Ah, war movies. They push humanity passed what is comfortable and familiar onto wild and violent territory where our livelihoods are compromised. Suddenly our senses of safety and security are ripped from us and we are launched into a survival of the fittest in the most extreme definition of the concept. It's increases the divide between us and them, between friends and strangers, and (sometimes) between friends and family members. War movies show us the triumph of man through the lens of a protagonist who is not unlike us. He (or she) is the "any" person rising to a challenge to protect the ones they love back home.

The war movie protagonist is the one we have hopes of becoming: resilient, brave, unafraid of failure. This is the platform that superhero movies employ as well, but to a higher degree since, well, they have special powers or abilities. These war heroes awaken the hero we'd like to hope is inside all of us. We hope that, given the opportunity, we would rescue those children from a burning apartment building, volunteer to be the last person out of a school bus being submerged in a body of water, or to be some modern day "catcher in the rye". It's a hope that the most of us can only speculate and ask within.