Quote:
Originally posted by Stare At The Sun
Ohhhh yes, make assumptions charlatan. You know me so well by the topics i choose to start on a forum. All I said is hollywood needs to get a new badguy scheme going on, and you jump my ass.
Meh, think what you will. I'm a democrat, and a huge civil rights advocate, however, I loathe discrimination in any form.
I still back up my comments on the Hitler thread. and I still backup my comments here. Holywood is unoriginal, and needs to get a new type of badguy, or just make a badguy that makes sense for the story, not some typical cop out.
Oh, and I watched "Bulletproof monk" yesterday, main nemisis, you guessed it, a Nazi. Freaking great.
|
I don't know you at all... I am simply pointing out that your interests seem to have a common theme. No judgments made (OK the rolling eyes may be judgemental).
What ever gave you the idea that Hollywood should be original? They make mainstream films that cater to a wide audience. I remember reading the memoirs of an early filmmaker and he pointed out that when introducing a villain in film it is important to be clear with your audience that some one is evil (or bad). In literature you can spend time exploring the inner workings of both your antagonist and protagonist. You can deal more readily in shades of grey.
His solution to translating this to the film medium, which mostly deals in black and white achetypes, was to have his villian kick a dog within the first few minutes of his first appearance on screen. It made it crystal clear that he was the bad guy.
Hollywood, while a tad more sophisitcated these days, still follows the same premise. Being a Nazi is indefensible. Nazi = evil. There is no disputing that unless you are a Nazi. Add to this that there are few organizations left (i.e. no more commies) that would neccessarily be looking for world domination (a common plot in Bond films, for example).
Yes, you could use Musilms but there has been a lot of criticism of late that we should take steps not to demonize them any further than they already have been. This is clearly politicized. Not long ago. as was pointed out above, True Lies used Arab Muslims in this role... it would not happen today. Given time there will be opportunity to use either Taliban or Al-Qaeda as villians but it is a bit close to home in the shadow of 9/11... people don't want their villians to be *that* true to life.
You can use aliens but that only works in sci-fi.
The problem with common everyday villians is that they are often too small in scope for the plot in question. A bank theif only wants to steal money, and while this can drive a plot like Die Hard, the fact that he was just a bank robber and not a terrorist as first assumed, was a clever plot twist.
What would be interesting is if you were to take a poll of all the films released by major studios over the last 10 to 20 years and make a study of villian achetypes. You would then have something to truly back up your assertion that "Fuck Whitey" is trend...
The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of heroes are white and male... why is there no representation of other races and genders on the protagonist side of the equation?
Don't blame Hollywood. Blame those who continue to shell of big money at the boxoffice. If they were shelling out the $$ for exciting foriegn films and independant productions where there heroes and villians were more complex you would see a change in trends.
Until that happends the forecast calls for more big budget sameness.