Mark Steyn, columnist to the Anglosphere, sums up my thoughts about recent Hollywood movies quite well:
If you’re making ten straight cowboy movies, a gay one’s neither here nor there. Similarly, if you’ve made ten movies in which Jake Gyllenhaal or Heath Ledger kick terrorist butt from here to Peshawar, there’s plenty of room for a contrarian take in which it turns out to be the stewardesses who pulled off 9/11. But, in a conflict that’s already lasted longer than America’s participation in World War Two, Hollywood still can’t bring itself to make a film in which America’s heroes whump America’s enemies. That’s just lousy business sense.
And so, after spending my college years in a theater several times a month, I now rarely go to see a movie because there are rarely movies I'm interested in seeing.
Oh, what the heck... Mr. Steyn also has a great few paragraphs farther down the page about what strange bedfellows the enemies of America make:
Ever since September 11th, there’s been a grand harmonic convergence of all the world’s loser ideologies, from Islamic fundamentalism to Gallic condescension. By rights, a coalition that embraces hardline British socialists, American white supremacists, sophisticated European secularists, neanderthal European fascists, misogynist Muslim theocrats, militant gay Canadians (really – he’s a guy called Svend Robinson, who for years has been the gay mascot of the Palestinian Authority), by rights this crowd should be as fractious as a Thanksgiving reunion at the Assad home, with Bashar, the uncle who tried to topple his dad, the uncle who had his brother murdered, etc. But apparently they all get along swimmingly.As you know, because the media parrot it incessantly, there were no links between al-Qa’eda and Saddam, because he’s a scrupulously secular Baathist and they’re fundamentalist Islamists. Good thing those pro-gay pro-feminist Eurolefties making common cause with honor-killing sodomite-beheaders don’t demand the same level of intellectual coherence from their own coalition as they do from the terrorists. Does George Galloway feel even a wee bit squeamish that his speeches are indistinguishable from David Duke?
Such lliances betray the real values of these various groups of losers. Despite how some may pose for freedom, they're all quick to stand against the world's brightest beacon of liberty in modern times: America.
And so what Mr. Steyn has his undies in a bunch about, with regards to movies anyway, is the lack of movies that depict the reality of our kicking terrorist butt?
It never ceases to amaze me the number of people who piss and moan about the movies Hollywood makes not being "real" enough for them.. or not suiting the reality of the times we live in. A movie about the US wiping the floor with terrorists wouldn't be very exciting.. and I'd be a little concerned about paying more than $7.50 to go see what would basically amount to little more than a news report that I could watch on broadcast TV.. and spend the $7.50+ on something else.
Movies are supposed to be fictional, even movies about real events. Mr. Steyn laughs that the movie Syriana doesn't accurately depict the CIA. Well duh.. I wouldn't expect a movie to do something like that.
I don't know about Mr. Steyn, but I go to movies to escape reality.. not to be constrained and compartmentalized by it in yet another venue. It's a diversion.. not a main route.
Nothing you want to see is playing at the local movie theater? Yeah, join the club. There aren't a lot of movies I want to see either.. but don't complain that they're not "real" enough for you.. because that's not what movies ever were or are supposed to be.