MoonlightMile75 t1_iuismqn wrote on October 31, 2022 at 5:25 PM

I loved it. And while it is changed from the book, the main ideas are still there - that war is terrible, that it irrevocably ruins soldiers, the lack of regard for life by leaders, and ultimately the incredible wastefulness of WW1 in particular.

thorppeed OP t1_iuiuidv wrote on October 31, 2022 at 5:37 PM

At a very basic level it keeps a lot of the main ideas, and those are things that any good WW1 movie should have whether it's based on Remarques book or not. That's why I say it's a pretty good ww1 film still.

But at the same time so much is lost from it. And not just minor themes either. The details really add up and I can't even really call it the same story anymore. I went over a lot of it in this post but it was the way Paul's death was mishandled in particular that really made me want to make this post.

I'm glad you loved it but personally I was really just expecting something else from it. If I could seperate it from the book totally then I probably would have loved it too. But as it stands I feel like the book and the older adaptations as well were a lot more meaningful and so I felt disappointed by it.