Wars are bad. Everybody knows that. And yet there are so many anti-war movies and TV shows to tell you that wars are bad. I know it, you know it, what are we talking about here?

How two stories show the same thing very differently. I chose anti-war genre because, well, the goal is obvious: you need to know that wars are bad, and the plot has to prove it. How exactly would you do that? ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ and ‘Generation Kill’ are diametrically opposed. You can fight me, but I’m convinced ‘Generation Kill’ is better. Not just better, I would say it’s superior.

Showing the gist

Every story has to be about something. At the same time, a scriptwriter is not allowed to just say `something` — viewers wouldn’t feel the emotions of the story — so a convoluted plot should to obfuscate the gist. Ideally, realization of it should blow you away at the end. Your own emotions are the best explanation of a story’s point.

You can apply this to everything. A character shouldn’t ever say “I am smart”, instead, you should see they’re smart without a clear declaration. And other characters should see it too, and they’re not supposed to say “You’re smart”, they just behave accordingly. They delegate a difficult task to that character or don’t lie to them, etc.

‘Hacksaw Ridge’

And you know what ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ did? Yeah, it literally said ‘wars are bad’. No shit, who could’ve thought!

I’m pretty sure you remember this one monologue when Andrew Garfield was crying. Yes, it’s a strong monologue, but it has a fundamental problem. It literally says that wars are bad. Nobody should ever say the gist like this. Viewers have to feel it, but instead they were told. And what makes it even worse, they were told the most obvious thing in the world. I can imagine a character saying something the author worried the viewers wouldn’t get or they would need a confirmation, but who needs a confirmation that wars are bad?

And then there is a unnecessary love subplot to make it even worse. The default motivation when a character lacks a better one. I will repeat it as many times as needed: most stories don’t need love plot lines if they’re not about love; your characters should have strong internal reasons instead.

Ah yes, he is also religious. Not one, but two external reasons to be good, and zero internal ones.

‘Hacksaw Ridge’ is a dull shell of what could have been a great movie. A story of a soldier who had never carried a gun sounds like an interesting premise and a reason to explore war ethics, but where is it? The guy wants to be good. He is good. The end.

‘Generation Kill’

On the other hand, there is an HBO mini-series about… well, war, as you might have guessed. Has it ever said anything about morality at all? No. It shows it, and does it brilliantly.

The beginning might scare you off — you just watch a bunch of idiots and wonder why the hell you should be interested. The more you watch, the more you realize: they’re not just a bunch of idiots, they’re very different people. It’s a career for someone, a morbid desire to see deaths for someone else, a way to get out of poverty for others, somebody just didn’t really think through before joining… They’re racist and homophobic, but at the same time funny, pragmatic and kind. It’s a weird mix of all types of people you could imagine that somehow ended up working together.

They begin as confident jerks making insulting jokes about literally everything. Episode by episode you see their armor breaks a bit more. They hide their souls from each other, because it would be too traumatizing to show any sign of fragility. And they go so far in hiding that half of them have a mental breakdown.

Sometimes they ask questions, but they don’t speak much about them. ‘How did that happen that we left our ammo but destroyed a local school?’ The thing is, the more complex the topic is, the more grounded characters should be. There is nothing poetic in dialogues, unlike ‘Hacksaw Ridge’; nobody in ‘Generation Kill’ tries to be a philosopher.

Remember when I was talking about the ‘Don’t say 4, say 2 and 2’ rule in the ‘3:10 to Yuma’ article? Well, ‘Generation Kill’ went even further and said $’\left( \sum_{k=1}^n a_k b_k \right)^2 \leq \left( \sum_{k=1}^n a_k^2 \right) \left( \sum_{k=1}^n b_k^2 \right)’$.

After maybe my third rewatch I finally understood most of what the characters say, because their intentions are well hidden. They don’t speak about their feelings and emotions; they’re also not allowed to talk about anything serious because of the unspoken rules — but you can decode what’s on their minds.

The problems in the series are more complex than just being good or bad. One of a sergeant’s man accidentally murders a kid while shooting camels for fun. It’s a lot to unpack already… This show doesn’t cut corners for sure. It’s the first time we see the protagonist crying — and it’s important because he’s the calmest here. He’s never showed much emotions, but this time something inside’s got broken.

His driver, who’s been the most funny and childish, suddenly starts a fight for absolutely no reason when they’re done and about to head home.

And of course, great final moments of the last episode. Throughout the show you might have noticed guys filming random stuff, and finally they see the full video. And it’s terrible. Destroyed houses, explosions, corpses, burnt cars. ‘Man comes around’ by Johnny Cash is playing, it’s the first time we hear music. The soldiers leave one by one. Only one of them watches till the end and enjoys, and it’s the same guy who killed the kid. Not a single word was spoken throughout this scene.

They were supposed to be proud, weren’t they?