WW1 is the most entertaining war so why aren't there more movies about it?

>anything using the words "Napoleonic Tactics"

I remember one video from the youtube channel "The Great War" that recounted an event of the Verdun battle that sounded pretty Napoleonic
French soldiers walking toward the enemy and closing ranks as their comrads fell only to launch a bayonet charge once 100ft away from the enemy
And a high officer was charging with them

Yes, and some officers varied their tactics at the Somme (which is where we get the idea of the British soldiers all going at a walking pace towards the enemy lines), but that wasn't really the way the war was conducted.

Methinks a script is in the works...
Suuuure why not? We'll call it creative license.

I'm sure Michael Bay will direct, he loves explosions.

anyone ever see that 10 part ww1 documentary, it got me fascinated with ww1 think ive watched the whole thing like 6 times now
youtube.com/watch?v=pzf9aHZmCAM

Because Americans can't be the hereoes in this war, therefore it can't make a good propaganda material for Hollywood.

As already said ITT, Murica only coming for the last three months after the German had already lost means no Hollywood bucks.

But even more importantly, there are no über ebil nazis to fight and perpetualy feed the never-forget never-again machine. Anti-German WWI propaganda became old merely a few years after 1918. We are still living in a artificially kept cycle of demonization of the enemy for WWII.

A combination of these.

Depressing, (relatively) "boring" fighting, moral ambiguity between the rival sides, and general lack of interest

WWI doesn't make for good storytelling in a lot of ways - and not just because it's a complex conflict without the heroes and villains like WW2.

Trench warfare was extremely boring (and safe) for the majority of men, and for the majority of the time. The front-line trench could be hellish but the average British soldier spent only two or three days there at a time, rarely more, and seven days max during big offensives. Troops were regularly rotated, spending most of their time in the fortified bunkers of rear trenches and often going a month or more between front line duty.

If you've ever seen 'Band of Brothers' and 'The Pacific', you'll know the latter suffered greatly from detached storytelling because the Marines rotated troops (though less frequently), meaning you couldn't focus on one unit like in BoB without missing major plot points, battles, and the war itself. That's why most WWI set-piece films focus on a specific battle or event, and why character driven WWI movies tend to focus only partly on the war... i.e.;

Birdsong- youtube.com/watch?v=NNXw2ZjvEdU
A Razor's Edge (personal favorite) - youtube.com/watch?v=mlbbzB2hgss
War Horse- youtube.com/watch?v=QhueHIXbTF4

6 million jews didnt die, so who cares

Beneath Hill 60 is another good one - youtube.com/watch?v=uYOpCJCl5L4

But 6 million jews didn't die in WW2 either.

>you'll know the latter suffered greatly from detached storytelling because the Marines rotated troops

Do you know why Marines were more likely to do rotations than the US military in Europe? I noticed that after watching The Pacific for the first time a few weeks ago, and Leckie/Basilone/Sledge's friend for the first half and Sledge/Snafu/etc for the second half

we're not going to apologize for the fact that no other country has a functioning film industry.

i haven't checked at all, but shouldn't there be a bunch of soviet films about the war? or did they also lack a film industry?

...

this is wrong on so many levels. china is hollywoods biggest market and it's who they pander to. doesn't matter where the films are made it matters who is paying to see them.

yea, it must have been like the troops were getting sent on a free vacation courtesy of their citizen government. oh wait, actually there were millions of troops ordered to charge into machine gun fire in the name of their king to recapture 100 meters of land that the other side captured yesterday, and everything just kept repeating for years on end. the elites used nationalism, a wholly made-up concept, to trick poor people to attack each other, and the elites got rich on the booming war economies, and the only thing it cost them was the lives of millions of conscripted soldiers who didn't even have the right to vote.

the only reason that it ended was because the controlling elites got spooked when russia had a revolution and massacred all their royals. with french and german troops plotting together in the trenches, the german elites decided that they would rather shake hands with the other elites than risk getting their heads lopped off by their own people. the opposing soldiers were ambivalent towards each other, and they even celebrated christmas together in the trenches. it was a time when men were reminded that their worst enemy was their own government.

>The front-line trench could be hellish but the average British soldier spent only two or three days there at a time

A good thing Britain wasnt the major player in that war
Germany and France were

I assume it was just the nature of being attached to the Navy that made absorbing replacements difficult, not to mention the island hopping doctrine. There were also only 6 Marine Divisions w/ only 600,000 men, compared to the Army's 7,000,000.

Exactly, it's a political drama whose most interesting protagonists weren't the ones fighting in the mud, meaning you can't tell that story with an action-oriented war film unless all you're after is war porn.

>there were millions of troops ordered to charge into machine gun fire

70-95% of all WWI casualties were fragmentary, from artillery or mortars.

It's not an interesting concept

WW2 is more entertaining because Hitler managed to actually take over most of Europe, was crazy and the Nazis provided a cool villainous group

What's so scary about the fucking Kaiser? Just the way the war itself started was stupid, some Slav blew the brains out of some prince and everyone declared war because of alliances instead of world domination

Yep, and war films tend to be ethnocentric.

So we get France to make more WWI movie then?

wow that is such a great picture

China is the biggest market though.
Also other countries should make their own movies.

youtube.com/watch?v=tt7xJdKfIMM

We have Paths of Glory, what more could you want?

Or a Battlefield 1 DLC :^)

France actually has a lot of WW1 movies but they rarely get translated
Being Quebecois, I've watched quite a few of them

I would like to ask another question is there equivalent about the French of All Quiet on the Western Front?
I really liked that movie.

Hue.

Fucking fantastic documentary

Can we stop perpetuating this "soldiers only spent a couple days at the line and constantly rotated out" meme?

I have never been into games like that much.

The trench cycle system is a thing. Unless you're including support and reserve trenches as front lines?

>28th of august, 1916: "We've been ordered to expand the communication trench to the west, but digging in roots and rocks is difficult and our shovels and picks have long since blunted. The shelling from across the embankment hasn't ended since yesterday. NCO Schultz was killed by a shot through the head when he tried to peer over the trench this morning, I believe he had four children back home.

This would be about 90% of the movie until the big "over the top" finale, when 80% of the characters from the previous four years all die at once, and the remainder are taken prisoner.

If you want a good Veeky Forums of WWI, read Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger. This is what every war movie should be.

I would recommend you guys to watch this + Joyeux Noël to see it from the French perspective. I saw both in French class during highschool and especially the first one is really good. It has a lovestory but they integrated it really well with the horrors of war. Unlike Passchendael which was just a really cheesy lovestory with a bit of action here and there.

Constant shelling drowns out any dialogue.

The best bit of that book are the trench digging sections it's really compelling how much they enjoyed devising them on the German side.

It's not a meme. It's literally how the war was conducted by the British. And the French, especially as the war went on. Germans had it the worst with less rotation, but on the whole their trench systems were at least of a greater quality, being on the strategic defensive.

anyone claiming "hurr durr dey wud be inna trench" or "dey wud be rotated all de time" is an idiot, obviously you focus on the interesting bits

otherwise explain how a show like ANZACS pulls off a proto-BoB, cunt

This is one of my favorite movies of all time. Although it's quite anti-war so I'm sure most of /his and the /pol/yps here would hate it.

>obviously you focus on the interesting bits

Pretty much this
Just like WW2 movies ommitt the 80% of the time soldiers past walking/sitting in trucks

its... its complicated

because it's fucking boring as fuck

There were no bad guys.

In WWII you have the evil Nazis and stuff. The mass audiences needs a black and white good vs evil story.