Love it or hate it, House of Dynamite is a film fuelling nuclear war fears. It's far from the first

Shortly after its premiere, Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear warning film House of Dynamite earned a curious distinction. Instead of Oscar nominations or accolades, it was a warning: according to Bloomberg, it came in the form of an internal memo from the Pentagon.

The document, dated Oct. 16, was meant to “address false assumptions, provide correct facts and a better understanding” than what Bigelow’s film depicts. A film that centres on America’s hypothetical response to an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) rocketing towards the United States with less than 20 minutes warning.

In Bigelow’s movie, which she and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim say was made with extensive guidance from scientists and previous administration members, the government's reaction did not exactly paint a pretty picture.

At one point, a defence secretary (played by Jared Harris) is shocked to find their missile defence systems — which stand as really the only contingency plan at their disposal — have success rates barely above 60 per cent.

“So it’s a f--king coin toss?” he laments. “That’s what $50 billion buys us?”

As stated in the memo itself, the Pentagon’s response was written to brief staff confronted with worries similar to those expressed by Harris’s character.

“The fictional interceptors in the movie miss their target and we understand this is intended to be a compelling part of the drama intended for the entertainment of the audience,” the memo reads, accoring to Bloomberg, before saying results from real-world testing “tell a vastly different story.”

CBC News has not seen the memo.

The Pentagon argued that current systems offer up to 100 per cent effectiveness in taking down ICBMs, though experts in the space have refuted their refutations. U.S. Sen. Edward J. Markey wrote an op-ed in response to the film, saying it exposed a “brutal truth” that the United States’ current long-range missile defence system is ineffectual in neutralizing a nuclear attack.

Nuclear physicist Laura Grego told Bloomberg that the situation depicted in House of Dynamite is likely far simpler than the host of problems the government would have to respond to in a real exchange — meaning what officials struggle to contend with in the film is actually close to a best-case scenario.

International affairs expert and Atlantic writer Tom Nichols wrote an article in response, arguing the Pentagon’s 100 per cent effectiveness claim was a fallacious number derived from cherry-picked and misleading data. The real number, he said, is likely even lower than what's shown in Bigelow’s film.

The movie also comes in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to invest trillions in the Golden Dome military defence project, and shortly before Trump announced plans to resume nuclear testing, decades after the country held their last test.

For their part, the film’s creators have rebuffed government complaints. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Bigelow said the strong response is a sign they achieved their main goal in making House of Dynamite.

“In a perfect world, culture has the potential to drive policy,” she said. “And if there’s dialogue around the proliferation of nuclear weapons, that is music to my ears, certainly.”

It is far from the first time filmmakers have sparked debate — or worry — about the realities of nuclear war. One of the earliest came in the form of The War Game. Made by celebrated filmmaker Peter Watkins, who died this week at 90, that BBC docu-drama showed the possible after-effects of a nuclear attack on Britain.

Commissioned by the corporation’s initially skittish head of documentaries, the brutal film shocked BBC heads when delivered. Though Watkins’s film would go on to win the Oscar for best documentary program in 1967, the BBC decided to ban the program from their airwaves for nearly 20 years.

The reasons why are vague. Shortly after the film was completed, BBC heads organized a private screening for government representatives, testing the waters on whether such an unnerving depiction of the realities of nuclear war was suitable for broadcast.

Whether it was the BBC or the British government that kept the movie from airing on British television wasn’t completely clear. Either way, the censorship likely stemmed from fear it might have caused the public to question how safe they really were.

“It is perhaps no surprise that a program attempting to expose the reality of a nuclear attack and, by inference, the inability of government to control its consequences, might have been banned on the basis of reasons other than editorial taste,” reads a BBC rehash of the subject.

In 1984, another BBC nuclear near-future horror gripped the public’s imagination. Threads, from director Mick Jackson, showed England as a brutal hellscape after war broke out between the Soviet Union and the United States. Frequently cited as among the most disturbing movies ever made, the date of its premiere was widely referred to as “the night the country didn’t sleep.”

Beyond the bombing itself, what often stuck in people’s imaginations was the depiction of ensuing nuclear winter, societal collapse and food scarcity. While it stunned and sobered the public, Jackson said the movie didn’t change anything when it came to international politics: “It didn’t shift policy at all,” he told the Guardian.

Another TV movie, 2004’s Dirty War, depicted the possible fallout if a “dirty bomb” — an improvised nuclear weapon — were detonated in the streets of London. As in House of Dynamite, Dirty War’s creators specifically sought to highlight the government’s lack of preparedness in the face of a specific type of nuclear attack.

The film focused heavily on emergency services’ struggle to respond and aid citizens, and aimed to highlight “the reality of the situation” the world was then facing. The BBC was later forced to defend accusations of scaremongering in the face of public worry, citing the fact that numerous government and political figures had assured them the threat they depicted was genuine.

In North America, there was 1983’s WarGames, a film about espionage and the precarious, fatalistic protection offered by "Mutually Assured Destruction." A film so prescient, it prompted then-president Ronald Reagan to ask his staff if a computer hack leading to nuclear war — as shown in the film — could be possible.

“Mr. President,” replied a general,” the problem is much worse than you think.”

In response, the U.S. government revamped its computer security and passed anti-hacking laws. Also released that year, ABC’s The Day After had a similar effect. Premiering to an audience of 100 million, the disaster film also showed a thermonuclear war between the U.S.S.R. and the United States, with a similar focus on the horrendous fallout.

Reagan, who requested to screen the film a month before its release, wrote in his diary that the movie was “very effective and left [him] greatly depressed.” Up to that point, he had been advancing his “peace through strength” nuclear stockpiling strategy for the Cold War. That also included his proposed space-based missile defence program — jokingly dubbed “Star Wars.”

According to Time magazine, The Day After was a key factor in pushing Reagan to move toward disarmament. Describing a meeting in which he was briefed on the details of the aftermath of a nuclear war, he wrote as much in his diary.

“In several ways, the sequence of events parallels those in the ABC movie," he wrote. "That could lead to the end of civilization as we know it."