Triple Frontier is not a very good film, but it has Oscar Isaac and Pedro Pascal in it, so you see, I had no choice but to watch it. While watching, it struck me that some scenes looked just like a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Call of Duty mission. In one scene, five former military men in Kevlar vests wielding rifles sweep a house with cold efficiency, shoot a man dead, and rob him blind, all before his family came home from church. Fuelled by greed, they end up crash-landing their escape plane 🐻while trying to get all the money they’ve stolen across the ocean. Add a voiceover of a pre-teen screaming slurs at me over comms, and you have Modern Warfare.
The big difference between Call of Duty and Triple Frontier is how the latter, like many contemporary war movies, makes at least some attempt to actually reckon with its content – there are some mentions of how veterans are left to fend for themselves, some guilt over their murder of civilian cocaine farmers, and a seeming scepticism of patriotism. There’s some reflection about the harms of the military-industrial complex, with Ben 🍸Affleck’s character saying, “It’s like they take your best 20 years and then spit you out.”
Call of Duty doesn’t do that. As much as the series claims to be treading into morally grey territory meant to make the player question their actions, it never does. For example, 2019’s Modern Warfare reboot scores you on moral choices, so killing civilians nets you a lower score and fewer rewards – these choices include murdering a woman who is reaching for her baby during a nighttime apartment raid eerily similar to Zero Dark Thirty’s version of th😼e killing of Osama Bin Laden. There are clear right and wrong choices, good guys and bꦫad guys – but no moral quandary and very little consideration for the consequences that continually killing people could have on someone’s psyche, whether that someone is the player or the character you take control of.
Call of Duty is also distinctively pro-intervention, as indicated by the many plotlines where American troops are deployed to other countries to intercede in its politics – 2007’s Modern Warfare fictionalises the 🦋real-life invasions of Afghanistan and Iran, legitimising America’s continuing imperialism, and in doing so, perpetuates false beliefs about the wars depicted. Take Modern Warfare 2019, for example; in one mission, it is revealed that Russian forces previously attacked an area called t🐻he ‘highway of death’, killing many civilians. In reality, the Highway of Death is a road between Kuwait and Iraq that had been severely damaged by American forces during the Gulf War.
In fact, 2019’s Modern Warfare takes place in a fictional Middle Eastern country that takes heavy inspiration from conflicts and political climates in Syria and Iraq, two countries where the US actively and publicly inserted themselves into unrest. Of course, in the games, the Americans are the heroes, even when they execute people extra-judicially, or &lsqജuo;d🎐e-escalate situations’ by threatening civilians with violence. Call of Duty tries to make heavy allusꦉions to real stru🌃ggles in real countries while actively distancing itself from the real histories behind those situations.
There’s a clear reason Call of Duty isn’t very interested in making its wars feel as horrific and brutal as they are in reality𝔍 – the US military has its hands in the mix. It’s an incredibly popular series played by millions of people that both fictionalises and represents the military-industrial complex at its worst extremes, so of course, the US Military has an interest in how it’s represented. The games have military consultants who have actively played a part in perpetuating violence in other countries. They’ve gone to military bases to collect information in service of ‘realism’, talked to returning soldiers, and believe it or not, the US Army was planning to spend millions of dollars so it could grow its audience with the stream’s Gen-Z, Black, Hispanic and female viewers.
The military also considered asking streamers to ‘create original content videos showcasing the wide range of skill sets offered by the Army,’ and throw tournaments including both soldiers and top streamers. It only backed out once reports of sexual harassment at Activi🧸sion’s workplace came out, damaging its brand reputation.
This is far from the first time the US government has interfered in entertainment media for its own gain – the military-entertainment complex is a real, quiet force moving behind the scenes of Hollywood and the video game industry. During World War 2, the United States Office of War Information had a unit dedicated entirely to Hollywood, which reviewed over a thousand scripts from 1942 to 1945 and either revised or discarded any that were critical of the United States or expressed anti-war sentiment. 🐎1986&﷽rsquo;s Top Gun was made with help from the Department of Defense, with the intention of rebranding the US Navy’s image after the Vietnam War had created huge anti-war sentiment in Americans, especially younger ones. This led to a very successful recruitment campaign. I Am Legend, where Will Smith plays a US Army virologist, was also created with input from the Department of Defense.
This is a historical pattern that is still perpetuated even today. Amazon’s Jack Ryan is the most obvious CIA propaganda machine I’ve seen in years, Argo was the first movie to get permission to film inside the CIA’s Langley headquarters in 15 years, 24 justified torture as a tool to fight terrorism, and the makers of Zero Dark Th🐠irty had clos𝓀e access to figures in the security world. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is plagued with superhero soldiers, but at least in Hollywood these films are countered by films like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, and far more. Triple-A gaming, in contrast, hasn’t had an anti-war war game since Spec Ops. Without any equally major games running in contrast to Call of Duty, the military has been given far too much power in shaping what gamers think about war.
Even if Call of Duty isn’t intentionally disseminating American propaganda and advocating for American imperialism, is it even possible for us to believe Call of Duty🤡 can ever move beyond the glorification of the US Military into telling truly impactful and honest stories about the cruelty of war? With an industry actively shaped, structured and even funded by American imperialism, how do we stop ourselves from becoming complicit in violence that has killed so many already? As it exists today, Call of Duty will always be about Americans being the real good guys. We should know better by now.