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50 free War Movie trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
49 free war movie trivia questions with answers. This war movie trivia quiz marches through a century of combat cinema: the silent-era and early talkie classics like All Quiet on the Western Front, the WWII epics of the 1950s and 60s (The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Great Escape, The Longest Day, Patton), the Vietnam wave of Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, and the modern era of Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, Dunkirk, 1917 and the 2022 German remake of All Quiet. Questions cover directors, casts, real people the stories were drawn from, famous scenes, box office and Academy Awards. The early questions suit anyone who has watched a few war films with family on a Sunday afternoon; later ones dig into production stories, source novels and awards records that reward serious film buffs. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia film entries before publishing, so you can settle arguments with confidence.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which director made Saving Private Ryan, famous for its Omaha Beach opening sequence?
Steven Spielberg
Spielberg won his second Best Director Oscar for it, though the film lost Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love.
Q 02In Saving Private Ryan, why is Private James Ryan being sent home?
His three brothers have all been killed
The story was loosely inspired by the Niland brothers and the US 'sole survivor' policy adopted after the Sullivan brothers died together in 1942.
Q 03Which Vietnam War film is loosely based on Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness?
Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola's shoot in the Philippines ran wildly over schedule, with typhoons, a heart attack for Martin Sheen and an unprepared lead.
Q 04Which actor arrived on Coppola's Vietnam epic overweight and unprepared to play Colonel Kurtz?
Marlon Brando
Brando arrived on set overweight and having not read the novella, so Coppola shot him mostly in shadow.
Q 05Who plays the overweight recruit Leonard Lawrence in Full Metal Jacket?
Vincent D'Onofrio
D'Onofrio reportedly gained about 70 pounds for the part, one of the largest weight gains ever for a film role.
Q 06Which real-life former Marine drill instructor plays Gunnery Sergeant Hartman for Stanley Kubrick?
R. Lee Ermey
He was hired as a technical adviser but sent Kubrick a tape of himself hurling insults nonstop, and got the part.
Q 07Which actor plays Chris Taylor, the young volunteer at the centre of Oliver Stone's Platoon?
Charlie Sheen
Sheen's father Martin had starred in Apocalypse Now seven years earlier; Platoon won Best Picture and Best Director for 1986.
Q 08Which film's Russian roulette scenes among American POWs made it a controversial 1970s Vietnam film?
The Deer Hunter
Michael Cimino's film won Best Picture and gave Christopher Walken a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
Q 09Which David Lean film about POWs building a Burma railway crossing won Best Picture for 1957?
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Alec Guinness won Best Actor as the rigid Colonel Nicholson; the film's whistled 'Colonel Bogey March' became a hit.
Q 10In The Great Escape, where does Steve McQueen's Hilts keep ending up after his failed escape attempts?
The cooler
He passes the time in solitary tossing a baseball against the wall, and befriends the Scot Ives in the next cell.
Q 11The Great Escape dramatises a mass breakout from which German POW camp?
Stalag Luft III
Of the 76 men who got out through the tunnel in March 1944, only three reached safety and 50 were executed on Hitler's orders.
Q 12Which 1970 biopic opens with its title character delivering a speech in front of a giant American flag?
Patton
George C. Scott won Best Actor for the role but refused the Oscar, calling the ceremony a 'meat parade'.
Q 13George C. Scott famously did what after winning the Best Actor Oscar for playing a WWII general?
Refused to accept it
He was the first actor to decline an Academy Award, having earlier described the ceremony as a 'two-hour meat parade'.
Q 21Black Hawk Down depicts a 1993 US raid in which city?
Mogadishu
Ridley Scott's film is based on Mark Bowden's book about the Battle of Mogadishu, in which two helicopters were shot down.
Q 22Which German U-boat film earned six 1983 Oscar nominations, including Best Director for Wolfgang Petersen?
Das Boot
Petersen later shot Hollywood films like Air Force One and Troy; Das Boot also exists in a much longer television cut.
Q 23Which Mel Gibson film tells the story of Desmond Doss, the unarmed medic who won the Medal of Honor at Okinawa?
Hacksaw Ridge
Doss was a Seventh-day Adventist conscientious objector who saved dozens of wounded men by lowering them down a cliff.
Q 14Which German author's novel became the 1930 Best Picture winner All Quiet on the Western Front?
Erich Maria Remarque
Nazi groups disrupted its German screenings with stink bombs and mice, and the film was soon banned there.
Q 15The 2022 German-language remake of All Quiet on the Western Front was released mainly on which platform?
Netflix
It won four Oscars including Best International Feature and a record seven BAFTAs for a non-English-language film.
Q 16Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk tells its story across three timelines. Which three settings does it use?
Land, sea, air
The land story spans a week, the sea a day and the air an hour, all converging at the climax.
Q 17Which pop star made his acting debut as a soldier in Dunkirk?
Harry Styles
Nolan said he cast him for the part without fully realising how famous he was.
Q 18Sam Mendes's 1917 is edited to look like how many continuous shots?
Two
Cinematographer Roger Deakins won an Oscar for the seamless illusion; the film's story came from Mendes's grandfather Alfred.
Q 191917 was partly inspired by stories told to Sam Mendes by whom?
His grandfather
Alfred Mendes served as a messenger on the Western Front and the film is dedicated to him.
Q 20Which Best Picture-winning film about a bomb-disposal team in Iraq was directed by Kathryn Bigelow?
The Hurt Locker
Bigelow became the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar, beating her ex-husband James Cameron's Avatar.
Q 24In Inglourious Basterds, what is the name of the SS colonel played by Christoph Waltz?
Hans Landa
Waltz, then little known outside German-language TV, won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the role.
Q 25What was the working title of Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow's film about the bin Laden hunt?
For God and Country
The final title, a military term for half past midnight, was only confirmed at the end of the teaser trailer.
Q 26American Sniper is based on the memoir of which Navy SEAL?
Chris Kyle
Bradley Cooper bulked up to play Kyle, and the film became the highest-grossing war movie in US box-office history at the time.
Q 27Which Terrence Malick film about Guadalcanal came out the same year as Saving Private Ryan?
The Thin Red Line
It marked Malick's return after a 20-year absence from directing and earned seven Oscar nominations.
Q 28Letters from Iwo Jima is told almost entirely from whose perspective?
Japanese soldiers
Clint Eastwood released it as a companion to Flags of Our Fathers, which showed the same battle from the American side.
Q 29Which Best Picture winner starred Peter O'Toole as a British officer who united Arab tribes in WWI?
Lawrence of Arabia
David Lean's 1962 epic runs over three and a half hours and has no speaking roles for women.
Q 30Which Mel Gibson film about Australian troops in WWI was directed by Peter Weir?
Gallipoli
Its climax dramatises the doomed charge at the Nek in August 1915.