War Movies

War Movies are very graphic and are violent but they're historical and good for learning. Frankly speaking there is a great niche for War Movies. War Movies are generally either serious or fun. War Movies are a rare breed, showcasing the ugly and brutal side of human nature. While often violent, these films also depict heroism, courage, dignity and sacrifice, often against overwhelming odds. Popular films articulate the desires, fears and aspirations of our culture. Analysis of recent War Movies can shed light on cultural beliefs about heroism, politics, the military and views of authority, justice, patriotism, family and gender relationships.

Hollywood has been making War Movies for decades, and in the beginning the film industry took advantage of Europe’s situation with Germany to make films. Then America was entered into the war by Japan with the Pearl Harbor attack. This immediately became fuel for the movie industry.  The US was officially at war with Japan and Germany; therefore it became patriotic and economical to create villains with connections to both countries (Bernard F. Dick 103).  In September of 1940, the Japanese joined the Axis, which had already helped Hollywood to make antagonists out of them, but their attack on the US sealed their place in movies.

Popularity of War Movies is that everyone has seen at least one War Movie, whether it is an old John Wayne movie or a new Spielberg film.  Yet very few people actually stop and think about the movie itself, what it contains and how the events are portrayed.  They ignore the relevance of a love story in the middle of classic War Movies.  It is disrespectful to the war itself, it sends out a message saying that war is “boring” and that it needs something added to it.  In reality war is a harsh and devastating thing, and it doesn’t have a director behind it trying to make it appealing.  So why should War Movies have something added to them?

Nowadays War Movies are not polemic diatribes about a country's incorrect case for involvement in a foreign war. They are also not a glorification of war, where enemy soldiers fall down with bloodless wounds from shots fired by forces with nerves of steel. War Movies of the new millennium are more often than not about pain and morality, survival and instinct.

Even in War Movies surrounding one of the most powerful confrontations American soldiers have had in the last twenty years, Jerry Bruckheimer still manages to slide in a wacky bit here and there. War Movies are easier to do the further back they go. Doing a war movie about an event only ten years old opens up quite a bit of possible criticism. Where do artistic slants turn into full fiction? How does representation slowly get hollywoodized into misrepresentation? How do the political beliefs of the writer and director taint the actual situation?

One of the greatest War Movies to date is Saving Private Ryan, a film by Steven Spielberg that was released in 1998.   It was referred to as “…the most realistic--and maybe the best--war film ever” by Amazon.com.  The opening scene is of the Normandy invasion on D-Day and is one of the greatest portrayals of a war battle ever, it is full of "battle sequences that wash over the eyes and hit the gut”.