I don't understand why out of all the stories, both good and bad coming out of Iraq that Hollywood has to make mostly negative movies. There are far more positive stories to tell, but that doesn't serve there agenda.
Marketing? Polling audiences and finding that most of them have a distaste for the war in Iraq? I don't know really.
It's funny, I was watching the Kingdom the other day and thinking about how different it was to other movies like Syriana for example. Basically, to those who don't know, the Kingdom is about four FBI agents investigating an attack on US citizens based in Saudi Arabia. It's been a while since you've had a movie where the Americans are the guys on the front foot, got a handle on things and are a professional kick-butt group.
Spoilers below:
The ending fell apart in the end. All through the film you've got these gung ho Americans doing their job to find out who killed their friend, and they are doing a good job of it too. The ending action is great, but they just had to put a political point in the end which, whilst perhaps a justified point [that violence begets violence] didn't fit the mood of the rest of the film.
Reality TV has seeped into the Hollywood machine, and the sad reality is that these movies are based on terrible events, or based on ideas that 'could happen' such as Syriana, and because there's so much negativity in the world it just naturally invades us. We're becoming a horribly jaded society, and it reflects in our films.
That being said, I'm debating about introducing my left-wing socialist friend to my cousin who is about to be sent off to Iraq, since it would be interesting to hear their no doubt opposing views on the topic.
Anyways, I don't care for the movie Redacted, but I'm still interested in it. Whether or not that's the controversy talking, I don't know, but still...