I wanted to love this movie so bad. But the ending absolutely wrecked it for me, personally. The book's ending is so powerful and heart wrenching. We spend the whole book with Paul as he slowly disassociates from his youth. We watch him kill. We watch him lose his best friends. We feel his soul leaving his traumatized youthful body. He soldiers on, breaking slowly. And "He fell in October of 1918, on a day so quiet and still, that the army action report confined itself to a single sentence: All quiet on the western front..."

He dies a month before the war ends, and his death is meaningless. This boy we grew to know and care about falls, and it simply doesn't matter to the machine that keeps grinding boys like him and his friends without so much as a shrug. When I first read it it broke me. For me, I really found I resented the ending of the new movie. Him ramboing his way through the french soldiers is silly to me. Paul isn't supposed to go out in a heroic last stand. He dies on a quiet day, with no ceremony or fanfare, our only solace as the reader is that "his face wore an expression of calm. As if almost glad the end had finally come."

Sorry for the rant. But this is one of the most powerful books I've read. And I wanted them to capture Remarque's meaning, and it didn't quite do it for me.

I really love your analysis. You make really great observations, and I seriously appreciate your insights!

All I can think is that the general would make a killer Dr. Robotnik.

The issue is that it wasn’t All Quiet on the Western Front. It was a WWI movie that had some characters with the same names as in All Quiet.
I was beyond pissed when they didn’t show the home leave and just had Kat talk about it. You can’t have All Quiet without that sequence, it is the crux of the whole story.

I remember a critic saying once “if you want to make your own movie make your own movie, don’t use the name of a more successful movie.” That’s the vibe I get from this version of all quiet. The director really wants to make his own movie, but some exec somewhere was like “oh name it all quiet on the western front”.

The book's authenticity comes from its honest perspective—Remarque wrote about things he had truly seen. It's ironic that the novel portrays the emptiness of civilians who believed they knew more about the war than he did, yet now we have a film adaptation made by civilians who, although anti-war rather than pro-war, still presume to know more about the "big picture" than Remarque.

For me it just looks like the 2022 film doesn't have the guts to tell the people that the civilians in WW1 were part of the problem, that the war they "fought" was based on pointless and fake rivalries, that the civilians acted more like spectators watching as their friends and family members died and refused to listen to them, the people that enlisted kids for the war, or how they believed that their sacrifice was meaningful, that peace agreements were actions of cowards, that they needed to win the war or else.

What I missed in all movies, but what was an obvious conclusion in the book, was the moment when they entered an abandoned British trench, and found an abundance of canned food that the British had left behind. Much of it had 'made in the USA' written on it.
In the book, it was clear to Paul and all his comrades that Germany had lost the war.
If the Allies would simply abandon such treasures, they realised they had no chance of winning.
The fact that Germany had lost WW1 and that everyone fighting it knew it, was very much made clear in the book.
That was the main reason the Nazis banned the book. It told the truth about the 'stab in the back' myth that got Hitler elected.

"We could be brothers. But they don't want us to know that" such a sad but true statement 😥

I think the best description of the 2022 film comes from German media, who simply called it "Oscar hungry", the entire movie reeks of being made to court the awards

The 2022 version of this movie didn't show the camaraderie and pain of loss of losing each friend slowly, one by one, the pain Paul suffered from going back home on leave and seeing his family. He never got to leave, and all of his classmates were killed immediately when they all got there. For as low budget as the 1979 version was, it was still superior.

I really preferred the '79 version honestly. Even if it was somewhat corny. From what I remember the battles had no music and it was just the blaring sound of machine-like gunfire and artillery, which is better imo. Even specific scenes like him in the crater with the French soldier and the ending are better in the previous versions. Thank you for this analysis dude!

Unironically i had the same experience after returning from Ukraine, we were having dinner in a restaurant and one of my non-combat friends corrected me in my statements about the conditions on the frontline. All in the year 2022.

The worst thing about trauma is that it estranges you not just from the people around you but from yourself. If you recall from the book, young Paul is full of dreams and curiosity. By the time of his death all that is gone, buried under layer after layer of trauma.

The 1930 original is to WW1 what Apocalypse Now is to Vietnam.Two of the greatest anti-war movies ever made. Paths of Glory comes a very close second.

All the movies miss a huge point of the book by changing the ending, that they have become soldiers that war is an important and integral part of them.  The sequel 'The Road Back' expands on this and the soldiers' tough time of switch back to civilians.  There is a passage in it that I love and hits home being a veteran myself, "Every man has been tempered through countless, pitiless days; every man is a complete soldier, no more and no less.  But for peace?  Are we suitable? Are we fit now for anything but soldiering?"

This was exactly my problem with the 2022 movie. If you changed the title no one would ever know it was All Quiet.

The first version was made within 15 years of the World War. It was fresh in everyone's mind.  My mom remembered how the future General MacArthur hosed down and burned the camps of the Bonus Marchers, the Veterans of the war who had been promised a substantial post war financial bonus by the Wilson administration and which they never got, part of the reason Hoover was hated and blamed for the Depression. But it was the unkeepable false promises that they made to keep the soldiers fighting.

I loved the 1979 one. The biggest things missing for me was the scene where Paul went back to Germany expecting a hero’s welcome only to find a ghost town with people indifferent and miserable. Also, the boot camp scenes were great, I loved the part where they pick on their old officer when he finally made it to the front. And his death too. It’s an oddly peaceful death. Sudden, gives the feeling he can finally rest after all the horror and loss. Kind of romanticises death.

I watched the 1930 version as a six year old with my grandfather. In 1930 my six year old future grandfather was taken to the cinema to watch it by his WWI veteran father. He told me that there were lots of veterans there with their sons, and no kids played war games after the film.

My grandfather volunteered and fought in WW1 and WW2. He was already working in a mine at 14 years old and ran away at 16, lying about his age, to volunteer for the Seaforth Highlander Regiment. He was shot and laid on the battlefield for seven hours. Working-class British men didn't even have the right to vote in the UK until after the war. The Germans did. That war won working-class men the vote as they were battle-hardened and angry and would not go back to being told they were not worthy of a vote. They gave wealthy women the vote at the very same time in 1918. In 2018, they celebrated 100 years since some women got the vote but didn't even mention what those men had won. I saw female British Members of Parliament talking about it and they didn't even realise that working-class men like my grandfather had no rights at all in the UK.