An examination of American history involves looking at how our collective history is portrayed in the cinema, reflecting our views on different events in our evolving presence in the world. An ever-present film genre, the War film is detailed in The Evolution of the War Film Genre: From Westerns and World War II to Vietnam, showing the origin of the War film genre as it evolved from the Western and was modified during the years in between World War II and Vietnam, before being completely changed when films about the Vietnam experience appeared in the decades after the war’s end, and again with the films of the War on Terror.