Copyright Deadline
The Department of Defense and Netflix are in a clash over how accurate nuclear disaster drama A House of Dynamite truly is. Highlighting a specific major HoD plot point, an October 16 memo from officials at the Pentagon was produced with the intent to address “false assumptions” from the film. The document says the failure of the military to stop a missile headed for the continental USA depicted in the Kathryn Bigelow directed film is okay as “a compelling part of the drama intended for the entertainment of the audience,” but the real-world capacities “tell a vastly different story.” In House of Dynamite, a intercepter missiles are said to have a 61% success rate in taking down incoming warheads, like the origin unknown enemy missile heading to wipe out the almost 10 million residents of greater Chicago as generals and officials in an Idris Elba-led administration scramble to find a solution or unleash global destruction. The Patriot PAC-3 that is launched in the tense HoD to take out the threat fails leaving the most powerful military force in human history suddenly out of options. As a counterpoint, the Missile Defense Agency memo of earlier this month adds that the DoD’s multi-billion dollar hit-to-kill systems “displayed a 100% accuracy rate in testing for more than a decade.” “The numbers tell us what is occurring and we need to know,” a well-positioned military official told Deadline today of the DoD’s 100% assertion. “The results are very very good, with the program scheduled to grow over the next decade,” he added of the interceptors America has developed in the post-Star Wars eras and will deploy down the line. The DoD reaction to A House of Dynamite, which premiered in Venice and then opened in a limited theater run on October 10 before hitting Netflix on October 24, was first reported by Bloomberg. Deadline has seen the document in question that questions how on the money HoD was in its quest to take out a bullet with a bullet, to paraphrase the acclaimed Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, Jason Clarke and Gabriel Basso co-starring film. On the flip side, the flick’s screenwriter Noah Oppenheim told MSNBC on October 26 that he would respectfully disagree” with the Pentagon’s assessment. Diplomatically, the former NBC News chief also said: “I welcome the conversation. I’m so glad the Pentagon watched, or is watching, and is paying attention to it, because this is exactly the conversation we want to have.” Bigelow has made it clear she kept the Pentagon at arm’s length to maintain independence. Both the Oscar winning director and Oppenheim have said HoD “had multiple tech advisers who have worked in the Pentagon.” For what it’s worth, none of those advisors were from the current administration, Oppenheim admitted on MSNBC this weekend. Not spotlighted by the Pentagon’s memo is another narrative element of HoD where once the initial attempt to take down the enemy missile fails, the brass decided not to ty again in order to save the remainder of America’s Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system for possible further attacks. At that junction in the film, and the Defense Secretary Baker (played by Jared Harris) rages: “So, it’s a f–king coin toss? That’s what $50 billion buys us?” In real-life, the USA currently has about 44 intercepters available to launch from Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. An update and expanded system is planned to come online in about 2028, with a first round of nearly half a dozen Next Generation Interceptors and around 40 more over time. A fact no one argues over: There are around 12,300 nuclear weapons among the arsenals of the USA and eight other nations. A terrifying number that could destroy all life on Earth many times over. “I feel like nuclear weapons, the prospect of their use, has become normalized,” Bigelow told Awardsline’s Antonia Blyth recently. “We don’t think about it, we don’t talk about it. And it’s an unthinkable situation. So, my hope was to maybe move it to the forefront of our lives.” Neither the Pentagon nor Netflix responded to Deadline’s request for comment on their assessment and the film.
