Western Animation / The War to End All Wars – The Movie

Front row: a British soldier, Milunka Savić, Albert I of Belgium, a stormtrooper, and Capt. T.P. Bonham
Back row: Vladimir Vazov, Pvt. Henry Johnson, an Alpino, and Adrian Carton de Wiart

The War to End All Wars – The Movie is a CGI Animated Musical film about World War I, co-produced by animation studio Yarnhub and Swedish Power Metal band Sabaton. After a preview performance for the press, it began a limited series of showings from 4 to 19 November 2023 in history museums worldwide as part of Sabaton's "History Rocks" charitable initiative.

The film begins in the fall of 1914 as King Albert I of Belgium leads what remains of his army in a desperate Last Stand against the German invaders in the marshlands of western Flanders. A page from a letter he is composing blows loose and is lost, traveling through the rest of the film to form a Framing Device connecting nine stories of what would tragically not truly be the War to End All Wars. Each of these stories is shown in a roughly five-minute-long segment in rough chronological order, set to a corresponding song from Sabaton's 2022 album The War to End All Wars.

1. "Race to the Sea": King Albert defends what's left of Belgium at the Battle of the Yser.
2. "Lady of the Dark": Milunka Savić and the Serbian Iron Regiment hold the Austro-Hungarians at the Battle of Kolubara.
3. "Christmas Truce": German and British soldiers on the Western Front hold an unauthorized Holiday Ceasefire on Christmas Day, 1914.
4. "Stormtroopers": The introduction of the German Imperial Army's Sturmtruppen.
5. "Dreadnought": HMS Black Prince runs afoul of the German High Seas Fleet around midnight shortly after the Battle of Jutland.
6. "The Unkillable Soldier": Lieutenant Colonel Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart fights at the Battle of the Somme.
7. "Soldier of Heaven": The White Friday avalanches on the Alpine front in December 1916.
8. "Valley of Death": General George Milne tries in vain to dislodge General Vladimir Vazov at the Third Battle of Doiran.
9. "Hellfighters": Privates Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts of the US Army 369th Infantry Regiment fight back against a German raid in the Argonne Forest.

In addition, "Versailles" plays over the end credits, while "The Red Baron" from Sabaton's previous album is heard on a museum employee's headphones during the epilogue.

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Tropes:

• Black Comedy: The entire "Unkillable Soldier" sequence is played for slapstick humor as Sir Adrian strolls calmly and very Britishly across no-man's-land armed with only a walking cane, while effortlessly beating the living daylights out of any German who comes anywhere near him. Enforced: Joakim Brodén has commented in previous interviews how Sir Adrian's biography reads like a real-life comic book character, and the live-action music video for the song had a similar slapstick vibe.
• Cerebus Retcon: The "Christmas Truce" segment reuses the sight gag from Yarnhub's earlier music video for the song where Gefreiter^note Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler tries to tattle on the truce to the German Army brass, gets hit in the head with a football, and then glumly refuses to participate. This time, though, his message actually does get through, and prompts the German general to command the artillery to resume firing, ending the truce.
• Compressed Hair: The "Lady of the Dark" segment depicts an Austro-Hungarian soldier pulling Milunka Savić's hat off while fighting with her and being astonished when her long, feminine hair falls free (having not realized she was a woman), which freezes him long enough for her to land a Megaton Punch on his jaw.
• Creator Cameo: The members of Sabaton appear in the film several times as rank-and-file soldiers of various armies as well as voicing several characters. Frontman Joakim Brodén also appears As Himself in the live-action epilogue.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The armored cruiser HMS Black Prince has a fatal encounter with the German High Seas Fleet on the morning of the Battle of Jutland, and is sunk with all hands by the far superior German dreadnoughts with almost no effort.
• Dramatic Irony: In the epilogue of the film, the missing page of King Albert's letter is reunited with the rest of it (which a museum employee finds in the pocket of Albert's uniform while cleaning the exhibit) and delivered to Joakim Brodén. We are finally shown the text of part of the letter, which exhorts the reader to ensure that this be The War to End All Wars—which, of course, it most certainly wasn't.
• "Eureka!" Moment: While agonizing over how to keep the Germans from finishing off the Belgian Army, King Albert accidentally knocks over a glass of water onto his battle map. This inspires him to order the Yperlee Canal locks opened and flood the area to block the German advance.
• Framing Device: King Albert's letter, which blows loose from his writing desk at the start of "Race to the Sea" and is carried by various means to each new segment, zigzagging its way across Europe for the four years of the war until it arrives at a museum warehouse where it is lost for a hundred years.
• Giant Wall of Watery Doom: When the Belgians open the Yperlee Canal locks, the water level begins to rise just slowly enough for the Germans to have a Mass "Oh, Crap!" before the rapidly moving water sweeps them away.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: At the start of "The Unkillable Soldier", Sir Adrian is shown playing darts and scores three bulls-eyes in a row despite having only one eye. During the song proper, he one-ups that by first killing a German airplane pilot with the rifle of a German infantryman he's fighting while the other man is still holding it, then throwing a dart down the barrel of a German machine gun firing at him and jamming it!
• Message in a Bottle: A sailor on HMS Black Prince stuffs King Albert's letter into an empty rum bottle and corks it before the ship goes down. The current carries it back to France, where it's recovered by a soldier headed for the Battle of the Somme.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: Well, "minor" only by comparison. In "The Unkillable Soldier", Sir Adrian stops near a British soldier clutching at a hand that's had the index finger shot off. Sir Adrian, in addition to sporting an eyepatch courtesy of an injury he sustained in Somaliland, gives the soldier a big grin and shows him how his entire left hand is missing.
• Orchestral Bombing: In several scenes, gunfire and artillery shots are timed to the drumbeats of the song in question.
• Papa Wolf: King Albert's son, the young Prince Leopold, is only twelve and fighting with his father on the front lines. At one point in "Race to the Sea", a German soldier gets Leopold at gunpoint, only to be shot dead from behind by Albert himself.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: King Albert of Belgium and his twelve-year-old son Leopold both fight on the front lines to hold the line at the Yser River, and Albert personally shoots and kills a German soldier threatening Leopold.
• Samus Is a Girl: An Austrian soldier knocks Milunka Savić's hat off and is astonished when the feminine long hair she'd kept tucked under it falls free.
• Shout-Out: The museum warehouse where King Albert's letter finally ends up is stacked high with boxes in a clear reference to the closing scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• Snow Means Death: The entirety of two armies are buried in an avalanche in the "Soldier of Heaven" sequence, triggered by a failed attempt by a soldier to shoot a rabbit for dinner. Only two Italian skiers, one of them guitarist Chris Rörland, manage to escape alive as the avalanche destroys every army position in its path.
• Source Music: A museum employee in the epilogue is shown listening to "The Red Baron" from Sabaton's previous album The Great War.
• Stock Footage: Most of the "Lady of the Dark" segment is reused from Yarnhub's earlier music video for the song. Averted with the following "Christmas Truce" segment, which though using some of the same shots as their earlier "Christmas Truce" music video (notably Adolf Hitler getting hit in the head with a soccer ball), was re-animated from scratch.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Private Henry Johnson from the Hellfighters, Milunka Savić, and Generals Milne and Vazov get clips right before the end credits explaining what became of them after the war: Johnson died in poverty in 1929, posthumously receiving a Medal of Honor in 2015; Savić spent time in a concentration camp during World War II and died of natural causes in 1973; while Milne and Vazov became good friends.
• Worthy Opponent: After "Valley of Death", the narrator describes how much British General George Milne grew to respect his Bulgarian counterpart Vladimir Vazov while they were fighting, saying that he fought not just bravely, but gentlemanly. The "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue states that they became good friends after the war.
• You Have Failed Me: Defied by Sir Adrian, who tells his steward that he deliberately doesn't carry any weapon into battle except his walking stick on the grounds that he might be tempted to use a revolver on his own men. This line was taken from Sir Adrian's memoir almost verbatim.

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