Military & War

8 Tropes 7 Movies
Table Of Contents
Diplomacy Depicted Negatively
  State Department Depicted Negatively
    Diplomats Depicted Negatively
Foreign Countries are a Threat
  Enemy has More Advanced Military Technology
Military Equipment Glamorized
  Military Weapons Glamorized
    Enemy has More Advanced Military Technology
Terrorism is a Threat
  Nuclear Terrorism is a Threat
  Torture Justified to Stop Terrorist Attacks
Torture is Effective and/or Justified
  Torture is Effective
  Torture is Justified
    Torture Justified to Stop Terrorist Attacks
War Depicted with Conservative Biases on Screen
  Nuclear War is a Threat

Conservative Trope Examples

  • Zero Dark Thirty (2012) | Torture is Effective
    The movie strongly implies that waterboarding suspects directly led to the eventual hiding spot of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, but in reality bin Laden was eventually found after the C.I.A. tracked down his courier using conventional means.
  • Unthinkable (2010) | Torture Justified to Stop Terrorist Attacks
    Clandestine officer H (Samuel L Jackson) brutally tortured suspected terrorist Yusuf Atta Mohammed (Michael Sheen) and even slashed his wife's throat right in front of him because Yusuf is threatening to detonate nuclear bombs he hid in three different cities.
  • Unthinkable (2010) | Nuclear Terrorism is a Threat
    A former Delta Force soldier and bomb expert placed three nuclear bombs in three American cities and then sends a videotaped confession to the government saying that the bombs will detonate within a week.
  • Right at Your Door (2006) | Nuclear Terrorism is a Threat
    Terrorists detonate three dirty bombs in different parts of Los Angeles, destroying large swaths of downtown and filling the air with a toxic ash.
  • Man on Fire (2004) | Torture is Effective and/or Justified
    John Creasy (Denzel Washington) duct tapes a suspected kidnappers hands to a steering wheel and cuts off a finger after he initially refuses to divulge any information about where the young girl John's looking for is. John then cuts another finger and part of his ear off, which finally gets the suspected kidnapper to spill the beans on where the girl is. After getting all the information he came for, John lights the kidnappers cigarette then shoots him in the head.
    Additional Tropes: Vigilantism is Justified
  • Rules of Engagement (2000) | Diplomats Depicted Negatively
    Ambassador Mourain (Ben Kingsley) is shown as scared, weak, clueless & unpatriotic during an evacuation of the US embassy in Yemen. He yells in a panic, "Colonel, we can’t wait here! Let’s go! Why are we still here?" just before he is given the embassy's USA flag brave marines took down while under fire. He is later convicted of lying in a plot to frame Samuel Jackson's Colonel Childers.
    Staff Aside
    In real-life, ambassadors know the risks of regions they serve and act nobly along with all the men and women they serve with.
  • True Lies (1994) | Nuclear Terrorism is a Threat
    Muslim terrorists trying to detonate a nuclear bomb in the United States is the plot.
  • Patriot Games (1992) | Torture is Effective
    Harrison Ford throws the IRA mole inside the British government down his basement stairs and shoots him in the leg so that he tells him about IRA terrorists coming for his family and British royals.
    Staff Aside
    You can't write many scenarios better justifying torture than to help terrorists from killing your wife and daughter.
    Additional Tropes: Torture Justified to Stop Terrorist Attacks