Ryan, which also stars Matt Damon, is about a politically charged mission following the Allied invasion of Normandy.
It's made recent headlines for a grueling 24-minute opening sequence that is undoubtedly one of the most unrelentingly immersive portrayals of war violence ever. Scenes feature rows of young soldiers machine-gunned to death, bodies flying apart from explosions and intestines pouring out of a wounded soldier's gut.
"I can't tell you how many veterans came up to me and said, 'Please, make an honest film'," Spielberg told E! Online in defense of the film's graphic nature.
"Most of the WWII films have been sanitized. They were recruitment tools to get men to enlist. My dad was a veteran. And he and his friends used to laugh at the movies. They said, 'That may be how it is in Hollywood, but that's not how it was in Omaha Beach.'"
The powerful Motion Picture Association of America added a footnote to the rating of the DreamWorks film: "Includes intense, prolonged realistically graphic sequences of war violence, and language."
"Had the [MPAA] said this is an NC-17," he told the Los Angeles Times, "I would have worn that like a Purple Heart, with pride and dignity, because I felt that the truth about what happened on Omaha Beach was long overdue. I would have gone out with an NC-17. Had they given me one, I would not have amended this film."
"I think audiences have been desensitized to violence," he told the Times. "My purpose in doing this film this way is to somehow re-sensitize audiences to how bad it was for the men who survived, as well as those who perished.
"It is to honor them with the truth and to hopefully teach something. Audiences today go to the movies, and they are often thrilled by violence. This is intended to show the other side of what violence does to human beings."
The film opens July 24. E! Online will host a live Webcast of the film's premiere Tuesday, July 21.
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