Theaters of War

INCLINATIONS film club presents:
Theaters of War (2022)
Duration: 1h 28m

If you’ve seen 'Top Gun' or 'Transformers', you may have wondered: Does all of that military machinery on screen come with strings attached? Does the military actually get a crack at the script?

'Theaters of War' digs deep into a vast new trove of recently released internal government documents to bring the answers to these questions into sharp focus. Traveling across America, filmmaker and media scholar Roger Stahl engages an array of other researchers, bewildered veterans, PR insiders, and industry producers willing to talk. In unsettling and riveting detail, he discovers how the military and CIA have pushed official narratives while systematically scrubbing scripts of war crimes, corruption, racism, sexual assault, coups, assassinations, and torture.

From 'The Longest Day' to 'Lone Survivor', 'Iron Man' to 'Iron Chef', and James Bond to Jack Ryan, 'Theaters of War' uncovers an alternative “cinematic universe” that stands as one of the great Pentagon PR coups of our time. As these activities gain new public scrutiny, new questions arise: How have they managed to fly under the radar for so long? And where do we go from here?

Followed by a panel discussion with:

Dr. Matthew Alford - filmmaker, journalist and lecturer in Politics, Languages & International Studies at the University of Bath. He is the co-author of the book 'National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood' (2017).

Alan MacLeod - journalist, Glasgow University lecturer and member of the Glasgow University Media Group. His latest book is 'Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent' (2019).

Tom Secker - investigative journalist covering the security services, Hollywood, and the history of terrorism. He runs the world's largest open source archive of documents on government propaganda in the entertainment industry: spyculture.com. He is the co-author of 'National Security Cinema' (2017).