War films and Genre

War films are a film genre concerned with warfare, usually about naval, air or land battles, sometimes focusing instead on prisoners of war, covert operations, military training or other related subjects. At times war films focus on daily military or civilian life in wartime without depicting battles. Their stories may be fiction, based on history, docudrama, biographical, or even alternate history fiction.
The term anti-war film is sometimes used to describe films which bring to the viewer the pain and horror of war, often from a political or ideological perspective.


What you mainly associate with war films is simply war. You expect to see one side fighting another and are usually based on fact. Examples of war films are black hawk down, platoon and we were soldiers. However some war films that are based on fact  are sometimes played around with for example Pearl Harbor, the background story around it is true but they play around with it and bring in a romance story. Some war films are different for example Rules of Engagement, this a war of words in a courtroom about crimes inflicted during a war so not neccessarily are all war films simply about war.

These are the types of things you expect to see in a typical  war genre film

• War
• Injury
• Death
• Guns
• Blood
• Vehicles (air,sea or land)
• Explosions
• Chaos
• Pain
• Horror of war

1 film that does follow Todorov's theory and 1 that doesn't

A film that follows Todorov's theory is The Expendables. First of all you are shown Vilena and that something is wrong with the government. The disruption is that they are sent in to repair the damage. The new equilibrium is that everyone is killed and Vilena returns to being a nice island. They do this because it is that typical style of film where something is wrong they send in people and they kill all the bad guys.

However one film that I believe does not fit his theory is The Departed because there is no new equilibrium at the end of the film the situation has not been resolved so the equilibrium is the same. They do this because it is a complex thriller and a bit more realistic because most of the main characters are killed in this film.