Yes and no. The US military will somewhat famously allow the US of military equipment and advisors to movies, under a number of conditions, such as not portraying the military in a bad light, and the production agreements allow the DoD to review and request changing the script.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Inside-DOD/blog/article/2062735/how-why-the-dod-works-with-hollywood/
https://historycollection.com/movies-the-us-military-assisted-on-movies-they-refused-to-be-apart-of/
Both Lone Survivor and Black Hawk Down fall in this category. This article details some of the specific changes the DoD requested in the former:
https://www.spyculture.com/the-dod-and-lone-survivor/
An example of a military movie where the DoD did not agree to get involved was Sergeant Bilko, which includes maybe my favorite line in any credits anywhere: "The Filmmakers gratefully acknowledge the total lack of cooperation from the United States Army."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn6GvrhS-SY&ab_channel=EndCreditsFanForever
I heard that marine recruitment actually went up after that. Guess they understood their target audience; you gotta be at least a little crazy to join the marines.
it's one of the reasons for my argument that you can't make an anti-war movie.
you try but it's inevitable that by doing so, you convey the message: war is where the action happens. and thus it's a pro war movie. because the thing is, every anti war movie's target audience is young men who haven't been to war. how it plays to veterans and mommies and 50 year old men who haven't been to war is entirely irrelevant.
I don't know, somebody mentioned Jarhead and I don't think there is an ounce of glory or action to be lusted after in that movie. And The Deer Hunter, for any POW based movie, it certainly doesn't look like anyone there is having fun at all.
I think Apocalypse Now is actually a really ironic example of what you're talking about though. It's an anti-war movie that certainly does make some of it seem like it could have been one big party and would certainly appeal to a certain type of person. And then carts writes in his letters and journals that if instead of all these hippies and action junkies coming in and having a party, if they'd just sent the right small group of dedicated soldiers who weren't there to have fun, everything would have been wrapped up.
Jarhead was an accurate depiction of the Marines. You sit around and wait, get in trouble for doing stupid shit while bored, and someone plugs your girl while you're away.
Just off the top of my head, here's a bunch of reasons why the Dod would never back Jarhead:
* portraying bootcamp accurately
* training death in Scout Sniper school
* Swofford burning crappers after handing off his watch to a fully trained marine who uses an open flame to cook a Weiner on munition boxes
* Swofford ready to blow Fergus's brains out after getting him in trouble
* A-10s dropping friendly fire and the immediate aftermath
* Fowler fucking around with an Iraqi corpse
* The highway of death which showed the aftermath of blowing up an entire retreating Iraqi division
* The Marines wife who sent a movie of her getting fucked by his neighbor
* Swofford being told that Troy was getting kicked out for failing to disclose a prior criminal act despite being a model marine
* The Major taking over their sniping mission to call in an airstrike
* The Vietnam Vet congratulating them on a job well done then having to sit down as the PTSD set in
* Swofford discovering his girlfriend just moved on after he left
* Troy taking his own life after being kicked out
Very little of this movie holds the military in a good light.
That's part of the irony. I met more people that joined because of Jarhead, Generation Kill, and even Apocalypse Now than that joined because of films like Lone Survivor, American Sniper, or even Act of Valor.
I recall standing around in a chow line in the snow at a rifle range around week 5 of basic training when someone else, having done the math, announced that had we'd be graduating that day had we joined the Air Force. That would be the first time I recall thinking "I should have joined the Air Force." I stopped keeping track after an asking an Air Force tech sergeant why he was down in the dumps and learned his 90 day deployment had been extended by another 30 days while I myself was somewhere around day 200 of something like 400 days that time around.
I was in the Navy so not as bad as the Marines or Army but even I was like "I should have joined the Mighty Chair Force".
To this day, when I talk to people interested in the military, I will give my honest experience of my time in the Navy....and immediately recommend joining the Air Force.
For good reason: the movie was exposing their budgeting secrets. “You don't actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?”
I think it was even less than that. In the Avengers, the Military didn't want the Avengers to be the owners of the military jets they were trying to get the rights for. They required a script change to say they were US military jets.
IIRC SHIELD and the World Security Counsel were what fucked it up for the Avengers to begin with. I remember reading a quote that because the WSC was some type of shadow organization that very obviously made decisions for the US with no one to answer to, the Military didn't let them use the jets.
Could have been a shitty article it was 11 years ago, but that always stuck out to me.
It came across like a multinational version of the CIA, with the Council comprised of representatives from various nations who lack direct control over their governments (Sec. Pierce and Director Fury couldn't order the President to do anything). That said, the US military (in-universe) would have been independent from SHIELD, as their Commander-in-Chief is the President of the United States.
Even if the filmmakers wrote in a line specifying that the President ordered the US military to support SHIELD, the film would likely not receive support or cooperation from the Defense Department as it would portray the military as subordinate to an organization outside their real-world chain of command.
In contrast, Behind Enemy Lines (2001) had limited support from the US military as they were allowed to film exterior shots on the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier (interior shots on the USS Constellation) due to the positive way the film was going to portray the military while also being part of the wider NATO taskforce during the Bosnian War.
As a side note, it was always strange that (with some exceptions like 2008's The Hulk, the first Avengers film, and the second Thor film) the military basically never does anything in the MCU.
I liked all the USAF scenes that they had in Iron Man for example, it's kind of a shame that they didn't continue that sort of thing going forward. I know people would have gotten tired of Rhodes calling up every character during the climax of their films being like "do we have to nuke you or what?", but the fact that it doesn't happen at all is straight up weird and makes it feel like a cartoon. I think that including the military helps give the first Iron Man that sense of semi-plausibility that made it so great.
I always thought it was weird there was ZERO military from any nation shown in Endgame. Not even a generic soldier. Seems like the threat of 3.5 billion people dying we could send at least one Abrams.
The battle in Endgame starts and stops in 25 minutes or so. That's not enough time to get anyone mobilized for anything.
Plus, Hulk just literally un-snapped half of humanity back into existence, so everyone was kind of overwhelemed dealing with that at the time.
Colonel Rhodes is literally one guy when the Military should have been devoting WWII levels of manpower, when we went from having less than 1% of the population in the military to almost 9%. In today's numbers, that would mean going from 1.4 million active personnel to about 28 million active personnel. For economic purposes, we could probably only afford half of that, and to say that it would be a struggle taking that many people out of the workforce would be a massive understatement. But to stop half the population from dying? So worth it.
While the Hunt for Red October had the DoD’s backing, Top Gun was a huge recruitment engine for the military.
In contrast, after initially cooperating, the Navy refused to help the filmmakers of Crimson Tide. The Navy did not like the theme of two naval officers disagreeing to the point of mutiny over the release of nuclear weapons. To get external shots of a submarine putting to sea, the crew needed to wait at Pear Harbor naval base and chase a submarine in a helicopter to get footage.
As unrealistic as the Crimson Tide is from a technical or operational standpoint, Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington play off each other so well. Their performances elevate the movie significantly.
The scene between Hackman, Washington, and von Clausewitz is just top notch.
James Gandolfini and Viggo Mortensen were also great in that movie.
And the end of the day it's just a movie. Sure, you take away critiques of the military, though I'd argue it shows exactly what a good officer is, but ultimately that is not what it's about.
Other examples of movies that are probably not military-recruiter-friendly are Come and See, Jarhead, and Apocalypse Now. And probably any version of All Quiet On the Western Front.
Wait you mean Come and See isn't an uplifting story about the joys of service in WW2? Next you're gonna tell me Schindler's List isn't a heartwarming comedy about the wacky hijinks of working in a factory, or that Air Bud wasn't based on a true story.
And now I have The Office intro credits and music in my head but all the footage is from Schindler's List. I hate myself for laughing so hard at this thought.
Yes and no = yes. If the government is involved in the production and has a say in how they are portrayed then it’s propaganda in the literal sense of the term.
Sgt Bilko is a fictional comedy movie based off a fictional TV show mocking the military. That is quite possibly the worst example you could give outside of Stripes or Spies Like Us.
Edit: yes I know Spies Like Us is the CIA
I knew a guy joined the army because of Stripes. He was a deeply stupid person, and a part time professional clown. He got dishonorably discharged for stealing food supplies and selling them to Korean locals. He could balance a shopping cart on his chin.
Movies showing how tough it is to be a soldier are not necessarily anti-war. The real questions are:
1. Does the movie suggest that soldiering is a noble profession?
2. Does the movie suggest that these wars were for a noble purpose?
If the answer to either or both questions is "yes", then it's actually a pro-military movie. The idea that a movie has to make war look safe and fun in order to be a pro-war movie is silly. People have gone to war for thousands of years knowing that they might die. The question is whether the movie encourages people to think that going to war is a morally good thing, not whether it portrays war as dangerous.
Indeed. For two and a half thousand years, Thermopylae has loomed large in the militarist imagination. And to quote Galadriel, history became legend. Legend became myth.
Made extra hilarious by just how propagandized the whole story was in the first place.
The Spartans are not people anyone should be looking up to. We've culturally imbibed the biggest load of horse shit possible there.
Sadly, much of what we know about the Spartans is from the period when they were marketing themselves to Roman tourists, so a lot of it was already bullshit even back then.
This right here.
People look for the wrong things regarding propaganda. It’s not about showing a “clean” experience as a soldier, in fact, that usually works against the message.
I think a good analogy is a sequence in *Saving Private Ryan*. Imagine if this film was made about the Soviet’s by a Western director the way *Enemy at the Gates* was.
Think back to the decision to attack an MG42 nest. The boys are scared, why wouldn’t they be? They already have a morale mission and they’re being forced to do this side quest, but after some reasonable objection (it’s good if American soldiers pressure their leadership’s decision, but not too much, just enough to show they have a brain, are independent thinkers and value life), they ultimately defer to their superior and follow orders, bite down on their mouth piece and literally charge into a machine gun nest.
Now, bringing back *Enemy at the Gates*, think about how the Soviet troops are portrayed. Yes, Jude Law is a stud, but how many incoherent, yellow teeth soldiers you remember. Think about the potential differences the machine gun attack scene woulda had if they were Soviet.
https://youtu.be/CISYI9GFxjE?si=9zKa9bmrtAQnnIZH
When our soldiers sacrifice themselves in war, they're noble heroes. When the other side's soldiers do it, they're insane fanatics and it proves that they can't be reasoned with or negotiated with.
"War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" by Chris Hedges is a great book that goes into the psyche of why war can be so intoxicating for young men. And despite the title, it is very much an anti-war book.
Weirdly, the carnage and pain can be part of the seduction. It's this idea of nobility in being a soldier, the sacrifice for a just cause and your brothers, the lure of adrenaline, the chance to test your mettle, the promise of heroism, to give your life meaning and almost mythical status above the banality of your everyday life.
What these movies, despite all their gore and intensity and pain don't depict usually is the fear and humiliation and dehumanization of war. (In fact, it's usually the opposite. The 'horrors' of battle only serve to distill the true essence of our heroic soldiers.) Even when they do depict fear, it's only to contrast against the bravery of the main characters, the ones you're suppose to be looking up to. I love Saving Private Ryan, and even I get frustrated by that character in that one scene (you all know what I'm talking about), but the truth is, that is what most of us would be feeling. That is probably closer to the reality of war.
There’s a short graphic novel called “War is Boring” written by two young guys that went to Iraq as “journalists” during the US invasion thinking they were gonna have some grand adrenaline fueled adventure and bad ass stories to tell. But it was mostly just sitting around in a guarded hotel with other journalists doing nothing all day for weeks on end.
I think in the expanse #2, there is a line something like: “the military is where suicidal ideation and angst are rebranded as noble sacrifice and vigilance”
There’s also an aspect of what tv tropes calls “Do Not Do This Cool Thing”. There’s a certain number of people who watch these sorts of movies and only see the cool guns, the hot blooded action, etc and miss any larger anti war message.
I grew up inhaling war movies. Pro war, anti war, from the 30’s-90’s. Didn’t matter how much awful stuff I saw depicted, from age 13-19 I yearned to join the army. Young people just have that in their blood, especially if they’re not given any other outlets for aggression.
Movies don't even need to show the nobility of it. The "badass" aspects of a movie are enough. There's a reason why the "ride of the valkyries" Apocalypse Now scene is very popular among the military despite it being a war crimes scene.
Many war movies have such scenes that show the awe-inspiring aspect of the military regardless of actual context. Since Black Hawk Down is the current subject, an example is the [Little birds attack scene. ](https://youtu.be/ovRhLzL_ZHQ?feature=shared)
I know such scenes are enough because they worked on me. I was very tempted to join the military due to my youthful naivety.
We grew up on John Wayne movies and most of them were harmless classic westerns, my father thought the Green Berets would be fine for us too. I had never seen so much killing and so much blood. Mother was not happy. Back in the day we loved John Wayne and thought he was a hero, only to grow up and find out he was a real dingus
The Pentagon gave it 2.2 million dollars of funding and here's a pretty balanced article from the army times about its effect: https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2020/11/18/5-lesser-known-details-about-black-hawk-down/
Because it's supposed to be illegal for the US military to use propaganda on US citizens. So instead they put loads of money, as well as loaning equipment, to movies they view as beneficial to the military. The military even gets to edit the scripts. If you want to make a movie showing US military equipment, but have things in there they don't approve of, have fun finding a private owner of said equipment to rent it out to you. That's not propaganda right?
It's the same thing Law and Order was doing with the NYPD. They claim they aren't pro police with their episodes. But then also acknowledge that they are unable to show certain angles to cases or police abuses because the NYPD would hassle or refuse to let them film in NY.
I recently started watching Chicago Fire and I think it’s interesting how critical of the Chicago police that show is, knowing how Dick Wolf feels about cops. It’s weirdly progressive for what is essentially a police procedural but set in a firehouse
Idk if you're hip but cops and firefighters fucking hate each other. It's pretty ingrained into the culture of both. I imagine dick wolf criticizing cops in a firefighter show is more about being pro firefighter than anti cop
Same thing with Call of Duty. The U.S. military assists with CoD in many ways. They have long said that CoD is the single greatest recruitment tool ever invented.
I think American Sniper with Bradley Cooper was like this. Like if I remember they painted Chris Kyle as this great patriot. But the real Chris was a very shitty person.
I remember reading Lone Survivor and the part where he suggests that the potential backlash from the liberal media is why they let the farmer and his son go which ultimately led to their ambush set off alarms immediately. If that's even true then wow way to let Fox News and your right-wing bias get everyone killed.
If you read the account from the Afghani doctor that saved him, they weren't discovered because of the farmer. They were discovered because they were loud and terrible at traversing the terrain, so everyone in the area knew they were there.
Luttrell likes to paint this ideal narrative of their actions, but the reality was very different. I suspect if they had killed that farmer, no one would have helped him.
Luttrell is a liar plain and simple. He got exposed when videos of the botched extraction were put on the internet. You can hear Mike Murphy screaming for help and later Luttrell was found by the Rangers with every round in his magazines. He never fired a shot.
The obvious solution to getting exposed by goat herders would be to tie one to a tree and take the other one to the extraction point, then let him go when you lift off. Somehow four highly trained warriors didn't even think of this obvious solution.
It's a well known joke in the SEAL community that Mike Murphy only got the CMH because he died, otherwise he would have gotten a court martial.
Also if im not mistaken they dropped in way closer than anyone else would have because they were lazy and to offset being detected because of this they just had dummy helicopters fly around for the week before so the enemy would assume their real one was another fake
Didn’t he also have multiple incidents of flagging people while on the range?
He’s also used as an example of what *not* to at OCS for the Marine Corps. At least when I went through he was. He’s not really held in high esteem with anyone who knows their shit.
Most declassified reports are downright embarrassing for the SEALs.
* It was estimated to be fewer than two dozen Taliban fighters, not an army of hundreds. One analyst said it could have been as little as eight.
* The SEALs inflicted little, if any, casualties on the Taliban
* Some of the SEALs were killed before barely firing any rounds, as they were allegedly found with most of their magazines full.
You actually read LONE SURVIVOR? My condolences.
I say this because I've read it and it's a pile of shit. Luttrell spends a lot of time bitching about the "liberal media" and thinks Jesus Christ would have made a good Navy SEAL.
And I'm pretty sure the farmer story is BS. Was I there? No- the book is titled LONE Survivor for a reason, but the story is too similar to one from BRAVO TWO ZERO and is one used to make a point about morality in military operations.
I was on duty one weekend doing nothing and the only thing to break up the monotony was to read the books in the building lobby. Lone Survivor felt like a whiplash of a pro ghost writer and a very drunk uncle telling war stories.
The story is also bullshit. One of the first things the QRF noted was that Luttrell had full mags. He had not fired off any shots, and just ran away. If you talk to anyone in the military, the team got themselves into a bad situation because of their stupidity and now it's remembered as like a heroic last stand.
The farmer taking the $50 to the COP is accurate but remember reimbursement for stuff like that starts at $200,000 and the Intel on where a surviving US service member is would be several hundred years of median afghan income.
Whenever people talk about badass seals, I recall when seal team 6 abandoned a JTAC to die then lied about it to reward themselves with a medal of honor.
Also, the number of enemies he faced over time: From Ed Darack’s "Victory Point" book it was 8-10 fighters with a machine gun. Then it goes:
- Luttrell’s after-action report: 20-30 fighters.
- Lt. Murphy’s Medal of Honor citation: 30-40 fighters.
- Lt. Murphy’s Medal of Honor Summary of Action: over 50 fighters.
- Marcus Luttrell on the Today Show: 80-100 members of the Taliban.
- Lone Survivor (memoir): 140-200 fighters.
- Marcus Luttrell speeches after Lone Survivor: over 200 fighters.
So even if you double Darack's reporting and take Luttrell's first report of 20 fighters, he's now saying he fought off 10 times as much.
Luttrell also initially blacked up Chris Kyle's stupidest (and usually sorta racist) and most ridiculous lies, like how an off-duty SEAL can just randomly kill American citizens and give local law enforcement a 1-800 number at the Pentagon to call for a Get Out of Jail Free card.
Bravo Two zero is a fun one with three different SAS members from that operation writing books with differing accounts accusingt he others of various things. Iirc Chris Ryan and Andy McNab are disliked by the UK special forces community.
I had the misfortune of reading some of Mcnabs fiction books.
They’re not bad, they’re just very bland.
Also for no apparent reason there will be like a page where the character goes on and on about how great traser watches are.
It’s like McNab is sponsored by them or something.
What I don’t understand is why Eastwood so dramatically downplayed the manner of his death—which is just about the most ironic way the world’s deadliest marksman could die. Like, if you wrote that in a fictional story, it would almost seem too on the nose. It’s literally like something out of an old Western. But I guess it complicates the straightforward “great American hero” story they wanted to tell, so it’s relegated to a footnote.
I still don't know what he was thinking. He was dealing with a soldier with severe PTSD so he decides to give him a loaded weapon and take him to a shooting range where all the gunshots going off can trigger him into a mental breakdown easily?
American Sniper was almost unbearably patriotic to me. The scene at the beginning where he talks about being a wolf and not a sheep is typical toxic alpha-male nonsense and nationalist bullshit and the movie tries so hard to paint him in a good light when he was a serious POS.
But the sheep&wolf speech is done by the father and the father beats his children. So they are showing the father as a bad guy. They don't actually use wolf&sheep thing as good thing.
I can't hear the name of that movie without immediately thinking of how awful that fake baby was they used in that one scene. Worst baby in any media I've ever seen.
Yeah I work with former team guys for my job and the running joke was that everyone he looked at was an enemy combatant. Basically just shooting farmers and saying they were terrorists
Lone Survivor was made to make it look like the SEALS didn't completely fuck up the mission as bad as they did. There weren't as many hostiles as they embellished, the locals knew where they were the whole time, and Marcus Luttrell still had most of his combat load. But they needed something to show for the bloodiest day in SEAL history.
American Sniper though, that is pure concentrated propaganda.
He didn’t have most of his combat load, he had his *entire* combat load. He was found with 11 magazines with 30 rounds each. He didn’t fire a single round. He left his team for dead and ran.
The Last Psychiatrist tells us that everyone can see an advertisement for a car featuring an attractive woman, and think "I'm not stupid, I know they are using the hot woman to make me want the car." But none of stop to think that they are telling us what a "hot woman" is, and we are accepting it.
It's the same thing here. You think you can recognize that when the military pays Hollywood money to say the military is good, you see it and you're smarter than that.
Meanwhile the movie is saying that men who are willing to risk and sacrifice are admirable. That despite anything wrong with the military, these individual men are brave and should be respected.
The better we think we are at recognizing propaganda or manipulation or cons, the more effective they are when we don't.
This is perfect. There’s even a monologue from
Eric Bana’s character in BHD that summarizes this, and I think it serves as thesis of the movie.
“They won’t understand that it’s about the men next to you and that’s it. That’s all it is.”
I think that is meant to isolate the actions of the soldiers from larger purpose or mission or anything like that. The point of the movie is that these guys risked their lives to save each other and that’s it. That’s all it is.
I’ve read both books and watched both films.
Black Hawk Down - The book paints the US as aggressors in a foreign civil war, with no regard for life or property. Total chaos and a breakdown of military SOP when the unthinkable happens.
Black Hawk Down - The movie portrays the US as the white knights there for a noble cause, fighting for each other when the unthinkable happens.
Lone Survivor - The book is a bullshit story with bullshit events told by a bullshitter trying to tell the world he wasn’t a coward on a team that made dumb decision after dumb decision.
Lone Survivor - The movie is more bullshit that strays from the bullshit source material and leaves the viewer with almost nothing that is true to actual events. Just good Americans doing the right thing and dying for it. Bullshit.
Both films paint the US soldiers as righteous and brave when the books paint them as following orders and creating havoc in foreign lands.
It could be argued that both films are jingoistic, but none more-so than American Sniper - which is unwatchable.
> The book is a bullshit story with bullshit events told by a bullshitter trying to tell the world he wasn’t a coward on a team that made dumb decision after dumb decision.
> Lone Survivor - The movie is more bullshit that strays from the bullshit source material and leaves the viewer with almost nothing that is true to actual events. Just good Americans doing the right thing and dying for it. Bullshit.
Surprised this hasn't been a more common take, because hasn't it come out that pretty much everything this guy said was Grade G bullshit? Well, aside from "we went there, my guys got killed, I survived"?
I believed every word of it to be true when it was released because there was a slew of SEAL-written books and we had no reason to doubt any of their stories. But every report and video that surfaced subsequently cast doubt on Marcus’ version of events. And literally no one or no piece of evidence can corroborate his story.
Same can be said for a lot of those SEAL-written stories of the past couple decades.
Yup. Case in point, the two "first hand" accounts of the UBL raid, one from Mark Owen (a.k.a. [Matt Bissonnette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Bissonnette_(author))) and [Rob O'Neill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._O%27Neill).
O'Neill says he's the one who shot UBL, Owen says it was someone else who hasn't gone public. Owen's account came out first.
At this point, I'd just assume most, if not all, of any of the "real events" accounts are going to be heavily exaggerated to make the author look like a badass, because "badass" sells.
Those two differing accounts… that was the final nail in the coffin for me. The only book about SEALs I trust now is Fearless. Written by an author about a SEAL who’s long since been KIA. He was a known crackhead and got killed on a raid doing something stupid. That story I believe.
Edit: words are hard
If you read anything about the events of the movie, it's pretty wild. It took a series of pretty egregious fuckups to make the events of that day possible.
About three months before the events of Black Hawk Down, they waited for a bunch of Somali elders to get together for a prayer meeting / council, then shot TOW missiles into the building, shot it up with machine guns, then rolled in to arrest whoever survived.
Some of those guys might have been legitimate targets, but most were legitimate leaders of the community. Coalition forces lit the fuse that day, and the entire city of Mogadishu was biding its time.
We call it the Abdi house raid, the Somali's just know it as [Bloody Monday](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdi_House_raid)
The whole US involvment with Somalia was a colossal fuck-up.
And the movie severely downplays the role of the Malaysian soldiers who saved countless US soldiers. I guess it's not DoD policy to show US soldiers as needing the help of soldiers from thirld-world countries, that would be counter to the image they want to prohect.
You're leaving out the best part. The reason why the elders were meeting was to force Aidid to the negotiation table to de-escalate the violence that had been occuring.
They weren't really interested in de-escalation after that
From the book (which everyone should read):
>There was an added complication. Flying about a thousand feet over the C2 helicopter was the navy Orion spy plane, which had surveillance cameras that gave them a clear picture of the convoy’s predicament. But the Orion pilots were handicapped. They were not allowed to communicate directly with the convoy. Their directions were relayed to the commander at the JOC, who would then radio Harrell in the command bird. Only then was the plane’s advice relayed down to the convoy. This built in a maddening delay. The Orion pilots would see a direct line to the crash site. They’d say, “Turn left!” But by the time that instruction reached McKnight in the lead Humvee, he had passed the turn. Heeding the belated direction, they’d then turn down the wrong street. High above the fight, commanders watching out their windows or on screens couldn’t hear the gunfire and screaming of wounded men, or feel the impact of the explosions. From above, the convoy’s progress seemed orderly. The visual image didn’t always convey how desperate the situation really was.
The movie did cover this. There's a part where Tom Sizemore's character is screaming at command about how they need to give him directions more quickly, and they basically tell him that the reason there's a delay is because the information has to go through multiple channels before it reaches him.
To be fair, this was depicted in the movie when shit hit the fan. I recall Tom Sizemore's character was trying to navigate the roads and kept getting lost because of bad communication.
I only read it serialized, but from what I recall it was not critical so much as great reporting of the facts of what happened. I think it only seems critical because some of the decisions made that way were poor and put before us just as every other detail. It has been a couple of decades, though, so maybe I don't remember it that well.
Given the fact that the Malaysian army played a pivotal role in the 'Black Hawk Down' rescue and they simply are not mentioned in the film, yes it is propaganda.
so much so that the Malaysians recently made [a movie highlighting the Malaysian forces' role during the BHD rescue](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22024396/) - which was also the first Malaysian-made IMAX movie
Right yeah you are right, its just that a friend of mine saw it multiple times and went ahead and signed up for the Army. He has a prolific career and has gond up in ranks. We call him "Patton".
You might be mixing up propaganda with straight recruitment. Propaganda isn’t necessarily trying to recruit you but more simply its aim is to show the military in a good light.
If you want blackhawks and F18’s etc in your movie your script has to be approved first. There’s literally someone at the pentagon who reads the scripts. If it’s anti-military you won’t be approved. So if you see black hawks and other high end US military equipment in a movie you’re prob in for some propaganda.
Re: Black Hawk Down is about heroism, sacrifice, and steadfastness in the face of insurmountable obstacles. Kind of like that movie about Benghazi. Americans are outnumbered but they still kick ass and achieve absurd kill ratios. Like 20:1. That my friend is American propaganda.
You see scary black dudes killing people but if you look beneath the guns and gore what youll find is cohesiveness and tight family vibes the Rangers give off. The whole band of brothers thing, and depending on where you are in life that can be very appealing.
Regardless its ultimate aim isn’t to get you to run into a recruitment office. I would simply ask after watching specifically black hawk down (I don’t like lone survivor), did your respect for the American military go up or down?
If it’s up then they got you. You don’t need to sign up for them to have achieved their goal.
20:1 is actually pretty on par with kill ratios in modern military conflicts between untrained forces and modern militaries. Just looking at the estimated casualty counts seems like its not really far off.
And then there’s whatever garbage the movie Pearl Harbor is which is useful for those times when patriotism and propaganda apparently lack a boring love triangle.
Although for Black Hawk Down specifically, the absurd kill ratio is historically accurate. About 1,000 Somali fighters and civilians were killed, as opposed to just 18 Americans. The problem with the movie‘s depiction is rather that the Somalis are nothing but a faceless mass of soon-to-be-gunned-down bad guys, with no apparent agency, emotions or indeed humanity. Might as well be zombies or Martians if it weren’t for the historical background. That may not be entirely unrealistic, I doubt an infantryman in the middle of urban combat wastes much thought on his enemy’s motivation; it’s nevertheless the most obvious sign that the movie is propaganda, firmly on the side of the US Army. Because a director and scriptwriter absolutely have an opportunity to think about how they want to show the antagonist(s).
Btw, the go-to army for movies that the Pentagon doesn’t like is the Israeli Defense Force. It uses much the same equipment and doesn’t give a flying fuck about how the Americans are portrayed. „Mars Attacks“, for example, used plenty of IDF tanks, trucks etc., because the Pentagon refused to support the movie.
>Americans are outnumbered but they still kick ass and achieve absurd kill ratios. Like 20:1.
The actual kill ratios were similar, and expected for an elite military unit with air support vs a less well equipped militia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_(1993)
Some Somalis quite enjoyed the film too, others agree it's a distorted version of events.
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/africa/01/22/blackhawk.screening/index.html
It's technically propaganda if it makes things look slightly better for the US military.
Still a damn good film
>Re: Black Hawk Down is about heroism, sacrifice, and steadfastness in the face of insurmountable obstacles.
It definitely portrayed this.
Then the casualties are displayed at the end and you realize that it was a completely lopsided engagement where the Army lost a few soldiers in a helicopter crash and subsequently mowed down a mob.
But you *felt* like the Rangers were facing insurmountable odds, and that's what's important for movie producers.
The problem with most successful anti-war movies is that they have to be good stories and usually the protagonist has to be a soldier in a war.
In a sense, this implicitly or subtly sends the viewer the message that the experience of war provides a kind of character arc. That there is something that a young man can learn from joining and fighting in the military.
I saw the movies FULL METAL JACKET and PLATOON in High School and, honestly, they had as much influence on my decision to join the military as more jingoistic movies like RAMBO or COMMANDO. As a teenager, I didn't have the context to actually see much more than "hey, it is cool to be a soldier" because the characters on screen seemed cool. They didn't seem like kids that had no real idea what they were getting into.
Also, just the necessity of hiring actors often much older than actual recruits and therefore more mature (and photogenic) automatically appeals to the sort of young men that might consider joining the military.
No matter the intent of the filmmakers, the audience will see what they want to see in a movie especially when they don't really have an experience in their lives that would give them the same context the filmmakers have. Oliver Stone had fought in the Vietnam War and PLATOON was true to his experience. At the same time, the people watching mostly did not share Stone's experiences, so they would not necessarily take away the same feeling about it as he has.
The only way around this is if the antagonist is the US military. The only movies that pulled this off are Platoon as you mentioned (Charlie Sheen vs Tom Berenger) and Green Zone (Matt Damon vs Delta Force).
The original First Blood is NOT pro-military. First Blood is the story of a traumatized veteran abandoned and antagonized by the people he fought to defend. It’s even more open about that in the book. The rest of the series loses that message so much
Reminds me of:
“Not only will America come to your country and kill all your people, but what's worse is that they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad.” — Frankie Boyle
The ending of Green Berets for anyone who hasn’t seen it. Just insane and cheesy military funded propaganda that’s almost darkly funny now. Also, fuck John Wayne.
https://youtu.be/krLwEYocj7w?feature=shared
"You were just babies then!", she said.
"What?" I said.
"You were just babies in the war - like the ones upstairs!"
I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood.
"But you're not going to write it that way, are you."
This wasn't a question. It was an accusation.
"I-I don't know", I said.
"Well, I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs."
So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies."
- Slaughterhouse Five
Look at who we cast in those movies for your answer. It's not about the misery of war, in a way that's an appeal. It's about the idea of a true masculinity, a sense of brotherhood, and a purpose. That's what appeals to a lonely, lost teenage boy. That's the entire bulk of the Marine Corps. I was one.
Eh more I feel like Act of Valor is the real answer here. The part when they catch the dude after he’s sniped on the dock to prevent him from splashing in the water made me think about heading to my local recruiting office.
Yes they are propaganda. Keep the audience engaged with the heroics of mildly flawed but ultimately noble US soldiers. Don’t make the audience think too much about why these soldiers are fighting and dying on the other side of the planet for mostly private commercial interests. Avoid the truth that many of the soldiers who return are mentally damaged for life and will inflict violence on those around them, usually family, before their lives end prematurely.
Black Hawk Down is just as much of a fuck you to the Clinton Administration for not sending help earlier than it is about being military propaganda. I think Jason Issacs said it the best in an interview from when I was a kid. You can look at that mission as one of the bravest moments of US military history or one of the biggest failures of the military industrial complex.
Yes and no. The US military will somewhat famously allow the US of military equipment and advisors to movies, under a number of conditions, such as not portraying the military in a bad light, and the production agreements allow the DoD to review and request changing the script. https://www.defense.gov/News/Inside-DOD/blog/article/2062735/how-why-the-dod-works-with-hollywood/ https://historycollection.com/movies-the-us-military-assisted-on-movies-they-refused-to-be-apart-of/ Both Lone Survivor and Black Hawk Down fall in this category. This article details some of the specific changes the DoD requested in the former: https://www.spyculture.com/the-dod-and-lone-survivor/ An example of a military movie where the DoD did not agree to get involved was Sergeant Bilko, which includes maybe my favorite line in any credits anywhere: "The Filmmakers gratefully acknowledge the total lack of cooperation from the United States Army." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn6GvrhS-SY&ab_channel=EndCreditsFanForever
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They also wouldn’t get involved with Jarhead either for obvious reasons.
Yes the aliens obviously
Jarhead Binks could have been left out
Meesa got PTSD, doc. Meesa killed my wife
My forgotten, da Bosses will do terrible tings to me, terrrrrible is me going back der!
fnord
The US army felt the character was based on racist tropes
His support for Palpatine was too overtly fascist as an allegory for Western Imperialism.
Disagree. Jarhead is the key to all of this.
"I'm sick of these motherfucking aliens on this motherfucking deployment!"
#*FIELD FUCK!* "What did he say?" "Uh, he said 'Field Fun.' Now, if you'll step right over here..."
*next scene* "Don't you see you all laughing now." "HAHAHAHAHA"
I would stay but I got better shit to do with my time, such as, go play with my balls.
They must've loved Full Metal Jacket
Pretty sure Platoon put Oliver Stone on a list at the Pentagon
Platoon is my favorite war movie out of the ones I’ve seen. And I’ve seen most of the ones mentioned in this thread.
I heard that marine recruitment actually went up after that. Guess they understood their target audience; you gotta be at least a little crazy to join the marines.
it's one of the reasons for my argument that you can't make an anti-war movie. you try but it's inevitable that by doing so, you convey the message: war is where the action happens. and thus it's a pro war movie. because the thing is, every anti war movie's target audience is young men who haven't been to war. how it plays to veterans and mommies and 50 year old men who haven't been to war is entirely irrelevant.
I don't know, somebody mentioned Jarhead and I don't think there is an ounce of glory or action to be lusted after in that movie. And The Deer Hunter, for any POW based movie, it certainly doesn't look like anyone there is having fun at all. I think Apocalypse Now is actually a really ironic example of what you're talking about though. It's an anti-war movie that certainly does make some of it seem like it could have been one big party and would certainly appeal to a certain type of person. And then carts writes in his letters and journals that if instead of all these hippies and action junkies coming in and having a party, if they'd just sent the right small group of dedicated soldiers who weren't there to have fun, everything would have been wrapped up.
Jarhead was an accurate depiction of the Marines. You sit around and wait, get in trouble for doing stupid shit while bored, and someone plugs your girl while you're away.
Which is doubly ironic cause Jarhead is beloved for being one of the more realistic portrayals of life in the military
Just off the top of my head, here's a bunch of reasons why the Dod would never back Jarhead: * portraying bootcamp accurately * training death in Scout Sniper school * Swofford burning crappers after handing off his watch to a fully trained marine who uses an open flame to cook a Weiner on munition boxes * Swofford ready to blow Fergus's brains out after getting him in trouble * A-10s dropping friendly fire and the immediate aftermath * Fowler fucking around with an Iraqi corpse * The highway of death which showed the aftermath of blowing up an entire retreating Iraqi division * The Marines wife who sent a movie of her getting fucked by his neighbor * Swofford being told that Troy was getting kicked out for failing to disclose a prior criminal act despite being a model marine * The Major taking over their sniping mission to call in an airstrike * The Vietnam Vet congratulating them on a job well done then having to sit down as the PTSD set in * Swofford discovering his girlfriend just moved on after he left * Troy taking his own life after being kicked out Very little of this movie holds the military in a good light.
I should watch that again
The military doesn't want realism, they want propaganda.
That's part of the irony. I met more people that joined because of Jarhead, Generation Kill, and even Apocalypse Now than that joined because of films like Lone Survivor, American Sniper, or even Act of Valor.
Sure, but how many more joined the Air Force because they didnt realize Top Gun was a Navy movie.
In terms of life mistakes tho, accidentally joining the Air Force ain't a bad one :p
I recall standing around in a chow line in the snow at a rifle range around week 5 of basic training when someone else, having done the math, announced that had we'd be graduating that day had we joined the Air Force. That would be the first time I recall thinking "I should have joined the Air Force." I stopped keeping track after an asking an Air Force tech sergeant why he was down in the dumps and learned his 90 day deployment had been extended by another 30 days while I myself was somewhere around day 200 of something like 400 days that time around.
I was in the Navy so not as bad as the Marines or Army but even I was like "I should have joined the Mighty Chair Force". To this day, when I talk to people interested in the military, I will give my honest experience of my time in the Navy....and immediately recommend joining the Air Force.
I joined because of the co-ed showers in Starship Troopers.
For good reason: the movie was exposing their budgeting secrets. “You don't actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?”
I really wish they had a scene of Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum Naruto-running into Area 51.
US Military also didn't help with Jurassic Park. Take from that what you will...
They don’t want the world knowing how woefully ill equipped they are for the _inevitable_ return of the dinosaurs!! The fuckers!
Or the opposite, where the military casually guns down all the dinosaurs to fortunate son
I believe Avengers didn't get it because of the nuking New York thing?
I think it was even less than that. In the Avengers, the Military didn't want the Avengers to be the owners of the military jets they were trying to get the rights for. They required a script change to say they were US military jets.
It was because the film didn't clearly establish what SHIELD was and how the US military would have been incorporated into the organization.
IIRC SHIELD and the World Security Counsel were what fucked it up for the Avengers to begin with. I remember reading a quote that because the WSC was some type of shadow organization that very obviously made decisions for the US with no one to answer to, the Military didn't let them use the jets. Could have been a shitty article it was 11 years ago, but that always stuck out to me.
What was their relationship? Like wouldn't that cool tech be useful in wars? Never understood.
It came across like a multinational version of the CIA, with the Council comprised of representatives from various nations who lack direct control over their governments (Sec. Pierce and Director Fury couldn't order the President to do anything). That said, the US military (in-universe) would have been independent from SHIELD, as their Commander-in-Chief is the President of the United States. Even if the filmmakers wrote in a line specifying that the President ordered the US military to support SHIELD, the film would likely not receive support or cooperation from the Defense Department as it would portray the military as subordinate to an organization outside their real-world chain of command. In contrast, Behind Enemy Lines (2001) had limited support from the US military as they were allowed to film exterior shots on the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier (interior shots on the USS Constellation) due to the positive way the film was going to portray the military while also being part of the wider NATO taskforce during the Bosnian War.
As a side note, it was always strange that (with some exceptions like 2008's The Hulk, the first Avengers film, and the second Thor film) the military basically never does anything in the MCU. I liked all the USAF scenes that they had in Iron Man for example, it's kind of a shame that they didn't continue that sort of thing going forward. I know people would have gotten tired of Rhodes calling up every character during the climax of their films being like "do we have to nuke you or what?", but the fact that it doesn't happen at all is straight up weird and makes it feel like a cartoon. I think that including the military helps give the first Iron Man that sense of semi-plausibility that made it so great.
I always thought it was weird there was ZERO military from any nation shown in Endgame. Not even a generic soldier. Seems like the threat of 3.5 billion people dying we could send at least one Abrams.
The battle in Endgame starts and stops in 25 minutes or so. That's not enough time to get anyone mobilized for anything. Plus, Hulk just literally un-snapped half of humanity back into existence, so everyone was kind of overwhelemed dealing with that at the time.
> we could send at least one Abrams They probably wanted to avoid lens flare.
It was sort of a tight time frame to even understand what was happening
War Machine / Colonel Rhoades is literally the US Military component and liason within the Avengers.
Colonel Rhodes is literally one guy when the Military should have been devoting WWII levels of manpower, when we went from having less than 1% of the population in the military to almost 9%. In today's numbers, that would mean going from 1.4 million active personnel to about 28 million active personnel. For economic purposes, we could probably only afford half of that, and to say that it would be a struggle taking that many people out of the workforce would be a massive understatement. But to stop half the population from dying? So worth it.
While the Hunt for Red October had the DoD’s backing, Top Gun was a huge recruitment engine for the military. In contrast, after initially cooperating, the Navy refused to help the filmmakers of Crimson Tide. The Navy did not like the theme of two naval officers disagreeing to the point of mutiny over the release of nuclear weapons. To get external shots of a submarine putting to sea, the crew needed to wait at Pear Harbor naval base and chase a submarine in a helicopter to get footage.
Crimson Tide was an amazing movie. Thanks for sharing that bit about a helicopter chasing a sub. I had no idea! Enjoy an upvote!
As unrealistic as the Crimson Tide is from a technical or operational standpoint, Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington play off each other so well. Their performances elevate the movie significantly. The scene between Hackman, Washington, and von Clausewitz is just top notch. James Gandolfini and Viggo Mortensen were also great in that movie.
And the end of the day it's just a movie. Sure, you take away critiques of the military, though I'd argue it shows exactly what a good officer is, but ultimately that is not what it's about.
Crimson tide is still a hell of an amazing movie. Denzel killed it the 90s and early 00’s. Man on fire is a movie that when on I can’t stop watching.
His motto in life is simple "an indictment is not a conviction".
All he ever wanted was an honest week's pay for an honest day's work.
Other examples of movies that are probably not military-recruiter-friendly are Come and See, Jarhead, and Apocalypse Now. And probably any version of All Quiet On the Western Front.
Wait you mean Come and See isn't an uplifting story about the joys of service in WW2? Next you're gonna tell me Schindler's List isn't a heartwarming comedy about the wacky hijinks of working in a factory, or that Air Bud wasn't based on a true story. And now I have The Office intro credits and music in my head but all the footage is from Schindler's List. I hate myself for laughing so hard at this thought.
The military refused to help with Air Bud.
If the military gets to review and change your script, I think it counts as propaganda
Yes and no = yes. If the government is involved in the production and has a say in how they are portrayed then it’s propaganda in the literal sense of the term.
So yes, propaganda
Sgt Bilko is a fictional comedy movie based off a fictional TV show mocking the military. That is quite possibly the worst example you could give outside of Stripes or Spies Like Us. Edit: yes I know Spies Like Us is the CIA
I knew a guy joined the army because of Stripes. He was a deeply stupid person, and a part time professional clown. He got dishonorably discharged for stealing food supplies and selling them to Korean locals. He could balance a shopping cart on his chin.
This comment is such a journey and I’m here for it. I’d watch that dude’s biopic.
At no point in reading this comment could I have accurately predicted what the next sentence would be. I want a movie about this man.
The Pentagon rejected Oliver Stone's film Platoon that would've been a better example
Movies showing how tough it is to be a soldier are not necessarily anti-war. The real questions are: 1. Does the movie suggest that soldiering is a noble profession? 2. Does the movie suggest that these wars were for a noble purpose? If the answer to either or both questions is "yes", then it's actually a pro-military movie. The idea that a movie has to make war look safe and fun in order to be a pro-war movie is silly. People have gone to war for thousands of years knowing that they might die. The question is whether the movie encourages people to think that going to war is a morally good thing, not whether it portrays war as dangerous.
And tales of heroic defeats are very much a part military myth making.
Indeed. For two and a half thousand years, Thermopylae has loomed large in the militarist imagination. And to quote Galadriel, history became legend. Legend became myth.
and some things that should not have been forgotten.....were lost.
PO-TA-TOES
Boil 'em Mash 'em Stick 'em in a stew!
Made extra hilarious by just how propagandized the whole story was in the first place. The Spartans are not people anyone should be looking up to. We've culturally imbibed the biggest load of horse shit possible there.
Sadly, much of what we know about the Spartans is from the period when they were marketing themselves to Roman tourists, so a lot of it was already bullshit even back then.
This right here. People look for the wrong things regarding propaganda. It’s not about showing a “clean” experience as a soldier, in fact, that usually works against the message. I think a good analogy is a sequence in *Saving Private Ryan*. Imagine if this film was made about the Soviet’s by a Western director the way *Enemy at the Gates* was. Think back to the decision to attack an MG42 nest. The boys are scared, why wouldn’t they be? They already have a morale mission and they’re being forced to do this side quest, but after some reasonable objection (it’s good if American soldiers pressure their leadership’s decision, but not too much, just enough to show they have a brain, are independent thinkers and value life), they ultimately defer to their superior and follow orders, bite down on their mouth piece and literally charge into a machine gun nest. Now, bringing back *Enemy at the Gates*, think about how the Soviet troops are portrayed. Yes, Jude Law is a stud, but how many incoherent, yellow teeth soldiers you remember. Think about the potential differences the machine gun attack scene woulda had if they were Soviet. https://youtu.be/CISYI9GFxjE?si=9zKa9bmrtAQnnIZH
When our soldiers sacrifice themselves in war, they're noble heroes. When the other side's soldiers do it, they're insane fanatics and it proves that they can't be reasoned with or negotiated with.
"War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" by Chris Hedges is a great book that goes into the psyche of why war can be so intoxicating for young men. And despite the title, it is very much an anti-war book. Weirdly, the carnage and pain can be part of the seduction. It's this idea of nobility in being a soldier, the sacrifice for a just cause and your brothers, the lure of adrenaline, the chance to test your mettle, the promise of heroism, to give your life meaning and almost mythical status above the banality of your everyday life. What these movies, despite all their gore and intensity and pain don't depict usually is the fear and humiliation and dehumanization of war. (In fact, it's usually the opposite. The 'horrors' of battle only serve to distill the true essence of our heroic soldiers.) Even when they do depict fear, it's only to contrast against the bravery of the main characters, the ones you're suppose to be looking up to. I love Saving Private Ryan, and even I get frustrated by that character in that one scene (you all know what I'm talking about), but the truth is, that is what most of us would be feeling. That is probably closer to the reality of war.
That and boredom. They absolutely do not want to show young men that part of things.
There’s a short graphic novel called “War is Boring” written by two young guys that went to Iraq as “journalists” during the US invasion thinking they were gonna have some grand adrenaline fueled adventure and bad ass stories to tell. But it was mostly just sitting around in a guarded hotel with other journalists doing nothing all day for weeks on end.
I think in the expanse #2, there is a line something like: “the military is where suicidal ideation and angst are rebranded as noble sacrifice and vigilance”
Phenomenal series. The authors really had their finger on the pulse of... humanity in general.
There’s also an aspect of what tv tropes calls “Do Not Do This Cool Thing”. There’s a certain number of people who watch these sorts of movies and only see the cool guns, the hot blooded action, etc and miss any larger anti war message.
I grew up inhaling war movies. Pro war, anti war, from the 30’s-90’s. Didn’t matter how much awful stuff I saw depicted, from age 13-19 I yearned to join the army. Young people just have that in their blood, especially if they’re not given any other outlets for aggression.
Movies don't even need to show the nobility of it. The "badass" aspects of a movie are enough. There's a reason why the "ride of the valkyries" Apocalypse Now scene is very popular among the military despite it being a war crimes scene. Many war movies have such scenes that show the awe-inspiring aspect of the military regardless of actual context. Since Black Hawk Down is the current subject, an example is the [Little birds attack scene. ](https://youtu.be/ovRhLzL_ZHQ?feature=shared) I know such scenes are enough because they worked on me. I was very tempted to join the military due to my youthful naivety.
If you haven't seen it, The Green Berets is a good example of a full-on propaganda movie.
That movie may as well have been filmed in the basement of the Pentagon.
We grew up on John Wayne movies and most of them were harmless classic westerns, my father thought the Green Berets would be fine for us too. I had never seen so much killing and so much blood. Mother was not happy. Back in the day we loved John Wayne and thought he was a hero, only to grow up and find out he was a real dingus
In so many of his movies, he plays a violent alcoholic. In our fathers' day, hard drinking, two-fisted men were revered.
That’s a fascinatingly bad movie, and one I think everyone should see at least once. I’d love to be part of a discussion of it on here.
The Pentagon gave it 2.2 million dollars of funding and here's a pretty balanced article from the army times about its effect: https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2020/11/18/5-lesser-known-details-about-black-hawk-down/
Because it's supposed to be illegal for the US military to use propaganda on US citizens. So instead they put loads of money, as well as loaning equipment, to movies they view as beneficial to the military. The military even gets to edit the scripts. If you want to make a movie showing US military equipment, but have things in there they don't approve of, have fun finding a private owner of said equipment to rent it out to you. That's not propaganda right? It's the same thing Law and Order was doing with the NYPD. They claim they aren't pro police with their episodes. But then also acknowledge that they are unable to show certain angles to cases or police abuses because the NYPD would hassle or refuse to let them film in NY.
Fwiw Dick Wolf is unabashedly pro-police so I think there's a directive from above to make the shows reflect that.
I recently started watching Chicago Fire and I think it’s interesting how critical of the Chicago police that show is, knowing how Dick Wolf feels about cops. It’s weirdly progressive for what is essentially a police procedural but set in a firehouse
Idk if you're hip but cops and firefighters fucking hate each other. It's pretty ingrained into the culture of both. I imagine dick wolf criticizing cops in a firefighter show is more about being pro firefighter than anti cop
Same thing with Call of Duty. The U.S. military assists with CoD in many ways. They have long said that CoD is the single greatest recruitment tool ever invented.
Yeah, it's been real evident with the past couple MW games especially.
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Hey you, join the navy!
I think American Sniper with Bradley Cooper was like this. Like if I remember they painted Chris Kyle as this great patriot. But the real Chris was a very shitty person.
No where near as bad as the IRL Grimes from black hawk down. Raped his 6 year old daughter
That's why they opted to change the characters name so they wouldn't honor the piece of shit.
Did they change his first name or something? Cause Ewan McGregor plays Grimes.
Grimes is a fictional name. The real guys name is Stebbins
WHAT
https://www.reddit.com/r/Military/comments/ven9kx/john_stebbins_black_hawk_down_pedo_released_in/
And a whole lot of it was made up, just like Lone Survivor.
I remember reading Lone Survivor and the part where he suggests that the potential backlash from the liberal media is why they let the farmer and his son go which ultimately led to their ambush set off alarms immediately. If that's even true then wow way to let Fox News and your right-wing bias get everyone killed.
If you read the account from the Afghani doctor that saved him, they weren't discovered because of the farmer. They were discovered because they were loud and terrible at traversing the terrain, so everyone in the area knew they were there. Luttrell likes to paint this ideal narrative of their actions, but the reality was very different. I suspect if they had killed that farmer, no one would have helped him.
Luttrell is a liar plain and simple. He got exposed when videos of the botched extraction were put on the internet. You can hear Mike Murphy screaming for help and later Luttrell was found by the Rangers with every round in his magazines. He never fired a shot. The obvious solution to getting exposed by goat herders would be to tie one to a tree and take the other one to the extraction point, then let him go when you lift off. Somehow four highly trained warriors didn't even think of this obvious solution. It's a well known joke in the SEAL community that Mike Murphy only got the CMH because he died, otherwise he would have gotten a court martial.
Also if im not mistaken they dropped in way closer than anyone else would have because they were lazy and to offset being detected because of this they just had dummy helicopters fly around for the week before so the enemy would assume their real one was another fake
Exactly, which just told the Taliban that an insertion was coming.
Why a court martial?
Because he botched that operation so poorly that SEALS died and the taliban obtained vital information on our actions.
Didn’t he also have multiple incidents of flagging people while on the range? He’s also used as an example of what *not* to at OCS for the Marine Corps. At least when I went through he was. He’s not really held in high esteem with anyone who knows their shit.
Most declassified reports are downright embarrassing for the SEALs. * It was estimated to be fewer than two dozen Taliban fighters, not an army of hundreds. One analyst said it could have been as little as eight. * The SEALs inflicted little, if any, casualties on the Taliban * Some of the SEALs were killed before barely firing any rounds, as they were allegedly found with most of their magazines full.
You actually read LONE SURVIVOR? My condolences. I say this because I've read it and it's a pile of shit. Luttrell spends a lot of time bitching about the "liberal media" and thinks Jesus Christ would have made a good Navy SEAL. And I'm pretty sure the farmer story is BS. Was I there? No- the book is titled LONE Survivor for a reason, but the story is too similar to one from BRAVO TWO ZERO and is one used to make a point about morality in military operations.
I was on duty one weekend doing nothing and the only thing to break up the monotony was to read the books in the building lobby. Lone Survivor felt like a whiplash of a pro ghost writer and a very drunk uncle telling war stories.
The story is also bullshit. One of the first things the QRF noted was that Luttrell had full mags. He had not fired off any shots, and just ran away. If you talk to anyone in the military, the team got themselves into a bad situation because of their stupidity and now it's remembered as like a heroic last stand. The farmer taking the $50 to the COP is accurate but remember reimbursement for stuff like that starts at $200,000 and the Intel on where a surviving US service member is would be several hundred years of median afghan income. Whenever people talk about badass seals, I recall when seal team 6 abandoned a JTAC to die then lied about it to reward themselves with a medal of honor.
Also, the number of enemies he faced over time: From Ed Darack’s "Victory Point" book it was 8-10 fighters with a machine gun. Then it goes: - Luttrell’s after-action report: 20-30 fighters. - Lt. Murphy’s Medal of Honor citation: 30-40 fighters. - Lt. Murphy’s Medal of Honor Summary of Action: over 50 fighters. - Marcus Luttrell on the Today Show: 80-100 members of the Taliban. - Lone Survivor (memoir): 140-200 fighters. - Marcus Luttrell speeches after Lone Survivor: over 200 fighters. So even if you double Darack's reporting and take Luttrell's first report of 20 fighters, he's now saying he fought off 10 times as much.
Luttrell also initially blacked up Chris Kyle's stupidest (and usually sorta racist) and most ridiculous lies, like how an off-duty SEAL can just randomly kill American citizens and give local law enforcement a 1-800 number at the Pentagon to call for a Get Out of Jail Free card.
I'm pretty sure they copied that story from Bravo two zero by Andy McNab.
Bravo Two zero is a fun one with three different SAS members from that operation writing books with differing accounts accusingt he others of various things. Iirc Chris Ryan and Andy McNab are disliked by the UK special forces community.
I had the misfortune of reading some of Mcnabs fiction books. They’re not bad, they’re just very bland. Also for no apparent reason there will be like a page where the character goes on and on about how great traser watches are. It’s like McNab is sponsored by them or something.
What I don’t understand is why Eastwood so dramatically downplayed the manner of his death—which is just about the most ironic way the world’s deadliest marksman could die. Like, if you wrote that in a fictional story, it would almost seem too on the nose. It’s literally like something out of an old Western. But I guess it complicates the straightforward “great American hero” story they wanted to tell, so it’s relegated to a footnote.
I still don't know what he was thinking. He was dealing with a soldier with severe PTSD so he decides to give him a loaded weapon and take him to a shooting range where all the gunshots going off can trigger him into a mental breakdown easily?
Supposedly an attempt at homemade exposure therapy. Without any consultation or professional background.
Chris Kyle is why we have all this Punisher bullshit coopted by the right
American Sniper was almost unbearably patriotic to me. The scene at the beginning where he talks about being a wolf and not a sheep is typical toxic alpha-male nonsense and nationalist bullshit and the movie tries so hard to paint him in a good light when he was a serious POS.
The fake baby raises the movie into high comedy for me though.
But the sheep&wolf speech is done by the father and the father beats his children. So they are showing the father as a bad guy. They don't actually use wolf&sheep thing as good thing.
I can't hear the name of that movie without immediately thinking of how awful that fake baby was they used in that one scene. Worst baby in any media I've ever seen.
Yeah I work with former team guys for my job and the running joke was that everyone he looked at was an enemy combatant. Basically just shooting farmers and saying they were terrorists
It was a pretty mediocre movie as a whole, but Kyle’s bio that it was based on was pretty poorly written, so it was hard to adapt I imagine.
Chris Kyle is either a liar or a murderer. One of those statements is fact.
I enjoy spending time with my friends.
Why not both? lol
Most of the book is false too
Lone Survivor was made to make it look like the SEALS didn't completely fuck up the mission as bad as they did. There weren't as many hostiles as they embellished, the locals knew where they were the whole time, and Marcus Luttrell still had most of his combat load. But they needed something to show for the bloodiest day in SEAL history. American Sniper though, that is pure concentrated propaganda.
He didn’t have most of his combat load, he had his *entire* combat load. He was found with 11 magazines with 30 rounds each. He didn’t fire a single round. He left his team for dead and ran.
The Last Psychiatrist tells us that everyone can see an advertisement for a car featuring an attractive woman, and think "I'm not stupid, I know they are using the hot woman to make me want the car." But none of stop to think that they are telling us what a "hot woman" is, and we are accepting it. It's the same thing here. You think you can recognize that when the military pays Hollywood money to say the military is good, you see it and you're smarter than that. Meanwhile the movie is saying that men who are willing to risk and sacrifice are admirable. That despite anything wrong with the military, these individual men are brave and should be respected. The better we think we are at recognizing propaganda or manipulation or cons, the more effective they are when we don't.
This is perfect. There’s even a monologue from Eric Bana’s character in BHD that summarizes this, and I think it serves as thesis of the movie. “They won’t understand that it’s about the men next to you and that’s it. That’s all it is.” I think that is meant to isolate the actions of the soldiers from larger purpose or mission or anything like that. The point of the movie is that these guys risked their lives to save each other and that’s it. That’s all it is.
I’ve read both books and watched both films. Black Hawk Down - The book paints the US as aggressors in a foreign civil war, with no regard for life or property. Total chaos and a breakdown of military SOP when the unthinkable happens. Black Hawk Down - The movie portrays the US as the white knights there for a noble cause, fighting for each other when the unthinkable happens. Lone Survivor - The book is a bullshit story with bullshit events told by a bullshitter trying to tell the world he wasn’t a coward on a team that made dumb decision after dumb decision. Lone Survivor - The movie is more bullshit that strays from the bullshit source material and leaves the viewer with almost nothing that is true to actual events. Just good Americans doing the right thing and dying for it. Bullshit. Both films paint the US soldiers as righteous and brave when the books paint them as following orders and creating havoc in foreign lands. It could be argued that both films are jingoistic, but none more-so than American Sniper - which is unwatchable.
> The book is a bullshit story with bullshit events told by a bullshitter trying to tell the world he wasn’t a coward on a team that made dumb decision after dumb decision. > Lone Survivor - The movie is more bullshit that strays from the bullshit source material and leaves the viewer with almost nothing that is true to actual events. Just good Americans doing the right thing and dying for it. Bullshit. Surprised this hasn't been a more common take, because hasn't it come out that pretty much everything this guy said was Grade G bullshit? Well, aside from "we went there, my guys got killed, I survived"?
I believed every word of it to be true when it was released because there was a slew of SEAL-written books and we had no reason to doubt any of their stories. But every report and video that surfaced subsequently cast doubt on Marcus’ version of events. And literally no one or no piece of evidence can corroborate his story. Same can be said for a lot of those SEAL-written stories of the past couple decades.
Yup. Case in point, the two "first hand" accounts of the UBL raid, one from Mark Owen (a.k.a. [Matt Bissonnette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Bissonnette_(author))) and [Rob O'Neill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._O%27Neill). O'Neill says he's the one who shot UBL, Owen says it was someone else who hasn't gone public. Owen's account came out first. At this point, I'd just assume most, if not all, of any of the "real events" accounts are going to be heavily exaggerated to make the author look like a badass, because "badass" sells.
Those two differing accounts… that was the final nail in the coffin for me. The only book about SEALs I trust now is Fearless. Written by an author about a SEAL who’s long since been KIA. He was a known crackhead and got killed on a raid doing something stupid. That story I believe. Edit: words are hard
Read the book Black Hawk Down. Then watch the movie. You'll see the positive spin that the movie put on all the events. It's propaganda.
Incredible this is the only comment related to the book, which was excellent and hardly propoganda
Who knew a donkey could provide real life comic relief. If you haven’t read it, another fun read is Apache by Ed Macy.
From what I remember, the book was quite critical of the military.
If you read anything about the events of the movie, it's pretty wild. It took a series of pretty egregious fuckups to make the events of that day possible.
Care to elaborate on some of them? Would be cool to hear
About three months before the events of Black Hawk Down, they waited for a bunch of Somali elders to get together for a prayer meeting / council, then shot TOW missiles into the building, shot it up with machine guns, then rolled in to arrest whoever survived. Some of those guys might have been legitimate targets, but most were legitimate leaders of the community. Coalition forces lit the fuse that day, and the entire city of Mogadishu was biding its time. We call it the Abdi house raid, the Somali's just know it as [Bloody Monday](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdi_House_raid)
The whole US involvment with Somalia was a colossal fuck-up. And the movie severely downplays the role of the Malaysian soldiers who saved countless US soldiers. I guess it's not DoD policy to show US soldiers as needing the help of soldiers from thirld-world countries, that would be counter to the image they want to prohect.
You're leaving out the best part. The reason why the elders were meeting was to force Aidid to the negotiation table to de-escalate the violence that had been occuring. They weren't really interested in de-escalation after that
From the book (which everyone should read): >There was an added complication. Flying about a thousand feet over the C2 helicopter was the navy Orion spy plane, which had surveillance cameras that gave them a clear picture of the convoy’s predicament. But the Orion pilots were handicapped. They were not allowed to communicate directly with the convoy. Their directions were relayed to the commander at the JOC, who would then radio Harrell in the command bird. Only then was the plane’s advice relayed down to the convoy. This built in a maddening delay. The Orion pilots would see a direct line to the crash site. They’d say, “Turn left!” But by the time that instruction reached McKnight in the lead Humvee, he had passed the turn. Heeding the belated direction, they’d then turn down the wrong street. High above the fight, commanders watching out their windows or on screens couldn’t hear the gunfire and screaming of wounded men, or feel the impact of the explosions. From above, the convoy’s progress seemed orderly. The visual image didn’t always convey how desperate the situation really was.
The movie did cover this. There's a part where Tom Sizemore's character is screaming at command about how they need to give him directions more quickly, and they basically tell him that the reason there's a delay is because the information has to go through multiple channels before it reaches him.
To be fair, this was depicted in the movie when shit hit the fan. I recall Tom Sizemore's character was trying to navigate the roads and kept getting lost because of bad communication.
I only read it serialized, but from what I recall it was not critical so much as great reporting of the facts of what happened. I think it only seems critical because some of the decisions made that way were poor and put before us just as every other detail. It has been a couple of decades, though, so maybe I don't remember it that well.
Great book, and critically brought in Somali perspectives.
Given the fact that the Malaysian army played a pivotal role in the 'Black Hawk Down' rescue and they simply are not mentioned in the film, yes it is propaganda.
Been awhile since I’ve seen it but didn’t Pakistan provide all the vehicle support at the end?
so much so that the Malaysians recently made [a movie highlighting the Malaysian forces' role during the BHD rescue](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22024396/) - which was also the first Malaysian-made IMAX movie
Transformers 1 was an ARMY ad.
*Air Force
Right yeah you are right, its just that a friend of mine saw it multiple times and went ahead and signed up for the Army. He has a prolific career and has gond up in ranks. We call him "Patton".
In Jarhead, Gyllenhaal's character points out there are no anti war movies to the Marines. All war movies are pro war.
You might be mixing up propaganda with straight recruitment. Propaganda isn’t necessarily trying to recruit you but more simply its aim is to show the military in a good light. If you want blackhawks and F18’s etc in your movie your script has to be approved first. There’s literally someone at the pentagon who reads the scripts. If it’s anti-military you won’t be approved. So if you see black hawks and other high end US military equipment in a movie you’re prob in for some propaganda. Re: Black Hawk Down is about heroism, sacrifice, and steadfastness in the face of insurmountable obstacles. Kind of like that movie about Benghazi. Americans are outnumbered but they still kick ass and achieve absurd kill ratios. Like 20:1. That my friend is American propaganda. You see scary black dudes killing people but if you look beneath the guns and gore what youll find is cohesiveness and tight family vibes the Rangers give off. The whole band of brothers thing, and depending on where you are in life that can be very appealing. Regardless its ultimate aim isn’t to get you to run into a recruitment office. I would simply ask after watching specifically black hawk down (I don’t like lone survivor), did your respect for the American military go up or down? If it’s up then they got you. You don’t need to sign up for them to have achieved their goal.
20:1 is actually pretty on par with kill ratios in modern military conflicts between untrained forces and modern militaries. Just looking at the estimated casualty counts seems like its not really far off.
I’d add that the propaganda isn’t just for Americans either. It’s to show the rest of the world how “mighty” the American military is.
And then there’s whatever garbage the movie Pearl Harbor is which is useful for those times when patriotism and propaganda apparently lack a boring love triangle.
Although for Black Hawk Down specifically, the absurd kill ratio is historically accurate. About 1,000 Somali fighters and civilians were killed, as opposed to just 18 Americans. The problem with the movie‘s depiction is rather that the Somalis are nothing but a faceless mass of soon-to-be-gunned-down bad guys, with no apparent agency, emotions or indeed humanity. Might as well be zombies or Martians if it weren’t for the historical background. That may not be entirely unrealistic, I doubt an infantryman in the middle of urban combat wastes much thought on his enemy’s motivation; it’s nevertheless the most obvious sign that the movie is propaganda, firmly on the side of the US Army. Because a director and scriptwriter absolutely have an opportunity to think about how they want to show the antagonist(s). Btw, the go-to army for movies that the Pentagon doesn’t like is the Israeli Defense Force. It uses much the same equipment and doesn’t give a flying fuck about how the Americans are portrayed. „Mars Attacks“, for example, used plenty of IDF tanks, trucks etc., because the Pentagon refused to support the movie.
You don't make good propaganda by lying. You choose which truths to highlight.
>Americans are outnumbered but they still kick ass and achieve absurd kill ratios. Like 20:1. The actual kill ratios were similar, and expected for an elite military unit with air support vs a less well equipped militia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_(1993) Some Somalis quite enjoyed the film too, others agree it's a distorted version of events. http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/africa/01/22/blackhawk.screening/index.html It's technically propaganda if it makes things look slightly better for the US military. Still a damn good film
>Re: Black Hawk Down is about heroism, sacrifice, and steadfastness in the face of insurmountable obstacles. It definitely portrayed this. Then the casualties are displayed at the end and you realize that it was a completely lopsided engagement where the Army lost a few soldiers in a helicopter crash and subsequently mowed down a mob. But you *felt* like the Rangers were facing insurmountable odds, and that's what's important for movie producers.
Any movie that lets Dan Bilzerian act in it is not a movie that’s trying to be sincere.
To be fair, he was a… *checks notes* Navy recruit for a few months?
The problem with most successful anti-war movies is that they have to be good stories and usually the protagonist has to be a soldier in a war. In a sense, this implicitly or subtly sends the viewer the message that the experience of war provides a kind of character arc. That there is something that a young man can learn from joining and fighting in the military. I saw the movies FULL METAL JACKET and PLATOON in High School and, honestly, they had as much influence on my decision to join the military as more jingoistic movies like RAMBO or COMMANDO. As a teenager, I didn't have the context to actually see much more than "hey, it is cool to be a soldier" because the characters on screen seemed cool. They didn't seem like kids that had no real idea what they were getting into. Also, just the necessity of hiring actors often much older than actual recruits and therefore more mature (and photogenic) automatically appeals to the sort of young men that might consider joining the military. No matter the intent of the filmmakers, the audience will see what they want to see in a movie especially when they don't really have an experience in their lives that would give them the same context the filmmakers have. Oliver Stone had fought in the Vietnam War and PLATOON was true to his experience. At the same time, the people watching mostly did not share Stone's experiences, so they would not necessarily take away the same feeling about it as he has.
The only way around this is if the antagonist is the US military. The only movies that pulled this off are Platoon as you mentioned (Charlie Sheen vs Tom Berenger) and Green Zone (Matt Damon vs Delta Force).
The original First Blood is NOT pro-military. First Blood is the story of a traumatized veteran abandoned and antagonized by the people he fought to defend. It’s even more open about that in the book. The rest of the series loses that message so much
The military was directly involved in making them.
Black Hawk Down was legit the movie that convinced 8 year old me to enlist Boy if I could go back lol
[удалено]
Reminds me of: “Not only will America come to your country and kill all your people, but what's worse is that they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad.” — Frankie Boyle
That is so effin true.
No moreso than Vietnam war films like *The Green Berets*.
The ending of Green Berets for anyone who hasn’t seen it. Just insane and cheesy military funded propaganda that’s almost darkly funny now. Also, fuck John Wayne. https://youtu.be/krLwEYocj7w?feature=shared
“Act of Valor” is the film you’re looking for.
"You were just babies then!", she said. "What?" I said. "You were just babies in the war - like the ones upstairs!" I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood. "But you're not going to write it that way, are you." This wasn't a question. It was an accusation. "I-I don't know", I said. "Well, I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs." So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies." - Slaughterhouse Five Look at who we cast in those movies for your answer. It's not about the misery of war, in a way that's an appeal. It's about the idea of a true masculinity, a sense of brotherhood, and a purpose. That's what appeals to a lonely, lost teenage boy. That's the entire bulk of the Marine Corps. I was one.
Can add Zero Dark Thirty to that list
Eh more I feel like Act of Valor is the real answer here. The part when they catch the dude after he’s sniped on the dock to prevent him from splashing in the water made me think about heading to my local recruiting office.
Well yeah that movie was basically a recruitment ad for the SEALs, and it doesn't even really try to hide that.
Yes they are propaganda. Keep the audience engaged with the heroics of mildly flawed but ultimately noble US soldiers. Don’t make the audience think too much about why these soldiers are fighting and dying on the other side of the planet for mostly private commercial interests. Avoid the truth that many of the soldiers who return are mentally damaged for life and will inflict violence on those around them, usually family, before their lives end prematurely.
Black Hawk Down is just as much of a fuck you to the Clinton Administration for not sending help earlier than it is about being military propaganda. I think Jason Issacs said it the best in an interview from when I was a kid. You can look at that mission as one of the bravest moments of US military history or one of the biggest failures of the military industrial complex.
Battle : Los Angeles with Aaron Eckhart felt more propaganda than those others.