Two links via ecmyers
Jul. 25th, 2008 01:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenBatman's secret identity FOR REALZ: George W. Bush
Forget that the author appears to have entirely missed the authorial intent of Christopher Nolan et al. who wrote the thing. Forget that even Frank Miller, who writes a pretty authoritarian, near-fascist Batman, still makes the point that Batman is as much part of the problem as anything. Forget your sanity.
....WHAT
...!?!?!?!
This part just proves he isn't thinking this through clearly:
And when our artistic community is ready to show that sometimes men must kill in order to preserve life; that sometimes they must violate their values in order to maintain those values; and that while movie stars may strut in the bright light of our adulation for pretending to be heroes, true heroes often must slink in the shadows, slump-shouldered and despised -- then and only then will we be able to pay President Bush his due and make good and true films about the war on terror.
Gee, that sort of sounds familiar. Wait, I know. It sounds like the fucking Operative from Serenity. Except that "violate values to save them" sounds a fuckload better than "I'm a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it." Because it doesn't acknowledge that you become the monster if you try to fight monsters on their level. God no, we couldn't call Dubya a monster! (Even though he is, if this author would follow his thought through.)
I am pissed about such stupidity, but the fact that the stupidity is so staggering mollifies me a bit. Yes, people flocked to see The Dark Knight entirely out of the repressed love that dare not speak its name: love for George W. Bush. As opposed to a hundred of other more obvious reasons--it's part of a franchise that has been around almost as long as George H.W. Bush; almost every critic ever swooned about it and demanded people see it; it's featuring the film return of the most famous villain of all time; there's the morbid attraction of seeing a young, hot, dead starlet's last picture--which are clearly superficial reasons masking our deep nationalistic pride in and hot, slavery adoration of Dubya.
Yeah. Right.
The question I asked, as many did, was: would people have gone to see The Dark Knight if Heath Ledger had not died? Sad as it is to say it: probably not. Yes, sold out first weekend, but the sort of continued record-breaking, sold-out-shows, shows at 3 and 6 am (and IMAX movies starting at 2 am!?)? No, probably not. The performance as the Joker is there, but it has an edge to it because of the tragedy. I don't want to say the devoted theater-goers are ghouls, but there's a certain addiction to melancholy that suffuses people and involves them more in the movie if it has some real life catastrophe attached to it. We live in a celebrity-obsessed culture. Even when it's not death, we tend to pay more attention to movies that provoke scandals than not. (How many people went to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith to watch the future Jolie-Pitts flirting before the fact? You know those people aren't sparse on the ground.
And then there's this: Max Payne teaser poster I have the same half repulsed/half intrigued reaction to this as I did the trailer. Parts of it seem very right by the source material--the over the top angst, for instance. But wtf is up with the Angel in the background? It also doesn't even seem like a very good use of that melodramatic shadowing effect. The grittiness of the game's comic panels isn't there. It's too...too clean, and it looks weird and fakish as a result.
Forget that the author appears to have entirely missed the authorial intent of Christopher Nolan et al. who wrote the thing. Forget that even Frank Miller, who writes a pretty authoritarian, near-fascist Batman, still makes the point that Batman is as much part of the problem as anything. Forget your sanity.
....WHAT
...!?!?!?!
This part just proves he isn't thinking this through clearly:
And when our artistic community is ready to show that sometimes men must kill in order to preserve life; that sometimes they must violate their values in order to maintain those values; and that while movie stars may strut in the bright light of our adulation for pretending to be heroes, true heroes often must slink in the shadows, slump-shouldered and despised -- then and only then will we be able to pay President Bush his due and make good and true films about the war on terror.
Gee, that sort of sounds familiar. Wait, I know. It sounds like the fucking Operative from Serenity. Except that "violate values to save them" sounds a fuckload better than "I'm a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it." Because it doesn't acknowledge that you become the monster if you try to fight monsters on their level. God no, we couldn't call Dubya a monster! (Even though he is, if this author would follow his thought through.)
I am pissed about such stupidity, but the fact that the stupidity is so staggering mollifies me a bit. Yes, people flocked to see The Dark Knight entirely out of the repressed love that dare not speak its name: love for George W. Bush. As opposed to a hundred of other more obvious reasons--it's part of a franchise that has been around almost as long as George H.W. Bush; almost every critic ever swooned about it and demanded people see it; it's featuring the film return of the most famous villain of all time; there's the morbid attraction of seeing a young, hot, dead starlet's last picture--which are clearly superficial reasons masking our deep nationalistic pride in and hot, slavery adoration of Dubya.
Yeah. Right.
The question I asked, as many did, was: would people have gone to see The Dark Knight if Heath Ledger had not died? Sad as it is to say it: probably not. Yes, sold out first weekend, but the sort of continued record-breaking, sold-out-shows, shows at 3 and 6 am (and IMAX movies starting at 2 am!?)? No, probably not. The performance as the Joker is there, but it has an edge to it because of the tragedy. I don't want to say the devoted theater-goers are ghouls, but there's a certain addiction to melancholy that suffuses people and involves them more in the movie if it has some real life catastrophe attached to it. We live in a celebrity-obsessed culture. Even when it's not death, we tend to pay more attention to movies that provoke scandals than not. (How many people went to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith to watch the future Jolie-Pitts flirting before the fact? You know those people aren't sparse on the ground.
And then there's this: Max Payne teaser poster I have the same half repulsed/half intrigued reaction to this as I did the trailer. Parts of it seem very right by the source material--the over the top angst, for instance. But wtf is up with the Angel in the background? It also doesn't even seem like a very good use of that melodramatic shadowing effect. The grittiness of the game's comic panels isn't there. It's too...too clean, and it looks weird and fakish as a result.
