Die Hard: Copaganda with Explosions

 I forget why I started watching the Die Hard franchise. I think someone recommended it, and also I had insomnia, so why not.

I saw the first one, Die Hard (1988), in the theater, I think? I have only vague memories. That would have been while I was in graduate school and when I was first dating Dr. Skull. We might have gone to see it -- we were seeing almost every single movie that came to town back then, including Highlander II (the worst movie I ever paid money to see).

Anyway, I remembered very little about the first Die Hard. So its amazing politics were a bit of a shock.

In the commentary (I was watching it on Amazon, which provides a running commentary if you click on the screen), we are told that in the orignal script, the bad guys were terrorists. But the director, John McTiernan, made them into thieves because he didn't want the movie to be "political."

Mind you, making the bad guys into thieves instead of international terrorists was an excellent plot move. I'm just laughing my ass off at the notion that this movie was "not political."

John McClane, our hero, is a New York City cop. All the films in the series, while they are indeed action films, are also straight-up copaganda. Cops are always the "good guys." They are pure of heart and noble in action -- like Roy Rogers, as McClane famously claims in the film. They rescue innocent civilians, and do so without ever shooting first. In fact, they do their best to never shoot anyone -- until they absolutely have to. (Spoilers: they always absolutely have to.) 

McClane is also handsome, witty, and smarter than anyone around him. (Spoilers: he's not actually smart, just written that way.)

His wife, Holly, on the other hand, that treacherous bitch, has taken a high-paying job with a large corporation. And not only did she leave her handsome hero husband to do so, moving to LA and leaving him behind in New York, she took back her maiden name.

I know! Scandalous!

Much of the movie is about McClane killing the terrorist/thieves in order to rescue his wife (they're all foreign, of course, as are the owners of the corporation that lured Holly away from her place by McClane's side). He rescues the other hostages too, of course, even though they, like Holly, work for this foreign corporation, and this are smarmy, stupid, and evil.

We get a lot of attacks on the media (one villain of the piece is the reporter trying to cover the story -- he is also smarmy, stupid, and evil), and on the FBI; and we get a lot of time spent showing us what a good guy McClane is, and what a good guy his counterpart, Al, an LA police officer, is. They love their kids. They love their country. They love to protect civilians --

What's that you say? Al shot a civilian? An innocent 10 year old carrying a toy gun? My, that doesn't sound very heroic.

Oh, wait. He feels bad about it, and now he can't even draw his weapon. He's a broken cop. All he can do now is "ride a desk."

Don't worry, though. By the end of the movie, he is able to gun down a bad guy. He's all better now! He can shoot people again, so he can go back to being a "real" cop.

Also at the end of the movie, Holly takes back McClane's last name. She's fixed too!

This movie is filled with explosions, blood, and McClane shooting people. The politics here include: 

(1) We need men with guns. These men are the heroes who keep us safe.

(2) Violence is an excellent solution - indeed, the only solution. 

(3) Women are helpless, and so are men who prefer to negotiate instead of shooting people. Such men die horribly, which is what they deserve for being such smarmy cowards. 

(3.1) Women also exist so men in the audience can look at their titties -- there's more than one gratuitous naked woman in this movie.

(4) People who are not American exist to be villains or comic relief.

(5) Black people exist to help and support white people.

(6) Black people adore and admire white people and love to help them.

(7) Black people also exist to be comic relief (Al lives on Twinkies, and Argyle -- don't black people have funny names! -- is essentially Stepin Fetchit).

(8) Police are pure of heart, heroic, white knight heroes, who are able to overcome huge odds and defeat the villains -- so long as the parasites and losers don't get in their way.

(9) People in California -- or at least liberals in California -- are ridiculous.

Now mind you, if you can squint your way past these "not political" aspects of the movie, this first one is kind of fun. Alan Rickman is a wonderful villain, the plot works well, and 33 year old Bruce Willis is indeed hot. The dialogue is also snappy -- or anyway, the dialogue between Rickman and Willis. The dialogue between Willis and Bonnie Bedelia, his wife, the love of his life, is both cliched and stale.

I tried to watch Die Hard 2: Die Harder, but it was both stupid and boring. I managed to make it through Die Hard 3: Die Hard with a Vengeance. I'll share my thoughts on that tomorrow.

More on Copaganda:

Review of Attack the Block over on my Patreon

New post up on my Patreon! It's a review of Attack the Block, and you can read it for free.

Also, a reminder! For only $3/month, you can read a new chapter of my novel and tons of other content every week, while also supporting a working artist. What a deal!

Review of Snowpiercer

I just finished teaching Snowpiercer in my World Science Fiction class.

Read my review of it over here on my Patreon, for free!

What I'm Reading (and watching) Now

I'm still tragically, dramatically sick, which means I can't do much besides lie on the sofa and whimper. Also blow my nose, emit hacking coughs, and read novels.

(I lie. I'm also writing. Each day I trawl up sufficient energy to write for at least two hours. Then I collapse.)

Anyway, I'm reading a lot. Also binge-watching a lot of Netflix.

Here's what I've been watching:

Review: Zootopia

For those of you who have not yet seen Zootopia, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I was not that excited about seeing it, frankly -- a Disney movie about a bunny who wants to be a cop?  Whatevs.  I went mostly because the kid wanted to see it so badly, and since my child almost never wants to go see a movie, we'll take her to anything.



Spoilers from here on out:

What Devilish Sort Of Science Fiction Is THIS?

So last night Dr. Skull and I went to see Prometheus.

It's hard to even begin on how much fail exists in this movie -- which, BTW, I so much wanted to like. I loved Alien and Aliens, though I do my best to pretend the other sequels just don't exist; and Blade Runner is one of my top favorite movies of all times, so while I didn't have great expectations, due to all the bad press it had been getting, well. I had hopes.

But my shit.

First of all, doesn't Ridley Scott know any scientists? Or if he doesn't know any, couldn't he arrange to find a consultant who could talk to some? Because I will just tell you, Ridley, this is not how scientists talk, this is not how they act, and it is not how they react. And I am guessing these are supposed to be among the best scientists of their generation, given that they got hired to do this way-cool scientific expedition out among the stars?

But they act like guys we've hired off the street to move furniture. Our "geologist," who claims at one point to "love rocks" wakes up here, two thousand light years from home, or however the fuck far it is, I don't know, about to land on a new planet, where no one has ever been before, and is he going o cool, I can't wait to see what the rocks are like? Is he saying, A planet! We're the first ones ever to land on a planet that isn't Earth! We can learn so much about rock formation from this!

No. He's saying, dude, I just came out here to make bucks. Fuck this job.

And once on the planet? He never once takes a rock sample or even looks at any of the rocks. That's right. Not once.

Same for our biologist. (Who, by the way, calls evolution "Darwinism.") When our intrepid explorers encounter the remains of the space aliens -- this would be, remember, the very first sign of any sort of non-terrestrial life anyone has ever found anywhere -- does our biologist want to have a look at it?

No. He barely glances at it. Then he wants to go back to the ship. Because dead bodies are scary.

Nor does he, ever, except for one time when it is vital for the plot, ever look at any of the life which is around him on this planet -- the algae, the worms, the other crawly bits -- nope. Not interested. Because scientists are like that.

And our main scientists, Mrs. Shaw (okay, Dr. Shaw, except I don't believe for one shitting minute she's a doctor) and her sweetie boo Charlie, who have convinced the head of Wayland Industries that if he spends a BAZILLION TRILLION dollars to come out here he will be made immortal (gah fuck?), they are just not scientists.

First, Elizabeth Shaw tells us she "chooses to believe" that the "engineers," which is what she calls the aliens, have created mankind. (She's come all the way out here to meet them and ask them why they created us.) Does she have evidence that these "engineers" created us? No. None. (Or at least none we're told about, and none the movie presents us.) So -- she's operating on faith alone. Yeah. There's your scientist at work.

All through the movie, clutching her cross, she operates this way -- moving on faith, not evidence. At the end, for instance, why does she trust David? Who has, after all, done nothing but betray them all, over and over? Including that charming bit where he killed her husband (the movie clearly shows that she guessed that) and tried to force her to carry an alien fetus to term? I'm guessing it's faith. It can't be sense, because there is no rational reason behind it.

(While we're on it, when Elizabeth Shaw goes to have the med pod remove the alien fetus, WTF is with calling that a Caesarean, and not an abortion? I guess it just goes against her faith to say the A-word? My hell.)

Mind you, there were some good bits to the movie. The little mapping drones were very cool. And I liked some of the byplay among the crew. And the opening scenes, where David is minding the ship, those are fun.

Not enough to carry this crap of a movie, though, sadly.

American Epics Movie Review II

Then this evening I watched Apocalypse Now, which I had never actually seen altogether (I had seen bits of it, since Dr. Skull watches it about 17 times a year), as it is another movie I am considering for the American Epics class.

Having seen it, I am still not sure about showing it. It is definitely an epic. And it definitely fits the class. I'm just not sure I can sit through it twice.

I don't know if I've ever had this experience -- it's a piece of work that I know is good, but that I find aesthetically revolting. Watching it literally made me ill: I have a migraine now.

I think I also find it morally repelling, too, though I can't exactly pin down why. The use of people of color as objects to make a political point? (Unless I'm mistaken, no Asian in the film has a role except as a savage, an Other, someone to be shot at, exploded, attacked. It's true black Americans have actual roles -- that's nice -- but there's also an extended scene where black soldiers are used as savages, complete with face paint and magic connections to the universe.) The excessive violence against POC? The absence of women except as objects?

Kurtz's little speech, there at the end, about judgment being the enemy that defeats us?

I ...I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us.

Yeah, that might be it. I know the movie tells us that Kurtz is crazy, so it has an out -- it can claim we're not supposed to think this is right -- but the movie is also playing him as a hero: the only man who is fighting this war right. (That's what the French dinner part is about; that's what Willard says on his trip up the river.) Kurtz is the man who is a God. He's outside the normal bounds, he doesn't have to play by the rules. So when he tells us this is the right way to act (in war), the movie is telling us that's right.

The movie approves, even if it also lets Willard kill Kurtz: it likes Kurtz's ethos. It wants this kind of warrior.

I think I probably will show it, because it's an American epic, and an American POV. But man I hate this movie.

Teaching American Epics

Last night, doing prep for American Epics, I watched John Sayles' Matewan, which I had never actually seen before, mainly because it is so hard to find. I actually had to buy a copy in order to watch it.

Totally worth it.

Based on actual events, Matewan relates the events leading up to the Battle of Matewan, when the coal company's gun thugs came in to massacre the striking miners and found the miners fully prepared to shoot back. The movie stops there, though an epilogue hints at the increased violence poured down on the miners (by both the coal and the state) for daring to fight back.

It's a powerful examination of the struggle to create unions in this country -- who paid, how they paid, how much they paid -- and who the true enemies are. It also shows, very nicely, how they work (successfully) to set us against one another.

Watch it, even if you have to buy it.