"But they're just TV shows" "it's not that deep" etc. I would implore you to listen to this excellent episode of Citations Needed..
It covers how modern cop shows were invented directly to counter shows that portrayed defence lawyers as the protagonists, along with a general push to lionize the police state despite its inability to prevent crime or deliver real justice.
Copaganda
Crazy how much of this stuff is subsidized by or directly financed by the national security state. The most infamous, in my memory anyway, was the Transformers Franchise which got enormous access to US military staff and equipment during the shooting. The end result was a movie that felt more like one of those hookey 80s "Join the Marines" ads than a piece of action cinema.
At least the newer Transformers films are better in that regard, with the latest film not having anything to do with it. Then again I heard they are doing a Transformers x GI Joe film.
Double Woof.
But yes, a lot of this just comes down to who will pay to finance the film. If Raytheon or the US Marines is willing to pick up a big chunk of the production costs, you're going to keep seeing them in the producer credits and "Special Thanks To" sections.
I kinda get it though...it's not like these armed forces are producing the movie themselves.
The studio wants to make a movie about/involving these entities. They want it to be as realistic as possible and the entity itself has the authority to give them access that it could also deny.
If you're in charge of, say, the Marines PR department, you're constantly trying to make the Corps look good and boost recruitment. If you can do this for next to nothing against your budget by granting access to a studio making a film that will give you essentially free PR, that's a great move. The bigger the movies potential, the more the entity in question is motivated to support it.
On the other hand, if the film is going to make your organization look bad, no PR person with a functioning brain is going to help that project in any way.
Idunno, I feel like these organizations do enough actually bad things, that I don't feel the urge to crucify them for cultivating image and working to generate positive PR.
The studio wants to make a movie about/involving these entities.
Studios want cheap special effects budgets and the MIC wants cheap labor. So you get what amounts to a promotional video for branches of the service, paid for out of the operating budgets of these agencies.
Idunno, I feel like these organizations do enough actually bad things, that I don’t feel the urge to crucify them for cultivating image and working to generate positive PR.
I think a big part of the "doing bad things" process is facilitated by whitewashing our activities in Kandahar or Fallujah with "We're just cool dudes fighting big monsters" action movie propaganda. Is Transformers as egregious as Rambo II or American Sniper? Not strictly. But its geared towards a younger audience, so it can't do the same kind of blood-drenched jingoism in that way.
I would consider gulling 12-year-olds into aspiring to become conscript killers for the oil & gas industry overseas pretty fucking bad, though.
Legally, access to government resources shouldn't depend on how you portray the government
Moonie (Moon Channel) has a lovely 2h30 video on the topic of Kawaii: Anime, Propaganda, and Soft Power Politics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM2VIKfaY0Y
It focuses mostly on the eastern part of things, but it applies to stuff we end up consuming, too. Also worth quoting one of the top comments in the video:
I think you get one thing wrong, and that is claiming Japan is the #1 at projecting soft power. I'm sorry but the US is #1 and it isn't even a contest (coming from a non-American). The reason we don't really get the impression that the US is this soft power behemoth is because the US has been so proficient in projecting soft power that it has been normalized and integrated everywhere.
Where does stuff like Brooklyn 99 come in?
Fetish content
ACAB sorry man
I tend to lump it in with The West Wing as idealistic wish fulfilment of how we'd like things to be, or a picture of our human potential.
NGL CSI was my shit growing up. Though I was never deluded into believing that accurately reflected reality to any extent. ACAB