I haven’t seen that for decades. I don’t remember the ending?
Without giving away too much…
The attack is cancelled, field phones are down, and the courier can’t make it to the trenches in time to deliver the message. Slaughter ensues.
What was the very last scene, before the credits rolled?
The main protagonist (a cross-country runner) taking machine-gun rounds in the chest. Freeze frame.
Good example.
You’ll notice I was talking about Hollywood films; there are many good foreign examples of true anti-war movies. The only American ones I can think of off the top of my head are all by Kubrick, who was the exception to many rules.
@enalzi
Agree 100%.
@ lissener
Couldn’t disagree more, I actually found the movie to very anti-war.
The whole point of the movie (as executed by the single POV shot) was we are the grunts, we take orders, we don’t question them. We only see and experience what they see and experience, absolutely nothing else. No conversations, no explanations, nothing. I thought the single take shot from their POV was a uniquely brilliant way to do this.
My takeaway was: as a grunt, you’re there to be sacrificed for the greater good, “Ours is not to reason why…”. That really made me think a lot about the horrors of war especially for the bottom level soldiers.
I also thought it was a sharp contrast to the Spielberg view, which had to justify to modern audiences “why” they had to save Private Ryan. No justification required in a real war.
After my son saw it he commented about how dumb he thought it was “why didn’t they drop the message from the a plane?” (Similar to what others mentioned in the previous thread on this). I said, who knows? why does it matter? The grunt’s missions are never justified to them, they’d never be told that. Maybe they didn’t have planes, maybe they decided the grunts were more expendable than risking a machine. The point is, the grunts would never know. Just do what you’re told. That’s when it hit him, you don’t question, you’re not allowed to question. If you question, you’re shot for insubordination. That’s the horror this portrayed, when you’re being sent off to probably die and no one even explains why.
That defence complete, I’d say it’s not perfect, but I’d put it in the category of very good (but not great).
That’s all true. But where I disagree with your conclusion is that the final shot is of the conquering hero. Everything else you mention are obstacles to overcome, like in a videogame. And the greater the obstacles, the greater the hero is for overcoming them.
The final shot can change everything. Spielberg turned what could have been an anti-war film with just the final shot of the movie. With the waving flag, and the final scene with present-day Matt Damon, he reversed everything that came before it. The final scene essentially said, “War is hell–but damn it’s worth it!”
1917 is not as egregious, but I think that a war movie that ends with a scene of relief and satisfaction renders all the violence that came before it as nothing but devices to magnify the enemy and to make the hero seem that much more heroic. Schofield is reduced to little more than the “Final Girl” in an 80s horror movie.
lissener, in your OP, you talk about “Hollywood/mainstream movies’ continuing inability–refusal?–to make a big budget war movie that isn’t pro-war propaganda”. Really? Do you consider A Private War, They Shall Not Grow Old, Jo Jo Rabbit, A Hidden Life, Hacksaw Ridge, The Hurt Locker, War Horse, How I Live Now, Beasts of No Nation, The Zookeeper’s Wife, Testament of War, and Free State of Jones to be pro-war propaganda?
We don’t experience it in anything remotely like the long extended takes in this movie. We experience it from our own relatively narrow point of view, not from the often expansive views here. This was nothing like a realistic experience.
Haven’t seen:
A Private War
A Hidden Life
Beasts of no Nation
How I Live Now
The Zookeeper’s Wife
Testament of War [Youth?]
[added to my list]
JoJo Rabbit:
Definitely anti-war (as acknowledged above); satire works better than Hollywood-style heroic dramas.
They Shall Not Grow Old:
Of course not pro war propaganda. That’s part of what distinguishes it from the many Hollywood films I mentioned. I don’t really include documentaries in my thinking here; maybe I should have mentioned that in my OP. Also, foreign production, as are most of the mentioned exceptions to my diatribe,
Hacksaw Ridge:
My memory is not clear, but I think of this as having a satisfying heroic ending. And you really can’t get more pro-war than Mel Gibson! 
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I really must remember to note such things as “There are of course exceptions” in my posts; i don’t do so by default because I assume that’s a given.
My OP was about a general trend; a tradition even. Does pointing out exceptions really have much impact on the validity of the general trend? I don’t want this to become a semantics battle of what movies “count” and which don’t.
Is there a general disagreement to my description of the general trend? Which I lay squarely at the foot of the Hays code and the government’s involvement with Hollywood during WWII.
Defeating the Axis powers wasn’t worth it?
O.K., there are the following films since 2010:
A Private War
A Hidden Life
Beasts of No Nation
How I Live Now
The Zookeeper’s Wife
Testament of Youth
Jo Jo Rabbit
They Shall Not Grow Old
Hacksaw Ridge
1917
I consider them to not be pro-war films. Some of them could be considered anti-war films. You claim that these are just exceptions to your rule that big-budget Hollywood/mainstream movies recently are mostly pro-war. So give us some examples of the pro-war movies that you think are the general rule over the same time period.
Sorry, I just couldn’t get past “Hollywood’s pro-war propaganda” without busting out laughing. I mean, maybe Transformers movies? But any actual war movie I’ve seen from Hollywood has been decidedly anti-war.
I disagree strongly (to put it mildly) with the OP, but I’m not going to argue about it. I will point out that 1917 was NOT a “Hollywood” movie. It’s British to its core. The writers, the director, and the actors are from the UK. To characterize it as “pro-war” is bad enough. To add insult to injury by saying it’s a Hollywood movie is ridiculous.
Actually, what lissener talked about in the OP was Hollywood/mainstream movies. That’s pretty vague. 1917 was funded by DreamWorks Pictures, Reliance Entertainment, New Republic Pictures, Mogambo, Neal Street Productions, and Amblin Partners. DreamWorks, New Republic, and Amblin are American. The others may all be British. The actors and crew are British. Most movies that do well in the U.S. are partly funded by American companies, regardless of where they are filmed, where they are set, who made them, and who acted in them. So I would say that 1917 was a mainstream movie, but it’s such a vague term that it means very little.
That doesn’t make the movie “anti-war.” That is just life. At your job you have to do things which seem silly but you do them because your boss’ boss’ boss said to do them. And it turned out to be one hell of an important thing the main character did.
I thought the movie was simply amazing. I thought it dragged during the part with the French woman and her baby and that part really could have been completely cut out, but damn, I personally felt exhausted towards the end. I wanted to scream at the screen for someone to go get me goddamn Col. fucking MacKenzie’s ass over here right fucking now! I wanted to pass out in bed for the main character.
But damn what a ride. Very historically accurate. The only thing that possibly took me out of it was how terrible that German sharpshooter in the belfry was. He had about five clean, easy shots that he missed, but our hero pulls off an offhanded shot at the large opening and gets a hit? And then he is so sure that he hit the German that he exposes his position across the open expanse of the street?
But again, the movie was so realistic, I was ready to feel the bullet. Also, although the Brits do speak English, they really need to get better at it. 
Found myself having to rewind to understand what they were saying sometimes.
All in all, one of the best movies I have seen in a while. 10/10.
That doesn’t make the movie “anti-war.” That is just life. At your job you have to do things which seem silly but you do them because your boss’ boss’ boss said to do them. And it turned out to be one hell of an important thing the main character did.
I thought the movie was simply amazing. I thought it dragged during the part with the French woman and her baby and that part really could have been completely cut out, but damn, I personally felt exhausted towards the end. I wanted to scream at the screen for someone to go get me goddamn Col. fucking MacKenzie’s ass over here right fucking now! I wanted to pass out in bed for the main character.
But damn what a ride. Very historically accurate. The only thing that possibly took me out of it was how terrible that German sharpshooter in the belfry was. He had about five clean, easy shots that he missed, but our hero pulls off an offhanded shot at the large opening and gets a hit? And then he is so sure that he hit the German that he exposes his position across the open expanse of the street?
But again, the movie was so realistic, I was ready to feel the bullet. Also, although the Brits do speak English, they really need to get better at it. Found myself having to rewind to understand what they were saying sometimes.
All in all, one of the best movies I have seen in a while. 10/10.
The end of Saving Private Ryan showed an old man who’s still broken from the war. I don’t think he was crying over the loss of his friend or the tragedy of his passing. I saw an old man who still falls to his knees crying if he thinks too much about what happened. Strong antiwar message, IMO.
I did wonder about that, too. An example of what TVTropes calls Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy? Yet, as that page notes, “by far most shots fired in firefights or combat are misses. Some sources report that in WWII, the average soldier needed to fire two hundred rounds for every hit scored on an enemy.”
Well, this was certainly “combat” but not how you normally think of it. This German had a rifle from a perch, in an elevated position, something to set the barrel on, with an unsuspecting target from about 100 or so yards away. Take any kid who has been hunting a few times and give him that shot and it would be painfully easy, almost murder instead of combat.