The Pentagon refused to help The Avengers
The Pentagon and the CIA have been offering advice, resources and even state-of-the-art military aircraft to Hollywood (and Katy Perry) for decades. In doing so, it has attempted to control the way the US military and the US Government are portrayed on screen. In Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down (2001), for example, in exchange for this help, a character based on a real-life soldier who had also been a child rapist lost that part of his backstory when he came to the screen. For a more detailed look at the connection between the the Pentagon and Hollywood check out this article from The Guardian.
While the Pentagon have been willing to help Hollywood in exchange for some positive PR, they weren’t willing to help Hollywood’s latest blockbuster superhero crew, The Avengers. The reason? The Defense Department didn’t think a movie about comic book heroes, Norse Gods and intergalactic invasions was sufficiently realistic in its treatment of military bureaucracy.
“We couldn’t reconcile the unreality of this international organization and our place in it,” Phil Strub, the Defense Department’s Hollywood liaison, tells Danger Room. “To whom did SHIELD answer? Did we work for SHIELD? We hit that roadblock and decided we couldn’t do anything” with the film.
That’s a pretty ridiculous problem. For the full poop, check out Wired’s article here.
