Humanity has always been fascinated by wars, soldiers, blood, and gore. As a result, children from just about every culture have grown up on a steady diet of heroic battles, deeds, and heroes. So it was only natural for cinema to pick up from where theater and books (and comics) had left off.

The first ever Academy Award for Best Picture in 1929 went to Wings, a flick about pilots of World War One’s US Army Aviation Corps, the predecessor of the modern US Air Force. Naturally, US Army Aviation pilots and planes were used to shoot the aerial combat scenes. Nearly a century later, what was a fledgling cooperation has fully taken off.

Armed forces around the world, just like any corporate entity, care about their image and are willing to spend time and money to ensure that electorates (and taxpayers) have a positive view of them. They want to ensure their budgets grow and also need to work on recruitment and retention. That’s where Hollywood is of great help.

Top Gun, the definitive war flick of the ’80s could not have been made without the Pentagon facilitating the production, and they certainly got their money’s worth. It was so successful that Air Force recruiters ended up setting recruiting booths inside theaters. For Hollywood, this cooperation helps cut costs and add authenticity. Consider this: renting a US military Black Hawk helicopter reportedly only costs studios $3600 per hour with fuel and aircrew included, thanks to the Pentagon’s largesse, with the additional benefit of Army-provided consultants.

This sort of subsidy always comes at a cost and, as in any relationship, there is give and take. The give is the access to equipment and expertise, and the take is that the Pentagon gets to control its image, even making changes to the script in some cases. There are guidelines for any producer who wants “access”. After all there is no such thing as a free lunch, not even for Hollywood.

Films like Blackhawk Down, Zero Dark Thirty, Seal Team 6 – and even Transformers and Iron Man are all examples of this cozy relationship.

Bollywood is no different when it comes to war movies. The messaging is always designed to induce patriotism, display the valor of Indian soldiers who are fighting the “enemy”, who are usually caricatures.

The goal is the same: to recruit and retain personnel, maintain a positive image in the pubic eye and justify a large military budget to the electorate and taxpayers. Any movie which requires military hardware, access to militarised zones, and soldiers standing in as extras is bound to give up some content customisation rights to the people who are making it all happen — the military. They used to call it propaganda; now it’s just called good PR. Pakistan has been no different. While our cinema and entertainment industry is no match for the Bollywood/Hollywood juggernaut, its story follows a similar trajectory. Even today Madam Noor Jehan’s songs during the 1965 war are legendary.

Similarly, one of the most popular TV serials that was ever produced in Pakistan was Alpha, Bravo, Charlie — a serial about a group of friends in the Army. Waar, the Bilal Lashari movie recently released in Pakistan, has raised hackles in certain quarters, largely due to its reported links with the Pakistani military, with some condemning it as a propaganda film. Ironically, the same people who’d watch a similar Hollywood/Bollywood war movie, are criticising Waar for being jingoistic, having a skewered script, and for being a wastage of public money.

While some of the criticism is legitimate, and some of the propaganda points may be unpalatable to many, it is at the end of the day an action movie and by (reportedly) facilitating it, the ISPR is doing its job just like any other PR arm of any armed forces in the world. And judging by the box office numbers, it seems to be working.

If anyone doubts how access and being embedded works wonders for militaries around the world, all you have to do is look at the writings of embedded reporters/writers. They usually gush about the units they’re embedded with and the military hardware they got to play with.

They present the human side of the military and help them connect with regular people globally. At the same time, less seasoned embedded reporters also dehumanise the “enemy”, ensuring complete public support for whatever military action is being conducted.

In a country like Pakistan where we still don’t have consensus among 180 million people about who the enemy is despite some 40,000 Pakistani soldiers and civilians being killed by terrorists of various kinds since 2001, the State’s communications specialists have a long way to go. For them to use the fast growing cinema platform in a market where there is a shortage of funding for film-makers is hardly surprising. It is, after all, just plain old demand and supply. And yes, there will be some give and some take.