War Movies

After watching All Quiet on the Western Front I began thinking that there isn't that many movies about WWI. Then it got me thinking about other wars. The war with the most movies based on it is WWII, which it probably should be as there are many different stories to be told about that war. But what about other wars. Each war has their own stories.

Take for instance The Revolutionary War. Lots of good stories from that war and the only movies I can think of that are about it are 1776, The Patriot and a movie on the History Channel about Washington's crossing of the Delaware. The website ranker.com lists only 13 movies about the revolutionary war. I guess after living in Boston and being around all that history it surprises me that there aren't more movies based on it.

Then I did a search on IMDB for movies about the War of 1812(ranker.com had nothing listed for the war of 1812). That came up with only 3 movies, and one of them is a remake of the first one. Really only 2 stories to tell from the War of 1812? The war where the British burned down half of Washington DC, where Andrew Jackson fought the Battle of New Orleans, and the war that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner. And the only 2 stories we can tell from that war are 2 versions about the pirate who helped Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans and the other movie takes place during the war but has nothing to do with the war. No wonder when the History Channel did a special on the War of 1812 they called it the forgotten war.

Maybe I just watch too much History Channel, but it just surprises me how much certain history gets overlooked. I recently saw a special on the History Channel about Andrew Jackson, and wow, there is a president that we should make a movie about. Really fascinating guy. And instead we had Oliver Stone make a movie about George W. Bush. I know Steven Spielberg is making a movie about Lincoln with Liam Neeson which will hopefully be good since there aren't that many Civil War movies either. Guess all I am saying is it would be nice to see movies from different parts of history instead of just focusing on the same time period over and over.

According to Ranker.com here are the number of movies made about each war. Some of the movies on the lists are made for TV and some I never heard of. And of course they aren't necessarily good movies that list would be much shorter. But they give a general idea about how many movies were made based on these wars.
WWII-207
Vietnam War-76
WWI-54
The Civil War-28(this number surprised me I actually thought there would be more)
Iraq War-19
Revolutionary War-13
Gulf War Movies-8
War of 1812-0 (3 according to IMDB)
Korean War-0 (38 according to IMDB but the only one I could think of was M.A.S.H.)