While Hollywood has turned the war movie into a vehicle for anti-American, anti-military propaganda with recent money-losers like Redacted and Lions for Lambs, the video game industry is making billions on war games in which American soldiers are the good guys.
Activision’s Modern Warfare 2, which is set partially in Afghanistan and lets you play as American and British soldiers hunting terrorists, is a cultural sensation.
When it came out Nov. 10, itbecame the biggest entertainment product launch in history, grossing $310 million in North America and the United Kingdom in its first 24 hours. In its first five days, Modern Warfare 2 sales hit$550 million.
Activision was quick to put that in perspective, noting that the largest worldwide five-day box-office take for any movie was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Princeat $394 million.
I’m sure Hollywood bosses realize that Americans don’t want to see movies depicting their country as the source of all evil in the world, but that’s how Hollywood people see it, and I guess we should respect them for being true to their convictions and putting their money where their hearts are, or something.
Leigh Scott’s article starts as a review of the new “V” mini-series (his conclusion: it compares the Obama administration and the Democrats to flesh-eating reptiles) but reaches deeper:
When you get right down to it, the reason there are so few “conservative” films out there is because most films are inherently conservative. Any film that champions the rise and strength of the individual is conservative. Any story that tells of the triumphs of good over evil is conservative. The subtext of films that resonate, films that capture our imaginations, are based on the romantic ideals of conservative thought.
We all know the classic romantic comedy formula. Boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. The backbone of this formula is individual achievement. Note that it isn’t boy meets girl, then boy gets government to force girl to be with him in the interest of “fairness.”
How many films end with the hero submitting to the collective? Did the audience cheer at the end of the “Invasion of Body Snatchers” remake? Were they happy that Donald Sutherland had given up that pesky individualism thing and joined the alien hive mind? When Jean-Luc Picard temporarily became Locutus of Borg did we all breathe a sigh of relief because we could finally root for the lead character of the series?
I’m sure everyone who serves in Palpatine’s galactic empire gets free health care. I don’t think Darth Vader had to pay an HMO for his suit. Yet, didn’t we all cheer when the rebels destroyed the Death Star?
The very funny and underrated film “The House Bunny” features a bunch of ugly duckling girls who find inner confidence and give each other makeovers to better their situation. They emerge from a snappy montage as a group of knock-outs. Again, this is conservatism. The girls rise to the occasion. They elevate themselves through achievement. Anna Faris’ character isn’t forced to make herself ugly in order to fit in with the awkward sorority.
Yet, in real life, Hollywood creative types advocate bashing all of us with an economic “ugly stick.”
Like many, I find it tedious and distracting when films and television shows delve into non sequiturs to bash Republicans, Christianity, and Conservatism in general. It’s not because I am religious (I am a devout Agnostic) nor because I call myself a Republican (I do not).
I despise it because it’s bad storytelling.
Progressive ideology does not fit well with classic narrative structures. The greatest stories are ones that champion things like individualism, freedom and faith. Big governments, collective thought, and cold scientific secularism make better villains than heroes.
Instinctively, we all know this.
So we can take solace in the fact that “V” is a classic validation of our ideology. We can also take away the fact that even the most die-hard, kool-aid drinking leftists know deep down inside that we are right. They might not say it with their voices, but they say it with their hearts.
And that’s enough for me.
Except that, as many commenters point out, back in 2007 “V”’s author was probably thinking he was writing an indictment of the Bush administration.
The father of Rubina Ali, the 9-year-old girl who starred in the Oscar-winning film, tried to convert her name into hard cash by selling her into “adoption” for a nice sum to a sheik from Dubai - who turned out to be an undercover reporter. Video at the link.
When the film was finally made, though, mobsters loved it to pieces:
They not only loved it—they adopted it as their own, employing the term Puzo invented (the Godfather) and frequently playing the movie’s haunting theme music at their weddings, baptisms, and funerals. “It made our life seem honorable,” Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, of the Gambino crime family, later told The New York Times, adding that the film spurred him on to commit 19 murders, whereas, he said, “I only did, like, one murder before I saw the movie.… I would use lines in real life like, ‘I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse,’ and I would always tell people, just like in The Godfather, ‘If you have an enemy, that enemy becomes my enemy.’”
Turns out there’s a delegation of Hollywood actors and movie-makers in Iran right now, and for the mullahs this, of course, is a perfect opportunity to try to exploit the new U.S. administration’s gutless stance on the Islamic theocracy that borders on appeasement:
A team of visiting Hollywood actors and members of the movie industry including Annette Bening should apologise for films such as 300 and The Wrestler which have angered many in Iran, said the artistic adviser to Iran’s president today.
Javad Shamaqdari, the art and cinema adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said members of the Iranian cinema community should not meet with representatives from the nine-member team until they apologise.
The group includes the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Sid Ganis; actors Ms Bening, and Alfre Woodard; producer William Horberg; AMPAS Special Events Programmer and Exhibitions Curator Ellen Harrington; and Tom Pollock, the former Universal Pictures chairman.
According to the website of Iran’s Cinema Association, the group arrived on Friday in Iran. They met a group of Iranian artists on Saturday, and will be holding educational seminars in directing, screenwriting, acting, producing, marketing and film distribution.
Despite a huge box-office take in January, investors shouldn’t think Hollywood is a safe place to put their money. In fact, it’s a “very, very risky business”.
