What is the biggest military movie/TV goof, basically the military Movie/TV mistakes that annoys you the most?

Yeah a lot of people hate that one

Yep.

HUGE pet peeve of mine!!!

Acceptable collateral damage?

SGT Russell Beach That one seems to happen quite often in a lot of movies.
The only movie where anyone seemed to know about the back blast was a dirty harry movie where Eastwood movies his partner out of the way before she is incinerated. lol

I can give them the bases, most people don't know the difference and it is a 'fake or alternate universe' (pardon my being nerdy)... but there are so many things that can be fixed, casting the wrong actor is big, and getting the look right.

I can't remember the movie but they cast an actor, that I like, as a Marine General. This actor must be 400 pounds!!! He wouldn't even have been a specialist in the guard back in the 90's... it was so unbelievable.

Well even a blind fox can catch a rabbit once in a while...haha.. I haven't seen or heard that show, will have to check it out.

I'll have to check it out also.

A ship with a virtually endless fuel supply!

Especially the women, that really bothers me

I guess that is sign of toughness or something when they do it in the movies. Of course 'I am Legend' and others had it when it didn't make sense. Either the actors refused to shave or the production gets lazy

In the 70s , we had several people that would shave then splash lighter fluid on their face. Went on sick call and got a profile against shaving.

When in Nam quite a few of us had hair on the upper lip. The First Sgt . made sure it was kept neat. The only guys we saw with full beards were the Sea Bees. Could not convince the 1st that we needed to look cool too.

haha... I was out before they switched, but I was DOD contracting on base for several years, I never once saw it up...

HA! you beat me to it. This is one of my biggest pet peeves.

The only time I raise the collar is when I'm gunning in the Stryker with the hatch up. Those 50 call brass are hot and hard to get out of your blouse with an iba on.

Aircrews are supposed to wear it up to protect against burns in the event of a fire.

CSM (Join to see) - Nazi Germany did have a few helicopters but nothing like the one in the movie.

My company works with tv/film/video games/advertising everyday and it's often a challenge due to a number of factors. Here's an article that may be of interest to you all.
http://allwarriornetwork.com/2014/11/so-you-want-to-be-a-hollywood-military-advisor/

LTC Gregory Bishop - Thanks for the article, Colonel; Cool business to be in. I imagine some historical movies or TV can potentially take quite a bit of research.

Here's an 80's made for TV movie about an all female commando unit that flew helicopters in WW II... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081472/

CMSgt Donald Felch - It really depends. Budgets are weird things and it depends on where the director and producers priorities are. If the military is not the main focus of the show, but they have a scene with military people in it, they usually will not go get a mil adviser. The focus of that show is on the main character and is really out of the scope of the story. So most producers are not going to go out of their way. In some of those cases it gets a little easier as many crew on set are former vets, so they can grab one of those guys and ask if the uniform looks right.

If the show does focus on military subjects. Its up to the director to decide how accurate they want the look to be. Some directors want 100% accurate. Others will say they want it some what accurate, but they are not too concerned if its perfect. Some of them will say "well the importance of them looking exact, doesn't really have bearing on my story." Of course at the end of the day it all boils down to if the producer has money in the budget.

Producers are real persnickety about where they spend the money. They have a threshold to meet in order pay for contingencies, like if they have to do a re-shoot. The producer has a real tight clinch on the purse strings. Sometimes they may only have the budget to bring in an adviser just during the pre-production phase and maybe one or two days on set with the characters.

As for high budget movies, a lot of the money goes to the talent if they have an A-list actor in the show. A bunch of money goes to other production functions. If it is an action flick a huge portion goes to VFX and editing. Unfortunately a military adviser is more of a luxury position on set. Based on union contracts there are is set minimum crew that have too be there for the scope of the work being done. One shooting day minus the talent can cost over hundred thousand dollars.

Ideal situations if the movie puts the military in a good light. They can sometimes get support by military film liaison offices. What this gets the production is, tech advisory support and DOD instillation use.

So it really depends in a nutshell.

Budgets can be such a simple thing to manipulate if you exercise a little creativity. You could probably hire a vet that got out as an NCO if you knew where to look and spend no more than a few thousand dollars over the course of filming. It seems like a small price out of a hundred million dollar budget to not end up with a movie that has a million Vets rolling their eyes.

SGT Richard H. - Its not that easy. There are union contracts with Screen Actors Guild (SAG). Anyone who has a role with a speaking line has to have a SAG card, even if they say one word on screen. Anyone who does not have a SAG card a producer can use them, but the person being selected for the role will get Taft-Hartley'd into the union as a SAG eligible. The production will pay a fine to the SAG.

They can use people in a background non speaking role. SAG does not control background extras as they are not considered actors. In fact they will do that a lot of times. There have been some movies like "Transformers," where the production does casting calls for veterans and current military in speaking roles. I worked with a DAF-CIV/ retired AF Major who got a line in "Lone Survivor." He got Taft-Hartley'd into the union. In this case the Production will either pay the fines or they may negotiate with the union and pay an upfront fee for the permission to bring in non-SAG actors.

Believe me, I know producers, some of them are very very cheap. If they could get away with it they would hire all non crews and actors, and most likely there stuff would look like crap.

Lt Col (Join to see) - Understood. As with many things, it's a matter of people choosing to or being forced to think inside the tiny boxes that they create for themselves, and then being stuck with only the options that they brought into the box with them.

That was why I phrased it like I did. For the few older movies showing reasonably modern subs do, occasionally, show how cramped the space is.

Ice Station Zebra was fairly close altho even it doesn't give a full indication of cramped spaces in Nuke Boats. If you ever find an internal photo of an OHIO class boat, for instance, a common theme was a luxury suite description. :-) the older nuke boats make the Ohio's look like a cruise ship.

PO1 Charles Babcock - Cool thanks for answering. But can you tell what was the point of going red?

The red light helps your eyes get dark adapted while still having enough light to see.

Is "light" Colonel a euphemism? Or a Hollywood mistake?