We're not saying that the Earth may actually come under attack from giant robots, but if that were to happen, apparently Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen would be a surprisingly realistic portrayal of how the US military would fight back.
In a first for a major movie, four of the five branches of America's military participated in the production of Michael Bay's mechanical melodrama sequel - The Coast Guard being the missing military, thereby robbing us of any chance of seeing action like this - something that Army Lt. Col. Greg Bishop feels is as close to realism as a movie like this can get:
This is probably the largest joint-military movie ever made... If you go down the list of military movies, ‘Black Hawk Down' was just about all Army, ‘Top Gun' was all Navy, ‘Iron Man' was predominantly Air Force [but, in reality, s]oldiers on the ground love to look up in the sky and see fighter jets over their shoulder... In ‘Transformers,' we're fighting alien robots, so realism is obviously out the window [but if it were to happen] this is how we'd do it.
Said realism comes, in part, from Harry Humphries, a retired Navy SEAL who has consulted with Bay on movies since 1996's The Rock:
Michael initially had a typically Hollywood attitude toward how things should look, but he's learned a lot in 10 years... I would say [Bay's 2001 historical drama] ‘Pearl Harbor' was his turning point.
Of course, there's a secondary benefit to such verismilitude in filmmaking for the military: using the movies as advertisements. Bishop, again:
I suspect most American citizens could never accurately describe what it's like to be a soldier in today's Army. They get their perception of the Army through the media, so our job is to educate the American people on who we are.
It's something that the Air Force's deputy director of public affairs, Captain Bryon McGarry, agrees with:
Recruiting and deterrents are secondary goals, but they're certainly there.
Film biz, military unite for mutual gain [Variety]