The worst war movies ever, from delta force to the empire strikes back

Most of us in the U.S. never experience the horror of war. Instead of serving, we plop our fat asses in front of war movies to get a vicarious sense of battle. Too bad most of those movies suck.

Most often, war movies are terrible, corny affairs, riddled with inaccuracies and jingoism. The best of the worst, however, are inadvertently hilarious. Cartoonish violence. Ill-conceived depictions of battle. Patronizing stereotypes of the people called upon to fight wars while the rest of us relax in a movie theater. These movies don’t reflect well on their creators.

But that’s what makes them so awesome. We don’t always have the emotional or intellectual bandwidth for The Deer Hunter. That’s where these movies come in. They remind us, however accidentally, that the only thing worse than these corny, cringeworthy films is the warfare they ineptly try to display. Careful: Many of these clips are NSFW.

The ’80s were a simpler time. Terrorists wore jackets and ties to hijack civilian airliners. They didn’t actually want to kill (many) people. And Chuck Norris was free to be Chuck Norris, landing in Beirut with Lee Marvin and Delta Force to Chuck Norris the terrorists to death.

The act of Chuck Norrising does not allow for much stealth. T.E. Lawrence might have instructed that rifles and knives are the best weapons for discrete, small-unit warfare. But Chuck Norris prefers bazookas. He’ll negotiate with terrorists, but only after he’s riddled them with bullets. If Delta Force was real, Beirut would have been a charnel house, even for civil war-era Lebanon. That’s because Chuck Norris acts like a man awaiting his inevitable meme-dom. Before there was the internet, there was Delta Force.

The Air Force thought it knew what it was getting when it threw in its lot with Marvel Studios’ Iron Man. The movie wasn’t just a surefire blockbuster, it offered a unique PR opportunity. Not only would Iron Man’s account of heroics through technology generally align with the Air Force’s worldview, but it would show the service’s prized F-22 fighter jet, an expensive plane that’s never been flown in anger, patrolling the skies over an ersatz Afghanistan. Win!

Except … no. Iron Man flew halfway around the world to fight a terrorist group, and he’s not even fazed by two F-22 Raptors that try to intercept him. Tony doesn’t want to harm the pilots, so he loiters on the underside of a wing to shake them off. But the maneuvers he’s forced to take to get out of the situation prove too much for the plane and the pilot, who bails and leaves his extremely costly plane to crash. This isn’t the message you want to send about the awesomeness of the F-22 right as it nears the chopping block.

If the Air Force had read the comics, maybe it would have seen that Marvel often uses Iron Man to critique militarism. It’s dialed down for a mass-appeal summer movie, but notice how the Stark Industries logo resembles Lockheed Martin’s; the movie’s villain doublecrosses the government and a terrorist group in the interest of selling more weapons. This F-22 thing probably wasn’t gonna end well. But at least the Air Force got defeated by the Golden Avenger and not, say, persistent oxygen problems.

The Hughes brothers’ early-’90s Dead Presidents isn’t just a bad movie. It shoehorns a terrible, patronizing Vietnam movie into a preachy heist movie.

Everything Vietnam veterans hate about their portrayal in the movies is on display. Star Larenz Tate’s recon squad casually commits war crimes “in the bush” (did people say that in Vietnam?), fueled by the insane bloodlust of Sergeant Cleon, who enjoys executing prisoners and corpse desecration. Chris Tucker gets high. The Viet Cong cut off the wang of the guy who plays Christopher on The Sopranos. Tate writes home, in a scene filmed like Apocalypse Now, that nothing about the war makes sense. And then when they come home, they go on a crime spree!

It’s probably a good thing that Dead Presidents is mostly forgotten. The Hughes brothers might still be dealing with the fallout to their careers. It’s shame enough that they had to sully both Vietnam vets’ images and a classic Nas lyric.

OK, fine, so they’re not the Taliban — yet. But John Rambo’s most absurd adventure leads him to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan to join forces with the mujahideen in order to free a captured American. The mujahideen run a two-hour seminar on why invading Afghanistan is a terrible idea.

This is 1988, back when the exigencies of anticommunism rendered Afghan holy warriors the “good guys.” One of them even refers to the U.S. as “the free world,” bless his heart. Rambo’s Afghan guide recites a graveyard-of-empires aphorism about how invaders would pray, “May God deliver us from the venom of the cobra, the teeth of the tiger, and the vengeance of the Afghans.” Rambo translates: “You guys don’t take any shit.” Watching Rambo III in 2011 is awwwwwwwkward.

And not just because of Rambo’s muj-ness. The camp invasion is crazy. Watch the Soviet helicopters overrun their own base while Rambo turns one of the Russkies’ anti-aircraft guns against Ivan. Why do the Soviets have anti-aircraft guns when they’re not facing an airborne threat? Because it’s badass, that’s why! Later in the film, Rambo magically becomes an expert in flying Russian Mi-24 attack helicopters. Must be his faith in Allah.

If you’ve never seen Peter Jackson’s pre-Lord of the Rings epic Meet the Feebles, you’ll never see Gollum the same way ever again. Think The Muppet Show with on-screen narcotics use and hardcore (again, on-screen) pornography. And those are the least offensive parts of the movie.

No, the most offensive part is the extended flashback scene where one of the Feebles relives his nightmarish Vietnam tour. Yes, he gets captured by the (slant-eyed, buck-toothed) Viet Cong. Yes, he gets put in a tiger cage. Yes, he’s forced to play a Deer Hunter-inspired round of Russian roulette. Did I mention every character in this movie is a puppet?

After Meet the Feebles, Jackson went Hollywood; Lord of the Rings doesn’t really allow for black humor. But there’s always a chance that his Hobbit adaptation will show the dread dragon Smaug as a giant puppet, terrorizing a remote village in Afghanistan.

The Annihilators … wow. For those who’ve managed to forget it, it was a 1985 urban revenge fantasy about dealing with criminals like Vietnamese insurgents. The Annihilators, a U.S. commando unit, reconstitute themselves to take South Point, Georgia back from the thugs. But it’s a miracle they survived Vietnam in the first place.

You know what Adm. Bill McRaven, the Special Operations Command chief who masterminded the Osama bin Laden raid, never recommended in his book about successful commando missions? Running into a huge exposed clearing, with one guy as your perimeter security, to take your sweet time detonating a Viet Cong supply tunnel. Also: taking out dudes by putting them in sleeper holds or throwing knives at them. It’s a miracle only one Annihilator gets shot up during this massive Viet Cong assault. These are not going to be the guys you want policing American streets.

Didn’t get enough of crusty fighter pilot Chappy Sinclair in the first Iron Eagle? Now it’s time for Louis Gossett Jr.’s rule-breaking Air Force general to … teach you about cooperation in a post-Cold War world! Because that’s totally what you want from a franchise about fighter pilots who do awesome stuff.

Real quick: An Iran stand-in is committing nuclear blackmail, and it’s up to the U.S.’ best fighter jocks to stop it. Only said jocks are joined by their Soviet counterparts. And that’s where the movie goes downhill.

International post-Cold War cooperation is a very good thing. But it’s a good thing in the real world, not the world of Good Guys and Bad Guys that Iron Eagle II inhabits. Leave aside the absurdity of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaging in a combined operation to attack a Mideastern rogue state. You want the alliance to be a totally uneasy one, where Air Force ground crews try to steal MiG secrets in the hangar or something. What Iron Eagle II gives us instead is a corny buddy movie, the fighter-pilot equivalent of Lethal Weapon.

And all of it from the multilateralist mouth of Louis Gossett Jr. Who would have thought he was a closet one-worlder?

Just hear me out before you post snide comments, all right?

Yes, if the Empire’s plan is to disrupt the Rebel Alliance’s base on the ice planet of Hoth, it succeeded. No one questions that. But the Empire’s admirals are outright fools. First they attack the Alliance’s base without air cover, pounding it with artillery strikes from the giant mechanized Walkers. But if the Empire has learned anything from the destruction of the Death Star, it’s that the rebels are improbably good pilots. If Luke had to dodge TIE Fighters, maybe he couldn’t down that Walker so easily.

Speaking of the TIE Fighters: Why oh why doesn’t the Imperial fleet deploy any to intercept the fleeing rebels? The Empire knows the rebels will flee Hoth under assault. But it doesn’t deploy the TIEs even when it has visual confirmation of the rebel escape. Instead, the lumbering, poorly maneuverable Star Destroyers attempt the interception, and end up ineptly grinding against each other like middle schoolers when the DJ at the spring formal plays an R. Kelly song.

But it’s not all the Imperial military’s fault. Vader presents a classic case of a powerful civilian who micromanages military affairs. His inability to delegate and to brook criticism leaves him choking out his officers on the brink of the attack. No wonder the Imperial admiralty is so cowed and incompetent.

Aside from that, The Empire Strikes Back is the greatest film ever made. Attack me in comments for saying that.