Real Navy SEAL on What War Movies Get Wrong | Joe Rogan and Andy Stumpf

What is it about war movies that drive you the most crazy? The fact that almost everything in them is inaccurate. Almost everything? The biggest thing that drives me fucking crazy is when grenades create a fireball. Really? Well, yeah, because it happens in like every movie. They throw a grenade in a 55-gallon drum of gasoline explodes. Right. And people go flying backwards and cars flip over. If you throw a grenade, it goes pop and it puts some dust up in the air. And if you're waiting for the fireball, you're going to be there for the rest of your natural life. It's just not going. And they're not that effective. They're fun, don't get me wrong, but they're not that effective. I did not know that they don't create a fireball. No. I've never seen a grenade go off, obviously. I'm sure Jamie can pull one up and it just goes, it's dust. I think I've seen one in a video that's gone. I'm sure for a moment, like the momentary explosion, there's a flash. But other than that, it's literally just dust flying up in the air. What is the best military movie that's the most accurate or the most, the least offensive? Navy SEALs starring Charlie Sheen. Really? No, not at all. Oh, Jesus Christ. I almost fell down. That fucking guy probably fooled more people into coming into the SEAL teams than anybody else. Really? Oh my God. Really? Yeah. I mean, they've fallen through skylights with MP5s and handlebar mustaches. You know, there's snipers calling himself God. I can't see anything. I'm switching to starlight, blasting people through a concrete wall. They're doing free fall jumps. They're in submarines. Like that's an entire 30 year career to do all that shit in 60 minutes. You take that expectation, you come to the teams, you're like, God, I'm kind of bored right now. So is that the war area? Charlie Sheen. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Look at him. I'm going to run, boys. Yep. I want to make it. And he's got the requisite scarf around the neck. And first off, so what kind of asshole wears a red scarf in an environment where there's no red? He's got green scarf. He's wearing a red chamal. Yeah. This is so hilarious. So another one. Especially when you know Charlie now, like such a fucking psychotic partier. So apparently, apparently, so they came to the buds compound and did a little bit of training with the guys. And I guess there were some bathroom breaks and they just like, all right, you guys ready for some more PT? Oh, really? That makes sense. I've always been hearing that 18th hand, but I want to believe it's true. Well, you know who I hear, Charlie. Charlie. Charlie. Charlie. Charlie. You know who I hear trains diligently and really hard and it like takes it super seriously. And it's like one of the most humble guys you ever meet is Keanu Reeves. That doesn't surprise me. Yeah, it doesn't surprise me either. But I heard some people that have had interacted with him when he was training for John Wick. Yeah, including my jujitsu instructor, John-Jacques Machado, my friend Higa Machado's, John-Jacques brother, and a bunch of other. He worked out with a bunch of other Machado's, in fact, I think Carlos as well. And he really wanted to learn actual jujitsu, so he really did train with them. Yeah, he did real tactical courses. And so his tactical proficiency shows in that movie. And so to get back to stuff that bothers me, it's the 72 round pistol magazine. Yes. Because I'm counting, I'm like, that's 15, oh, 25, 30. For the shotgun that has 48 rounds in it, so I can't do it. I'm like throwing stuff at the TV. My wife just points, she says, get out. I can't do it. So Sicario, I love Sicario. There's a scene at the border that has one of the most blatant just errors in the movie. There's a guy pointing a gun, he's supposedly a CIA agent, he's pointing a gun out the windshield. And you can see that the bolt to the rifle is locked to the rear. Oh, no. Which means the armor on set handed it to him, clear and safe. And he just went and they filmed it and nobody caught it. And I saw that movie, I'm like, turn that shit off. I can't watch it anymore. Of course, yeah. It ruins it for me. Now, why don't they fix stuff like that? You would think that you're making a movie about military or about guns. Yeah. The real gun nuts are going to notice that. But they probably didn't catch it in the editing process. It's so fast. It's probably up there for three seconds. But if you know, I mean, you look at a gun and like you just, if it was your primary tool for years, you're looking for certain things all the time. There it is. So look for someone who doesn't know that it looks super serious. Well, that's why they're still watching the movie and I left. Yep. Bolt to the rear. Ah, yeah. Walk to the rear. Yeah. Go ahead and pull the trigger there. Go ahead, son. Obviously an empty magazine. Yeah. Hey, silly. Yeah. So nobody caught that in the editing process is what it is. They not see that. No, don't you think they digitally could have moved that forward? Yeah. Because he didn't fire in that scene anyway. Yeah. Just push that bitch up. Just Photoshop that sucker. I gotta get excited. I mean, they can use, you get angry, right? I make sense. Hey man, in a way less significant thing, I get crazy when I watch people play pool in movies that obviously can't play. Oh, I can imagine. Drives me nuts. Yes. Drives me nuts. Like if I see someone like it's supposed to be some pool hustler and I see somebody of a bullshit bridge and they're gripping the, like you can see things in movies like my friends who smoke cigarettes say they can tell when someone doesn't smoke. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Because when you smoke, there's just like a casual, relaxed way that you're holding the cigarette and the way you're drawing it. But when someone's like never smoked before and they're like, they've got this weird thing to do and like, oh, that guy doesn't really smoke. I'm like, how the fuck can you tell it? Because I smoke. It's like another thing that bugs me is you watch any tactical scene where they're like moving down a hallway and it's like, why is your gun pointed at your buddy's face? Like that's not cool. Right. Yes. Why are you aiming across like, and then the way that they make entry into rooms, it's like awesome. I like to play Russian Roulette with my life as well. Like it just drives me absolutely bad. What about Zero Dark Thirty? That movie fucking sucks. What sucks about it? You know what drove me crazy? How much time do we have? That redhead lady was yelling at all those trained killers. I was like, I don't think they'd listen to her. There are some creative liberties that are taken in that movie from soup to nuts. I mean. Like was that person, the lady who yelled at those guys, the woman who was in charge, was that a real human in real life? It was based off of a real human for sure. Like a lot of the things in that movie were based on real events. However, if you're trying to get tickets to get people seats, their butts in seats, you got to glamorize stuff. So a lot of people, because in that movie, the source drives up in the vehicle and detonates himself. That actually happened. That killed a bunch of people in KAUST. As long as you look at it as entertainment, that movie is okay. If you look at it with a refined eye, like are they doing this correctly? No. They're all going to die. I mean, it's, it just, we would need another four hours to literally go down the list of things, but it's just, things are compressed. Things that would never happen happen for the sake of creating an intoxicating or emotional scene on camera. And it's tough to watch because I'm sitting there, I'm like, get out of the door, get out of the door, get out of the door. I'm getting anxiety watching these damn movies because you don't hang out in front of open doors unless you want to get shot. How many different things were fucked up about that movie? Only the things that were after the opening scene. That's a little, a little movie is a disaster. Yeah, it's just, I don't want to talk about it anymore. Dumbass like myself, I'm like, that's a good fucking movie. Seems pretty realistic. Well, think about it from entertainment. It's a great entertaining movie. You get asked the same question about the movie American Sniper or Lone Survivor. They're all based around certain things that have been enhanced to make it more entertaining. Yes. And I get it. They're there to make money. They're not there to tell historically accurate. Do you know Marcus? I do not know Marcus well, but I do know Marcus. I know him. I don't know how he felt. I don't know if you'd ever say. He was involved with the making of it. How he felt about the movie. Yeah, but I mean, I'm sure they only listened to him so much, you know? Yeah. Even how I can, again, having not been there and I can only imagine how horrific that incident must be for him to deal with on a daily level, I would bet he wasn't very involved. I would almost rather them, if that was me, I think I would almost rather say, you know what? Just make the movie that you want to make because I don't want to sit here and explain exactly what happened and recreate these scenes and talk about how this person died over here. Like I would just go, you know, go to town. Is there any movie that you've ever seen about war where you go, that makes sense. First 10 minutes of Saving Private Ryan is unbelievable. Not for accuracy, for capturing the essence of what it feels like and the switch between utter fear to excitement, to joy, to anger in the matter of a second. Another movie that does a good aspect or a good job of capturing some of those aspects, I would say is also Black Hawk Down. Not for accuracy, but to capture the chaos, how a plan can come unraveled and just how chaotic it can be and how sometimes you can feel so helpless, but your only solution is to drive into the problem instead of moving away from it. So those capture the essence of it well from a technical perspective. I honestly cannot think of a single movie that does it justice. It would have to be like a 50 hour movie though. Of course. I mean, Black Hawk Down I think was a multiple day incident in that movie is 90 minutes. So they get rid of all the boring BS stuff that is actually what you do the vast majority of your job. If I look at my career, probably greater than 95% of my career, I spent training and 5% I spent in combat. Really? Yeah. And that is, that's average. I would say there are people who are maybe a little bit higher and people who are a little bit lower, but you're not going to spend more than at most, maybe 10% of your career in combat, even if your job is directly tied to combat because you got to train, you got to plan the missions. I mean, our normal planning cycle was 24 to 72 hours sitting in front of PowerPoint, considering whether or not I should hang myself or blow my brains out because we're arguing over the font that we're using to submit for mission approval. Really? Oh, you're studying the weather. You're studying the terrain. I've had slides and mission briefs sent back, not be approved because I didn't orient the helicopter the correct direction on the slide. They're like, Hey, you need to fix this and then resubmit it. Like if you wanted to shut down the average day military, it wouldn't be through a kinetic act. You would need to put some type of code into Microsoft office and we're done because we operate on Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft word and Microsoft office. We'd sit there and we'd plan and we would brief and we'd submit for approval. That's three days. Then you'd go do an objective that would last for 10 hours. Whoa. Repeat the cycle. I'm too ADD for that. It's well, you break up the tasks. So each, like you said the last thing you would want is one person creating the entire plan. So somebody's doing the communication plan, the Medivac plan, the insertion plan, the route planning. We don't ever really brief what we're going to do inside of the objective because that's kind of the soup and nuts that you train for at all times. Like that's everything is to get there and then, okay, that's actually our job, but we focus on all those other things. Then primary, secondary, tertiary plan for each one of those things, phase lines for each one of those things. None of that has ever shown up in any movie. What doesn't show up in any movies is vast majority of time. The intelligence is bad and you hit what's called a dry hole. You go to a building, you approach the structure, you breach the door and it's just the intelligence is wrong. It's either empty or it's the wrong person that happens all the time. That doesn't, it's not exciting though. So we pay the people money, they fix their door and we go back and we try to find a person again. None of that shows up in any of the mediums because it's too, they're too compressed.