side of that conflict who obviously, obviously had it worse. Jarhead and multiple Vietnam movies come to mind.
Most American war movies set in Vietnam to the present day more or less skips over the "why" when it comes to the war itself because asking that question opens up a whole can of worms that the DoD might not like. Instead, they tend to focus more on the bond between soldiers and as you mention, PTSD in an abstract sense and the "hard decisions" that the troops have to make. The real tragedy here is that having to drop bombs and shoot civilians is making our soldiers *sad.* It falls perfectly in line with most pro-war American sentiment in the years following the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan once a lot of the initial patriotic fervor wore off. *Don't question why the troops are there, but make sure that you support them because they're going through a lot.*
Good follow-up, nicely put.
American Sniper's basically a testament to USA's psychopathic obsession with guns & the military. In one of the early scenes during his training the main character actually complains that he can’t hit the targets because they're “not alive”. It's basically a story about a psychopath whose dreams come true; he joins the US military to get to kill men, women & children & get praised for it. The guy barely shows any emotion thoughout & all the killing is framed as justified protection of the American way of life or some shit. It's all so every day he's even given a satellite phone so he can call his wife back home whilst he's out killing. Then after the war he finally returns home & decides the best way to help mentally ill soldiers treat their ptsd is to take them out to shoot stuff, because in his mind shooting stuff (especially stuff that's alive) makes him feel better. Only he doesn’t see the inherant danger in the fact that US military are cool with giving men with a range of mental illnesses guns, training, then shipping them off kill. That is until one of them shoots him & his friend in the back at their makeshift shooting range. It would be preposterously hilarious if it weren't all a true story.
Rambo 1 id call anti war, it's a fun action film that also shows the dark side of PTSD and how people where treated. Rambo 2/3 etc where propaganda films for the American Army, I dont know if there pro war but they are pro USA/Army. The military has a long lasting link to Hollywood, be it direct funding or free use of hardware or just advice/script changes and lack of red tape. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93entertainment\_complex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93entertainment_complex) [https://www.spyculture.com/dod-hollywood-collaboration-database-excerpts/](https://www.spyculture.com/dod-hollywood-collaboration-database-excerpts/) I suspect every country has some kind of PR outreach program to media Film/TV/books etc edit the list of films with DoD co-scripted on wiki/spy Culture covers a lot you may not expect I Am Legend, Jurassic Park 3, The Karate Kid 2/3, Last Action Hero, Star Trek 4, Wonder Woman 1984. Funny thing the link to over 400 DoD funded films is broken, found a working copy archived [https://web.archive.org/web/20200323015526/https://www.mintpressnews.com/hollywood-propaganda/247154/](https://web.archive.org/web/20200323015526/https://www.mintpressnews.com/hollywood-propaganda/247154/)
I wish they would stuck with the book and killed Rambo at the end of First Blood. Good film and the first film of it's type i showed my daughter years ago. She was really surprised when he broke down and bawled, when it all caught up to him. After First Blood they just threw that character away.
The third movie's affinity for the mujaheed is definitely supportive of the CIA operation to supply them arms against the Soviets. It aged extremely poorly because they're all treated like freedom fighters, but really the CIA was supplying every Afghan group they could in the region including warlords which later formed Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Also, fun to know: The CIA put out a lot of jihadist propaganda in the region, but assumed that the movement would only ever be directed at the Soviet Union.
*First Blood* is undoubtedly a more nuanced look at the after-effects of war and what it does to people psychologically, but I wouldn’t call it anti-war. It doesn't take much of a position on war at all beyond acknowledging that it comes with trauma. It definitely does argue for a greater sense of compassion for those returning from war though.
Lone Survivor, Murph, American Sniper, Battleship, Transformers, Avengers. I think any movie that romanticizes an over inflated, hyper funded, hyper advanced US military is pro war. The people here saying there’s a difference between pro military and pro war are crazy. To be pro-military is to be be pro-war
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The Longest Day perhaps? It’s been a while since I saw it, but it’s about D-Day, and as far as I remember it didn’t depict much that was overtly horrific or brutal (e.g. no killing of surrendered soldiers like in Saving Private Ryan.)
Not true. *The Longest Day* did have the scene where the German tried to surrender with his hands held up as he pleaded, "Bitte! Bitte!" ("Please, please"). The American shot him anyway and made a sarcastic remark about the German supposedly showing his fresh washed hands and being ready for supper.
In a sense most modern war films tend to be pro-war. Filmmakers tend to rely on the military to get footage of jets, tanks, etc. One of the caveats is the military will not provide access to that type of equipment if the film paints the United States military in a negative light. You can't show an American soldier committing war crimes, for example, if you want to get them to let you shoot footage of their equipment.
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) Not just a pro-war movie but a pro- total war movie. It makes the case that war can no longer be fought in a gentlemanly ‘clean’ fashion Some enemies are so evil; their defeat so paramount. That any means no matter how unpleasant, underhanded, or morally repugnant should and must be used Also interestingly a war movie where almost no fighting is show on screen
That's a weird take on the messaging of the movie, I always viewed it as more of an anti-war movie, but art is subjective I guess: [https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230615-the-life-and-death-of-colonel-blimp-the-war-film-that-churchill-tried-to-ban](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230615-the-life-and-death-of-colonel-blimp-the-war-film-that-churchill-tried-to-ban) A better example, from around the same time, would be Casablanca: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/casablanca-at-75-still-a-classic-of-wwii-propaganda-humphrey-bogart-ingrid-bergman-morocco-a8076041.html
Churchill opposition seems to me not be complaining that the film is anti-war but that it shouldn’t be criticising military brass’ methods and humanising Germans. Also I have got to believe he was perturbed by how much of the titular characters life mirrors his own. “"The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" is a film of balance and insight--a civilized film, which even in a time of war celebrates civilized values. What it regrets is the loss, in two World Wars, of a sense of decency and fair play that had governed the European military classes. Near the film's end, the German refugee corrects the sentimentalism of the old general, telling him from first-hand experience that Nazism is the greatest evil the world has ever known, and saying there is no point in playing fair when the enemy plays foul, if that means you lose, and evil wins. “ - Ebert The earlier wars in the film are depicted as a civilised duels between nation (pro-war imo) then WWii as a manichean struggle in which no quarter will or should be given (pro-war even to the point of staining one’s own national soul) Theo warns Candy, "This is not a gentleman's war. This time you're fighting for your very existence against the most devilish idea ever created by a human brain – Nazism. And if you lose, there won't be a return match next year..."
Street Fighter The Movie. Hear me out. There's a scene where Guile (played by JCVD) and his UN troops are preparing to launch an invasion again M. Bison. The UN security councilcomes in, says they're negotiating peace, and calls off the attack. Guile tells the UN liason that he lost his balls. Guile gives a speech to his troops to let them know "the war is cancelled." When he says they can go home, there's sad music lol. Guile then rallies them to "keep fighting", as he tells them he's launching a one man invasion and that anyone interested can join him. His troops cheer and they attack Bison to victorious music lol
Green Berets 1968 John Wayne's pro-Vietnam war film imspired by the Finnish Larry Thorne. Was immediately panned for it's soecific stance. I hope that this meets the length standards this sub seems to think is always relevant to the discussions.
A bit of a deviation from your original question, but Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. It takes glee in its violence and makes no qualms or introspection about the methods of violence used. It isn’t a ‘pro’ war film but it never condemns it either.
I think Inglorious Basterds is very self-awarw about its use of violence. Throughout the whole movie we see Basterds killing nazis in very gruesome ways and it's shown that they have fun doing it. And I was having a fun to when I was watching it, especially during the scene in cinema. But I think what is important is what movie nazis are watching in cinema - it's a propaganda movie about sniper that glorifies violence. And this movie is, in a way, very similar to the Inglorious Basterds. Nazis in this cinema are basically us having fun while watching a violent movie.
Tarantino films are always super meta. It's absolutely about propaganda films more than the actual war, and the coolest character by a mile is Christoph Waltz nazi. Everyone is pretty good in it, but the Nazi is the best character by a mile
The violence in inglorious Basterds did not hit me the same way. It bothered me, especially the palpable joy the killing. I don’t think quintin is so much anti nazi as he is pro violence. He doesn’t have anything to say that isn’t cruel and shallow
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I don't really agree. Inglourious Basterds has a ton of introspection on methods of violence and on war films in general. Even if it is definitely gleeful. I think it is especially about drawing some parallels between Nazi and American propaganda/culture. The idea that an audience can be made to accept or cheer for anything, given the right circumstances or presentation. The whole conversation at the start about the way people perceive a rat vs. a squirrel despite them being basically the same thing is very important to the film imo. The methods the Basterds use which are the methods used by America's historical "enemies" like Indian scalpings, terrorism, suicide bombings. Then obviously the entire sequence in the cinema where we see a Nazi audience enjoying a big massacre on screen, mirroring us as the audience enjoying seeing them get massacred. The most "honourable" person in the whole film is the Nazi who refuses to point out position on a map and gets his brains smashed in. And it's all very enjoyable. I don't think QT is saying Nazis should have more sympathy. Far, far from it. But that audiences in America often don't think of what they watch as propaganda or manipulation, that they are just as susceptible to it as the Germans were, and he tries to kind of "show you the strings" that he's pulling. The fact the film feels gleeful or pro-violence is part of that. Like he is saying this is all great fun but if we were all living in in 1930s Germany I could use exactly the same techniques to make you cheer the Nazis and you'd enjoy it too. Final shot is the audience having the POV from Landa after being branded with a Swastika. I don't think QT was trying to be subtle.
I think it's interesting, because to me it always showed how war, or at least those in the war, are essentially office politics for those in charge. Hans Landa is always looking for the deal best for him, even if it involves betraying his Commanders and country. The Little Man is essentially Aldo's secretary and gets treated like a lackey despite being seemingly 2nd in charge. Also kills a man and thinks it's fine because he'll get chewed out by his boss but not punished. The amount of times I've thought about that line at work is funny lol It definitely takes glee in its violence but I think it's pretty negative of war.
I think it'a s pro "pro war" film. In the sense that it justifies and celebrates violence in movies rather than violence is real life (as a pro-war film would do).
The 2023 film Свидетель (The Witness) is quite literally the closest thing you can get to a pro-war film. It's filled with propaganda and meant to make the war in Ukraine seem justified. I haven't seen it for obvious reasons, but if you want pro-war propaganda just take a look at the Kremlin's filmography.
Probably gods and generals. Not only is it basically me looking very propaganda but the way they use battle seems as always and epic. Like this one scene where the union army are retreating from the field and as we are just being massacred shot at point blank bayonetted running and screaming from the field The music isn't sorrowful it's uplifting and epic like slaughtering people is supposed to be this great thing or something. I know that movie has been trashed ad nauseam over and over again across the internet but sincerely fuck that movie.
You’ll be hard pressed to find ANY hollywood blockbuster that isn’t heavily tied to the military industrial complex through consultants, equipment and prop acquisition/product placement, let alone blatant war films that feature the military that aren’t unabashedly pro-war and pro-military.
My vote is for Inglorious Bastards. Who doesn't love celebrating the destruction of filthy Nazi scum. Quentin Tarantinos' writing and execution and knack for stylized violence makes war look like a blast and certainly a worthy cause.
Honestly superhero movies, most action movies, many epic blockbusters, generally films with an over abundance of routine violence, could be said to be pro-war in sentiment. Most movies explicitly about war illustrate its negatives.
Pro-war films, imho, are simply war films in which the viewer sees the protagonist in a positive way and the protagonist is not a victim of his circumstances. I would also classify films like Top Gun as pro-war because you don't come away lamenting the dead. When the final credits roll you're meant to celebratet the bad guys dying in spectacular fashion and the protagonists supreme skill. I would consider Hacksaw Ridge, for example, to be pro-war. Even though the horrors of war are on full display (and the protagonists endures a lot of them), at the end you're cheering for him because of his bravery and for overcoming great odds to survive and benefit his fellows. The war itself becomes incidental to the protagonists great deeds. The end of the film celebrates the protagonist, who has the very admirable quality of being incredibly humble about his experiences. You're meant to love the guy. On the other hand, Saving Private Ryan shows the horrors of war with equal intensity, but the story focuses on the horrors of war in a wholly different way. Rather than ending on a positive note the protagonist relives the horrible experience while standing over the graves of those died to save him. You're supposed to mourn the dead and feel sympathy for the protagonist as he reflects on their sacrifice. That seems decidedly anti-war to me. American submarine movies are almost always pro-war. They're designed to instill a sense of national pride. It's always about the mission or the heroism of the crew. Off the top of my head I can only think of two American submarine films that end in tragedy for the crew. I wish I could remember the names, lol. Foreign submarine films go either way. Propoganda films sponsored by the military in times of war are obviously pro-war. Virtually every WWII film made with the assistance of the Army or Navy is pro-war. I'm just rambling now.... \[edited for content and clarity\]
Battle: Los Angeles was pro war and an overt recruiting tool for the army. Premise: how would the us military respond to an alien invasion? Enemy is scary and enigmatic, can’t be bargained with. The squad of soldiers get their asses handed to them until the Inspirational Speech halfway through the film. Suddenly their M-16s can’t miss and are 100% effective against alien armor. From that point on there is no doubt that through discipline and teamwork, the army can’t lose. And look! It all turns out that the aliens are drones so if you kill the boss monster, they all fall down dead. Just like in real life. I mean it wasn’t a terrible movie, for what it was. But they weren’t subtle about it.
The difficulty is that most films, even Full Metal Jacket and Platoon, have to be interesting to be successful. Therefore, no matter the intent, the film will make its subject and setting interesting. When I joined the military as a teenager, films like Platoon were just as influential as a movie like Rambo or Commando. Or even moreso as it depicted a "coming of age" story. War was a way boys became men. So nearly every successful film will inadvertently end up glamourizing war irrespective of the authorial intent. To take another obvious "pro-war" movie for example, 300. Many have seen it as a very jingoistic portrayal of the Spartans representing America and the Persians representing a foreign horde. At the same time though, could the Spartans be seen as a disciplined society of indigenous people like the Taliban fighting a cosmopolitan, decadent and far more powerful invader like the United States? Are the Spartans like the Ukrainians fighting against the odds against the invading Russians or are the Spartans the Russians sending a last stand attack against the corrupt Western powers? Whatever the interpretation, it depends on what the audience members expect and want to believe.
Starship Troopers I think the point is to satire fascism but it is too subtle. I definitely didn't see the layers my first time watching. At face value, it looks like a lot of 80's meathead action movies. I think your average person won't ever look too deep and never see it as anything but pro war.
I think most movies depict war at least in an exciting way. Like 1917 made a whole videogamey spectacle out of it even when it tried to show the horror. Most war movies id say are pro-war. American Sniper, Top Gun etc
I can’t remember seeing any “pro war” movies, outside of some during/about WWII and II. Many glamorize the military, but that’s not the same as saying, “War is great! Let’s go pound our enemies into dust!” For a lot that people think may be pro war, they’re just set during a war and so might seem to be glorifying the war itself when it’s just a standard “these are our heroes and aren’t they badasses” kind of movie.