There are some things in life that you want to see represented accurately on the big screen and the military that protects our country is one of them. It’s understandable in many respects that the US Army isn’t always shown in its full glory in some films since the plot and premise might be focused more around the drama, comedy, or horror of the film than it is around the accuracy of the uniforms and practices. But the idea that such things don’t matter to the the audience is an erroneous one at best and highly disrespectful as well. It’s one of those things in life that needs to be given the proper respect on basic principle sense it’s representing something that helps to make our nation a great place to live and keeps us safe at the same time.
It’s not that much to ask to get things right after all.
5. The use of certain weapons.
It looks cool when a soldier picks up a weapon in a movie and can suddenly become a crack shot or hefts a rocket launcher on their shoulder and lets loose. The only problem with this is that these weapons are designed to be fired in a very specific way, and some of them, no matter how tough a person is, would knock them on their butts and possibly dislocate something if they tried to perform the actions as shown in the movie.
4. The ranking system.
This is something that the average audience member will almost never catch either because they have never been in the military or aren’t paying attention. But those who are career military or have lived around those who are would no doubt pick apart many movies since the ranks that are put on display are at times very wrong and misleading. Some movies get this right but not a lot.
3. Magical weapons that never run out of ammo.
A lot of movies have gotten better about this in the last couple of decades but up until then it seemed as though every person that shot a gun in war movies had the advantage of a clip that could last for several minutes at a time as the protagonist sprayed a lethal barrage of bullets at the attackers. Running out of ammo was never really an issue for some actors in army films.
2. The tactics are usually not standard.
American soldiers tend to do a lot of things in movies that would never be sanctioned or even dreamed of in reality. In fact some of the things that are done would be punishable immediately and could possibly lead to a court martial depending on the severity. In any case disregarding one’s duty and going off track could possibly do worse than just show dereliction of duty, it could cause a serious international incident depending on what was done.
1. A lot of movies get the salute wrong.
This is something you just-do-not-get-wrong in the presence of someone that has had to salute their superior officers since the day they entered the armed forces. The proper salute, as it’s written, is to raise the right hand so that the tip of the forefinger is touching the eyebrow, arm at a 45 degree angle, with your fingers together and straight. Mess with this at your own peril.
Movies might make the armed forces look cool, but they need to remember to be accurate.
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