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[snoscythe]

I understand what you are saying with Black Hawk Down, but when I watch it, I see a brave and honorable group of men who will stand up to insurmountable odds for their brothers, which makes my heart swell with pride for our armed forces.

Agreed. Hollywood has been intelligent enough to make sure that they make the individual soldiers the courageous hero figures that they really are, but they aim their cynical barbs at the upper levels of the military--administration, policy, and bureaucracy. Instead of making the soldier someone you want to emulate and follow (like Maverick from TopGun), they make them sympathetic figures whose mistakes you want to avoid repeating (did Tears of the Sun make you want to enlist?).

[Florwood]

http://pict.fm/gallery/1046/avatar-3.html

Does some super cool person want to help me know how I can get this one "down to size?"

If you upload a picture to photobucket (free site), it provides you with tools to resize the pic to fit the 90x90 limitations.

[hawkwing]

http://pict.fm/gallery/1046/avatar-3.html

Does some super cool person want to help me know how I can get this one "down to size?"

If you upload a picture to photobucket (free site), it provides you with tools to resize the pic to fit the 90x90 limitations.

By the way, I've changed the restrictions to 100x100 now! Big increase

[Schmoe]

Sno, though I agree with you that the general public was not in an anti-war, anti-army, anti-America (see: today) when Full Metal Jacket was released, it was received with critical acclaim and an overall decent reception, though controversial.

Black Hawk Down was directed by arguably the greatest director of our time (my favorite anyway) and had so many layers that it's hard to simply call it anti-war. It depicted modern warfare in such an accurate manner that Saving Private Ryan comes to mind as the only fair comparison. It depicted war as it really is, which is never pretty, but it strummed my patriotic heartstrings and still made me proud to be an American citizen (and didn't negatively affect my desire to enlist, probably because I understand that soldiers go to war while many others only want the money and bitch and moan when they get called up).

Anywho, I am bothered by the overall sentiment in Hollywood that our Generals are heartless, incompetent, bloodthirsty warmongers. Like they say, any fool can criticize, condemn, and ridicule, and they usually do.

[Italics]

psh... forget all the modern war movies being anti-american/anti-military... what about all the other films?

Example: All of marvel's films... X-Men, Iron Man, Hulk, etc... all of them depicting our military as the bad guys.

Not to mention King Kong, etc, etc.

[Schmoe]

In X-Men the government was debating about the issue and the military helped the good mutants fight Magneto and his legions of mutant villains.

[Mars]

In X-Men the government was debating about the issue and the military helped the good mutants fight Magneto and his legions of mutant villains.

The government broke into the mansion and kidnapped kids, so Wolverine started killing American soldiers...

[Schmoe]

Stryker is the leader of a secret paramilitary group made up of the followers of his televangelical program.

[snoscythe]

FWIW, my understanding of Avatar is that the fighting does not involve the military. The lead character is a former marine, but the fighting on the planet of Pandora is corporate mercenaries fighting for the resources of the planet.

It's about corporate greed, not the military industrial complex.