The Rock Screenwriter Horrified By Iraq Intelligence Link

The screenwriter behind ‘The Rock,’ director Michael Bay’s action movie starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage, is aghast at the film’s implication in the Chilcott Report.

The investigation into the circumstances leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq found that intelligence suggesting the presence of weapons of mass destruction in the middle eastern republic made reference to chemical weapons using glass containers similar to those featured in the 1996 hit (more on which here).

Screenwriter David Weisberg, who co-wrote the screenplay for 'The Rock’ with the late Douglas Cook, tells The Guardian that this revelation is “not a nice legacy for the film… it’s tragic we went to war.”

While Weisberg had conducted serious research into chemical weapons for the film (aided by his stepfather, who had worked in national security under Reagan and Bush Sr.), the weapons presented in 'The Rock’ were a complete work of fiction.

The simple truth, Weisberg explains, is that real-life chemical weapons just don’t present an exciting enough spectacle for the sort of crash-bang-wallop movie like 'The Rock’:

“Unfortunately chemical weapons are very boring because essentially they’re a two-chamber cell with two odourless and colourless gases in each chamber. When the shell is detonated, the gases mix and become the [nerve agent] VX.

“There was no way to do that [realistically] on the screen with any kind of excitement. In real life it’s all invisible and boring, as per usual.

"So we invented this string-of-pearls approach to have these little globes with green gases in them, to give visual interest and to create jeopardy. If one of these globules broke you’d be in real trouble.

"What was so amazing, was anybody in the poison gas community would immediately know that this was total bulls**t – such obvious bulls**t.”

Picture Credit: Disney

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