How does America represent their enemies in Film?

In film, it seems to be apparent that Hollywood like to change, whether that be subtly or obviously, the characters ethnicity or the protagonists ethnicity to often make America to be the hero, and a common threat to be the enemy. There are numerous examples in film where Hollywood film alters the narrative to glorify themselves, and stigmatise others.

For example, the film 'The Last Samurai' has an patriotic American, played by Tom Cruise. He plays a patriotic man who fought in the American Civil War, then after the war, he turns to drink, and shooting shows to make a living. The American Army are paid by the Japanese to train up their own army to combat the rising problem of the Samurai. America seem to represent themselves in film as an incredibly powerful nation. Although this is true, after the Second World War, but before even the first world war, their army only peaked at 18th strongest in the world. In this film we see America showing themselves as the strongest nation in the world, getting paid to train other nations armies. But during the time the film was set, the American Army was literally nothing. The nation that was actually involved was Prussia (Germany). This is explained by Cathy Shultz on her blog 'History in the Movies' when she said "The Prussians (later to be known as the Germans) were the ones barking out orders to Japanese conscripts in the 1870s." This provides strong evidence that America changed the story to make their own army out to be the greatest power in the world. The film has a lot of scenes that show Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) as the patriotic, all American who actually plays a key part in saving everybody and saving the day. Although this is not changing history in a huge way, it is making America, as the nation is only represented by Nathan, as the most important person in the film, even if he is prisoner at one point, he is still the focal point in a war. Commenting on the historical accuracy of the film as a whole, Stefan Lovgren, writer for the National Geographic brings up many points about the accuracy of the film other than the representations of nations. He comments on the Samurai, and 

In his essay, 'The Historical Film as Real History' Robert A Rosenstone explores why History is changed in film, and why historians are troubled by it. He states the obvious, because they 'are inaccurate. They distort the past. They fictionalise, trivialise and romanticise important people, events, and movements. They falsify History.' He says that his point of the essay is to state that Historians must look at historical film as its own separate form of information and see how it shows peoples opinions of history and how they think it was and want their nation to see it.

A perfect example is the film U-571 (2000). A film which bases the narrative around a group of American soldiers who capture an enigma machine and save the day and get the front foot. But in real life, it was British soldiers who took the enigma machine. There are mixed reviews and thoughts on why it was changed to do this. Some say it was to alienate the British from the American audience as a form of superiority, or to put America as a nation above the world. It can be argued that this wasn't a big method or an all out attack on England. But a study lead by Andrew Butler said that 'In contrast, when information in the film directly contradicted the text, people often falsely recalled the misinformation portrayed in the film, sometimes as much as 50 per cent of the time.’ This showing that film as a source of history is extremely efficient, and almost half of the people in the study were taking the false facts that glorify America in film. The reason behind the decision to make the protagonists American rather than English, but it caused mass outrage and huge uproar among the navy and even in Parliament. At the time Prime Minister Tony Blair called the film ''an insult to the Royal Navy.''And Alex Von Tunzelmann, writer for the guardian wrote ''The only honest thing about U-571 is its tagline: "Nine men are about to change history." Although, senior vice president of national publicity, Jeffrey Sakson, told in an interview that the film was a fictional tale, inspired by several events, which supports my argument that they change it, just as an artistic choice, and not a propaganda piece. They do it just to make the film more enjoyable, and it tells more about the audience when they believe the films as facts, when all they have to do is some simple research to find the real facts, as long as they state it as fiction, what is the problem?