Escape to the Movies: Taken 3 - The One Where Liam Neeson Beats People Up

Metalrocks

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wasnt to fond of the first movie. it was alright but cant say it knocked me over. didnt bother to watch part 2 and from the looks of it, part 3 is no better. skip for me. unless someone lends me the movie, then i would watch it.

and i highly doubt that peddigton bear is any good. saw the trailer of it and not a single person in the cinema was laughing, as much as having a chuckle. it just looked so wrong and nothing inspiring.
 

Baresark

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hentropy said:
SnakeoilSage said:
I really don't get the whole "dad's always right" angle. He's former-CIA and he's a concerned father. Of course he's going to have reservations about his daughter going anywhere without an escort. The fact that he's proven right is just grounds for making the movie in the first place.
That last sentence doesn't really make sense. Yeah, a paranoid "I toldya so" macho father-knows-best fantasy is the basis of making the movie, and that's a bad thing. As someone else mentioned above me, rich white tourists are pretty much the people human traffickers avoid like the plague, because CNN goes DEFCON-1 whenever a pretty white American sniffles overseas. It's not a movie about the realistic danger of human trafficking, it's a transparent power fantasy for men who go apeshit whenever their daughters so much touch a boy without an interview.

The funny thing is Bob basically said that was fine, as most of the movie is just action, and it still holds up on those points and can be fun to watch.
I find your comment off base. Human Trafficking is not color blind. It's not typically blind to money, but the idea is that they no one can really do anything about an American girl in a foreign country disappearing. They are tied to that countries police force, or maybe Interpol gets involved, which doesn't mean much. If this movie took place in America, you may have a point, but you are living in some kind of fantasy to think that "white women" are spared conditions represented in this movie. It may happen less to "white people", but it does happen. Roughly 25% of all the human trafficking in America, for instance, is on white people. Mostly children, and mostly women. No one can argue that race is not tied into it historically, it definitely is, but it's misleading to pretend it's not a problem that can affect you regardless of race.

A far as the premise behind the movie, I don't know if it's a bad thing that it's some sort of power fantasy. People enjoy and engage in watching fiction such as this because they know in real life they could not handle having a gun pointed at them, most humans can't, hell most police and soldiers can't which is why they always try to point their gun first. Also... did you just compare a fictional story about a girl being sold into sex trafficking to a guy being unhappy with the new boyfriend because he doesn't approve. Not even in the same zip code.

That said, I do respect your opinion. I wouldn't mind a deeper movie at all when it comes to this type of thing. I think that maybe The Equalizer might be more up your alley so far as action-y movies go. It's really excellent and Denzel Washington does a great job in it. He is just helping people, which is nice, including some victims of sex trafficking. Though, be warned, the girls who represent that population are white, but they are also Russian, which is predominantly white as I understand it.
 

Grabehn

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The only good thing that came from this movie for me was that the some company in charge (afaik) of the trailer's subtitles screwed up, so when the "call" happens, Neeson's character basically says "I will do NOTHING".
 

Baresark

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Shjade said:
ToastiestZombie said:
Paradoxrifts said:
And that's one diatribe too far. I'm hitting the ejection button and escaping from Escape To The Movies. There is just not enough fun in these videos to justify wading through all of the negativity. If people enjoy this then all the more power to them, but I'm out. Can anyone suggest a replacement?
Yep, even when he says "it's fine" at the end it doesn't diminish the completely pointless attack on divorced fathers that manages to turn "caring for your children's safety" into "lousy slob father power fantasies for escapism after alimony payments".
aka: what the Taken series is.

Nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade.
Are you calling a spade a spade though? The idea is that the movie appeals to those people because it's an accurate description of how their lives have gone and how they feel, which is not calling a spade a spade. It's like assuming that all divorced fathers are dead beats who have no love for family outside some weird control issue that are related in direct proportion to the size of alimony payments.

Also, I don't know if you are familiar with that system, but it's 100% broken and not based on anything other than someone's opinion at the time. There are people who get divorced and one party is forced to pay the other party alimony for the rest of their lives, no matter if that person gets married, wins the lottery, or anything of the like. Notice my use of party and not a sex descriptor because it can go both ways, though it's more common for the man to end up paying than the woman. It does happen though and it's ridiculous.

I will point out that Liam Neeson's character never once made anything about money in any of the films. He just wanted to be close to his daughter, but also respected her new fathers imposed limits on him.

No, I can't see this as anything other than Bob being mega bitter about anything movie related. I feel like he also likes to lash out at films aimed towards anyone besides the his generation or younger (of which I'm a part of). If you watch some of his recent reviews, he is always energetic about bashing a film, but rarely is anything besides descriptive to good films. He didn't use to be that way, I feel like he used to put little energy towards bashing and be really involved in reviews of good movies, which is a better Bob in my book.

But that is just my opinion. I don't intend for it to be taken as anything but my opinion.
 

hentropy

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Baresark said:
hentropy said:
SnakeoilSage said:
I really don't get the whole "dad's always right" angle. He's former-CIA and he's a concerned father. Of course he's going to have reservations about his daughter going anywhere without an escort. The fact that he's proven right is just grounds for making the movie in the first place.
That last sentence doesn't really make sense. Yeah, a paranoid "I toldya so" macho father-knows-best fantasy is the basis of making the movie, and that's a bad thing. As someone else mentioned above me, rich white tourists are pretty much the people human traffickers avoid like the plague, because CNN goes DEFCON-1 whenever a pretty white American sniffles overseas. It's not a movie about the realistic danger of human trafficking, it's a transparent power fantasy for men who go apeshit whenever their daughters so much touch a boy without an interview.

The funny thing is Bob basically said that was fine, as most of the movie is just action, and it still holds up on those points and can be fun to watch.
I find your comment off base. Human Trafficking is not color blind. It's not typically blind to money, but the idea is that they no one can really do anything about an American girl in a foreign country disappearing. They are tied to that countries police force, or maybe Interpol gets involved, which doesn't mean much. If this movie took place in America, you may have a point, but you are living in some kind of fantasy to think that "white women" are spared conditions represented in this movie. It may happen less to "white people", but it does happen. Roughly 25% of all the human trafficking in America, for instance, is on white people. Mostly children, and mostly women. No one can argue that race is not tied into it historically, it definitely is, but it's misleading to pretend it's not a problem that can affect you regardless of race.
There have been quite a few high-profile cases of women going overseas, going missing, and it becoming 24-hour news for quite some time. It's extremely rare for tourists of any color to be abducted at all. The plain fact is that police departments in every first world country have a hard time combating human trafficking BECAUSE the people being trafficked are poor, vulnerable, and many times born into the life or went into it at an early age. France is not some dystopian hellhole where tourists disappear and the police throw up their hands and barely investigate the issue. However, when someone is trafficked into France without anyone knowing, sold or transferred or made to work some place underground, it is much more difficult for authorities to combat.

So while the scenario presented might be possible, as many unrealistic things are, it's not really what happens and is presented in such a way for sensational, xenophobic reasons, trying to manipulate someone's feelings into thinking that no one is ever safe unless they're in the loving embrace of daddy America. And literal daddy. Man On Fire at least depicted a scenario that was a legitimate and reasonable fear about rich Americans going to Mexico.

A far as the premise behind the movie, I don't know if it's a bad thing that it's some sort of power fantasy. People enjoy and engage in watching fiction such as this because they know in real life they could not handle having a gun pointed at them, most humans can't, hell most police and soldiers can't which is why they always try to point their gun first. Also... did you just compare a fictional story about a girl being sold into sex trafficking to a guy being unhappy with the new boyfriend because he doesn't approve. Not even in the same zip code.
Ahh, the old "projected comparison" fallacy. Someone should really come up with a cute name for when someone accuses you of comparing two obviously unequal things when that was never implicitly or explicitly implied.

My point was that the kind of person the movie is meant to appeal to is the kind of person who is overly paranoid of the women or other family in their lif doing things that they see as unwise. See, Mary? You keep dating that guy I don't approve of and you'll end up on some underground catwalk with some middle-easterner staring you up and down!

There's nothing wrong with power fantasies, letting people fantasize about being more powerful or competent than they are. There is something wrong with stoking people's unwarranted fears about this or that for entertainment reasons. I think Red Dawn is a pretty cool movie, I'll watch it if I see it on and of course it has a special place in the zeitgeist, but part of that place is that the war the movie portrays is incredibly absurd in many ways and people recognize that. There's no problem with liking the movie, but it's also important to know that it was a product of a time and a way to turn people's unreasonable fears into entertainment, but it wasn't a joke back then, and could have stoked anti-Communist sentiment even more, if that were possible, and had real-life consequences. I think movies like Taken largely fall in the same category. Nonsensical movies that were products of overblown fears that turned out to actually be enjoyable in some way.
 

Baresark

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hentropy said:
Baresark said:
hentropy said:
SnakeoilSage said:
I really don't get the whole "dad's always right" angle. He's former-CIA and he's a concerned father. Of course he's going to have reservations about his daughter going anywhere without an escort. The fact that he's proven right is just grounds for making the movie in the first place.
That last sentence doesn't really make sense. Yeah, a paranoid "I toldya so" macho father-knows-best fantasy is the basis of making the movie, and that's a bad thing. As someone else mentioned above me, rich white tourists are pretty much the people human traffickers avoid like the plague, because CNN goes DEFCON-1 whenever a pretty white American sniffles overseas. It's not a movie about the realistic danger of human trafficking, it's a transparent power fantasy for men who go apeshit whenever their daughters so much touch a boy without an interview.

The funny thing is Bob basically said that was fine, as most of the movie is just action, and it still holds up on those points and can be fun to watch.
I find your comment off base. Human Trafficking is not color blind. It's not typically blind to money, but the idea is that they no one can really do anything about an American girl in a foreign country disappearing. They are tied to that countries police force, or maybe Interpol gets involved, which doesn't mean much. If this movie took place in America, you may have a point, but you are living in some kind of fantasy to think that "white women" are spared conditions represented in this movie. It may happen less to "white people", but it does happen. Roughly 25% of all the human trafficking in America, for instance, is on white people. Mostly children, and mostly women. No one can argue that race is not tied into it historically, it definitely is, but it's misleading to pretend it's not a problem that can affect you regardless of race.
There have been quite a few high-profile cases of women going overseas, going missing, and it becoming 24-hour news for quite some time. It's extremely rare for tourists of any color to be abducted at all. The plain fact is that police departments in every first world country have a hard time combating human trafficking BECAUSE the people being trafficked are poor, vulnerable, and many times born into the life or went into it at an early age. France is not some dystopian hellhole where tourists disappear and the police throw up their hands and barely investigate the issue. However, when someone is trafficked into France without anyone knowing, sold or transferred or made to work some place underground, it is much more difficult for authorities to combat.

So while the scenario presented might be possible, as many unrealistic things are, it's not really what happens and is presented in such a way for sensational, xenophobic reasons, trying to manipulate someone's feelings into thinking that no one is ever safe unless they're in the loving embrace of daddy America. And literal daddy. Man On Fire at least depicted a scenario that was a legitimate and reasonable fear about rich Americans going to Mexico.

A far as the premise behind the movie, I don't know if it's a bad thing that it's some sort of power fantasy. People enjoy and engage in watching fiction such as this because they know in real life they could not handle having a gun pointed at them, most humans can't, hell most police and soldiers can't which is why they always try to point their gun first. Also... did you just compare a fictional story about a girl being sold into sex trafficking to a guy being unhappy with the new boyfriend because he doesn't approve. Not even in the same zip code.
Ahh, the old "projected comparison" fallacy. Someone should really come up with a cute name for when someone accuses you of comparing two obviously unequal things when that was never implicitly or explicitly implied.

My point was that the kind of person the movie is meant to appeal to is the kind of person who is overly paranoid of the women or other family in their lif doing things that they see as unwise. See, Mary? You keep dating that guy I don't approve of and you'll end up on some underground catwalk with some middle-easterner staring you up and down!

There's nothing wrong with power fantasies, letting people fantasize about being more powerful or competent than they are. There is something wrong with stoking people's unwarranted fears about this or that for entertainment reasons. I think Red Dawn is a pretty cool movie, I'll watch it if I see it on and of course it has a special place in the zeitgeist, but part of that place is that the war the movie portrays is incredibly absurd in many ways and people recognize that. There's no problem with liking the movie, but it's also important to know that it was a product of a time and a way to turn people's unreasonable fears into entertainment, but it wasn't a joke back then, and could have stoked anti-Communist sentiment even more, if that were possible, and had real-life consequences. I think movies like Taken largely fall in the same category. Nonsensical movies that were products of overblown fears that turned out to actually be enjoyable in some way.
That is a great name for that fallacy, it should go in the books perhaps. But, it could also easily be represented as a straw man as well I think.

Either way, you seem to be making a broad sweeping generalization about people who enjoyed that movie. It's not meant to appeal to anything of the sort in my opinion because it appeals to so many more, hell, Bob liked it for what it was. For instance, it in general appeals to men because men like to go and watch a "bad ass" do bad things to "bad people". At worst you are looking at the... what is that trope.... the woman in the refrigerator? But you have no basis to make a generalization about who Taken is meant to appeal and for that matter, neither does Bob, but he is in a hyper-negative rut these days. There are far too many people who liked it to make that generalization, though it probably would not be a far stretch to say it was mostly liked by men (which is a genre that has broadly appealed to mostly men up until now). Also, no one can say with any level of fact what a movie is about except for the writers and directors. You can choose to see it that way but that also ignores a large portion of how the movie went about. For instance, he was against the trip, but he condoned it, which also makes him responsible her getting kidnapped since he could have prevented her from going in the first place.

I'm calling in the availability heuristic. You know about those cases of white women disappearing because they were on the news, you don't know about how often it happens and you don't ever hear about it. It's a problem that affects people independent of race, though social status is a fair attack. But rich people get targeted for being rich in hopes of a large ransom, so that is a side effect of being rich (Those poor bastards!). I just don't think the movie is about what you think it's about. All action movies have done this in my lifetime. Die Hard is about a bunch of essentially bank robbers who are willing to kill just about everyone for some money. The movie Broken Arrow was about a lost nuclear weapon. The Rock was about a chemical attack on the San Francisco. You literally always put people in danger for an action movie. Your example also works at showing you that the premise of action movies is always putting someone or many people in danger. I can't even think of an action movie that does not use the general fears of the population as a premise for one guy to get away with anything. If you can, I'm more than happy to hear examples that don't do this. With that mind, Taken was no different than all other action movies so I'm not so sure you final assessment is warranted. I was just kind of happy the premise was used for an action movie rather than another Hostel movie, they were disturbing.

Also, with your point about what Red Dawn could have caused is a little off base in my opinion. Sure, it could have caused anti-communist hysteria (if it wasn't possibly already going on?), but it didn't, or at least didn't increase the amount of overall anti-communist feelings. I don't think it's fair to judge something on what could have happened versus what actually did happen.
 

Dandres

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Liam Neeson did say in an interview that he was not going to do a Taken 3 if someone was actually taken again. He said it had been done enough.
 

Ghadente

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"it ends here" tagline for the movie... i sure hope it does because it should have ended after the 1st one
 

tyriless

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kuolonen said:
I don't really mind Bob calling taken out for the jerkoff-powerfantasy that it is (and seriously, taken is very blatant one at that), but how about calling it out on "Bob's favorite movie" -list as well. Machete would be a good start.
Machete is not a good movie (it was a waste of my money) but if you are going on the basis of it being a jerkoff-powerfantasy it has one crucial difference: the movie is utterly self-consciously silly. I haven't bothered to see part 2 and part 3 of the Taken franchise, but the first one plays it as a straight thriller. It tries to be grounded in real world problems to build up the tension and have us empathize with the protagonist by giving him a father's worst nightmare.

Machete is pure schlock (aka Moviebob's greatest weakness) and the director knows it and he makes very clear that you should know it too. Machete's masculinity is blown to cartoonish proportions in every scene: he catches bullets with his teeth, scowls in every scene, grunts out one liners, and the ************ has sex so hot that he fries an egg under his bed. That's less powerfantasy and much more parody.

One other thing I would like to mention that bothers me about Taken is that the movie completely gives no fucks about the friend who was also kidnapped. I know the focus is about the daughter, but damn, some poor girl just got sold into sex slavery and that puts one hell of a dampening on the original films "happy ending".
 

Piorn

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So it's just Die Hard, i.e. an unlikely actor in a surprisingly solid action movie that keeps on making sequels after everyone stopped caring, all over again?
 

Evonisia

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Jun 24, 2013
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Piorn said:
So it's just Die Hard, i.e. an unlikely actor in a surprisingly solid action movie that keeps on making sequels after everyone stopped caring, all over again?
Well Die Hard 3 kicked arse, Taken 3 no so much it seems.
 

Shjade

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Feb 2, 2010
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Baresark said:
The idea is that the movie appeals to those people because it's an accurate description of how their lives have gone and how they feel, which is not calling a spade a spade.
...no. The idea is that the movie appeals because it's an INaccurate description of their lives in which they're actually the heroes who know best and if their wives would've just listened to them everything would've been better for everyone. Which, in most cases, probably isn't true.
 

Rad Party God

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Yup, the first film was actually pretty good and I still like it, the second one was fun, but it got a little ridiculous when it decided to take an Austin Powers joke and took it seriously enough to turn it into it's entire premise. "Sleepy Bob Disclaimer" should be a new low score.

Elijah Newton said:
I'm holding out for another sequel where they cross over with Fast and the Furious so we can all get Taken 4: A Ride.

I'm sorry, I couldn't resist :p
 

hentropy

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Baresark said:
hentropy said:
Baresark said:
hentropy said:
SnakeoilSage said:
I really don't get the whole "dad's always right" angle. He's former-CIA and he's a concerned father. Of course he's going to have reservations about his daughter going anywhere without an escort. The fact that he's proven right is just grounds for making the movie in the first place.
That last sentence doesn't really make sense. Yeah, a paranoid "I toldya so" macho father-knows-best fantasy is the basis of making the movie, and that's a bad thing. As someone else mentioned above me, rich white tourists are pretty much the people human traffickers avoid like the plague, because CNN goes DEFCON-1 whenever a pretty white American sniffles overseas. It's not a movie about the realistic danger of human trafficking, it's a transparent power fantasy for men who go apeshit whenever their daughters so much touch a boy without an interview.

The funny thing is Bob basically said that was fine, as most of the movie is just action, and it still holds up on those points and can be fun to watch.
I find your comment off base. Human Trafficking is not color blind. It's not typically blind to money, but the idea is that they no one can really do anything about an American girl in a foreign country disappearing. They are tied to that countries police force, or maybe Interpol gets involved, which doesn't mean much. If this movie took place in America, you may have a point, but you are living in some kind of fantasy to think that "white women" are spared conditions represented in this movie. It may happen less to "white people", but it does happen. Roughly 25% of all the human trafficking in America, for instance, is on white people. Mostly children, and mostly women. No one can argue that race is not tied into it historically, it definitely is, but it's misleading to pretend it's not a problem that can affect you regardless of race.
There have been quite a few high-profile cases of women going overseas, going missing, and it becoming 24-hour news for quite some time. It's extremely rare for tourists of any color to be abducted at all. The plain fact is that police departments in every first world country have a hard time combating human trafficking BECAUSE the people being trafficked are poor, vulnerable, and many times born into the life or went into it at an early age. France is not some dystopian hellhole where tourists disappear and the police throw up their hands and barely investigate the issue. However, when someone is trafficked into France without anyone knowing, sold or transferred or made to work some place underground, it is much more difficult for authorities to combat.

So while the scenario presented might be possible, as many unrealistic things are, it's not really what happens and is presented in such a way for sensational, xenophobic reasons, trying to manipulate someone's feelings into thinking that no one is ever safe unless they're in the loving embrace of daddy America. And literal daddy. Man On Fire at least depicted a scenario that was a legitimate and reasonable fear about rich Americans going to Mexico.

A far as the premise behind the movie, I don't know if it's a bad thing that it's some sort of power fantasy. People enjoy and engage in watching fiction such as this because they know in real life they could not handle having a gun pointed at them, most humans can't, hell most police and soldiers can't which is why they always try to point their gun first. Also... did you just compare a fictional story about a girl being sold into sex trafficking to a guy being unhappy with the new boyfriend because he doesn't approve. Not even in the same zip code.
Ahh, the old "projected comparison" fallacy. Someone should really come up with a cute name for when someone accuses you of comparing two obviously unequal things when that was never implicitly or explicitly implied.

My point was that the kind of person the movie is meant to appeal to is the kind of person who is overly paranoid of the women or other family in their lif doing things that they see as unwise. See, Mary? You keep dating that guy I don't approve of and you'll end up on some underground catwalk with some middle-easterner staring you up and down!

There's nothing wrong with power fantasies, letting people fantasize about being more powerful or competent than they are. There is something wrong with stoking people's unwarranted fears about this or that for entertainment reasons. I think Red Dawn is a pretty cool movie, I'll watch it if I see it on and of course it has a special place in the zeitgeist, but part of that place is that the war the movie portrays is incredibly absurd in many ways and people recognize that. There's no problem with liking the movie, but it's also important to know that it was a product of a time and a way to turn people's unreasonable fears into entertainment, but it wasn't a joke back then, and could have stoked anti-Communist sentiment even more, if that were possible, and had real-life consequences. I think movies like Taken largely fall in the same category. Nonsensical movies that were products of overblown fears that turned out to actually be enjoyable in some way.
That is a great name for that fallacy, it should go in the books perhaps. But, it could also easily be represented as a straw man as well I think.

Either way, you seem to be making a broad sweeping generalization about people who enjoyed that movie. It's not meant to appeal to anything of the sort in my opinion because it appeals to so many more, hell, Bob liked it for what it was. For instance, it in general appeals to men because men like to go and watch a "bad ass" do bad things to "bad people". At worst you are looking at the... what is that trope.... the woman in the refrigerator? But you have no basis to make a generalization about who Taken is meant to appeal and for that matter, neither does Bob, but he is in a hyper-negative rut these days. There are far too many people who liked it to make that generalization, though it probably would not be a far stretch to say it was mostly liked by men (which is a genre that has broadly appealed to mostly men up until now). Also, no one can say with any level of fact what a movie is about except for the writers and directors. You can choose to see it that way but that also ignores a large portion of how the movie went about. For instance, he was against the trip, but he condoned it, which also makes him responsible her getting kidnapped since he could have prevented her from going in the first place.

I'm calling in the availability heuristic. You know about those cases of white women disappearing because they were on the news, you don't know about how often it happens and you don't ever hear about it. It's a problem that affects people independent of race, though social status is a fair attack. But rich people get targeted for being rich in hopes of a large ransom, so that is a side effect of being rich (Those poor bastards!). I just don't think the movie is about what you think it's about. All action movies have done this in my lifetime. Die Hard is about a bunch of essentially bank robbers who are willing to kill just about everyone for some money. The movie Broken Arrow was about a lost nuclear weapon. The Rock was about a chemical attack on the San Francisco. You literally always put people in danger for an action movie. Your example also works at showing you that the premise of action movies is always putting someone or many people in danger. I can't even think of an action movie that does not use the general fears of the population as a premise for one guy to get away with anything. If you can, I'm more than happy to hear examples that don't do this. With that mind, Taken was no different than all other action movies so I'm not so sure you final assessment is warranted. I was just kind of happy the premise was used for an action movie rather than another Hostel movie, they were disturbing.

Also, with your point about what Red Dawn could have caused is a little off base in my opinion. Sure, it could have caused anti-communist hysteria (if it wasn't possibly already going on?), but it didn't, or at least didn't increase the amount of overall anti-communist feelings. I don't think it's fair to judge something on what could have happened versus what actually did happen.
Unrealistic plots aren't anything new, and not problematic in and of themselves. But take this example: an all-European movie production sets its movie in the US, and the main plot is that a rich European tourist gets gunned down in broad daylight by take your pick: drug gang member, mentally ill, police officer, etc. on 5th avenue outside of Tiffany's. Some Americans might see that as an attempt to stoke anti-American fear due to the disproportionately high number shootings we have. I've talked to Europeans who say that it is a real fear when traveling to the US. Most Americans would probably point out that it is quite an unrealistic portrayal. The vast majority of people don't live in fear that they will be victims of a shooting, and it would be very unlikely in the touristy part of New York City. The American would still have the right to call it out as bullshit, even if it's an otherwise very well-made action/suspense/thriller.

Some might see that as more than just an attempt to make an action movie, but to use people's irrational fears as a way to engage them, which isn't the right thing to do as it could confirm those fears or make them worse. Red Dawn was probably more of a product of long-standing fears about war with Communists, but at the same time it also confirmed those unrealistic fears that the war was coming to Colorado any day now unless you vote for hawks.

I can certainly see how people might have watched Taken and gotten a very wrong idea about France and how safe it is to go there, and people using the movies to claim or otherwise feel that funny-speaking Europe is far too perilous for Americans.

I never claimed that all the people who enjoyed the movie was of the same type, only that it was written, in part, to appeal to people with a certain mindset that they have to keep their women on a short leash because they'll do stupid stuff if (like going to the crime-ridden hellhole of Paris) you let them. Obviously they don't hold these views outwardly or explicitly. It's perfectly possible to not care about those parts and just love the actiony bits. All me or Bob or anyone else is saying is that the confluence of story factors in which the "danger" is provided is problematic as it portrays real things somewhat outrageously and sensationally. People who already have a mindset feel justified or backed-up in their beliefs when they see them being confirmed and backed up in Hollywood movies.

It's been some time since I watched The Rock, but as far as I remember it might be a little dumb and unrealistic, but doesn't attempt to push a certain worldview about countries or individuals.
 

Baresark

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Shjade said:
Baresark said:
The idea is that the movie appeals to those people because it's an accurate description of how their lives have gone and how they feel, which is not calling a spade a spade.
...no. The idea is that the movie appeals because it's an INaccurate description of their lives in which they're actually the heroes who know best and if their wives would've just listened to them everything would've been better for everyone. Which, in most cases, probably isn't true.
Eh, rewatch the review. Bob basically gives his opinion on what the Taken franchise is. He doesn't say it's meant to be that way. I just think that is him being bitter and you holding onto every word he says as fact.
 

Baresark

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hentropy said:
Unrealistic plots aren't anything new, and not problematic in and of themselves. But take this example: an all-European movie production sets its movie in the US, and the main plot is that a rich European tourist gets gunned down in broad daylight by take your pick: drug gang member, mentally ill, police officer, etc. on 5th avenue outside of Tiffany's. Some Americans might see that as an attempt to stoke anti-American fear due to the disproportionately high number shootings we have. I've talked to Europeans who say that it is a real fear when traveling to the US. Most Americans would probably point out that it is quite an unrealistic portrayal. The vast majority of people don't live in fear that they will be victims of a shooting, and it would be very unlikely in the touristy part of New York City. The American would still have the right to call it out as bullshit, even if it's an otherwise very well-made action/suspense/thriller.

Some might see that as more than just an attempt to make an action movie, but to use people's irrational fears as a way to engage them, which isn't the right thing to do as it could confirm those fears or make them worse. Red Dawn was probably more of a product of long-standing fears about war with Communists, but at the same time it also confirmed those unrealistic fears that the war was coming to Colorado any day now unless you vote for hawks.

I can certainly see how people might have watched Taken and gotten a very wrong idea about France and how safe it is to go there, and people using the movies to claim or otherwise feel that funny-speaking Europe is far too perilous for Americans.

I never claimed that all the people who enjoyed the movie was of the same type, only that it was written, in part, to appeal to people with a certain mindset that they have to keep their women on a short leash because they'll do stupid stuff if (like going to the crime-ridden hellhole of Paris) you let them. Obviously they don't hold these views outwardly or explicitly. It's perfectly possible to not care about those parts and just love the actiony bits. All me or Bob or anyone else is saying is that the confluence of story factors in which the "danger" is provided is problematic as it portrays real things somewhat outrageously and sensationally. People who already have a mindset feel justified or backed-up in their beliefs when they see them being confirmed and backed up in Hollywood movies.

It's been some time since I watched The Rock, but as far as I remember it might be a little dumb and unrealistic, but doesn't attempt to push a certain worldview about countries or individuals.
Eh, I rewatched the video. It's Bob's opinion that is what the movie is about. I don't agree and I think most people are with me on that. If you want to see it that way, that is fine. I think your hypothetical situations are not realistic. I know lots of people who visit America from other countries and anyone being afraid they are going to get shot in the streets of NYC are just xenophobic. No movie made them that way, that is just how they are. More than likely it's an unhealthy observance of fact by statistic that lead to that.

If you think the franchise is meant to say that, it's fine. It doesn't hurt anyone for someone to think that. I don't agree, that's really it. To me it's just an action movie that uses a trope as the instigating incident for Liam Neeson's character to run to France and show a bunch of scummy sex traffickers what for. I don't think anyone is afraid to travel to other countries because of a movie. The racial and economic status of people who are actually stuck in that horrible world is completely inconsequential because the franchise is not trying to show an accurate portrayal of that situation, they are trying to give the main character a good enough reason not to call the police and wait for Interpol to get back to him on it. In this case that main character is a white estranged father of that girl. In the Equalizer the bad ass is a black man who lives by himself and has a particular set of skills that he can use to help anyone he feels needs it. These things are harmless in and of themselves and are not trying to push an agenda or say something about a certain subculture of people. In truth, it's giving the film makers to much credit for trying to make the movie meaningful in some way besides the fantasy of it.
 

Nurb

Cynical bastard
Dec 9, 2008
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Ark of the Covetor said:
Oh christ on a bike, will all you blubbing precious wee men give it a rest already? Every week I pop in to the thread to see if there's any interesting discussion of the movie, and it's the same cabal of whingers complaining that Bob isn't being right-wing enough for their tastes. If you're genuinely incapable of tolerating a reviewer analysing the movie from a political perspective you don't share, might I suggest you check out the Family Research Council or something? Seems like more your speed.
You are like the tea party of liberals with your fanatic "everything that disagrees with me is conservative" views and need to purge everyone who isn't your little group.
 

chocolate pickles

New member
Apr 14, 2011
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'The universe conspires, in form of Scary Foreign Terrorist Types, to teach the ungrateful women in our hero's life how desperately necessary his presence is.'

I'm not sure if you were being serious with this part, but i don't really think that was the point of this series - remember that bit in two where Neeson got captured, and basically had to rely on his daughter to find him and give him a gun?
 

m19

New member
Jun 13, 2012
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So salty Bob. I'm sorry for whatever happened to you that made you so venomous towards men.