[Rant]Ugh, Bay

[MCerberus]

I need to vent something, and that is that 13 Hours, a movie coming out this week is a going to be a toxic turd dropped into the culture.

For those of you that don't know, this movie is based around a group of soldiers in Benghazi during the consulate attack who (ugh) refuse to acknowledge a stand down order in order to [explosions]. It's based off of a book that has been exposed as super-freaking fraudulent with Baysplosions everywhere. So my problems where to start.

First all, the lies. The account being made into a movie is already full of them. Now, aside from that, making a movie only about the attack itself picks the least interesting and least important part of the story. Then we add in Michael "Strafe the hospital" Bay, who makes unfortunate and idiotic edits to history in order to try and be ham-handed emotionally manipulative.

The real danger is that we already know that Bay takes notes from the government in order to make the armed forces together and the CIA is active in pushing their view into movies. Intentionally or not, we're getting a propaganda piece where all Americans are beautiful cinnamon rolls too pure for this world where the US never does anything wrong and foreigners are evil (hi again, Bay).

And it isn't like there isn't a right-wing friendly director that can makes something good from this. This is Eastwood, who specializes in dark character drama, which is where all the complexity of what happened in Benghazi is. Instead we're getting a fictional war story that pastes real people in (disrespecting a whole lot of dead people in the process) that you know people will take as gospel.

Prepare to ignore a lot of Facebook statuses in the next few weeks.

 

[Barbas]

Yeah, but you gotta give us more to work with than a rant, though. I never heard of this film. What's the background behind it (in further detail)?

 

[tippy2k2]

Just curious; have you seen the movie yet?

Because if not, how do you know about half of what you're saying (I'll just take your word about the book being full of lies because I don't really care enough to look myself) is true? If you haven't seen it yet, how do you know he pushes nothing but pure 'MERICA! to make all the good guys awesome and all the bad guys evil baby eaters? Are there at least reviews saying this cause I haven't found any reviews online yet?

 

[Saltyk]

Have you ever looked at any movie based on a true story? They are all full of lies. It's to the point that I actively hate seeing true story on a movie, because I know half of it is untrue and anyone who sees it will think it's the actual truth. Take Patch Adams, for example. That movie is like 90% falsehoods.

Regardless of whether the book it is based on is true or not (frankly don't care and have no intention of challenging this point), the movie was never going to show what really happened. It's going to show what a screenwriter wishes had happened to make the movie marketable.

Seriously, look up some background on these true story movies. Half the time, the actual truth is way more interesting than the screenwriter version.

 

[Fox12]

Have you ever looked at any movie based on a true story? They are all full of lies. It's to the point that I actively hate seeing true story on a movie, because I know half of it is untrue and anyone who sees it will think it's the actual truth. Take Patch Adams, for example. That movie is like 90% falsehoods.

Regardless of whether the book it is based on is true or not (frankly don't care and have no intention of challenging this point), the movie was never going to show what really happened. It's going to show what a screenwriter wishes had happened to make the movie marketable.

Seriously, look up some background on these true story movies. Half the time, the actual truth is way more interesting than the screenwriter version.

I think that the OP has a point, though, that a lot of people are going to take this as gospel due to confirmation bias. It doesn't help that Bay is one of the biggest directors out there. Making dumb action movies is all well and good, but pushing a dangerous world view is something we should be wary of. A lot of people don't have the sense to separate fact from fiction. Surely no one thinks it's a coincidence that this film coincides with Hillary's run for office...

 

[Ambient_Malice]

I think you're overreacting. A lot.

It's based off of a book that has been exposed as super-freaking fraudulent with Baysplosions everywhere.

Can you cite this? My understanding is the original book shied away from political commentary and focused on the soldiers involved.

Then we add in Michael "Strafe the hospital" Bay, who makes unfortunate and idiotic edits to history in order to try and be ham-handed emotionally manipulative.

That was a very poor bit of creative license akin to the revisionist history in Braveheart. But it was also 15 years ago, and it was arguably not done maliciously, but rather as a poorly-conceived attempt to make the spectacle more vicious.

The real danger is that we already know that Bay takes notes from the government in order to make the armed forces together and the CIA is active in pushing their view into movies. Intentionally or not, we're getting a propaganda piece where all Americans are beautiful cinnamon rolls too pure for this world where the US never does anything wrong and foreigners are evil (hi again, Bay).

Have you watched his Transformers movies? Sure, he only co-writes them, but Michael Bay has a Kojima-esque cynicism about American politics, while having a fetish for Americana. The villains in Transformers 4 are "Cemetery Wind", named after the real-life black ops group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Support_Activity They murder and torture and harass ordinary American citizens in the name of freedom and security.

The worst I can say about 13 Hours is that Michael Bay doesn't seem particularly enthused about the project.

 

[sky14kemea]

The forums aren't a place for you to post your personal rants. Please use a blog in the future. Thanks.