The Big Picture · Discussion

6. ‘The Hurt Locker’ and ‘Iron Man’ | Mission Accomplished

August 29, 2025/ 46 min/ Brian Raftery

The 'Mission Accomplished' series closes on the two 2008 films that finally got audiences to look at the wars they'd tuned out: Kathryn Bigelow's under-$15M bomb-squad drama 'The Hurt Locker,' which beat 'Avatar' to Best Picture, and Jon Favreau's 'Iron Man,' the B-list gamble that launched the MCU. Jamel Bouie and Joanna Robinson join Brian Raftery. Opens on 'Black Hawk Down' and the run of Iraq-war films nobody went to see.

14 films across 3 segments.

AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.

The war Hollywood wouldn't filmthe Iraq movies that came and went

Black Hawk Down 2001

Ridley Scott's Mogadishu combat film, made with Defense Department helicopters and flight-simulator training. Bush screened it at Camp David for 20 Republican members of Congress; Cheney and Rumsfeld attended the D.C. premiere. It cleared $100M in the U.S., one of the only contemporary war films to break through in the Bush years.

Redacted 2007

Brian De Palma's drama about U.S. troops who assault and murder a 14-year-old Iraqi girl. Opened in 15 theaters, gone in a month; a man picketed it in North Carolina, offended by its depiction of American soldiers.

Stop-Loss 2008

MTV Films drama with Ryan Phillippe and Channing Tatum as soldiers ordered back to Iraq. Aimed at young moviegoers, found none. ('With all due respect, sir, fuck the president,' to Timothy Olyphant's commanding officer.)

In the Valley of Elah 2007

Built from a Mark Boal article, about a young American murdered after coming home from Iraq. Set mostly stateside. Didn't matter, audiences wanted nothing to do with the Middle East.

Casualties of War 1989

De Palma's Vietnam film, cited as the kind of war movie an earlier generation made from direct experience, the connection 2000s filmmakers lacked with Iraq.

‘The Hurt Locker’with Jamel Bouie

The Hurt Locker 2008

Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq bomb-squad drama, written by embedded journalist Mark Boal, the title from army slang for 'a dangerous or painful place.' Made for under $15M with money from a producer who mortgaged his house; shot 44 days in Jordan under death threats and 120-degree heat, with Iraqi refugees among the cast. Jeremy Renner as Staff Sergeant William James, the EOD tech who feels most alive next to a bomb; Anthony Mackie and David Morse. Filmed 2007, premiered at fall 2008 festivals, opened wide in the U.S. in summer 2009 as the war wound down. Won Best Picture, Best Director (Bigelow the first woman to win it), and Best Original Screenplay. Bouie: almost apolitical, its concern the psychology of these men, not the war.

Point Break 1991

Bigelow's Keanu Reeves / Patrick Swayze film about a live-for-the-edge crew. Its fatalism, 'it's not tragic to die doing what you love,' is the key Bigelow used to read Renner's character, per her 60 Minutes interview.

Near Dark 1987

Bigelow's nomadic-vampire film, an early example of her interest in people wholly committed to a dangerous calling.

Strange Days 1995

Bigelow's near-future film about a man hustling other people's recorded memories on the black market.

K-19: The Widowmaker 2002

Bigelow's expensive submarine drama; its disappointment made studios wary of financing 'The Hurt Locker.'

Avatar 2009

James Cameron's $237M blockbuster, also about American soldiers in a troubled occupation and the year's Best Picture front-runner. Audiences chose it: billions in grosses. Oscar voters chose 'The Hurt Locker.'

‘Iron Man’with Joanna Robinson

Iron Man 2008

Jon Favreau's film (his biggest prior credit was 'Elf') with Robert Downey Jr. as arms dealer Tony Stark, kidnapped in Afghanistan by the Ten Rings, who sees his own weapons' damage and reinvents himself. Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane (Robinson hears Cheney in his defense of the missile business). A B-list gamble under a $525M Merrill Lynch slate deal: miss with four films and the characters reverted to the lender. Made ~$100M its opening weekend, over half a billion total, turned Downey into a star, and launched the MCU. Robinson calls it the movie of the Bush era: U.S. military propaganda and a critique of America as architect of its own disaster, at once.