Welcome to the show folks...
I've been seeing a lot about the upcoming film RED, starring Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and others. It's based on a graphic novel written by Warren Ellis and is about elite government operatives who are hunted by their former employers and have to kick the ass of the US government to save their lives and the day.
Where have I heard that before?
Let me think about that for a minute....
Oh, yeah, I heard that story before in:
Salt
The A-Team
Green Zone
The Losers
The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Supremacy
The Bourne Ultimatum
Shooter
Mission: Impossible 1
The Long Kiss Goodnight
Those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I think they were planning to do the same plot if they went through with the proposed, yet never made, third installment of the Agent Cody Banks movies.
These stories are the ultimate in formulaic. You can use this randomly determined form to make your own Hollywood spy action-thriller:
My lead character(s) is/are a
A) SPY
B) SPECIAL FORCES SOLDIER
C) ELITE ESPIONAGE/MILITARY UNIT
that the
A) CIA
B) FBI
C) US MILITARY
has declared a
A) KNOW-TOO-MUCH TROUBLEMAKER
B) TRAITOR
C) CRIMINAL
D) NUISANCE
in order to further a conspiracy of
A) ASSASSINATION
B) FINANCIAL MALFEASANCE
C) DRUG SMUGGLING
D) WARMONGERING FOR PROFIT
E) COVERING UP ATROCITIES OR SHENANIGANS
involving the
A) CIA-FBI-PENTAGON
B) SINISTER CORPORATION INC.
C) DRUG LORD
D) POLITICIANS
E) ALL OF THE ABOVE.
Now that you have your plot, just toss in some car chases, shoot-outs, and a truckload of explosions, and you've got a movie.
It will probably lose money, like The Losers, and The A-Team, but that won't stop Hollywood from doing it over, and over, and over again.
Why?
Multiple reasons:
1. CLICHE: Hollywood has a complex relationship with cliches, they both crave them for their familiarity, yet want to be seen as original and daring artists, especially when they're not original, daring, or artists. They look at the classic espionage plot of a foreign power or warlord plotting evil against the west, and say: Leave the foreign villains for the more or less foreign James Bond franchise.
But if you can't do that, then what are they going to do? Well, they have to do something, but not anything too daring, because that might alienate a target demographic somewhere. So they look at some movie somebody made years ago about someone running & fighting the CIA, and go for that.
2. MISUNDERSTANDING THE CIA: Hollywood's understanding of the CIA is that it is an omnipresent, omnipotent organization run by shadowy right wing zealots who are capable of committing untraceable assassinations, disappearances, and regularly do surveillance of every aspect of a target's life with the press of a button.
Reality is a little bit different. The CIA failed to connect the dots on the overthrow of Cuba's Batista regime, the fall of the Soviet Union, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the 9/11 Attacks, and literally hundreds of other incidents, most of them still classified, leaving the agency to keep a scintilla of dignity. That pretty much debunks the myth of omnipotence and omnipresence. Assassinations, or "wetwork" was banned from CIA operations in the 1970s, and they also banned doing business with shady people at around the same time. (Which pretty much puts you out of most intelligence gathering) It also leaks like a sieve, with many major operations ending up on the front page of the New York Times as a matter of course.
3. POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: The classic example of political correctness rewriting movies that's always cited was when Paramount changed the villains in the movie version of The Sum Of All Fears from Middle Eastern terrorists, to Austrian-German Neo-Nazi businessmen. The main motivation for that was a deep seeded fear of offending a potential ticket-buying market that might threaten a boycott, accuse them of racism, or toss death threats at their executives.
Of course if you ask the studios making these movies, they'll say that they're merely avoiding cliches, by constantly replaying other cliches.
4. MISGUIDED NATIONALISM: This is different than patriotism. Patriotism wouldn't be using the government as the villain. Misguided nationalism means that the people green-lighting these rehashes believe that someone who isn't American could not possibly be tough or smart enough to be a credible threat to an all-powerful American hero.
This means that the villains have to be their hero's fellow countrymen, usually from the very same agencies or branches of the military that the hero came from to make them credible in the eyes of Hollywood.
So we have basically the same movie being released over and over again, with minor variations on the same theme. Will it stop? As long as one or two make money, they'll keep tossing them out. It's a hell of a lot easier than having to come up with something new.
I've been seeing a lot about the upcoming film RED, starring Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and others. It's based on a graphic novel written by Warren Ellis and is about elite government operatives who are hunted by their former employers and have to kick the ass of the US government to save their lives and the day.
Where have I heard that before?
Let me think about that for a minute....
Oh, yeah, I heard that story before in:
Salt
The A-Team
Green Zone
The Losers
The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Supremacy
The Bourne Ultimatum
Shooter
Mission: Impossible 1
The Long Kiss Goodnight
Those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I think they were planning to do the same plot if they went through with the proposed, yet never made, third installment of the Agent Cody Banks movies.
These stories are the ultimate in formulaic. You can use this randomly determined form to make your own Hollywood spy action-thriller:
My lead character(s) is/are a
A) SPY
B) SPECIAL FORCES SOLDIER
C) ELITE ESPIONAGE/MILITARY UNIT
that the
A) CIA
B) FBI
C) US MILITARY
has declared a
A) KNOW-TOO-MUCH TROUBLEMAKER
B) TRAITOR
C) CRIMINAL
D) NUISANCE
in order to further a conspiracy of
A) ASSASSINATION
B) FINANCIAL MALFEASANCE
C) DRUG SMUGGLING
D) WARMONGERING FOR PROFIT
E) COVERING UP ATROCITIES OR SHENANIGANS
involving the
A) CIA-FBI-PENTAGON
B) SINISTER CORPORATION INC.
C) DRUG LORD
D) POLITICIANS
E) ALL OF THE ABOVE.
Now that you have your plot, just toss in some car chases, shoot-outs, and a truckload of explosions, and you've got a movie.
It will probably lose money, like The Losers, and The A-Team, but that won't stop Hollywood from doing it over, and over, and over again.
Why?
Multiple reasons:
1. CLICHE: Hollywood has a complex relationship with cliches, they both crave them for their familiarity, yet want to be seen as original and daring artists, especially when they're not original, daring, or artists. They look at the classic espionage plot of a foreign power or warlord plotting evil against the west, and say: Leave the foreign villains for the more or less foreign James Bond franchise.
But if you can't do that, then what are they going to do? Well, they have to do something, but not anything too daring, because that might alienate a target demographic somewhere. So they look at some movie somebody made years ago about someone running & fighting the CIA, and go for that.
2. MISUNDERSTANDING THE CIA: Hollywood's understanding of the CIA is that it is an omnipresent, omnipotent organization run by shadowy right wing zealots who are capable of committing untraceable assassinations, disappearances, and regularly do surveillance of every aspect of a target's life with the press of a button.
Reality is a little bit different. The CIA failed to connect the dots on the overthrow of Cuba's Batista regime, the fall of the Soviet Union, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the 9/11 Attacks, and literally hundreds of other incidents, most of them still classified, leaving the agency to keep a scintilla of dignity. That pretty much debunks the myth of omnipotence and omnipresence. Assassinations, or "wetwork" was banned from CIA operations in the 1970s, and they also banned doing business with shady people at around the same time. (Which pretty much puts you out of most intelligence gathering) It also leaks like a sieve, with many major operations ending up on the front page of the New York Times as a matter of course.
3. POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: The classic example of political correctness rewriting movies that's always cited was when Paramount changed the villains in the movie version of The Sum Of All Fears from Middle Eastern terrorists, to Austrian-German Neo-Nazi businessmen. The main motivation for that was a deep seeded fear of offending a potential ticket-buying market that might threaten a boycott, accuse them of racism, or toss death threats at their executives.
Of course if you ask the studios making these movies, they'll say that they're merely avoiding cliches, by constantly replaying other cliches.
4. MISGUIDED NATIONALISM: This is different than patriotism. Patriotism wouldn't be using the government as the villain. Misguided nationalism means that the people green-lighting these rehashes believe that someone who isn't American could not possibly be tough or smart enough to be a credible threat to an all-powerful American hero.
This means that the villains have to be their hero's fellow countrymen, usually from the very same agencies or branches of the military that the hero came from to make them credible in the eyes of Hollywood.
So we have basically the same movie being released over and over again, with minor variations on the same theme. Will it stop? As long as one or two make money, they'll keep tossing them out. It's a hell of a lot easier than having to come up with something new.
Salt is a KGB spy for ussR
ReplyDeleteYes, 'Ex-CIA has to defend themselves against their former employers' has been done to death. However, there are a couple of reasons I'm not ready to give up on "RED" yet:
ReplyDelete1) John F'n Malkovich and Dame Helen F'n Mirren. Love both of them, especially Malkovich when he plays silly-crazy. Using Morgan Freeman also buys a lot of goodwill from me.
2) It definitely doesn't look like it takes itself seriously. Which is why I liked the "A-Team" "Losers" didn't interest me, since it seemed to be trying to hard for the ultracool vibe.
3) The plot seems to be (at least in part) about the old-timers showing the young whippersnappers how to really kick butt. That's their hook, and they need to really use it.
So, if it's just a fun movie with Mirren and Malkovich (and Freeman) stomping a new hole into the young upstarts, then it'll be OK. But it won't win any awards for originality.
From what I've read of the CIA, I've always imagined a typical CIA 'wetwork' operation to consist of a big guy in a CIA t-shirt running into a crowded restaurant, unloading a magnum into the chest of the target, reloading, firing again, shouting 'You didn't see me!!!' to the other patrons, and then running out. Seriously, with those guys giving us our intel, it's a miracle my country made it out of the Cold War in one piece.
ReplyDeleteAnd, as for Mister Warren Ellis...he's past his prime. I love his stuff, I really do, but it's gotten more and more stale over the last few years. The best thing he ever did was 'Planetary', and even that started getting phoned in near the ending (and NEVER ACTUALLY ENDED) - and I'm not even going to get into his stuff for Marvel. So, of all the stuff he's written, I'm a little sad it's one of his later, more derivative, ideas that's finally getting something more than a cancelled pilot.