The scene where the 8 year old tells him how to operate the LAW rocket launcher is a classic cinema moment.
They were trying to take the audience on a journey from "this guy is a righteous badass who has been pushed too far" to "this guy was fighting across la to murder-suicide his wife and kids, he's the bad guy" but it really didn't land. Folks remember the cool violence, not the end.
Same genre of missed satire or critique as fight club, taxi driver.
I watched this in my pre-woke period and surprisingly, it's one of the few examples of the satire NOT being missed on me. Like I just saw a grumpy divorced boomer bumbling around LA and being a dick. Sometimes to people who kinda deserved it but often just to random people. He doesn't do anything badass he actually gets owned several times, and the movie ends with him dying rather pathetically, getting shot by a guy who just owned him in a debate about ethics.
I think there's a reason your usual reddit edgelord doesn't cite this film as an inspiration unlike Fight Club.
Yeah but he only did that cuz he was disgusted by the fact the Nazi thought he was "one of them", which is itself and indictment of his character. As I recall that's the only person he kills but he nearly kills several other people, most of whom were just innocent service workers and whatnot.
Yeah but he only did that cuz he was disgusted by the fact the Nazi thought he was “one of them”,
Liberals shock when a fascist recongises they are on the same team lmao
Starship Troopers too. You basically can't make satire of this type without a huge proportion of the viewers going "whoah, cool shooty guns! wow! I'm just like the protagonist!"
It’s settled, after the revolution we need to make a reverse Haye’s code where the main rule is that the villains cannot be too cool, too sexy, or whatever.
I think a good 30% of CHUDs under 45 are CHUDS because they want to emulate the cool supervillains from media.
I'm on board but if your take from starship troopers is the villains (bug aliens) are too sexy let's get into that please
they both are and are not
in conclusion do not fuck the bugs
The bugs did literally nothing wrong, Buenos Aires was a false flag
We need to face up to an uncomfortable truth of the 21st century; Monsterfuckers are the only people driving the culture in new, inventive, and transformative directions while others simply rehash what has been. In this essay I will
The thing about Falling Down, the villain isn't cool, his a divorced loser who lives with his mom.
I think a good 30% of CHUDs under 45 are CHUDS because they want to emulate the cool supervillains from media.
Nah it's settler brain. Blaming in on media is missing the forest through the trees.
FWIW, those institutions are still super important for setting the culture if I understand my gramsci correctly.
Yeah but, and I don't have anything to back this up besides vibes, I kinda suspect the nerds to post about how much they like Fight Club and Joker mostly just edgelord post online. The actual MAGA dudes who go and do shit outside, regardless of how embarrassing it is, are probably more brain-poised on like Call of Duty and those bad direct to TV Steven Seagal films, Joker would be too artsy for them.
Really though I think its mostly their suburban, white bread, driving the Silverado to Buffalo Wild Wings every Friday while pretending to be an independent frontiersman lifestyle that rots their brain. I mean, the media they consume is part of that but it's just one ingredient in the brain-worm soup, removing it and it alone wouldn't do shit. Also you know plenty of socialists watched Fight Club and Joker and played too much COD but ended up where we are now, I know I fucking did.
In think most of the people on this site are themselves media fixated nerds (including myself) and so tend to ascribe to media way more power than it has. It's a piece of the puzzle but I don't think its a particularly big one, at least not when taken with everything else.
It's definitely the loudest piece of the puzzle but I agree that it's not the largest.
In the future all film makers will study Mel Brooks and Charlie Chaplin's depictions of Nazis before they're allowed to touch fascism.
It’s settled, after the revolution we need to make a reverse Haye’s code where the main rule is that the villains cannot be too cool, too sexy, or whatever.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: writers need to beat the audience over and about the head with the point they want to make to the point of having a character and/or the narrator literally just straight up tell the audience the point several times, and only after that are they allowed to engage in allegory of any sort of even slightly ambiguous characterization.
Retvrn to movies like It's A Wonderful Life where they beat you over the head with the message
Fucking hell the recent discourse around the movie drives me up the wall. All the chuds that think they're vindicated because the director said the "bugs launched the meteor" in the director's commentary or whatever despite the movie itself directly contradicting this.
We see them ram the fucking meteor and change its trajectory. Rico's sitting in the barracks after quitting service talking with his parents on the telephone when the call suddenly drops when the meteor lands. Rico grabs his bag and walks out of the barracks to leave. Then the big fucking jumbotron outside starts playing a fully cut, edited, and narrated propaganda reel complete with rising death toll showing how Buenos Aires was destroyed by a meteor, they already determined it came from Klandathu and didn't arrive by chance but was launched with purpose, and the council already convened and decided on war. Shortly after this, they have another fully edited and narrated reel with footage of the destruction wrought by the meteor, complete with literal crisis actors rooting through burned out houses shouting jingoisms at the camera about the damn fucking buggos.
The movie does everything it could reasonably do to show you that it's a false flag without saying it out loud. Rico is perhaps the only fucking person on Earth with the knowledge to deduce this is a government plot, and he still signs back up with fervor to join the war effort now that his family and home is destroyed.
That's not the fault of the people making the movies, that's the fault of dumbasses not being able to actually understand things and don't understand the concept of "show, don't tell". Like Fallen Down, Starship Troopers, Fight Club, Taxi Driver, etc are very heavy handed and obvious in terms of satire. They clearly show you why. The only way for these movies to be more obvious would be for them not to be satirical.
I mean, I am pretty sure the government specifically under educates people so they are easier to manipulate.
Basically I think this comes down to people being incapable of dissociating themselves from the person the camera follows most, or who is given the most camera time to portray their self in their own words.
It's an indictment the type of guy he is. He gets mad at the nazi guy for correctly identifying him as also a nazi.
"We're not the same. I'm an American, you're a sick asshole."
The scene where he pulls out a gun because he wants breakfast is peak boomer boater kulak.
This is one of those movies where a lot of people miss the point. By the end of the movie, you're not supposed to empathise with the protagonist. Protagonist does not mean good guy.
but protagonist does mean the person the (media illiterate American) audience identifies with the most immediately
"IN AMERICA WE HAVE THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH, THE RIGHT TO DISAGREE" "FUCK YOU AND YOUR FREEDOM"
Kinda unrelated but that movie portrays perfectly the hell that is walking through a concrete-filled city under the scorching summer sun
Do gotta say I like the moment him and the black guy getting arrested by the cops share, it's interesting that in contrast to the main character who chooses outward violence on worthy and unworthy bystanders the other mirror image is attempting to spread a message on "not being economically viable" to the masses before being silenced by the
