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In reply to the discussion: Peter Jackson's Cartoon War Sanitized images like these are war pornography. That they are no longe [View all]EarlG
(21,942 posts)Yes, the first part of the movie was about the men joining up and *thinking* that they were going to be part of a jolly adventure. It did indeed contain veterans saying positive things about the experience of joining up, thinking you were doing something patriotic, and how it made them physically fit.
Then the movie goes into graphic detail about the reality of the actual war, vivid descriptions of death and disease, filthy conditions, gas attacks, shell shock, men losing their minds, and a long segment describing the experience of going over the top and walking towards the enemy machine gun fire, being shelled by your own guns -- narrated by the surviving solders who actually did it. It's horrifying.
The movie contains footage of soldiers dying, and graphic still photographs of battlefield corpses. It ends by describing how the veterans who came home were basically ignored and then forgotten after the war was over.
I'm not sure how anyone can watch this movie and come away thinking that it makes war look good.