21 Things Movies Get Wrong About War

French filmmaker Francois Truffaut is widely credited with the idea that it’s impossible to make an anti-war film because “to show something is to ennoble it.” That guy clearly never saw Movie 43, but he had a point about war. When a battle is gorgeously lit, dramatically scored, lovingly framed and strategically blocked, it becomes less of a battle and more, well, art, and that’s really not what they mean when they call it “the art of war.”

In the real world, war is both simpler and more complicated, more mundane but also more chaotic, louder and faster but also slower and not that loud, Nolan, Jesus Christ. The reality of war is just not cinematic enough for a movie, which is why movies have to make war cinematic. Reddit proved that when user TheAirplane asked, “Redditors who have been in a military combat scenario: What aspects of war/battle does Hollywood fail to portray?”