Mission Unaccomplished: American War Films in the Twenty-First Century

"Throughout his career, prominent film scholar Alan Nadel has explored the idea of cultural narratives and how every social unit sees and explains the world through the stories we tell. In this book, he identifies how the war-film genre has changed in the 21st century after 9/11 and more specifically Bush's announcement of "Mission Accomplished." He explains how the traditional war-film narrative in which soldiers have a specific mission or objective to achieve in battle changed to one in which war is treated as a daily occupation, with no larger mission that will lead, even in the long run, to peace. He examines how films such as Saving Private Ryan, at the end of the 20th century, have morphed into films such as Jarhead, The Hurt Locker, and The Green Zone. With the indefinite and ill-planned occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, including the privatization of many military services through "contractors," this new situation has led to films in which we follow soldiers' day-to-day lives as they go through their duties, or even after they've come home as in American Sniper. Another change in war films during the "Global War on Terror" puts the emphasis on just surviving and getting out, such as in Hacksaw Ridge, which even carries over to films about, for example, WWII, such as Dunkirk. Again, combatants have no specific goal other than escaping or helping others to escape, or just surviving long enough to go home. Nadel shows how this change has also affected non-war films, such as Sully, Captain Phillips, Deepwater Horizon, and Get Out and even the television series Lost. Nadel deftly moves between political history and film analysis with this wide-ranging, lucid examination of the changing nature and role of war films"--