Ark of the Lost Angels

F-14 Tomcat from the film Top Gun

Warfare on film is an enduring part of the entertainment output of America.

It has been often said that America’s two biggest domestic industries are wars and movies. The mythology of the American soldier occupies a crucial place within American culture, and the nation’s legacy of warfare is seen, by and large, as an honorable and just one.

This mythologizing dates back to the Revolutionary War, where a bunch of brave, ragtag minutemen stood up to the greatest military in the world when the Continental Army chased the Redcoats out of the New World and established “The Greatest Nation on Earth.” Many modern military traditions date themselves back to the earliest days of America’s fighting forces.

As the filmmaking industry developed, American history marched onwards. World War II would become a massive focal point in the filmmaking industry. World War II would be overrepresented in the lists of war films. In fact, the obsession is so great that this phenomenon was being written about ten years ago. Part of the reason is doubtlessly the evil of the Nazi regime which makes for compelling villains, and many harrowing real stories with enough drama to make intriguing stories. Another part of the reason is the fact that World War II was the last time the great powers of the world engaged in direct combat.

Whatever the reasons, whatever the conflict, the simple fact of the matter is that war films sell tickets, and they’re excellent targets for awards. Telling a compelling story is chief among the requirements for winning awards. War offers a great deal of avenues to tell compelling stories. Combat is stressful, the reasons for fighting are varied, and combatants are an interesting bunch.

The very first winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture was 1927’s Wings, a silent film about two World War I pilots competing over the affections of a women, rereleased later with synchronized soundtrack of sound effects. This win cemented the war film as an important part of American film canon.

In the years since, war films would evolve, but still win awards. Saving Private Ryan showed the sheer toll of the landings at Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day in 1944, as well as the toll combat takes on people. It displays the nobility of the soldiers dedicated to their calling. The unit risks life and limb traversing the battlefield to find a Private whose brothers are all dead so that he can return home and his parents do not have to bury all of their children. Several of them lose their own lives in the process. Their deaths are seen as noble sacrifices in pursuit of their orders. The similar nobility of sacrifice would be echoed in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers which would be executive produced by Saving Private Ryan’s director and leading actor, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, respectively.

Part of the appeal of war films is that they make the service and sacrifice seem honorable. The HBO miniseries Band of Brothers released in the early 2000s and follows Easy Company of the 506^th Regiment of the 101^st Airborne Division of the United States Army as they train together and land in France during D-Day in 1944, up through the end of the war. Band of Brothers was one of the seminal portrayals of the honorable American warfare efforts. It paid respect to the sacrifices of the real men of Easy Company and held the soldiers and the war effort with a certain reverence.

Not every war film that spoke highly of the people involved was so dramatic and serious. Top Gun is one of the most iconic movies of the 1980s. Starring Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards, and Kelly McGillis, the movie oozed with 80s charm, a fantastic soundtrack, and an absolutely energizing showcase of the venerable F-14 Tomcat. The movie showed the consequences of someone who isn’t a team player going up against the best in the Navy and why that cooperation is so important. Top Gun is easily read as being favorable to the military, and trying to impart its lessons and justify itself to the public. The movie, produced with help from the Department of Defense, served to drum up interest in the military to the point where recruiters set up outside movie theaters.

Thus reveals the ugly side of the more ‘upbeat’ war films. They are often produced in close cooperation with the United States Department of Defense with ulterior motives. The Pentagon has the Entertainment Media Office for coordinating the use of military assets in film. It serves as good public outreach for the military, and makes the films seem more realistic by the use of real military equipment and personnel. However, to receive the Pentagon’s cooperation, the Defense Department gets oversight on the scripts. Their cooperation is extremely widespread.

This cooperation comes with certain stipulations, such as portraying the military in a positive light or shying away from showing some of the dangers, or doing away with some major inaccuracies. For example, in Top Gun, the Navy requested that the instructor whom Maverick (played by Tom Cruise) becomes romantically involved with be a civilian to avoid breaching fraternization rules, hence Charlie (played by Kelly McGillis) becoming a civilian consultant to the military and not enlisted personnel as was in the original script. Another change in Top Gun takes place in the opening scene. It was originally written that Maverick’s wingman, Cougar, would crash on his landing attempt on the deck of the carrier after being shaken up by contact with an enemy MiG. The Navy, wanting to downplay how dangerous carrier landings truly are, requested that the scene be changed and another scene where Cougar hands in his wings, so Maverick and his Radar Intercept Officer, Goose, are sent to the titular Top Gun school instead. Top Gun’s 2022 sequel, Top Gun Maverick, was similarly co-written by the Pentagon.

The nature of war films changed as time went on and warfare changed. War is a constant in the human experience, and many films created in the wake of 9/11 were commentaries on the ongoing War on Terror. Films like The Hurt Locker or The Outpost focus on specific aspects or moments within the conflict and are produced shortly after. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi dealt with the Benghazi attack in Libya in 2012 and was released four years after the attack happened, when it was still fresh in people’s minds.

Zero Dark Thirty chronicled the CIA’s attempts to locate Osama bin Laden in the wake of 9/11 and was released one year after he was found and killed. The movie captured the difficult nature of fighting an enemy without a nation, whose followers are fanatical, and the moral complexities which come with it. The movie concludes with a depiction of the raid on bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan when SEAL Team Six killed the man responsible for ordering the largest attack on American soil since Imperial Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. It was incredibly timely and relevant, and offered commentary on the happenings of the War on Terror while it was still unfolding, seeing as American presence in Afghanistan would not end until 2021.

Sometimes, creators feel more comfortable taking statements about ongoing conflicts and setting them in the past. There is a trend of war films being set in a previous war but being a commentary on what was going on at the time of production and release. One of the greatest comedies of all time,MASH, was set during the Korean War. MASH was produced during the Vietnam War and was noted for its humor, characters, and anti-war tone. The series served as a commentary on contemporary events and lasted for eleven seasons while the Korean War was only three years long.

MASH wouldn’t be the only war production which took place in the past but was a commentary on the present. Jarhead was released in 2005 despite being about the Gulf War of 1991 and reflected many of the questions people had about the 2003 Iraq War.

Black Hawk Down was an interesting inversion. Despite being released after the attacks on September 11^th, 2001, and the outbreak of the War on Terror, the movie was conceived the year prior and shot earlier in 2001. The film retells the intense Battle of Mogadishu which occurred in October 1993 during the US Military’s activity in Somalia. In critical readings of the film, the entire action serves as a narrative that is supportive of the soldiers on the ground while showing that the reason they were in Somalia was murky at best and the series of failures in prosecuting the conflict cost several lives with little-to-no gain.

Many productions are more overtly critical of warfare in general. The aforementioned Jarhead, based on Anthony Swofford’s memoir of the same name about his time as a Marine Scout Sniper in the Gulf War of 1991 showed the reality of much of modern warfare: lots of sitting around and waiting, moving through harrowing situations, and not seeing combat. Swofford’s real experiences made a solid basis for an intriguing psychological thriller movie that had as much to say about the Gulf War of 1991 as it did about the Iraq War which started in 2003 and was ongoing as of the time of the movie’s release in 2005.

War also provides a smart backdrop to reinterpret other stories. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was about Africa at the end of the 19^th century and critiqued the European colonial ambitions on the continent. The novella follows a riverboat captain and his troubles with the owner of a trading post along the river, and how the owner went a bit mad due to being in such harsh circumstances for which he was not prepared for so long, and how there is very little that separates the ‘civilized’ people from the ‘savage’ people. Francis Ford Coppola updated the setting to the Vietnam War in his 1979 film Apocalypse Now. The production of the film was so troublesome that the cast and crew underwent similar events as in the novel while creating the film. Adapting an acclaimed piece of literature was one part of why Apocalypse Now was so well-received, but showing why war is such a mentally taxing situation makes the movie relevant.

However, there can be no better production that shows the reality of warfare than the 2008 HBO miniseries Generation Kill. From The Wire co-creators David Simon and Ed Burns, Generation Kill adapts Rolling Stone journalist Evan Wright’s book of the same name about his time embedded with the United States Marines Second Platoon of Bravo Company of the 1^st Reconnaissance Battalion during the initial invasion of Iraq during the 2003 Iraq War. Generation Kill opens with an intense combat sequence, revealed to be a training mission in Kuwait, before the invasion even kicks off. The remainder of the series plays out less like a war drama and more like a road trip film. There are only two scenes of prolonged combat in all seven episodes.

Generation Kill put a high fidelity on accuracy both in the terminology and actions of the Marines, and in the types of personalities shown. The series had the opposite effect of Band of Brothers, in that it demythologizes the American fighting man and the ‘glory’ of war. Where Band of Brothers showed the struggle of strong, dedicated soldiers against a great evil, Generation Kill showed the variety of men who pushed themselves to become Recon Marines, and the often chaotic, messy, and dumb ways they dealt with the situations they found themselves in.

The other great thing about Generation Kill is the complicated nature of war. The series does not make a political statement on the reasons for the war but makes extensive commentary on the nature of warfare by showing several characters’ actions and reactions to the events transpiring around them. The commanding officer of Second Platoon, Lieutenant Nathaniel Fick, went from following orders of his superior officers without question to becoming disillusioned with the entire proceedings by the time Bravo Company reaches Baghdad. Multiple scenes were shown of Iraqi civilians being caught in the crossfire, and did not shy away about showing innocents as the primary casualties of the war.

Warfare on film seems to be around as long as war itself is. Films both for and against war can be excellent films in their own right and given the propensity for American conflicts to be intertwined with the American entertainment industry, war films will remain a prominent part of modern entertainment.