I think that most people share this feeling. We want our movies to be escapism. We get it that there's no way any man could do the things that Batman does and it's impossible for one man to walk onto an island filled with bad guys brandishing machine-guns (or worse) and walk away with only a couple of minor wounds. That's a requirement of action sci-fi films, you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief for a few hours and just take it all in.
That's why no one likes social justice warriors, those sad souls who pick apart every action movie and look for a way to interject their (increasingly whiny) politics into the mix in an attempt to guilt/shame everyone into submission who might have found say, Avatar, pretty enjoyable.
"It's the mythos of the white savior" they'll wail. Wondering why James Cameron had to model the Na'vi after the Native Americans and why the white man had to come and save them.
Well, for one thing, Sam Worthington, cast as the hero, is Caucasian and two, the hero typically needs to be someone the audience connects with. It was through Jake Sully that the audience gained an understanding of the Na'vi that would have been tedious to have some sociologist stand on screen for 45 minutes and try to explain.
When Social Justice Warriors start to cry about every perceived slight in a work of fiction, I politely head out the door and look for the nearest bar.
Republicans, annoyingly, have a tendency to do much the same thing. When it comes to movies and pop culture it's as if they cannot quell the pressing need to come across as a scold.
The Trashing of a Generation. Armond White, National Review Online.
Is it overreaching — or being humorless — to recognize and critique a piece of entertainment that takes America’s schism lightly? Will fanboys — or for that matter film critics — ever understand that Marvel Studios has engineered a cultural coup that prevents viewers from thinking? How did we get here?The answers are yes, and yes.
Because we're talking about a fictional MOVIE. We have a former skinny, undersized lad who was injected with a super-soldier serum, fabricated by a German scientist who fled the Nazi regime, who became a war hero before plying it in over the Atlantic and spending 60+ years as a frozen licking post for polar bears facing off against a womanizing, philandering, irresponsible functional alcoholic of a Billionaire who happens to dress in an iron suit with tons of scientifically improbable gadgets.
If there's one thing this movie doesn't need it's added gravitas in the form of social introspection.
What we want to see are the superheroes fight. We want to see some cool special effects and we want to have our heart strings tugged at when some of our favorite characters die. Oh, and if you could blow up some shit spectacularly along the way that would be cool as well. I don't want my movies to teach me a lesson, I want them to entertain me.
One of my favorite movie franchises (non sci-fi) is the Ocean's Eleven series of movies. They are my favorites despite the fact that there are plot holes bigger than a California sink-hole laced throughout. For one, how did they get all of those flyers for strippers down into the vault? Because the bags loaded with them went up to the van before the "S.W.A.T." came down.
We laugh about this when watching it, and then move on because it doesn't matter. I've suspended disbelief and I'm willing to let bygones be bygones.
I understand why every baddie (especially, FWIW Imperial or First Order Storm Troopers) are going to be historically awful shots. This despite the fact that they are, usually, the most feared shock troops in the galaxy, world whatever.
I understand that, at some point, the villain is going to spill the entirety of his plan, including key details, to the hero despite there being no reason for him doing so. This will either happen directly, when the hero is caught in an insanely complicated, and easily escapable death trap or in some presentation to associates that the villain is about to kill in which the hero is eavesdropping. (Remember the scene in Goldfinger, where Auric Goldfinger strangely explains the plan to the mafia members that he then kills off for no reason?)
I accept that the hero is the most well-trained, best-shooting, most-dangerous man ever invented and we must be reminded of that in every movie, especially those staring Gerard Butler.
I'm willing to believe that a normal cop, or a security guard, or just a workaday Joe, can suddenly have fighting skills that allow them to overcome legions of the most well trained baddies in the world through sheer grit, determination and a willing to bleed profusely on camera.
Because they are MOVIES. Not real life, not a reflection of real life and not some place where I want to go see some great moral lesson. It's to the detriment of society that we've rewarded a group of critics who do, and who want to make critiques on it.
This is a large part why we treat celebrities as being in possession of some mystical wisdom these days, and it's why a lot of people are tired of both Republicans (and Progressives) lecturing them when they just want a little bit of escapism from their hum-drum lives.
At home I've got the movie S.P.E.C.T.R.E. on Blu Ray. My plan is to watch it this week. I don't care whether or not the movie is realistic, I just hope the actions shots are good, the Bond girls are pretty and the villain is a good one.
Oh, and that the shit that gets blown up gets done so in a spectacular manner.
