Villains in American War Movies After 1975

The character Rambo played by Stallone has brought vague comfort to the conservatives who tend to review the war. That is, if there is no victory on the battlefield, the film helps us have victory on the screen to soothe our wounded ego. The political message of the film and its propaganda are very clear: the Vietnamese are cruel, barbaric, cowardly, evil. Rambo symbolizes what is just and noble. Standing on the realistic perspective of the war, this is clearly a film that blatantly turns black into white, aiming to satisfy the goal of "rewriting history" in the Hollywood way "turning a shameful military defeat into a war epic" [112]. The film Rambo , First Blood (part 2) is another attempt to confront the Vietnam War. But in the end, through the exaggeration of the content and image of the film's character, "Johnny Superman is still shown as a wounded person " [112]. Intellectual viewers still recognize the absurdity of this type of hero and only consider it a humorous attempt to regain lost glory. The tendency to recreate heroic characters of brave American soldiers in the Vietnam War, to review the war in a way that praises the glory of American soldiers, and to find ways to erase and blur the mistakes of America is also affirmed in the film We Are Soldiers produced by director Randal Wallace in 2002. The film tells the story of the battle at La Drang (based on the best-selling book We Were Soldiers and… Young - We Were Soldiers and

… young by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore). All of the above films are clear illustrations of a trend in Hollywood films about the Vietnam War.

Mark Cronlund Anderson, an American history professor, in his article: “How to Win the Vietnam War: More Rambos Are Needed” [76] made seemingly humorous but deeply meaningful comments about

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Why America Needs More Rambos: “The narratives of the Vietnam War are very similar to the myths of America’s territorial struggles, which scholars consider myths born of the nation’s founding. In general, American Vietnam War films depict fictional cowboys fighting fictional Indians. The cowboys, while invading, occupying, and pillaging, fought to protect democracy and freedom; the Indians/Viet Cong fought against goodness and decency and everything else America could think of. In short, similar to the myth of territorial struggles, in Vietnam, civilization once again wrestled with barbarism. And the war was disastrous because America fought in Vietnam to prevent the spread of communism, which threatened to dominate the world, an obsession of American presidents throughout the 20th century. Thus, once again, as in the mythical territorial story, America is fighting in Vietnam for its own survival” [76].

3.3.4. Villains in American war films after 1975

The enemy characters in American feature films about the Vietnam War after 1975 are often just ghosts, which many American critics call "faceless" . The Viet Cong, guerrillas, Vietnamese people... in some American war films about Vietnam are described as cruel, inhuman, brutal. They rape civilians (Heaven and Earth ...), kill civilians (throwing grenades into civilian bunkers in The Deer Hunter ), physically and mentally torture the enemy (forcing prisoners to play Russian roulette in The Deer Hunter ), or are dark-skinned, dirty, cruel, lustful, cowardly, incompetent savages, even bowing to Russian advisors ( Rambo, Bloodshed).

the first time II ), or the inferior people a “yellow peril” that needs to be enlightened ( Now is the end of the world ),…

The villains do not have a character that is a direct opposite and worthy of the protagonists of the good side. The Americans - this way of looking at the enemy character first of all comes from the filmmakers' goal of justifying the mistakes of the most brutal and unjust war in American history, for the reason that the US government has pursued for so many years: "to stop brutal communism, a threat to humanity". Many critics have pointed out that the battle sequence of the film The Deer Hunter is a reversal of the common activities of American soldiers, seeking to pacify Vietnamese villages by burning and destroying, specifically the My Lai massacre in March 1968, in which American soldiers massacred between four and five hundred Vietnamese civilians, mainly women and children. (Seymour Hersh published the first reports of the My Lai massacre in November 1969.) The film shows the Viet Cong destroying the village and killing its inhabitants, while heroic American soldiers avenge their deaths.[112]

Next is the way of describing the racism in the films about their villains, to enhance the “pride” of their civilized race and the right to enlighten the ignorant, as well as to find ways to explain and attract the audience to follow the trend of blurring the lines between right and wrong, reality and illusion, like the comment of John Pilger - a British war correspondent about the film The Deer Hunter which he called “The Hunter of the Gooks” (Viet Cong): “It is a cynical attempt by Hollywood to profit from a film that directly evokes the cause of war and allows the Vietnam War to last so long because of racist instincts” [112]. And the researcher

Saul Steier commented that the film Doomsday “is a deeply racist film” because all the Asians in the film are portrayed as insane. The Vietnamese people’s will to win the war was due to their primitive nature. Asians are primitive and savage, wild in nature. Intelligence and civilization are the causes of the American defeat [66] .

The way the enemy characters are portrayed in American Vietnam War films like this further exposes the confusion, roundaboutness and helplessness of filmmakers in depicting the reality of the war in accordance with historical truth. Cinema is an art form and it is a land for the imagination and creativity of filmmakers to run wild. However, whether we like it or not, war films always reflect real historical events. Therefore, the ambiguity, deception, and black-white conversion cannot fool the audience who understands and respects the truth.

Through this, we can see one thing: in the feature films about the Vietnam War after 1975, if Vietnamese filmmakers have developed in their perception and in portraying the opposing side's characters to make them more realistic, that has not happened with American filmmakers.

Through the development of the American Vietnam War film genre and based on the most prominent films of each trend analyzed above, we can see the following characteristics in character building:

The films rarely focus on one main character - this is often established in the plot of classic Hollywood movies. American war films have a variety of characters, rarely showing the image of a central character, especially combat films.

For example, the movie Platoon , has many characters and is divided into two main character lines: one side is the characters close to Sergeant Barnes, who is cunning, dangerous, selfish, violent, cold, symbolizing evil, and the other side is the soldiers close to Sergeant Elias, symbolizing good and good and evil in the movie are also relative. The character Chris Taylor is considered the narrator of the story, like an observer of everything that is happening.

The same goes for the movie Doomsday , which depicts a group of American soldiers driving a motorboat up the river carrying Captain Willard, who is ordered to find and kill Colonel Kurt. Although it feels like Willard is the main character, the movie is actually about many characters. In addition to Willard and Kurt, the movie also depicts Colonel Kilgore and his helicopter squadron, as well as the lives and deaths of each American soldier on Willard's boat.

The Deer Hunter depicts the lives of three old friends during and after the war and the horrific suicide by Russian roulette of Nick - one of them. The Return tells the story of three characters, one of whom is an American veteran, and their love triangle. It can be said that although they are all feature films, many American Vietnam War feature films are documentary in nature and depict diverse fates of characters in the war; the narrative tries to create authenticity with many different events and characters.

The flashback technique is used in films with many effects: Portraying multi-dimensional characters, characters with depth, stories within stories creating appeal and following the characteristics of human thinking - humans always have memories and associative thinking, comparison, and contrast.

In the films, diverse American characters are built fully, with both personal lives and national service lives. The character's personality creates attraction, obsession and extremely realistic details in the character.

Filmmakers use the narrative film genre to increase persuasiveness and credibility. For example, in the film Platoon . The character type is still a heroic character (unusual in intelligence, courage, ideology, soul...) but in an extremely harsh context of war - a war in which the hero realizes its meaninglessness. The cruelty of an unjust war, along with the awareness of it, is a great challenge for filmmakers. The heroic character changes on many levels and nuances: From a hero participating in the war to a hero opposing the war, a victorious hero to a defeated one. From a hero enthusiastically participating in the war to a hero opposing the meaningless war, bravely speaking the truth, the right, so that no one has to continue to lose because of war,...

It was these changes that brought American cinema great success in films exploiting the theme of the Vietnam War after 1975.

3.4. Some reasons for character transformation in Vietnam War films of American Cinema after 1975

3.4.1. Reality, the outcome of the war and the time lag

Reality, the outcome of the war and the time lag affect the choice of cinematic characters.

As well as the cause of the change in the characters of the Vietnam War-themed feature films of Vietnamese cinema after the war, the change in the economic, political and social context has created changes in literature and art, including cinema. The Vietnam War has left serious consequences for

American society. The Vietnam syndrome haunts generations of Americans. People cannot escape the truth, especially the terrible truth.

The Americans had to retreat from the war with Vietnam on their own land, despite spending a large amount of money, manpower and great determination. The need to be aware of what had passed was raised.

In fact, the soldiers saw the nature of the Vietnam War was not as they thought: the meaninglessness of the war, the death and loss of their families, loved ones and themselves, the war aimed guns at innocent people in their own homeland,... Many Americans who participated in the Vietnam War after the war became writers and filmmakers, directly recreating the tragedy of the war.

3.4.2. The tradition of promoting individuality and the Hollywood tradition

The tradition of promoting individuality and individuality of American culture and the Hollywood tradition strongly influence the transformation of characters and heroes - with high humanity.

The hero can be understood as a Hollywood specialty.

Initially, the hero character was romanticized, poeticized, and acted as a savior in the fantastic contexts of war,...

After that, the hero character fails, suffers many losses, is close to real life, ordinary life, ... but their qualities are not lost: intelligence, difference. But the character in a war movie only has vitality when it is placed on a realistic background.

3.4.3. The cinema industry knows how to look straight at the truth and perceive fairly.

Although there is still a conservative tendency, unwilling to acknowledge the failure, the unjust nature of the war with the desire for the hero to return in some films produced after 1975, but based on the achievements of American cinema in films about the Vietnam War, it can be affirmed: American cinema is a great cinema, with many works by talented filmmakers, with conscience, daring to look straight at the truth and make fair judgments. That also has deep, fundamental causes.

Firstly, on the basis of the values of freedom, democracy, equality, and charity, talented filmmakers with honest perspectives have created films with humanistic values that approach the truth about history and the truth about people. Cinematic achievements in war-themed films are always associated with an increasingly profound awareness of the unjust nature of war...

Second, cinema is an art and also an entertainment industry. In order to develop as an art and truly contribute to cultural development, it must tell the truth. Only by building on a foundation of truth can characters move people's hearts. If some American filmmakers in the early stages of the war before 1975 made propaganda films for the war of aggression to serve politics, then after 1975, many filmmakers made films about war for the people, to serve the people and for the future of America.

The achievements and limitations of American cinema in character building in films about the Vietnam War will certainly give us deeper understanding of people and war from the other side and those who

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