And then run for Senate in Maine
the real horror of doing war crimes is that some people doing them will get sad and will need validation
You’re not wrong.
I believe the original source for this joke is Frankie Boyle: https://youtu.be/yZOLq82m2Ks
Honestly, most good (Anti) War Movies i know are set in Vietnam.
When i think of movies in the middle east, it´s US Slopaganda like Jarhead, Blackhawk Down and American Sniper
Blackhawk Down is set in Africa. Also, watch Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant and Warfare by Alex Garland / A24.
touche. last time i watched it was as an impressionable teenager so i don’t remember much.
i wonder what a guy ritchie war movie is like, thx for the recommendation
You have to look for movies made during the war to get the spicy stuff. Most famously, The Green Berets, a movie so bad that when they showed it to marines in Vietnam, they wanted to go back to work. Roger Ebert gave 0 stars, bless his soul.
My favorite shamelessly openly propaganda movie is Red Dawn, the one about a ragtag team of teenagers guerilla fighting off a joint invasion of the US by the USSR and Communist Latin Americans. Wolverines!
Don’t forget Monster Hunter
I mean it depends. Depending on what country they dont like at the moment, its been Russia, China, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran… And now Venezuela.
Nobody likes Russia.
The slave trade was stopped not by trying to garner sympathy for the slaves, but for the slave traders dying at sea. Hard to get people to care about people who look different to them. Then again in the age of drone warfare I don’t think this can be applied “directly” to modern conflict.
We all have to feel sorry for the drones?
Looks like it. Time to humanize ChatGPT.
Please, won’t somebody think of the drones? 🥺
Wall-E 2 is gonna be dope
I mean, wouldn’t you be depressed after slaughtering several clearly unarmed families?
there are documentaries of old people laughing when reminiscing about their warcrimes.
look into the Tantura massacre documentary
Somehow I can’t relate to that all. No amount of economic desperation would bring many people to that.
Now with the right amount of indoctrination and lack of education I can definitely see things playing out that way.
No, that’s the cure to the depression (Obviously not)
Not before they make 10 movies about how great their job in bringing democracy to said country was
If you being democracy to a country against the will of the people, is that reqlly democratic? This sounds like putting lipstick on the pig that is imperialism.
this gives me the idea for a movie about the uh…liberation…of Afghanistan by the taliban, back in trumps first term.
probably loads of good story during that event, especially with how so much of the government was just the taliban in suits, entire cities “falling” without a single shot
would probably come off better as a documentary, do…people still make those?
Obligatory US troop copypasta
You see american choppers in the bright blue sky, hundreds and hundreds of screaming american soldiers drop from it, you look across the field and see the tanks rolling in. You hear a loud explosion and realise that the shrine you have protected for thousands of years with tooth and nail is destroyed by the empire, you come to the realisation that this is very probably the end of your people who’ve struggled to survive all these centuries.You realise that very soon there is going to be a river of blood of your people here; white phosphorus and depleted uranium will be shot very soon, deforming babies for decades to come, and millions of your people are gonna be killed. Your millennia old language and religion will be wiped out, you’re very likely the last of your kind.
Suddenly, an American soldier kicks you down, puts his foot on your neck and aims his standard ar-15 on the side of your head all while screaming; you realise you’re gonna die, and you won’t have to see the destruction of your community that you fostered so carefully all these centuries for.
Just before he pulls the trigger, you think to yourself, “To be fair to him, he probably had a low GPA in highschool and didnt have a health-care, those are notoriously hard to get in America”.
Remember Jarhead with Jake Gyllenhaal?
They were literally depressed because they didn’t get to shoot enough people…The way the stories are depicted they always dehumanize the invaded populations; after soldiers kill freedom fighters (who are always depicted as the bad guys), they also show civilians who get caught up and then the marine has a little breakdown over it, or has to hide his pain, or even that the civilians may have been trying to protect the fighter because he was family to them, and basically the story is told in a way to make you want to make excuses for the soldier. Meanwhile real soldiers are more like Platner who go back for multiple tours and talk about how they like infantry combat, or the people who brutalize the population at a level just beneath getting them legal consequences.
I would say we need a new red dawn movie from the perspective of the Soviet (DPRK in the modern one) troops to get the message across, something that probably rips off a famous war movie that most have seen, to really hammer home how ridiculous modern war movies are but truthfully? I do genuinely think too many people are far too obtuse to understand; also every now and then a lib cracks and admits he believe our troops are good people while Russian troops are bad people.
Perhaps what we also really need are movies from the perspective of the freedom fighters, but forget depicting them in a sympathetic light; depict them like Rambo, kicking butt and taking dogtags/names, and the troops in a similar depiction as the Persians in 300.
And there’s a solid chance the cinematography will portray the civillians and resistance fighters as either dumb animals (most Iraq movies) or a horde of zombies (Black Hawk Down)
They just wanted healthcare 😔 Its not their fault that iraqi wedding was placed in front of their gun! True America isn’t like that I swear!
The people who make movies about depressed soldiers are usually trying to make an anti-war statement. American is not homogenous. There are people who bomb without remorse and people who try to point that we shouldn’t do that. Bombing without remorse is not something that can only be tied to one country. It can be tied to psychopaths of which quite a few have weaseled their way into power.
Yes. And the point of the joke this meme is aping is that not even the anti-war, anti-imperialist Americans will concern themselves with the feelings of non-Americans.
I suspect survivability bias plays into it, as I imagine an empathetic and self-reflective anti-war film in the is more likely than a straight “US are the villains” film to be funded and see financial, and therefore popular, success in the US. It makes sense why domestic industries will tend to tell domestic-facing stories. I’d say the size of the US film industry means you actually get more diversity in war films compared to ones you see in places like Japan or Germany.
Also exemplified by the American comments in this thread.
Are there any good movies that show the other perspective?
Sci-fi all the way.
Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009) shows the fall of an empire (loosely, America) at the hands of their AI creations. I guess Rome or Britain could also sit in for America. This show aired while Bush the lesser was taking Afghanistan and Iraq apart piece by piece.
The Expanse (2015-2022) is the worthy heir to the throne of casting harsh light on the oligarchs and hegemons. Belters could be any people put upon by this corrupt system: migrant workers, Indigenous people, refugees, the unhoused, the descendants of the enslaved — anyone who was expected to bootstrap success.
Both are good shows. The Expanse is proving to be somewhat more resilient to the passage of time.
At least in western cinema, only sci-fi can get away with anti-imperialism. Star wars (the rebellion = vietnamese communists), lots of Star trek episodes especially in DS9, Dune (the book first, then the film), and pry a lot more I can’t think of right now.
DS9 does so much right. It is certainly on point in its treatment of moral gray.
The anti-war statement is directed at the psychopaths doing the bombing. Showing them how people are suffering after being bombed doesn’t affect them. Its an attempt to show them how they might regret their own decisions. At the very least it might chip away at the people who support them.
I’m not sure how well received it would be if Americans tried to make movies on behalf of the others saying how they must’ve felt. Safer to stick to their own perspective
It can be done tastefully if there is a desire to humanize the non Americans. The problem is that desire is often what’s lacking.
I’d rather just see movies made by those who were on the other side, I think that’d be more authentic
the only good us soldier is a dead one
