Few Hollywood war movies match the brilliance and power of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. In this 1998 war film, Tom Hanks stars as U.S. Army Captain John H. Miller, a man sent to rescue a soldier currently deployed during World War II during the Normandy Invasion. Matt Damon is Private Ryan, and by U.S. military orders, once his three brothers died in action, he was to be sent home to his family as the last survivor. Capt. Miller has to get a troop of soldiers through enemy fire to rescue and pull Ryan out.

When this film arrived, Spielberg’s career saw him alternating between popcorn fare and serious releases, with his four previous films being Jurᴀssic Park, Schindler’s List, The Lost World: Jurᴀssic Park, and Amistad. The film marked a departure as it was two serious Spielberg historical films in a row, but what resulted was one of the director’s masterpieces, a war movie with a spectacular cast that went on to earn 11 Oscar nominations. Spielberg won Best Director but shockingly lost Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love. Despite that, Saving Private Ryan has a superior legacy all these years later.

Saving Private Ryan Is Still Cinema’s Most Influential War Movie

The Movie Influenced Other Movies, TV Shows, Video Games, & More

While few people talk about Shakespeare in Love anymore, the Library of Congress added Saving Private Ryan to the National Film Registry as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in 2014. The film more than deserved that honor. Not many war films have been as influential as Steven Spielberg’s classic. This is due to many things, including the emotional beats of the Army unit losing soldiers along the way and the realistic manner Spielberg directed the battle scenes.

In addition, the movie influenced many films, television shows, and even video games that came after it. The opening scene, with the storming of Normandy, was sH๏τ in a way that paid tribute to the classic Stanley Kubrick movie Paths of Glory, and everything since then has paid tribute to Spielberg’s version. Spielberg and Tom Hanks produced the HBO series Band of Brothers, which owes its existence to Saving Private Ryan. The later series, The Pacific, also owes a lot to both war releases.

Saving Private Ryan helped grow public interest in war movies again, resulting in everything from Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers and Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds and the biopic American Sniper. The filmmaking of this movie also helped influence everything from the Call of Duty video game series to the giant battles in later superhero movies.

Why Saving Private Ryan Is As Powerful Now As It Was In 1998

The Steven Spielberg Movie Is A Hard, But Rewarding Watch

Almost 30 years after its release, Saving Private Ryan is as intense and powerful as when it was first released. When the film was first released, there were stories of veterans who began to see more counselors to deal with PTSD issues, reignited by the film’s battle scenes (via Philly.com). According to many war veterans, this film had the most realistic depiction of wartime battles of any movie, and that remains true to this very day.

Saving Private Ryan is about a group of soldiers sent in to bring a man home. However, that isn’t what makes this movie so powerful. Instead, this is a film about men fighting side-by-side, looking to keep each other alive and complete a mission. However, not everyone gets through this alive, and the deaths all hit hard because Steven Spielberg makes the viewers care about these men. Saving Private Ryan is not an easy watch. It is a hard movie to sit through, but it is rewarding and one of the best war movies ever made in Hollywood history.