So, I was playing Call of Duty 4 today and something occurred to me: The US Marine missions were accompanied by rocking music, with the heavy bass riffs and the electric guitar wails (signifying how the Americans are totally AWESOME, of course). The British SAS missions? Not so much.
And it occured to me that at least one movie I’ve seen, Black Hawk Down (Which CoD 4 takes some apparent inspiration from) similarly featured a metal-heavy soundtrack for when the Americans were going into battle. Is this a common theme in war movies, or was it just CoD paying homage to BHD?
I don’t think it’s a reference to BHD, although COD4 does throw in a bunch of homages in the dialog. It seems pretty standard to make Marines listen to hard rock. See Ironman and the remake of the Manchurian Candidate.
Hmm, it seems whenever Marines listen to rock you know they’re all going to die soon.
Yeah, but they’re going to take a lot of bad guys with them.
The Marines are kick ass at their job, which of course is killing whomever they are told to.
Point of professional pride, there are no Marines featured in Iron Man, save for a couple of cameos in the weapons demonstration scene. The guys in the beginning of the movie are Security Forces Airmen, the de facto ground forces of the Air Force. You can tell because their uniforms have the tigerstripe camo of the new ABU uniforms, not to mention the inverted chevrons we use for our ranks, and the driver making a point of saying she’s an Airman.
So maybe it’s just Americans who like listening to brash abrasive (awesome) rock music?
Sorry, should have said US military. I don’t know what branch the new MC is either, it’s been years since I last saw it. COD4 is definitely Marines, however.
I bow to your discerning eye. It’s an interesting choice they made for Iron Man.
Well, the US Army missions were always about going in hot and keeping up the tension and gunfire. The SAS mission? Trying not to have your ghilly-suited ass run over by a tank or slaughtering sleeping sailors in their bed.
(While it’s certainly something of a referance to movies like BHD and Full Metal Jacket, it’s also a poke at the “gung ho” tough-guy attitude the US Army troops exhibit.)
The Marines and the Army recruited often at my high school. They always had big booths with lots of cool free stuff to take, and they always had recruiting videos playing. The videos always featured lots of dramatic shots of helicopters, Humvees, tanks, etc, in action, always accompanied by “hardcore” or heavy metal music. I recall one of them had a never-ending refrain of “Let The Bodies Hit The Floor.” I guess it gets a certain type of guy jacked up - even back then, I thought it was a little nihilistic. I mean, the bodies could just as easily be you and your friends, as they could be the bad guys. On the other hand, that is a reality of combat, but I doubt it’s one that the recruiters wanted to emphasize.
OK blokes here we are deep in Russian territory somewhere east of Moscow,lets take those missile silos out…wait a minute is that Vivaldis Four Seasons I hear?
Turn the volume up full and lets show Ivan that while the S.A.S. is made up of intelligent but murderous psychopaths we are all deeply cultured at heart.
