Posted on 07/18/2005 5:58:56 AM PDT by John Jorsett
David Koepp, who wrote the screenplay for War of the Worlds, says the Martian attackers in the film represent the American military, while the Americans being slaughtered at random represent Iraqi civilians. I see it differently. I think the Martians symbolize normal Americans, while those being attacked are the numbskulls who run Hollywood. Perhaps the normals went a bit too far in this easy-to-understand allegory, but think of the provocation.
Among other things, Koepp made the "thereisnoInternet" mistake, carefully masking his analysis in U.S. interviews, but saying it flat-out in Rue Morgue, an obscure Canadian horror magazine, apparently thinking nobody would notice. But as the movie makes clear, once the normals begin to track you with their newfangled technology, there is no escape. They can find you even in Canada.
Hollywood has grown eye-poppingly angry with the rest of the country, mostly over Bush and Iraq, but partly, at least, because the left-coasters apparently thought they were somehow entitled to a string of Democratic presidents after Clinton. The upshot is that even mild-mannered nonpropagandists like George Lucas have come under pressure to display their lefty credentials with silly political touches. The first three, brilliant Star Wars had no such touches, but the last three, nonbrilliant ones surely do. In the last of the epics, two anti-Bush lines showed up: "Only a Sith [a dark lord] thinks in absolutes" and "If you're not with me, you are my enemy." Lucas said the "enemy" sentence had been written before Bush's similar words after 9/11. Maybe so, but Lucas had three years or so to figure out the political impact of the line but left it in anyway. Last May, at the Cannes Film Festival, natural breeding ground for excitedly anti-American prose, Lucas apparently said that his final Star Wars movie, featuring the rise of Darth Vader and the sinister empire, is a wake-up call to Americans about the erosion of freedoms under President Bush. (I say "apparently" because Cannes news reports, appearing only in various Canadian papers, had no direct quotes about a wake-up call, only paraphrases.) Paul Jackson of the Calgary Sun wrote: "Now [Lucas] says the Star Wars movies have a political message: Fight to free Americans from the evermore frightening dictatorial tyranny of the Bush administration."
The soft and squishy side of the Hollywood mind was on display in Ridley Scott's unintentionally hilarious movie about the Crusades, Kingdom of Heaven. A Crusader is shown beheading a hostage, thus establishing moral equivalence with the monstrous terrorist tactics of today. Saladin's sister is executed by the Crusaders (in real life, as opposed to reel life, she was released). The famous Saladin picks up and admiringly fondles a Christian crucifix he finds on the ground. Somehow I doubt this happened. Muslims had spent several centuries slaughtering Christians or converting them at swords' point. The good-hearted Christian king of Jerusalem aspires to establish a tolerant, multicultural, and apparently relativistic kingdom of Muslims, Christians, and Jews that seems like a 12th-century version of Beverly Hills run by a studio head.
Unhinged. "There is a tremendous drive in Hollywood to exculpate Islamifascist terrorists," Michael Medved says. No movie has been made about the terrorists since 9/11, nothing on al Qaeda, the Taliban, Daniel Pearl, Saddam Hussein, the USS Cole, the embassy attacks, the daring and impressive attempts to track down terrorists. Nothing. Not even a movie about heroic action after 9/11--the firemen who ran upstairs to their deaths to save others in the twin towers, the people who drove all night from Texas and the South to help New Yorkers cope with the disaster.
But wait. Help is on the way. Hollywood is still reluctant to irritate terrorists, but a few movies about 9/11 heroes are on the way. And whom did Paramount pick for the highest-profile one? Oliver Stone, the unhinged director/screenwriter who refers to 9/11 as a justified "revolt" against the established order and the six companies he thinks control the world. At a panel after 9/11, Stone said that the Palestinians who danced at the news of the attack were reacting just as people responded after the revolutions in France and Russia. He thinks 9/11 may have unleashed as much creative energy as the birth of Einstein. Internet commentators are going berserk over the idea of a wacky pro-terrorist paranoid directing the first big 9/11 movie. It will focus on two American heroes, not terrorists. But it could well turn out badly. Besides, why pick Stone? What can be done about the Hollywood brain? And where are those Martian attackers when you really need them?
Koepp should have kept his mouth shut but glad he didn't. He just assured that my family will not get over our distaste for Cruise and spend money on this movie.
Gee Thanks!
Sure did'nt see that one coming.
Thought only Michael Moore hates America.
One has to wonder if David Koepp thinks this is 1898. But then idiots of his ilk don't live in the real world anyway. Too bad H.G. Wells isn't around to sue this Human Garbage pile into oblivion.
Confession time.... I saw WOTW this weekend. We were traveling, checking out some colleges, and in a sleepy Virginia town Saturday night with not much to do so......
The effects were great, the Martians, although they were never identified as such, frightening. But the movie is mainly about Tom Cruise's growth as a father. And the whole subplot with Tim Robbins - it should have been cut from the flick.
And those Martians... for all their vaunted technology, I guess they never developed infrared sensors! And burying their war machines? That would mean their technology was basically frozen in place from the time the machines were buried until the attack was launched, which was how many years, or eons even? I could go on but, hey, it was just a silly summertime flick.
In contrast I watched the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS last night on TCM. Very, very well done.
Yeah, but Cruise thinks the aliens represent aliens.
The solution is simple. Stay away from their looney leftist movies. Hollywood is in their lowest slump ever. If they continue to lose money it'll eventually get through their heads they have to find other outlets for their preaching.
Anyone still believe the tripe that Hollywood only wants to make money? They just can't keep themselves from sticking their thumb in America's eye at every opportunity. May they continue to lose money hand over fist.
you should watch the original war of the worlds again with Gene Barry
that was a fun, kind of creepy rendition. very well down
"Ridley Scott's unintentionally hilarious movie about the Crusades, Kingdom of Heaven. "
Just saw it at the $2 movie theater. Boy did it stink up the place, though the scenes and cinematography were good and even Orlando did ok. It was just the PC crap that made you think, when is this movie going to die. Eveer Christian was limp wristed, felonious, or insane while every Muslim a noble savage. Somehow I don't think that's quite the way it was.
I have hungered for a real action movie for decades, now. I longed for a story about a real hero fighting a real evil, but Schwartznegger/Stallone movies were so unreal as they fought an evil that didn't really exist. Now we have a believable, real evil in muslim extremist terrorists killing innocents. Hundreds of realistic, believable movie plots could be written about heroes saving the lives of innocents, preventing nuclear attacks, fighting and winning the war on terror, real action movies. The theaters would be packed. But I haven't seen one. Maybe I should write one. I have some ideas.
That stupid Day the Earth Froze, or whatever they called that global warming film last year, was on cable this weekend. Good special effects but the plot was ridiculous. Film even seemed to have what you would call a "happy ending" even though billions of people had died!
This piece of propaganda wasn't even the least bit subtle. It blamed this natural disaster squarely on human beings and our overconsumption of oil and resources. In other words, we should be severely punished for being civilized. Sheesh.
He believes they are his ancestors.
I liked National Treasure.
Did you see Hostage with Bruce Willis? A hero movie to me.
Remakes ... When we heard they were remaking Willy Wonka, we thought about going until we saw a commercial for the film. Johnny Depp made Ru Paul seem masculine. Who would have guessed that Willy Wonka's candy factory was all about packing fudge?
If George Bush were to ask the studios to not make 9/11 movies, you think they would actually listen to him? You don't think they'd be howling all over the media about how he was trying to censor them? And if they're so anxious to make money, why did they just guarantee that the first major film about 9/11 will be a massive box office bomb by giving it to Oliver Stone to direct?
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