I not sure this belong in POOP, but I'm not sure it fits in general ether so I'll put it here, if the mods don't think it fits here move it where ever. I wonder how long it will be before we start geting war movies about the curent war in iraq. how long after the vietnam war ended was it before the movies started being made? any thoughts?

The Gulf War was made into movies no more than ten years after the fact; books came out sooner. The military effort in Somalia created books and movies less than ten years.

Thus, I'll say the first will probably come out in 2009 - just in time for there to be some truth to them without affecting an election.

I can already imagine a remake of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly."

A deserter, an insurgent, and a prison guard gone rogue look for a hidden oil well.

Seriously, though, I give them until summer of 2006, and that's probably generous. There are already fictionalised accounts of it.

If you want studies and documentaries, such already exist.

If you're looking for dramatizations and historical fiction, I give it until three years after major US troop presence in the area has ended.

Haven't they already done made-for-TV movies about Iraq? The whole Jessica Lynch thing?

I don't know about movies, but I've already seen a couple computer games based on the current Iraq war. ::shudder:: Makes me feel sick.

Well, the Army has been using computer games as recruitment advertising. I don't know if America's Army is about Iraq or not, but apparently a big fraction of the guys who contacted them about joining up said they did so after playing the videogame.

What was the timeframe between The whole incident that "Black Hawk Down" was based on and the movie being made?

Take your figure, subtract 12 months, then watch the first movie...

I'm with NobodyHome on this one... but why stop at the war?

...Coming this fall... join us for a story of true love, discovered during the collapse of the twin towers - starring Brendon Fraser as an accountant with a heart, and Kiera Knightley as a spunky insurance company receptionist in "I <3 N Y"...

The whole concept of making money out of such a tragedy makes me feel both sick and angry at the same time...

It's interesting that many of you think it is unseemly to make movies about tragic events, because movies are money making things. Movies are also art and movies can even be educational.

It's just a wee bit over ten years since the genocide in Rwanda, and "Hotel Rwanda" just came out.

Friends of mine did twin-tower related visual art right after it happened as a way to process the pain and get meaning out of the tragedy. Many people who are not friends of mine did the same.

Neither of these things seem untoward, and many of the big Veitnam movies were saying important things about the conflict. Was it money-grubbing and sick to make "Apocolypse Now?"

How about "Saving Private Ryan?" Many people rave about the movie, but it was certainly a big-budget large-grossing Hollywood movie about a war.

Well, Reverse Chronologically. (By war)

Yugoslavia:
Behind Enemy Lines (2001) was the only real movie about the Yougoslavian conflict era, while The Peacemaker (1997) was based loosely on it. So those took 6 and 2 years respectively.

Somalia:
Black Hawk Down was released in 2001, based on Somalia (October 3, 1993). so, 8 years.

Gulf War:
Courage Under Fire (1996)&Three Kings (1999) are two of the more prominent Gulf war movies I remember. So, it took 5 and 8 years, respecively.

Grenada:
[url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091187/[/url]Heartbreak Ridge (1986)[/url] was the only real movie about the invasion of Grenada in October, 1983 So, that's only 3 years.

Vietnam: Now we get back to the last era that's really been highly used in movies.
Apocalpyse now (1979) (at least 5 years, though the actual date escapes me. (it was mentioned in the film))
Platoon (1986) At least 11 years. Though it was "the height of the conflict" so we'll say at least 14. Highly fictionilized, but by all reports one of the best and most accurate movie depiction of the Vietnam war.
Casualties of War (1989) At least 14 years, Though the events in the movie suggest it was early in the conflict, so we'll say 17 years.
Flight of the Intruder (1991) The book was highly publicized, and highly fictionalized, of course, but we'll still place this at least 16 years.
However, The Green Berets (1968) was released just as The Vietnam War was heating up.

WWII:
Midway, Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), The big red one, were all made relatively close to WWII, while Movies like the tuskegee airmen (1995) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) stand at least 50 years beyond the events.

I guess what we can infer from all this is that the stories really determine how fast a movie can be made, and for how long they will be remembered. Events like the possibility of the first woman medal of honor winner (Courge under fire) The beginning of Vietnam (Green Berets) The winning of the war in the pacific (Iwo Jima) were Big, History changing events and things the american populace were supposedly proud of. That's why they were made quickly.

Meanwhile Events that needed time to sink in, like platoon, Apocalypse, black hawk down, and Behind Enemy Lines, took a while for the authors to find a way to make the story not an reminder of the bad incidents they're based off of, but get to the core of heroism in the story and then make that story grand.

So, back onto the point. The american populace isn't entirely Thrilled with the events of the last 4 years. It's still a relatively sore spot, Especially with [reverb]Liberal Hollywood[/reverb]. So I do not think we're going to see events from Iraqi Freedom in movie form anytime soon. I would expect that we won't see them until at least 3 or 4 years after the end of the conflict, with the distinct exception given for the case of a truely heroic story.

FWIW; Ballad of the Green Berets was released at the height of the war (the Tet offensive was within a year of it's Debut). It was a fairly bad pro-war flick; starring John Wayne pretending that all of this was World War II again (only with different slanty-eyed enemies hiding in the trees). By the end of the movie the skeptical reporter was cleansed of his doubts; this was a holy crusade we were engaged in, purely for the good of the Vietnamese.

As a bit of geek trivia; George Takai was in this stinker, playing an ARVN officer so bad that every single man under him joined the VC. However, since he was one of the good guys; he was smart enough to plant bombs in all of their foxholes before the battle when they turned, and blew them all up without a single white man being harmed. I like to hope Mr Takai had a mortgage to pay, and never read the script; he was certainly vocal enough about what a scum his character was afterwards.

I wholely admit, It's a rather bad movie with Anvils everywhere. (Anvil: n. Literary device so obvious you see it falling from a mile away. Think "Dead Meat" from Hot Shots.) But I included it as an example of a bad event, presented ini a glowing light, becoming a movie before we knew just how bad things really were. It's a bit of propaganda for the Green Berets (who were at the time a very new concept.) And it was hollywood's attempt do do as they did as the Korean war began, by putting out WW2 movies, to boost recruitment and prove they were not communists. And as for George Takai... he was young and needed the money.

Granted... The point I was addressing is the need to "hollywoodise" the majority of movies to the extent the impact of the conflict / tragedy is lost in a load of fluff, irrelevances or distortion.

Imagine if the Titanic disaster happened just five years before the eponymous movie was released... it'd have been far too fresh in the minds of the viewers to be seen as anything other than crass and inappropriate... hence the "love story in the twin towers" example i implied...



Granted... because the subject matter was handled intelligently and with respect... It wasn't dumbed down in traditional Hollywood style...

The video game based off of Desert Storm: http://www.conflict.com/conflictDesertS ... efault.htm

I'd give it a few more years before they start making the movies based on it.

There is a game where one of the missions is to assassinate Uday and Qusay Hussein, might be America's Army, but I'm not sure.

And there is indeed a made-for TV movie based around what happened to Jessica Lynch. Well, that's not entirely true; it's based on a load of fictionalised rubbish about what happened to Jessica Lynch.

And whilst I'm unaware of any films actually set in the Twin Towers during the attack, there's always 9-11: Time of Crisis, all about the Bush Administration's heroic response to the tragedy. Now there's a funny film if ever I've seen one.