There really ought to be more movies about WW1

There are a myriad of incredible stories to be told, but here's the biggest problem, at least, as far as Hollywood is concerned:

Very, VERY few Americans.

Foreign film companies likely don't have the budgets to do a really good WWI action flick ala Saving Private Ryan or similar and American companies want American heroes. There are next to none in World War One.

When Flyboys (won't lie, still haven't seen it) came out, I thought the idea was laughable. I always thought an aerial-focused WWI film had tremendous potential with the German, French and British aces carving out a brand new kind of combat in the skies. To focus on the handful of American pilots is skipping over the best stories (the Red Baron's life and death begs a biopic) and goes straight to scraping the bottom of the barrel before the barrel is even empty.

I thought this movie would be more like the book "To the Last Man"... at least the flying portions. Raoul Lufburry and the Red Baron featured along with the rest of the Lafayette Escadrille. It was a great story, and flyboys felt like a weak retelling of it, with some of the characters like weak watered down versions of the real characters. I had just finished the book coincidentally, so the timing may have ruined the movie for me somewhat. I'll have to rewatch it at some point, but its not high on my list.

Galipoli, Joyuse Noel, The Red Baron, Warhorse?
Seems like there are a fair number of recently made ones around, they just tend not to be made by the Hollywood machine.

"Any plan that involves losing your hat is a BAD plan.""

I know this thread is old, but here we are only a few months away from the 100 year anniversary of the guns of August. I also would like to see more films about WWI, and I also think a film depicting the lead-up to the war would be fascinating if done right.

My understanding is that after the assassination of Ferdinand, the war could have been averted if not for various diplomatic mistakes and misunderstandings. Once the mobilizations began though, the powers were basically locked into a collision course, because whoever disrupted their own mobilation first would have made themselves too vulnerable to attack. So once mobilization began, it couldn't be stopped (almost like a slow-mo version of a modern day nuclear escalation).

That whole process would make a great historical film, although realistically it would probably be a box office flop as a lot of really good films are.



-Make it so!