Hollywood: Whose Side Are You on?

Nov 25, 2009 JamesHudnall Featured, Hollywood 8 Comments">8 Comments

My latest big Hollywood screed. In which I describe how Hollywood is making America out to be the villain these days in many films, or American contractors which they’ve made the new cliched villain.

I just started watching ABC’s Flash Forward by comics scribe David Goyer and lo and behold, guess who some of the villains are? Take a wild guess.

JamesHudnall

James Hudnall has been a professional writer since 1986. He's been a web developer since 1999. James currently lives in San Diego, California.
  • GeorgeC

    Goyer’s a hack at any rate.

    I haven’t read a comic or seen a movie written by him that’s been anything but “meh.”

    The real concern is how uncritical persons lap this drivel up and take it as gospel. Far more of these people exist outside of the U.S. I think even the great unwashed cynics amongst us who haven’t lost ALL hope are beginning to see how this constant negativity and one-sided representation of the U.S. drags things down.

    Yes, there are bad people in contracting and not all of our fellow citizens have humanity’s best interests at heart.

    The question more of us should be asking is what is at the heart of guys like David Goyer when they repeat the same tired 60′s radical protest themes and koombayah nonsense.

    The only writers in Hollywood that are regularly balanced in their satire and zinging are Parker and Stone of South Park…

  • http://keenerworks.com website design

    Don’t really watch a lot of TV of any kind. Monk, Psych, and that’s about it.

    Just a quick critical (and honestly non-political) question: from a dramatic point of view, isn’t it scarier to have, on a fictional TV show, a villain closer to home than a foreign one?

    Don’t get me wrong, I Haven’t seen Goyer’s show, and have no real desire to watch Flash-Forward or any other show out right now, and am not trying to defend him; just a quick thought.

  • Anthonyx

    Its not really scarier having a villain close to home anymore because its ….been…done as nauseam.

    Red Dawn remake, guaranteed it will be a an American led cartel that engineered it all. Its all false teenage rebellion.

    They have won the culture war, the presidency, control of Universities yet they still need to act out against the MAN!

    Its childish and cowardly

  • http://keenerworks.com website design

    I thought that China was the enemy in the new Red Dawn.

    Could be wrong.

    Really, though, how much comes out of Hollywood that’s both interesting and new?

    That’s not an excuse for Hollywood (in fact, quite the opposite).

  • http://jameshudnall.com JamesHudnall

    Web Guy, Anthony X hit it on the head. The idea of someone close to home being the villain is IN EVERYTHING these days. Every villain in every movie and TV show 99.99999% of the time is a traitor of some kind. I mean, come on.

    A villain can be scary without them being a foreigner. I am not saying we should make foreigners all the bad guys. I am say, purposely avoiding Islamo-Fascists as villains is absurd if the film is about Iraq, terrorists or Afghanistan. It’s like making WWII movies without mentioning the nazis.

    It’s even worse when you make US the bad guys and don’t even mentio who or what we’re fighting. And some of these flsm do. They don’t give us any examples of the evil the other side does.

  • http://keenerworks.com website design

    I’ll defer to you on this, since I watch very, very little new stuff in the theaters or on TV, as so much of it is interchangeable pap anyway.

  • http://edshugeo.com Edshugeo The GodMoor

    I thought Traitor was pretty good, but I think that was an indie film (co-written by Steve Martin).

    There was a story a couple of weeks back about an effort to produce a Sgt. Rock film, only set in the future. The reasons given by the studio seem almost un-apologetically anti-American.

    http://www.aintitcool.com/node/43018

    ” Until now, “Rock” has retained its World War II setting, with Silver and the studio trying to make a big-budget action adventure movie that was a throwback to flicks like “The Dirty Dozen,” which feature acts of American derring-do.

    But a big budget always was an obstacle and, “Inglourious Basterds” notwithstanding, period war movies have not been in vogue in Hollywood for years, unless it was a more serious contemplation of the subject like “Saving Private Ryan.” Also, American jingoism went out of style after 9/11; even this summer’s G.I. Joe movie dropped the toy’s “A Real American Hero” tagline and made the action team internationally focused.

    The studio hopes moving the time period to the future solves the dilemma.”

  • http://jameshudnall.com JamesHudnall

    Traitor was OK. It bombed, though. These Hollywood producers figure the world market won’t buy American patriotic films. But that doesn’t mean they have to be anti-American. As Inglorious Basterds showed, you can do a war film and just make it a story about something. It doesn’t have to be all about American patriotism.

    People don’t like depressing movies. Clint Eastwood’s two Iwo Jima movies were well made, but they flopped because they were so negative.

    People like positive stories. Even if they’re twisted like Basterds

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