Amph Why don't we see more media based around the Korean War?

I basically said that GenAntilles, however I showed zero respect for the entire subculture that feels an inexplicable need to simulate right wing military fantasies over and over again.

 

I thought this was about the Koran War and I got unreasonably excited that darth_boy was back.

WAY TO RAISE MY HOPES!!!

 

Similar thoughts, I just had more specific ones I wanted to put out there. As is your right, personal taste is personal, and I much preferred to original WWII Call of Duty games to the recent modern ones

 

DC's The New Frontier comic series starts off during the Korean War, with Hal Jordan as a pilot and Lois Lane as a war correspondent.

 

The same.

 

I'd like to second Guy on this. The movie was a bit on the cheesy side at times, but it's the only one I've seen that tries to give a more balanced perspective when it comes to war crimes and corruption on both sides. I wonder if there's a similar movie about the Chinese Civil War?

 

The Hunters and Battle Hymn are two good movies about the air war in Korea. But like someone said earlier, they're more like WW2 movies in tone and character.

 

There's also The Bridges at Toko-Ri.

Fun fact: TBATR was base on a Michener novella, which was based on a mission that may been flown by Neil Armstrong.

 

There had to have been some John Wayne propaganda films on this subject?

 

I forgot that one. Which also reminds me of Men of the Fighting Lady.

 

(Added with the aforementioned Bridges of Toko-Ri.)

And this is the real issue of why there isn't more media based on the Korean War. For mass market appeal, with only a 5 year separation, the land warfare portion of the Korean War isn't far enough removed from WWII to give its own appeal. The tactics were the same. The organizational structure was the same. The small arms, equipment, uniforms, tanks, etc.. were the same. This is especially true for the casual audience member/ game player who doesn't want a dedicated history lesson. If your WWII FPS has an M1 Garand or BAR, then your Korean War FPS is going to have.....an M1 Garand and a BAR....The result is that if you wanted to tell a visual story or design a video game about the Korean War, you'd basically have one for WWII but without the rich, multiple settings that WWII had. By the time the Korean War broke out, you still had stories from WWII being told, which is why so many Korean War movies are basically WWII movies set in Korea.

There are 2 major caveats here:

1) The air war in Korea is a completely different beast than the above, because Korea was the first conflict that saw jet to jet combat (not including the extremely limited prototypes at the end of WWII). There are all sorts of movies about the early 1950's era of jet combat, even if they aren't all specifically limited to the Korean War because there was enough of a paradigm shift to make it worth while on its own.

2)As has already been mentioned with Sam Fuller's Steel Helmet, you also have to separate out the Korean War movies which were actually released during the time the conflict was going on. Retreat Hell is the perfect example of this. Where as Steel Helmet was more of a human interest story set against the backdrop of Korea, Retreat Hell was about a battalion of Marines who were fighting in Korea with Korean-war specific situations. As a bonus, it had both sympathetic and non-sympathetic Asian depictions, and most of the stereotyping was directed against the communist Chinese foes, more because of the communistic angle, not the Chinese one, because it was produced at the start of the cold war.

 

Why can't we just get Ken Burns to do something?

 

Honestly I think we need more WWII movies, we don't have enough of those.

 

We need more WWIII movies....

 

We need more WWIV movies.

 

we need more wwf movies. ohhhh yeah!

 

Actually there has been a pretty marked deficit of wildlife documentaries. While something like "African Cats" was a strong entry in the genre, there's been no real follow-up. And even this represents a continued limping along on the strength of celebrity names in the marquee.

 

The spirit of MASH is a critique of Vietnam, but also just of war in general. And it is in fact very specific to Korea, all the way down to troop surges and specific battles and China's entrance into the war, etc. all having episodes dedicated to them.

 

Yeah, we've had the longer discussion. I don't really dispute that or have a problem with it. But the contrast I was more trying to make was to film's that have had a powerful impact on the cultural understanding of the conflict. For instance, people came away from "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific" with what was, especially for younger viewers, a new framework for how they'd subsequently imagine the war and its lived experience. Films like Apocalypse Now, Conrad re-telling that it was, did the same for Vietnam. But discussing MASH, the thing it seemed to help people understand was. . .Vietnam.

For all that this may not be fair, it does directly address the original poster's question about the cultural importance of the war better than a strict plot synopsis of the series would.