Pentagon Halts Cooperation With Avengers Movie Due to Film Being “Unrealistic”

It's become a standard of big budget, blockbuster action movies. You have the U.S. military bringing out their best weapons and heavy artillery to take out whatever major threat happen to be threatening the planet. What you may or may not know is that the real military cooperates with the Hollywood military on these films, and are usually happy to do it. So why is there no U.S. military involvement in one of the biggest action blockbusters ever?

The Pentagon reports that they have stopped cooperating with the mega-hit movie "The Avengers," due to the film being too unrealistic in its treatment of the military bureaucracy.

Moviegoers and comic fans know that S.H.I.E.L.D., led by Samuel L. Jackson’s super-spy Nick Fury, is an international peacekeeping/global surveillance/crisis response/quasi-military organization. But its relationship with the United States is murky. And that basically stopped the U.S. military, which is normally eager to cooperate with the film industry on blockbuster movies, from teaming up with the Avengers.

“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 S.H.I.E.L.D. answer? Did we work for S.H.I.E.L.D.? We hit that roadblock and decided we couldn’t do anything” with the film.

Now, some military fighter jets did appear in the movie, but according to Marvel, they were "digitally inserted" into the film.

So, to sum it all up, a movie in which you have superheroes and an organization that has no clear ties to the U.S. military is unrealistic. But other movies in which you have aliens, super-powered terrorists and sentient robot beings, but the U.S. government is the hero or major power in charge is completely realistic?

Look, if the government doesn't want to get involved with a movie, that's their business. But at least come up with a better excuse than "it's too unrealistic." Because when you've got your planes and tanks and stuff in movies about aliens rising up out the ocean or robots that can change into vehicles, "realistic" flies out the window.