And the Neutral Zone in between.
Correct and my bad.
The U.S. Navy didn’t fare too well in The Sand Pebbles.
In the original version the original ending had Kevin McCarthy running down the highway, yelling “You’re next!” to the motorists, who think he’s crazy. They tacked on a “happy” ending when he finally convinces people about the pod people only after test screenings showed the audience didn’t like the “downer” ending.
Finney’s novel, by the way, has a completely out-of-the-blue “happy” ending that’s just as unrealistic. The pods shoulda won.
In Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters the humans win. His book predated Finney’s.
The Mouse that Roared. America is invaded by the smallest country in the world (The Duchy of Grand Fenwick) and loses.
I’ve seen the film, but it was too long ago to remember: do they make explicit in the film version of The Handmaid’s Tale that Gilead defeated the United States?
Being a big generous about winning and losing, I submit:
On The Beach
A Day Without a Mexican
CSA
The Road
The entirety of the Planet of the Apes films.
The directors cut of The Little Shop of Horrors remake.
No Way Out with Kevin Costner.
Turns out though Costner isn’t the killer, he is the KGB mole and his role goes undiscovered.
In the movie We Were Soldiers (and presumably also the book), the American forces win a big battle, but in the end it’s painted as a pretty pointless victory. The enemy commander surveys the aftermath and says “[the Americans] will think this was their victory…”; it’s based on a real battle, and the epilogue notes that as soon as the American troops were airlifted out, the North Vietnamese took control of the area again.
Glory. The Union’s 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (with Matthew Broderick and Denzel Washington) gets mowed down and fails to take the Confederates’ Fort Wagner. All the stars die.
The Quiet American is a great film.
I agree with you about the rest, too, and would include Peal Harbor-related movies as well. Part of the unspoken undercurrent of Pearl Harbor films is that the Americans only got their asses kicked because of the unhanded surprise tactics. The whole plot serves a larger narrative of American moral and military superiority and eventual victory.
It might be more interesting to narrow the scope to fictional movies. It’s one thing for a producer to sell a movie based on a historical US loss – “Hey, what are ya gonna do, we lost” – but it’s a much harder sell to say, “We made up this story and the US loses. Don’t worry, American audiences will love it.”
There isn’t much left of the US after the *Sharknado *series.
Episode “Replacements” from the HBO series Band of Brothers.
The elite 101st Airborne attacks the Dutch village of Neunen, which is occupied by panzertruppen, and most definitely did not succeed in taking the town.
Thank you. This was my intention too.
It is very rare for Hollywood to sanction a fictional film where the American characters end up losing.
I don’t know if losing battles in otherwise winning wars really gets at the heart of what the OP was getting at.
I mean, the Alamo was definitely a defeat, but was a heroic last stand in what ended up being a victorious campaign.
Same with Civil War movies told from the Union side- we know how the Battle for Ft. Wagner ended up, but we also know that the Union won and that eventually black troops were accepted into the military, and that even later, were instrumental in gaining equality for all black people.
I kind of think that movies like most of the Vietnam ones or maybe “The Day After” (albeit made for TV) are better examples, where the US loses outright.
There’s quite a number of movies where the terrorists /bad guys actually win/accomplish what they set out to do in the final part even if the heroes survive until the end.
Stone Cold
The hero defeats the bad guys but the terrorists literally accomplished pretty much everything they set out to do.
Unthinkable
The terrorists are able to detonate the last nuclear bomb before the heroes can find the location.
The Day The Earth Stood Still (Remake)
Alien leaves Earth but in the process detonates an EMP that disrupts all electricity in the world, ensuing a complete global collapse of society.
Transcendence
The movie ends with all technology being destroyed, ensuing a complete global collapse of society.
Kingsman - British super spy’s defeat evil American tech billionaire Sam Jackson from doing weird shit, that was poorly explained, to the world
Fail-Safe, in which the US Air Force nukes both Moscow *and *New York.