Post-Pandemic War Narratives: Case studies of Quo Vadis Aida? (2020), All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) and Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Abstract

War tends to polarise national and global conflicts as encapsulated by the phrase, ‘you are either with us or against us’. There is further danger of knee jerk reactions at such times, including the present, towards unconditionally funding long-term military security hardware and dedicating scarce resources that are badly needed for more benevolent projects, including equitable redistribution of resources, not to mention the challenge to move away from fossil fuels in our climate crisis. These tensions are evident on recognising European dependence on Russian oil and gas, which unfortunately is helping to fund the ongoing Ukrainian war. This paper will explore how a sample of more contemporary wars and national conflicts have been dramatised on film since the pandemic. Focusing specifically on three contrasting approaches to the tragedy of war and its effects on citizens and soldiers: from an insider’s personal response to the massacre in the Balkans during the 1990s in Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020), to the reworked conventional World War One classic All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), before finally coming full circle with the big budget Hollywood celebration of aerial war heroics in the sequel Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Sample textual and contextual analysis will be used to explore how such war narratives have become repurposed, both from an insider soldier’s perspective and also through a rejuvenated cinematic war framework, as contemporary audiences strive to cope with ever-increasing crises and conflicts facing the planet, having recently endured a global pandemic.