YMMV / Saving Private Ryan

• Accidental Aesop: If you can't afford to take prisoners of war, kill them. Letting them go runs the risk of them rejoining their army and killing you.
• Adorkable: Upham, with his clumsiness, intellect, and inexperience, is charming yet klutzy throughout most of the film.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Upham. Gutless Dirty Coward, or sympathetic Everyman who does what many inexperienced, ordinary people would do in the heat of battle? Any online discussion of Mellish's death scene will inevitably devolve into this.
    • By the same token, there is at least some portion of the fanbase that believes the unnamed German soldier was sufficiently traumatized by the hand to hand fight with Mellish that he spared Upham as a momentary act of mercy, rather than deciding he was Not Worth Killing.
  • Is Captain Miller's order to directly assault the machine gun nest a poor decision influenced by his frustration at the lack of progress with the mission and his combat stress, or was it actually the best tactical choice for safely traversing the area? The unease of the men with the plan, the fruitless death of Wade and the Captain's blunt "Our mission is to win the war." comment perhaps suggest the former, but the success of the attack and the significance of having made the area safer also suggests the latter.
    • Consider how much the squad gripes about the futility of their assignment (saving one soldier). Miller's insists on clearing the MG nest to "win the war" so that Reiben has to quit complaining and put his money where his mouth is. Immediately after Wade dies, the squad never questions Miller's orders or their mission to save Ryan, since they know that their chances of dying are indeed equal no matter what.
    • It's also possible that Miller did not storm the nest out of any sense of duty, but rather to ensure that Carpazo's earlier death doesn't go in vain. It might be his way of redeeming Carpazo from "dying on a glorified PR stunt" to "dying on a rescue mission behind enemy lines that also include a lot of useful sabotage".
  • Is Steamboat Willie a cowardly despicable bastard who killed Wade and then refused to take responsibility for his death, then later knowingly killed Miller when he got the chance...or did he have only a passive role in Wade's death and not know it was Miller when he fired the shot? Miller was only seen for a second or two before he fired and may have looked like any other GI. Though the fact he recognizes Upham immediately afterwards perhaps suggests he knew it was Miller and his squad that he was shooting at.
  • Or, adding to other theory, he only recognized Upham.
• Award Snub: One of the most famous in the history of the Academy. The film lost the Best Picture Academy Award to Shakespeare in Love due to the Weinsteins heavily lobbying for their movie. Nonetheless, Saving Private Ryan is the film people remember more these days.
• Common Knowledge: Many people who saw the film were confused as to whether the German soldier that kills Corporal Mellish is also "Steamboat Willie." They are in fact, different soldiers. The soldier that kills Mellish has Waffen SS lapel insignia, while "Steamboat Willie" has the lapel insignia of an enlisted soldier in the Wehrmacht Heer. Part of the reason this confusion exists is because a number of viewers find the killer of Mellish being Steamboat Willie as adding an extra layer of emotion to Upham's vendetta and reasoning for shooting Willie at the end.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Near the end of the Normandy invasion, American soldiers ignore surrendering enemies pleading for their lives and shoot them. It's a shocking depiction of war crime and made worse if you can understand their language, as they're actually not Nazis, but Czech conscripts. But even with this disturbing context in mind, a few admit they couldn't help but laugh a little when Americans make a joke of out it:
  What did he say?
  "Look, I washed for supper!"
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: As an extremely bloody and realistic war movie the natural expectation is that it would work solely as an anti-war movie by showing the horror. However, there is a non-trivial section of the audience that found the (lavishly shot) action scenes exhilarating, even glamorous. These reactions are far from mutually exclusive. Of course, your opinion may take a 180 degree turn when the medics try to stop a soldier from bleeding out, or during the Telegram scene.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Jackson and Wade seem to be the favourites among the fandom. Their deaths seem to elicit the most Tear Jerker reactions anyway.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Shakespeare in Love fans, due to the perceived Award Snub at the Oscars. Spielberg won Best Director, but Shakespeare In Love won Best Film.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Band of Brothers, due to both being companion pieces by Spielberg (though he only produced the miniseries) and having very similar visual styles - especially during the battle scenes. Both projects had the cast endure a boot camp from Captain Dale Dye too.
• Genre Turning Point: It’s easy to forget now, but Saving Private Ryan changed war movies in general as well as depictions of the Second World War. Previous WWII films tended to take a more romantic, heroic tone especially when portraying soldiers’ lives and battle scenes. The violence in the vast majority of previous war movies was always subdued & tame, and there was a level of disconnect between the audience and the action of the scenes. Ryan, while it does honor the actions of the soldiers, put much more emphasis on the loss of life, the danger the soldiers are in along with their suffering, and their personal aspects. And that’s without mentioning the hyper-realistic violence & gore in the film’s battle sequences that had never been depicted so accurately prior, along with the cinematography that makes the viewers feel like they’re in the action. Nowadays, War Films, especially WWII Films, take the realistic “War Is Hell” approach that Spielberg’s film pioneered & perfected.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Private Ryan is a paratrooper in the 101st Airbourne. He refuses to go with Captain Miller because he does not want to desert his post and leave his comrades behind. Band of Brothers came out a couple of years later and focused on the real men of the 101st. After seeing truly how deep the men cared for each other makes Ryan's refusal to leave his post all the more poignant.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • This movie wouldn't be the last time where Tom Hanks saved the titular character, with Saving Mr. Banks starring him in 2013.
  • Dale Dye has a cameo where he talks about how the 101st Airbourne has been scattered across Normandy. This is slightly hilarious as of Dye's role in Band of Brothers, which covers the exploits of Easy Company in the 101st. It makes one chuckle that Dye's character in this doesn't know he has a lookalike in Normandy.
  • This is the first time that America put together an extremely dangerous rescue mission to bring home Matt Damon. History repeated with Interstellar and The Martian, to the point someone calclated the cost of all of the times Matt Damon's character need to be such.
  • It’s now a bit ironically funny seeing Vin Diesel play the first of the team to die, as he’s now notorious for being so insecure about his image that he actually has a clause in his contract preventing him from ever looking bad onscreen.
• It Was His Sled:
  • The old man from the opening is set up to be Miller, only for it to be revealed that it's Ryan because Miller dies. It's now one of the most well-known facts of the film, because of the gif meme of young Ryan fading into old Ryan.
  • A minor example about an hour into the film. The unit finds a Private James F. Ryan and breaks the news to him...only to find out it's not the one they're looking for. Spielberg's intention was to cast an unknown as Private Ryan and while Matt Damon had just recently netted an Oscar nomination for Good Will Hunting he still wasn't exactly a star. Nowadays everyone knows Matt Damon is James Ryan, not to mention Nathan Fillion being a fairly recognizable name too. So while it's revealed Fillion's Ryan is not the guy pretty quickly, most new viewers are bound to catch on before it (the fact that it's happening so early in the film also tends to tip off viewers - "no way they'd find him that easily this early in the movie!").
• Jerkass Woobie: Mellish is a dick throughout the film but then you realise he's Jewish, and there's also an early scene where he's handed a Hitler Youth knife. He tries to joke about it but bursts into tears. And later he dies horribly after witnessing his ally get shot in the throat.
  • Reiben as well, since he only wants to desert the mission after being forced to watch two comrades die slowly and painfully. He also witnesses Miller dying.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Tom Hanks versus tank scene becomes the subject of object labeling memes in late 2018.
  • The crossfade of young Ryan to present day elderly Ryan is also a popular reaction image for people feeling old.
  • A common joke name for the film, originating from an infamous edit of the movie's poster, is "Saving Ryan's Privates". Shaving them is also a common mutation of it.
• Misaimed Fandom: As noted above, many ignore the message that War Is Hell and only like the carnage in the war scenes.
• Narm: A captured German soldier desperately begging the squad to spare his life? Poignant and heartbreaking. A captured German soldier trying to prove that he loves America by babbling random American slang terms and singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in broken English? ...Decidedly less so.
  Steamboat Willie: Please, I like America! "Fancy schmancy!" "What a cinch!" "Go fly a kite!" "Cat got your tongue!" "Hill of beans!" Betty Boop, what a dish! Betty Grable, nice gams! (singing) "I say, can you see! I say can you see! I... I say..."
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: The team find a private Ryan, but he turns out be a different Ryan than the one that they want. Later, they find another Ryan, who is played by Matt Damon. Aha!
  • Though these days, the fact that the first Ryan himself is now a very recognizable actor could throw you off.
  • What should have been a tense scene when they think they've found Private Ryan is ruined by the fact that between the time Matt Damon was cast, and the time of the film's release, he had become a huge star after Good Will Hunting. By this time many people had internet in their homes and word that Matt Damon was playing Private Ryan had gotten out quickly. Since Nathan Fillion is the "Private Ryan" running up, everyone now knows that's not who they're looking for.
• Once Original, Now Common: Both on the giving (it's not the first movie to use a documentary-like depiction of war or realistic carnage, but the first popular one) and taking ends (the influence on war movies or battle scenes in general, complaints about the patriotic/emotional tone of the post-Omaha Beach part of the movie).
• One-Scene Wonder: Ted Danson as Captain Hamill.
  • Ryan’s mother makes a scene, where the audience knows what’s going to happen, incredibly emotional without saying a single word and having her shown mostly from the side or back.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • A lot of the younger actors, especially Matt Damon and Vin Diesel, were not yet megastars at the time this movie came out. Damon had won an Oscar (albeit for Best Screenplay in Good Will Hunting), but it may yet have been a flash in the pan. Steven Spielberg is rightfully credited as helping jump-starting Diesel's career, writing the role specifically for him after seeing Diesel in his acclaimed short film Multi-Facial.
  • Nathan Fillion as Private James Frederick Ryan from Minnesota.
  • Paul Giamatti and Bryan Cranston also have small roles and went on to become acclaimed actors.
• Signature Scene: The very first scene of the Normandy invasion on D-Day, widely regarded as arguably the best and most accurate depiction of the battle on film.
• Special Effect Failure: In the shot where Mellish is stabbed, his chest suddenly looks oddly concave compared to earlier shots in the scene, giving away that his body (apart from his head and arms) is fake, with the actor's real body underneath the floor.
• Too Cool to Live: Jackson. A badass sniper who says a prayer before every shot he takes, manages to snipe another sniper's eye out, and sleeps like a baby despite it all. It's only fitting that he gets an equally badass death.
• Tough Act to Follow: Steven Spielberg has directed numerous critically and/or commercially successful films since the beginning of the 21st century, but none of them have so far managed to leave as great of a cultural impact as Private Ryan.
• Woolseyism: The "FUBAR" Running Gag was translated in Latin America as "FOMARE", which stands in for "Follado y Machacado sin Remedio" ("Fucked and Stomped on without Solution"), which sounds equally nonsensical if you don't know it's an acronym and adds a Precision F-Strike (the translation cleaned up a lot of the foul language).
• The Woobie:
  • All the soldiers who were understandably terrified of storming Omaha Beach, shortly before they all faced gruesome and horrifying fates.
  • Medic Irwin Wade, who is shot multiple times in the stomach when trying to counteract a German radio station, and slowly bleeds to death in the arms of his comrades, even crying out "Mama" after requesting them to euthanize him with morphine.
  • Private Mellish, a young Jewish man who possibly lost several friends and family members to the Nazis and is clearly the squad member with the most personal stake in the war. He breaks down into tears when he realises he killed Hitler Youth during the chaos of Omaha. In the squad's final battle, he gets pinned to the floor by a monstrous Nazi after a brief hand-to-hand struggle and he dies from a bayonet being pushed slowly into his chest, futilely pleading and calling out for help.
  • Mrs. Ryan, who is clearly devastated by the deaths of three of her sons, to the point where we see her falling to the ground sobbing when she receives the telegram. And that's before she learns it was three of her sons who have been killed.
  • Private James Frederick Ryan, who in the space of about 90 seconds learns that his brothers are dead and then learns that he's been mistaken for Private James Francis Ryan. He's still distraught after the mix-up is clarified and by the time Captain Miller's detachment leaves.

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