re: Erik, maybe that's the damaging effect to long term imprisonment we were looking for (since he's otherwise remarkably fit)?
re: Vietnam, there's probably meta to be written on how the second trilogy (assuming it'll be one) uses American history - so first you get the Cuban missile crisis, which is generally seen as a tense moment but one where cooler heads prevailed over warmongerers, i.e. something optimistic in pop culture, and then you get the Vietnam war, key to the big US self image challenge - i.e. Americans no longer able to see themselves as a) winning and b) being the good guys. If WWII is treated as the "good" war in the public consciousness, with clearly drawn good/bad lines, Vietnam is the by now classic pop culture "bad" war. (In the US: WWI has that honour over here in Europe for a few decades longer, but that one doesn't seem to register much in America.)
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re: Vietnam, there's probably meta to be written on how the second trilogy (assuming it'll be one) uses American history - so first you get the Cuban missile crisis, which is generally seen as a tense moment but one where cooler heads prevailed over warmongerers, i.e. something optimistic in pop culture, and then you get the Vietnam war, key to the big US self image challenge - i.e. Americans no longer able to see themselves as a) winning and b) being the good guys. If WWII is treated as the "good" war in the public consciousness, with clearly drawn good/bad lines, Vietnam is the by now classic pop culture "bad" war. (In the US: WWI has that honour over here in Europe for a few decades longer, but that one doesn't seem to register much in America.)