You already know how "product placement" in the movies is intended to get you to buy certain brands. The military knows that too, and they've been using it from the very beginning of movies, from Abbott and Costello in Buck Privates to GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
Besides the military hardware and excitement generated in films like Hurt Locker and Transformers, often recruiting ads will be shown before the movies during previews.
Read more on this in the articles linked at right. (The last article from the US Department of Defense claims that the purpose of the relationship between Hollywood and the military is so the films are "more accurate." Watch some of the latest fare from Hollywood featuring the military, and judge for yourself.)
Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead, about his experience during the first Gulf War, says this about war films, anti-war or not:
"There is talk that many Vietnam films are antiwar, that the message is war is inhumane and look what happens when you train young American men to fight and kill, they turn their fighting and killing everywhere, they ignore their targets and desecrate the entire country, shooting fully automatic, forgetting they were trained to aim. But actually, Vietnam films are all pro-war, no matter what the supposed message, what Kubrick or Coppola or Stone intended.
"Mr. and Mrs. Johnson in Omaha or San Francisco or Manhattan will watch the films and weep and decide once and for all that war is inhumane and terrible, and they will tell their friends at church and their family this, but Corporal Johnson at Camp Pendleton and Sergeant Johnson at Travis Air Force Base and Seaman Johson at Coronado Naval Station and Spec 4 Johnson at Fort Bragg and Lance Corporal Swofford at Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base watch the same films and are excited by them, because the magic brutality of the films celebrates the terrible and despicable beauty of their fighting skills. [Emphasis added] Fight, rape, war, pillage, burn. Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man... It doesn't matter how many Mr. and Mrs. Johnsons are antiwar--the actual killers who know how to use the weapons are not."
