Further requests to the DOD have produced more 1-page summaries about the collaboration granted to Hollywood movies, much like the United 93 document. The latest documents briefly detail the contact between the DOD and the makers of Red Dawn (the 1980s version) and Battleship. The Battleship document doesn’t really add anything we didn’t already know from the US Navy documents, except that it wasn’t just the Navy but also the DOD who approved the film. This suggests that the different branches of the DOD still have to seek central DOD approval for involvement in films, which in turn would mean that all the films appearing on the separate branch lists that don’t appear on the main DOD list should be on the main list.
The Red Dawn summary says that collaboration was approved, though the Air Force objected to the language used by one of the pilots in the film, but that the director John Milius decided it was too expensive and so the film was made without the co-operation of the DOD.
Even though the film shows the Pentagon as utterly useless in the face of a Soviet-allied invasion of the US mainland, the DOD ‘felt it would have a positive impact and benefit to the military services and in the nat’l interest’. In other words, this ludicrously hyped-up threat of Soviet military capability was seen by the DOD as quite useful to them, even it meant looking second best to this fictitious nightmare.
You can download the DOD summaries on Battleship here (pdf file) and Red Dawn here.