Last unashamedly pro-war mainstream movie?

Cafe Society
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If Hot Shots Part Deux taught us anything it’s that war is fantastic.

Leaving that masterpiece aside and because of the recent success of the pretty much classic anti-war war movie ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ I was wondering what was the last mainstream movie that could be said to pretty much, war it’s A-OK.

And no I don’t think it’s a good thing or even particularly like war movies.

Except Top Gun Maverick, which was like a semi-serious version of Hot Shots the first partenining crossed with Star Wars.

Have I just answered my own question?

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Are you okay?

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It’s a joke, like something that would feature in that movie.

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I’d say 300, except there was a sequel:

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I have long held that Apocalypse Now was a pro war movie, but that is 1979.

Braveheart?

6

I haven’t seen it but Devotion (2022) seems to be pretty pro-war. From what I can tell, the main message of the movie is that black Americans and white Americans can overcome racism by fighting a common enemy like the Communists.

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The Darkest Hour (2017). Gary Oldman won an Oscar playing Winston Churchill, with the film’s on-screen antagonists being Chamberlain and the other British politicians who wanted to make peace with the Germans.

Honestly, almost all American and British WW2 movies - at least those dealing with the European Theater of Operations - are pro-war to one degree or another. It’s either that, or be against fighting Nazis.

8

If you think about, Germans are anti-war when it comes to WW1 and WW2, Americans are anti-war when it comes to Vietnam… basically, people are only anti-war when they’ve lost. It’s a sour grapes thing: I didn’t want to win it anyway. War sucks, you know?

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I know it is older than most mentioned, but it has the benefit of being a actual shooting war movie.

I give you the jingoistic propaganda piece, The Green Berets.

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Mel Gibson’s, We Were Soldiers is pretty good.

We Were Soldiers (2002) Official Trailer #1 - Mel Gibson Movie HD - YouTube

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A German film critic, writing about the recent All Quiet on the Western Front, suggested that it is impossible to make an anti-war movie. War porn of any kind turns it into a pro-war film at some, fairly obvious level.

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So if they avoid that, we’re cool? Because Hair is definitely anti-war and has zero war porn. Blackadder Goes Forth and The Odd Angry Shot would also like a place in the discussion.

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I misread, misthought the op, reading as "pro war mainstream (war) movie. The reference to All Quiet threw me

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I’ve heard that attributed to Truffaut. That it’s impossible to make an anti war film, it’s just too exciting on the big screen.

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Don’t know if it fits the criteria but the first movie I thought of was Starship Troopers.

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The Patriot?

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So I’m not the only person that’s watched this movie. Good to know. Saw it as a double feature drive in with Attack Force Z, a WWII movie starring a very young Mel Gibson.

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Dune and knowing what’s in the rest of the novel Part II whenever that comes out.

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The one I’m thinking is 2012, Act of Valor, the cringeworthy one starring actual Navy SEALs. But 2022’s Top Gun Maverick is also very pro-war, although it’s more about the characters than the overall plot.

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I don’t know that I’d say it was pro war, so much as a more accurate than most retelling of the actual events in question. You could very easily come out of that movie pretty anti-war, when you see how many of the main characters end up killed or wounded, and just how sort of pointless overall the actual battle was. The US forces definitely destroyed the opposing PAVN forces, but for what gain? With hindsight it was a tactical victory that didn’t really lead anywhere else.

The movie didn’t glorify war, didn’t gloss over much, and if it was sentimental, it was sentimental about the esprit de corps of the US units and individual heroism of some of the soldiers.

It certainly wasn’t The Green Berets or any of the WWII propaganda movies.