Why did they even bother to set this in the Korean War?

But that by itself didn't prohibit the filmmakers from changing the setting to Vietnam. Filmmakers have taken much greater liberties with the source material.

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Director Robert Altman wanted very much to set the film in Vietnam. However, the 'suits' at Fox made him put a title card in the beginning to set it in Korea. But that's the only mention of it. Everything else really says Vietnam.

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You have to really look at the zeitgeist of the time. How many movies can you think of that dealt with the Vietnam War that were made during the Vietnam War? - AndrewHNPX2

The only notable film about the war that was made during the war that I can recall offhand is The Green Berets starring John Wayne, which can hardly be called subversive although it was made as a reaction to the growing opposition to the war.

You make an important point about the zeitgeist. The fact that popular opposition to the war occurred at all is almost unprecedented, at least to the degree that happened with Vietnam. Historically, there had been opposition to previous wars--even to "the good war" (to borrow Studs Terkel's phrase), World War Two--but not at the scale of Vietnam, let alone its exposure as the first "television war." Compounding the issue is that there never had been a war like Vietnam before, with no clear objectives and confusion over who the "enemy" really was in a place halfway around the world.

In hindsight, it's easy to look at the 1960s as being a radical time that broke down many barriers, but change takes time--the decade may have initiated fundamental changes, but their impacts were not truly felt until years afterward. Moreover, those changes were hotly contested. Recall that Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 as a law-and-order man who represented the "silent majority," clearly a reaction to the social and political changes put forth by the various movements.

As other posters have noted, the motion picture studios were part of the established order, and maverick flimmakers such as Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese were just becoming established themselves, meaning that they still had to work within the system.

This extends to war movies as well. Historically, films made about a war as the war was still in progress have been "flag-wavers," or films supporting the war effort. World War Two provides the best example as the objectives and the enemy were clear, and there was relatively little opposition to the war effort.

Two notable exceptions occurred during, appropriately enough, the Korean conflict, the "forgotten war," with two films that may be largely forgotten today but that were fairly well-received in their day. Director Samuel Fuller's The Steel Helmet was made during the war, and its frank, realistic depictions of war at the squad level (Fuller had been a combat infantryman during World War Two, as reflected in his later, well-known The Big Red One) was, while not exactly subversive, not of the "flag-waver" variety, either. That is why for its follow-up, Fixed Bayonets!, the military insisted on a technical advisor, and Bayonets is a little more conventional than Steel Helmet.
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"Do your job and do it right/Life's a ball--TV tonight" - Frank Zappa

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"But war is a sad natural fact and no anti-war stuff is going to change it".

Yeah. So let`s not even try. Besides, the more anti-war people there are the more difficult it is for politicians and other as-holes to start wars. And movies are one possible way to influence people`s thinking... and not just for the worse.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

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