"How to Recognize a War Movie: The Contemporary Science Fiction Blockbuster as Military Recruitment Film"
Essay printed in A Companion to the War Film, edited by Douglas A. Cunningham and John Nelson (Wiley Blackwell, 2016)
My essay examines how the military has increasingly turned to the tropes of science fiction in order to create compelling narratives about military service that might be used for recruitment purposes. Finding the messages of contemporary war films set in Iraq or Afghanistan (such as STOPLOSS, THE VALLEY OF ELAH, or even THE HURT LOCKER) to be either outwardly hostile to the military or at least morally ambiguous, the Department of Defense has turned to science fiction blockbusters to promote the traditional values of military service, such as honor, sacrifice, patriotism, duty, and brotherhood. By providing unprecedented resources for films like TRANSFORMERS 2: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, BATTLE: LOS ANGELES, and BATTLESHIP, the Pentagon ensures that these messages reach large numbers of viewers (and especially the young male audience that they might hope to recruit), who flock to fantasy-based blockbuster films.
A major focus of the essay is BATTLE: LOS ANGELES (Jonathan Liebesman, 2011), a self-conscious science-fiction reworking of SANDS OF IWO JIMA (Allen Dwan, 1949), itself an overt U.S. Marine Corps recruitment film featuring much-emulated John Wayne battle heroics. I will argue that because the film replaces real-world combatants with faceless and all-out evil aliens whose annihilation of the human race needs no motivation, it is able to activate the "Good War" tropes of traditional World War II combat films that current war films have eschewed.
I also discuss the use of science fiction tropes in military recruitment commercials, such as the series of “It’s Not Science Fiction” ads for the Air Force and the Army Strong commercial tied in with X-MEN: FIRST CLASS. Along with the films, these commercials associate military service with the spectacle and wonder of science fiction iconography, giving it the sense of the fantastic and miraculous that speculative technologies evoke. Ultimately, I argue that the military’s investment in the narratives and imagery of science fiction results not just in genre hybridity, but in a reconceptualization of the war genre.
My essay examines how the military has increasingly turned to the tropes of science fiction in order to create compelling narratives about military service that might be used for recruitment purposes. Finding the messages of contemporary war films set in Iraq or Afghanistan (such as STOPLOSS, THE VALLEY OF ELAH, or even THE HURT LOCKER) to be either outwardly hostile to the military or at least morally ambiguous, the Department of Defense has turned to science fiction blockbusters to promote the traditional values of military service, such as honor, sacrifice, patriotism, duty, and brotherhood. By providing unprecedented resources for films like TRANSFORMERS 2: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, BATTLE: LOS ANGELES, and BATTLESHIP, the Pentagon ensures that these messages reach large numbers of viewers (and especially the young male audience that they might hope to recruit), who flock to fantasy-based blockbuster films.
A major focus of the essay is BATTLE: LOS ANGELES (Jonathan Liebesman, 2011), a self-conscious science-fiction reworking of SANDS OF IWO JIMA (Allen Dwan, 1949), itself an overt U.S. Marine Corps recruitment film featuring much-emulated John Wayne battle heroics. I will argue that because the film replaces real-world combatants with faceless and all-out evil aliens whose annihilation of the human race needs no motivation, it is able to activate the "Good War" tropes of traditional World War II combat films that current war films have eschewed.
I also discuss the use of science fiction tropes in military recruitment commercials, such as the series of “It’s Not Science Fiction” ads for the Air Force and the Army Strong commercial tied in with X-MEN: FIRST CLASS. Along with the films, these commercials associate military service with the spectacle and wonder of science fiction iconography, giving it the sense of the fantastic and miraculous that speculative technologies evoke. Ultimately, I argue that the military’s investment in the narratives and imagery of science fiction results not just in genre hybridity, but in a reconceptualization of the war genre.
Word cloud of the text of the essay.
