The Long Road

08/06/2003 Archived Entry: "Sacred Cows"

Something hit me while watching Bad Boys 2 last night, no cops died in the movie. At all. In a supremely destructive 22 car accident, we’re told that no cops died, some were injured and in the hospital. In the climactic gunfight one cop is shot in the leg and dozens of Cubans shot dead. What’s my point? Cops and soldiers are the new sacred cows.

You can’t make a movie anymore showing cops and soldiers acting less than heroic without having the media come down upon you like you just make the most horribly anti-american movie ever. Witness the shit-storm circling Buffalo Soldiers. The movie is coming under a lot of criticism because it depicts soldiers doing unsavory things. Back when X-Men 2 came out, a few interviewers had asked director Bryan Singer about how anti-authority the movie was and if he didn’t like soldiers because so many were killed by Wolverine and the X-Men. He had to defend himself by explaining that Stryker’s soldiers weren’t necessarily U.S. soldiers and that they were working for a rogue agency. I think it’s ridiculous that he’s had to answer such a question. This line of thinking (bad depiction of military = criticism of government) had not been this insanely prevalent before the Bush Regime planted it into public consciousness. I’ve heard a lot of people comment about how the Hulk never killed anyone, even when he threw a tank across the desert or dropped a helicopter; I can guarantee that those little scenes with soldiers walking out of wreckage or saying that they were alright were inserted explicitly to avoid having this kind of banal criticism leveled at it. Imagine the movie “The Rock” was released today with its Navy Seals gone homicidal and a room full of soldiers getting gunned down. The media controversy around a movie like that being released today would be intense. The filmmakers would be called everything from un-american to terrorist sympathizers.

When this kind of thing happens I always wonder if there is an actual public outcry against a movie or is it just the media trying to stir some shit up by seeing a potential story, writing up an article about how said movie has a negative depiction of authority and hoping that a bunch of idiots somewhere will see the story and descent upon the film as if it worshipped Hitler.

Replies: 9 comments

As they stand right now..."most" movies already tend to be unrealistic...thus, even more realism is lost by the fact that they don't have cops or soldiers dying...its stupid...

Posted by dAN @ 08/06/2003 07:28 PM EST

what about that swat movie? i bet there'll be cops and stuff dying in that one.

Posted by shawnathan @ 08/07/2003 09:35 AM EST

I guess we'll have to see about SWAT.

Posted by Rayne @ 08/07/2003 01:40 PM EST

BB2 was a strange case, i think. not a single thing in the movie made sense (miami police force invading cuba and smith fleeing in a bright yellow hummer is a good example of that) and everything is done to make Will Smith a flawless hero.

Not only no cop dies in the film, not a single person who is not a villain dies. But, you know, it was the same in Rambo2 and Rambo3, and many other movies. I'm not sure it is related to political tensions. I am more encline to think that it is easier to film a feel-good-we-are-american-and-we-are-strong-movie if no good guy dies at all in it and, well, many avil people (of different nations) do -latinos, cubans, russians...-.

What i see mostly in this movie is intellectual laziness.

Rent Adaptation.

Posted by Étienne @ 08/07/2003 05:16 PM EST

commando with arnold schwarzenegger is like that also. except a couple good people die in the beginning. but we don't really know them, or who they are when it happens. and it's not like they look like police or people in suits. they're ex-commandos in sort of like a witness protection thing (this is exaplined after their deaths).

Posted by shawnthan @ 08/08/2003 01:54 PM EST

I don't think any of the "good guys" die in SWAT. I don't remember anyone dieing. One guy gets shot and seems like he's gonna die but in the end doesn't die. That's about it

Posted by Anonymous @ 08/11/2003 01:00 AM EST

Rambo movies are supposed to be wave-the-flag though so I can see it avoiding death of American soldiers. I haven't seen any of those films in years though.

Thanks for ruining parts of SWAT there =P

Posted by Rayne @ 08/11/2003 02:13 PM EST

BB2 is a wave the flag movie too.

Posted by Étienne @ 08/11/2003 05:55 PM EST

I didn't think that it was.

Posted by Rayne @ 08/11/2003 06:44 PM EST