What War Movies Really Tell Us

What do war films really teach us - not just about conflict, but about who we think we are, and what we believe we’d do when it matters?

In this Christmas episode of Facing Coming Storms, we step slightly sideways from our usual focus on geopolitics and defence technology to explore war movies and popular culture and what they reveal about society’s relationship with conflict.

We’re joined by Robert Hutton and Duncan Weldon from the War Movie Theatre podcast, alongside Patrick Bury, former British Army officer and now Professor of National Security Studies. Together, we talk about the films we grew up with, the ones that still resonate, and the striking absence or difficulty of telling stories about more recent wars.

What We Explore 

- Why War Movies Matter: We reflect on how war films act as a cultural classroom - teaching generations what courage, leadership, sacrifice and loyalty are supposed to look like.

- Generations, Memory and Distance: We compare how different generations encountered war through cinema - from Second World War films shown on Sunday afternoons, to Vietnam-era classics, to the far thinner cultural record of Iraq and Afghanistan.

- Action Films vs War Films: We draw a clear distinction between spectacle and substance, asking why the most enduring war films are rarely about explosions and almost always about people under pressure.

- Failure, Defeat and Groupthink: From A Bridge Too Far to Kajaki, we explore why some of the most powerful war films are about mistakes, moral ambiguity and institutional failure and what they teach us about leadership and decision-making.

- Modern Wars and the Storytelling Gap: We ask why Iraq and Afghanistan have produced relatively little mainstream cinema, and whether proximity, political discomfort, or unresolved outcomes make these conflicts harder to process.

- War, Preparation and Deterrence: The conversation widens to the present day - how societies prepare for conflict, why deterrence depends on credibility, and why the goal of preparation is often to ensure war never happens at all.

- Culture, Identity and the Information Space: We reflect on how narratives, myths and memory interact with today’s information environment and why misremembering past wars can be as dangerous as forgetting them.

As we close, one theme keeps resurfacing: war stories endure because they are never just about war. They are about character, pressure, loss, loyalty, and the choices people make when there are no good options left.

In a moment where the idea of conflict feels uncomfortably close again, these stories remind us that preparedness is not bravado, and reflection is not weakness. Understanding how we’ve told these stories before may be one of the ways we avoid having to live them again.

Facing Coming Storms is brought to you by the British Army’s Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research, in partnership with the Project for the Study of the 21st Century, and produced by Urban Podcasts.