Hollywood: Comic book heroes count more than the U.S. military

Enter Stage Right ^ | July 14, 2003 | Daniel G. Jennings

[Anthem]

Like most rational adults, I can discern messages in movies and decide for myself whether they're good or bad.

LOL

[HitmanLV]

Yep - back then, you could actually read XMen without getting a headache! XMen doesn' depict the miliary in any such way - the mean colonel is clearlya rouge and on his own agenda, and has credible (if twisted) motivations.

XMen 2 is not an indictment on the military, not by any stretch.

Neither is the Hulk for that matter. Hulk has soldiers going crazy to contain the Hulk - if such a creature existed, lets be honest, we would all hope they would!

[Anthem]

Looks to me like you know your Marvel. And I would agree that the X-Men generally are of a libertarian ideal. What this article (and my purpose for posting it) points out is the endless Hollywood nihilist slams against types of people who fit sterotypes of conservatives and businessmen.

[Anthem]

Interesting take.

[steve-b]

Yeah, where do these Hollyweird people get off depicting American military forces attacking innocent people? For a worse example, look at this movie still:

Huh? That's a news still, not a movie still?

[ EMILY LATELLA ] Never mind.... [ /EMILY LATELLA ]

[steve-b]

Anyone capable of looking beneath the surface plot can see the obvious analogies to persecution of real-world minorities (racial, religious, sexual, whatever) in the X-Men stories.

[steve-b]

Unfortunately, X2 makes the mutants so menacing that I actually had quite a bit of sympathy for the military "fanatics".

Unfortunately? That aspect of the situation helps raise the movie above the simplistic good-guys-beat-up-bad-guys level.

[Question_Assumptions]

"Unfortunately" in "Unfortunately, they actually made me think that it would have been better off if the 'bad guys' had won."

The X-Men has always been something of an allegory for racism and other forms of bigotry with the message being that bigotry is bad and that humans and mutants can peacefully co-exist. This movie sent a very different message to me.

The anti-bigotry message of the X-Men works because it encourages people (especially comic book fans with feelings of alienation) to identify with the mutants, to look at things from their perspective, and to see them as the undeserving targets of irrational fear and hatred. But given terrorist situations in the real world, I identified, instead, with the Secret Service agents trying futilely to save their presidident from a rampaging mutant as well as with the various humans who were menaced and were controlled like puppets, not only by the evil bad guys but by the supposed good guys, as well.

[LS]

Yah, but the difference is in the 1960s, I recall the plots being decidedly AMERICAN. I heard Stan Lee, on a network history of the comics, say that after 9/11 he really couldn't see a Captain America going after a bunch of Arabs! AND WHY NOT, MR. LEE? IS THEIR DANGER LESS THAN THAT OF HIROHITO?

[Anthem]

Technically those were LEO's, not DOD forces. Although your point is well taken (that our gov. forces have attacked civilians on more than one occasion), my point is that such behavior is assigned to conservative stereotypes by Hollyweird.

[Anthem]

related to my point

[weegee]

Mindreading mutants violate the civil rights of humans by violating their privacy.

Same with identity stealing mutants. They put themselves as superior races to humans.

The whole notion of mutation in the Marvel universe is crap anyway. Persons who are "born" mutated are treated differently than those who mutate as a result of some outside influence. Also in the Marvel world, siblings sired from the same parents will have different mutant abilities than each other and even their parents. A mutation should be heriditary (possibly regressive).

It's not like there is one switch "Mutant ON/OFF" that means if you have it you will have 1 of 300,000 different abilities. Crap science. Crap politics. Don't think about it too much and tell the writers to use Western Union if they want to send messages.

[Sloth]

This is ridiculous. I saw X-Men 2, it did NOT portray the military in general as bad, just one particular guy who was misusing it. Furthermore, it stunned me by portraying an explicitly Christian faith (by the character Nightcrawler) in a very positive light.

If I was to interpret X2 as any kind of modern political allegory, the mutants would be gun-owners.

[Sloth]

Well, in my opinion- if Mutants like the X-Men existed, I would either want them brought under total government control (I mean North Korean-style indoctrination from birth to be soliders of the state) or I would want them wiped out. Better the former, if necessary the latter. Probably a combination of the two.

So, your idea of human rights only applies to the weak and pliable.

How else do you deal with people who can kill people with their brain or any number of other such things?

The same way you deal with people who can kill people with semi-auto rifles, pipe bombs, ammonium nitrate or any number of other such things. You wait until they actually DO something illegal, THEN you seize & punish them. That's what the Constitution says.