Daily News for Marvel Movie

Summary

• The Pentagon withdrew support from 2012's The Avengers due to their inability to reconcile their place in the "unreality" of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• The autonomy of S.H.I.E.L.D. to make decisions against threats seemed to supersede that of the Pentagon, which could have made showing the Pentagon in the film burdensome.
• While the Pentagon opted out of The Avengers, Marvel has still worked closely with the U.S. military for other MCU films, including Iron Man and Captain America, creating a palpable military presence in the franchise.

2012's The Avengers lost the support of the Pentagon due to one big element of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's first big crossover movie. Superhero movies frequently include the presence of American soldiers and the Department of Defense in the backdrop of their stories, which typically makes a lot of narrative sense. In scenarios like alien invasions and attacks by superpowered evildoers, it would be expected for the military to step in. The MCU has its own such government bodies in the form the defense organizations S.H.I.E.L.D. and S.W.O.R.D., though S.H.I.E.L.D. is the more prominent of the two.
While S.H.I.E.L.D. supports the Avengers on their missions, it is also the reason behind the Pentagon pulling out of providing support to The Avengers. As explained by the Defense Department's Hollywood liaison Phil Strub in an interview with Wired, "We couldn't reconcile the unreality of this international organization and our place in it…To whom did S.H.I.E.L.D. answer? Did we work for S.H.I.E.L.D.? We hit that roadblock and decided we couldn't do anything." This ultimately left Earth's Mightiest Heroes and S.H.I.E.L.D. to save the world on their own in The Avengers, but that does raise questions about how different a movie it could have been.