Many Hollywood movies depicting war or any military related things have the sponsorship (or are co-scripted) of the DoD, mostly as a recruitment tactic, the same way they pay for the anthem to be played at NFL games.

How else can you get a bunch of kids to have as a life long dream to kill and be killed? You make it look cool and glamorous and hide the nasty bits. If war movies were real they'd all end up with your team half dead in combat and the other half committing suicide back at home from the PTSD.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93entertainment...

if you self funded such a movie, would you be allowed to publish it?

Of course you would be allowed to (self) publish it, first amendment and so on. Whether you would be vilified by jingoists and/or glorified by anti-war activists is a separate question.

> DoD, ... they pay for the anthem to be played at NFL games.

What? And that is not controversial?

I had never considered that the DoD might pay for playing the national anthem at NFL games (playing the anthem is a staple of high school games, and I know my school didn't get any DoD funding), and after a quick search it appears that what they pay for is things like flyovers, having service members hold out a large flag on the field, buying them tickets to the game afterward (where they can be seen in uniform in the stands), etc.

It's marketing.

And the number bandied about in the first few links was something like $5.5 million over three years. Not a huge amount of money.

I think kids are recruited because they are disadvantaged in some way - economically, academically, etc. and are presented with a notion that the military is their only option to "escape". I don't think kids dream of killing because they see movies, I think they dream of the camaraderie, wanting to look like & talk like those they see in the movies and to fight against bad forces in the world. Only 10% of the military people actually engage in combat [0] (was a stat from when the US had troops in Afghanistan).

If the trades advertised as much as the military there wouldn't be shortages of electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians, etc. Some of those careers are just as highly technical as programming and might pay just as much (sans stock options). Hollywood doesn't make movies about plumbers though.

[0] https://www.thesoldiersproject.org/what-percentage-of-the-mi...

That's the motivation to join the military, but people would be less willing to join and more interested in alternatives if the reality of war wasn't obscured by mass-media depictions.