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Originally Posted by SoldierOfDarkness
I mean in order for him to depict military action scenes he needs access to military vehicles which come from the US military so obviously he has to showboat them. (US propaganda) and this helps out with the budget. I mean that's why most of the autobots were GM vehicles right?
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Product placement and sponsoring do indeed help lighten the bill. Everybody wins. Just look at what
Top Gun did for the US Navy.
The Pentagon gave Michael Bay leave to use some of its assets (it even sacrificed some of the mock-up tanks used in Red Flag exercises for the SOCCENT attack, when those burning tanks go tumbling in midair), but as far as I can tell, the only restrictions Bay was forced to abide by was that he couldn't either film some pieces of hardware from certain angles (the F22) or some real-life protocols had to be correctly acted out on the big screen (the example he used, if I'm not mistaken, was when the IT girl barged in on the SecDef's little SITREP session to argue that the hacking problem was caused by something no less powerful than a quantum computer -- in real life, that girl wouldn't have been able to do so and the Pentagon was adamant in pointing that out).
Aside from that, the Pentagon has little say over what is shown, unless it paints the armed forces in a bad way (which became an issue in the Hurt Locker, if memory serves well).
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On that end I found the US military a tad too powerful and convenient. There were cases where I was wondering why they kept saying "OMG we need the autobots" because really....they could've beaten the decepticons without the Autobots at all. Granted more would die but then so what?
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The US reinforcements in RotF were still bloodied beyond recognition when the Fallen pulled that levitation trick of his. I mean, at the end, pretty much only infantrymen were left - the tanks and MLRS launchers were good for the scrap yard.
Granted, there is that railgun on the Arleigh Burke destroyer (whose existence is only explained in the comics, but never in the movie), but for some reason it was never fired again.
And in DotM the USAF got clobbered by the Decepticons' line of defense (NEST lost more than 60-75% of its ground troops, too, during the airdrop scene) erected around Chicago. Much of the heavy firepower shown in the last battle (aside from the Tomahawk strike) was provided by the Autobots (esp. the Wreckers).
But I'm still surprised the Pentagon didn't cringe while watching all three movies - I mean, they lost (on the big screen, I mean) the SOCCENT base plus an entire
aircraft carrier (some USN bigwigs must've had a heart attack at that moment), plus a USMC contingent, a dozen F22s and MV22s...
I'm actually surprised the Pentagon doesn't hate
Bay instead of being fond of him - I mean, he makes them suffer so much on-screen... XD
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Then there were cases with Starscream. I mean the first movie was ok since he provided aerial support but was driven off through sheer numers but in the 2nd and 3rd it was like...where the hell are you?
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Starscream IMHO got sidelined by other members of the cast, especially the Fallen, Soundwave and Shockwave - they pretty much ate up the screentime that should've been devoted to him. Though...he did get some more screentime