Hollywood at its best for the Pentagon

Editor's note: Hollywood needs to be flushed down the toilet. Why Americans continue to dysfunctionally fixate on these people is beyond comprehension. Responsible Statecraft (apparently "credentialed amateurs") used an image with George Clooney on the right holding an Oscar. Circumstances are becoming so bizarre and weird including recent allegations George Clooney was taped raping Justin Bieber revealed in some Diddy videos released. Are these people that arrogant or are they just that stupid to allow themselves to be video taped? If anyone needs to understand better why "the Oscars suck", by all means have a read through this latest:

Why The Oscars Suck - No Truth
________

And the Oscar goes to ... the Pentagon!

Can you feel it? At least one-third of blockbuster films substantially featuring the military were likely produced with DoD support

By Ashley Gate | February 28, 2025

This Sunday millions will tune in to watch Hollywood's premier awards ceremony, the Oscars. All eyes will be on the red carpet to see who is wearing what and viewers will be anxiously waiting to see if any drama unfolds–like a Will Smith slap or accidentally awarding the Best Picture Oscar to the wrong film. What won't be mentioned is the fact that many of the movies vying for Oscar wins wouldn't have made it to the big screen without help from the U.S. military.

From Goldfinger (1964) to Captain Marvel (2019), the Pentagon has assisted in the making of more than 2,500 war-themed movies and television series and continues to contribute to an average of seven feature film projects and over 90 smaller film and TV projects every year.

Roger Stahl, who heads University of Georgia's Communications Studies Department and author of Militainment Inc. and the documentary "Theaters of War," suspects that a third to a half of all blockbuster films substantially featuring the military have received military support. "The Oscars have honored a few security state-sponsored productions over the years," he wrote in an email exchange with Responsible Statecraft.

As reported by Stahl, The Hurt Locker, which won Best Picture in 2010, had DoD help for half of its production before the relationship soured. Argo and its CIA "co-producers" won Best Picture in 2013, and the Navy's Top Gun: Maverick boasted nine nominations in 2023.

Documents pertaining to the production of this year's films aren’t available yet, as they are often only accessible through time-intensive Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. But, according to Stahl, "if there was an Oscar category for most likely to do business with the security state, the nominees would be the new offerings in franchises that have done it before: Godzilla, Mission: Impossible, Planet of the Apes, and Captain America."

The Costs of War’s new Consuming War research series, unveiled earlier this week, highlights the many ways in which "Americans are inundated with cultural projects promoting militarism." The series's first paper, "The Militarization of Movies and Television," provides a timely review of the Pentagon's influence over the movie and television industry. And it turns out that U.S. taxpayer money is going directly to Hollywood subsidies.

Tanner Mirrlees, the author of the report and Associate Professor of Communication and Digital Media Studies at Ontario Tech University, illustrates how Americans are unwittingly helping finance military propaganda disguised as commercial entertainment. A typical war movie budget may range between $50 million and $150 million.

Meanwhile, a single F-35 fighter costs over $80 million. Thus, the cost of acquiring and operating jets, tanks and aircraft carriers would make such weapons inaccessible to movie makers without extensive DoD subsidization. Partnering with the Pentagon gives studios access to technologies and the personnel to operate them, military locations to film at, and U.S. officers who can double as taxpayer-funded extras.

This partnership comes at a price. In exchange for the use of military personnel and equipment, movie producers must abide by the Pentagon's strict entertainment policy that grants the DoD final say over a movie's script. These collaborations frequently require changes to the screenplay that amount to historical revisionism. Spy Culture, the "world's leading resource on government involvement in Hollywood," has utilized FOIA requests to collect tens of thousands of annotated drafts of film scripts which provide a firsthand glimpse at the breadth of the Pentagon’s influence over the movies we know and love.

Please go to Responsible Statecraft to continue reading.

________

With Hollywood almost anything is possible:

Randy Quaid: Hollywood Knows 7Star Whackers' Killed Gene Hackman to Protect Epstein List

Here is where the Pentagon produced an estimated 90,000 films (many hard core war propaganda films) to convince Americans of the US military's superiority including falsified and staged films of "nuclear explosions":

Look Out Mountain Laboratory