Wednesday, February 15, 2012

‘Battleship’ movie: “Real Heroes,” reel propaganda

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

A new behind-the-scenes featurette for the upcoming alien invasion movie Battleship has just surfaced online. Titled “Real Heroes,” the three minute video is not so much a promo for the movie as it is a shameless recruitment ad for the US Navy, which, in lending its full support to the production, has been granted contractual power to significantly influence the content of this two-hundred-million dollar bucket of popcorn and how it is sold to the masses.

 “I have a good relationship with the Department of Defense and they know that I love soldiers and I respect the warrior spirit of any soldier, anywhere in the world,” says director Peter Berg. “As a result, they’ve opened up their doors to us in fairly unprecedented ways.”

The last time the DoD opened its doors to Hollywood in “unprecedented ways” was for the production of Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The end result was both UFOlogically fascinating and – unsurprisingly for a Hollywood-DoD collaboration – nauseatingly propagandist.

 “It’s been a long time since the world has seen what we do over here in America with our military and just how strong we are,” Berg enthuses in the propaganda short featurette.

Thank goodness, then, that Berg has stepped up to the plate with Battleship. For what better way to project American power than to kick some extraterrestrial heinie while flying the stars and stripes (and believe me, they’ll be flying) on the international stage?

Battleship docks at cinemas this May.







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