All Quiet on the Western Front: The Fallacies of Anti-War Films 

I surprisingly agree you changed my perspective

The thing is... Remarque NEVER said "All war bad". He was writing about his own experience as a German soldier in a *specific* war (and in later novels, he took an *anti-Hitler* stance, not a blanket anti-war one). People, however, tend to dilute his position down to a sort of middling pacifism, especially in adaptations. At best, that's ignorance of nuance, at worst, it's malicius manipulation.

You had me at “here is a picture of a funny cat” 😂

The 2022 All Quiet on the Western Front, while the cinematography is beautiful and the atmosphere is given, the 1930 All Quiet on the Western Front (the Original) is the best of the series. It is the most authentic. It has no CGI. The extras were all World War 1 veterans. All the things in the movie happened to either the Author, or what the author heard when he was in field hospitals and catholic recovery hospitals. However, I feel possibly the best real art that's been written, maybe not intended to be *real* Anti-War, is Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger. There is no fiction in it. It is his diary. He speaks of heroism, honor, and sacrifice. He speaks of happiness, and contentment. But he also speaks of the most horrific things you can imagine with an almost indifference. The sadness that is experienced feels that much sadder and despairful, when All Quiet on the Western Front is just always sad and so you just get used to it. Storm of Steel throws you around and that makes it feel more impactful. The Author of Storm of Steel says war is a disease. It comes along, and it's there. You can't do anything. You just deal with it. He says there should be many more things to prevent war, but it's a disease. All quiet I feel is just to tell the story of the men who fought and died in WW1, because at the time, society had not known what really happens in war. They went around putting white flowers on young teenage boys (the white flower is a sign of cowardice) so they'd go enlist when they were not legally old enough. When they came back after the war, there was nothing and almost no one to help them. That's why I feel the original All Quiet on The Western Front was more relevant than the 2022 adaptation. P.S , please review or at least see the 1930 All Quiet on The Western Front.

Well, now that I look at it, anti-war content seems to me to be just the whims of first world countries and citizens who are just trying to be moral for show.

All Quiet on the Western Front was a crazy cinematic experience. Not really an anti-war movie, too much heroism in a situation (war) where heroes don't really exist.

I would say "Come and see" as an actual anti war film.

This reminds me of a StarCraft Manga called “Do no harm” where a Protoss was disillusioned by War that he resorted to Pacifism. But when he and several of his brethren were abducted to be experiments in a Terran Dominion Lab, he broke that promise to fight and save his brothers. In an ideal world, it’s good to try to resolve matters peacefully at first. But when it fails, you should be willing to fight.

Thank you so much for bringing attention to this. There is a huge gap between "being on the front line sucks" and "It's never ok to fight." I can agree to the former without agreeing to the latter. One can use the same reasoning to conclude exercise is bad: "you get hot, tired, sore, you might feel embarrassed by people outperforming you, and here's a montage of gym accidents that lead to death." Analysing the combat without an analysis of the causes, and alternatives is just silly. We can all agree that the war in the trenches was bad and that the Vietnam war was bad, but we don't need to be sold on that because we're already there. And what does that say about war in principle? Nothing. One can even make the case that Europe learned the lesson from All Quiet On The Western Front and that's why Britain and France tried to appease Hitler; because anything was preferable to another war. So when I saw the movie, I nodded my head and said "Yep. The western front at that point in the war sure did suck."

When a large number of WW1 veterans agreed that their experience being soldiers in the First World War was a hell of a lot better time spent than the drudgery of their normal everyday civilian lives, it really makes you wonder why we as a modern generation feel the need to speak for them and put words in their mouths. The original story did a solid job of unpacking the nuance many German soldiers experienced between the genuine horrors of the war and the good times that broke up the bad, and it also delved into a side of what most average people don't understand; How it feels to be a soldier whose experienced war, survived, and come back to a society that is untouched by it and the total disconnect that lies between the two points of view. Thank you for bringing this up, I have been pulling my hair out since watching this movie and knowing how many people missed the point of the original story and took the new message hook line and sinker.

Wars are embarked on by elites, and WW1 was a classic example. And it just so happens that this is the war covered in this film. A lot of people supported WW1 at the start, but for example in Britain volunteering for the armed forces sharply declined in 1915 and by 1916, for the first time ever, Britain introduced conscription. The British avoided mass mutinies in 1917, unlike the French and Russians, but relatively large numbers of the now partly conscripted army surrendered when the German spring offensive started in March 1918.

Interesting

Suicide rates tend to decline in wartime, though one part of that may be that it is easier in war to put yourself in death's way without it being obvious suicide.

war is bad so lets make it as a tion packed as possible. lol

I´m writing a script to a fictional war film and THANK YOU for doing this, your video is GOLD

Meanwhile a movie that ran against All Quiet at the Oscars (and lost to it in almost every category they were both in) has a far more nuanced and complex take on war and combat, but it was so nuanced and complex, people didn't recognise that it was. They'll gloss over things like the death of a child being caused by that child's deliberate attacking and killing of unarmed noncombatants, because they go in with a superhero movie bias with clear heroes and villains. The child's death was unjustified because they are a hero and those unarmed people are the bad guys so they can die. Anyone that tries to stop the child from killing more people or themselves is pure evil and should die, too. Just because he's bad and has the identity and name of someone who was bad assigned to him before he was born... 6 months ago. I made an even bigger list of things but honestly it deserves a video, not a comment. Probably even one as long as some of the other deconstructions of it and the movie it's a sequel of. Drives me crazy how James Cameron made the two most successful war dramas of all time, and all they get compared to is animated children's movies from the 90s. Because nobody will connect the dots between them and their clear influences from classics like Lawrence Of Arabia, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, The Deer Hunter, Saving Private Ryan and Apocalypse Now. Hope time, more sincere reviewers, the deconstructions already done about them (some taking longer than both current movies combined) getting more attention from the algorithm and the completion of the main saga fixes that.

The 1979 All quite on the western front, is the better film

I do wonder. Why no one did a film about anti-war protestor during Vietnam War realize that war itself is complicated as listens to Veteran who reveals why it was horrible to begin with leading to questioned what was anti-war movement was all about?

The great "Stalingrad" film directed by Joseph Vilsmaier has been called an "antiwar film". I believe that film is valid although nothing can convey the true horror of what actually happened at and around Stalingrad.

my favorite anti wars are come and see and stalingrad 1993

ANTO did stand by while people ware being iklled in Yugoslavia. It wasn't until a german truck got hit by accident that they actually did anything.

I found this YT itself a little one-sided. First of all, films and TV shows about war, certainly English-language ones, are often not unambiguously anti-war. Indeed some are subtly pro-war, it could be argued. "Saving Private Ryan" showed carnage and seemed to weigh the human cost of trying to retrieve one man from combat, but hardly questioned WW2 as such. Certainly not the Normandy campaign. "Band Of Brothers" was hardly an anti-war statement. I don't think you took sufficient account of the particularly wasteful and inhuman qualities of WW1. There is a reason it became a particular crucible of anti-war feeling and pacifism, also reflected in films. The only unambiguously pro-war film I have seen connected with WW1 is "Operation Michael", a heavily fictionalised account of Germany's 1918 spring offensive. A German officer who leads an attack on the British and finds himself cut off calls down German artillery fire on his own position, to kill as many British as possible as well as himself. The film depicts this as an epic of sacrifice, which was indeed the state of mind in 1937 Nazi Germany, which made the film. Is that better than this?

Except, if you know a bit about NATOs history, Russias annexation of Crimea was hardly unprovoked.