Comment on What's one cliche "Moral of the story" in media that you hate more than anything else?

• RoidingOldMan@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I feel as though most war movies, especially the famous ones, the moral is always “war is horrible.” The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) is about how hard it is to come back from war and resume life.

  With the exceptions of Top Gun, Act of Valor (2012), Lone Survivor (2013), etc. Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) sticks out as propaganda-ish.

  The ones I would actually call “war movies” and not propaganda. Like The Longest Day (1962), Tora Tora Tora (1970) are obsessed with their historical accuracy. Hard to call those pro-war.

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  • subverted_per@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    There are a lot of movies in the 50s and 60s that werent so much war propaganda as they were soldier’s experience. Since their audience was people who’d been through war already. You see a certain style of humor of soldiers not heroically leaping into battle, but desperatwly trying to avoid fighting entirely, and when their is fighting trying as hard as they can to survive more than amything else. Certainly there were propaganda films then that did treat soldiers as heroes, also fuck john wayne, but its in the 70s and 80s that those types of movies disappeared and all war movies became heroic, and even non-war action movies became pro-war.

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  • dustyData@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    There’s an argument that there’s no such thing as an anti war movie. Basically, movies are a recreative art medium. As such, any movie that intends to hold the attention of the audience all the way through, will make aesthetic or narrative concessions that will accidentally glorify war in turn. Some even go as far as claiming that any portrayal of war, even if negative, is promoting war.

    It reminds me of Come and See (1985), which is a great horrible movie. But often some of the things being portrayed are so well framed and filmed that it is truly beautiful at times. Even if the subject material is extremely horrifying. And the hook to keep the audience watching wanders into morbidity.

    In contrast with 20 days in Mariupol (2023), which I almost didn’t finish. Because it was true documented horror without any sort of grand narrative. A documentary doesn’t have to tell you war is hell. Movies, however, tend to wax poetic about it.

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    • snooggums@piefed.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      There’s an argument that there’s no such thing as an anti war movie.

      Some arguments are stupid and that certainly is one of them. It can be difficult to make a movie about war that involves combat not lean into glorifying the violence, but there are movies that only show the horrible side of war without even risking the chance of glorifying violence.

      Grave of the Fireflies just off the top of my head.

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• schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Or watch American Football.

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