Kathryn Bigelow Doesn’t Mind Pentagon’s Film Criticism

Director Kathryn Bigelow doesn't mind that the Pentagon is furious with her film House of Dynamite – it means the right people are watching. “In an ideal world, culture could drive policy,” Bigelow said. Hollywood Reporter October 29. “And if there is a dialogue around the proliferation of nuclear weapons, then that, of course, is music to my ears.” The Missile Defense Agency published an internal memo on October 16 criticizing House of Dynamite for presenting its nuclear missile defense as only 50 percent effective, which was then passed on to Bloombergaccording to an October 25 post. The film takes place in the Pentagon. The film follows government workers who have less than 30 minutes to respond to a nuclear attack before it lands in Chicago. House of Dynamite was the No. 1 movie on Netflix last week, with 22.1 million views each Deadline. Clearly the film is reaching the right people.

“The fictional interceptors in the film do not hit the target, and we understand that this is intended as an exciting piece of drama intended to entertain audiences,” the Pentagon said in a memo, noting that the real-life tests “tell a very different story.”

So I did House of Dynamite teach Netflix's 22 million viewers the wrong facts about US missile defense work? Bigelow and her screenwriter Noah Oppenheim hold their (literal) guns down. “We believe all those experts who told us that the system is more like flipping a coin, as we portray in the film,” Oppenheim said. TPP. Bigelow and Oppenheim's research for the film focused on people who had recently worked in government, rather than people who were currently working. “In our view, this is not a debate between us filmmakers and the Pentagon,” Oppenheim said. “It's between the Pentagon and the broader community of experts in space.” Oppenheim also noted that their film was called accurate by “Senator Edward Markey or retired General Douglas Lute, journalists such as Tom Nichols and Fred Kaplan who have covered the issue for decades; [and] APS, non-partisan organization of physicists.” Bigelow added in TPP that the film is “all about realism and authenticity”: “I’m just telling the truth.”