Well, it is an original formula...

So you are going to make a movie that has a conflict. You have a few options on how to go about the conflict. The traditional option is to make side A the good guys, and side B the bad guys. This is tried and true. Granted, it is boring and unrealistic, but it still works.

You could also do some moral ambiguity, and make neither side easy to fit into standard notions of either good or evil. If you do this, you have achieved the grittiness that this generation so loves, and will probably make a good movie.

You could also show the conflict from the point of view of Side A, which starts off with the assumption that they are the good guys. As the movie goes on, it is revealed that Side A is actually the bad guys. Do this, and you have a great anti-War narrative, a la "Platoon".

You could also show Side A and Side B as both being bad guys, with innocents caught in the middle. Maybe make them likeable bad guys (anti-heroes), and boom, youve got the good old mobster movie formula.




Gods and Generals, however, has decided to do away with all of these conventions, and instead portray a conflict between two sides who each get a rosey nostalgia attached to them. The movie, conveniently brushing over slavery, depicts the war as a battle between two sides who were equally right and just. It is generally annoying and sappy enough when a war movie does this to just Side A. Doing it to both sides is so sappy that it has almost achieved a state of avant garde self-satire.