Hacker Cinema
22 Jump Street
2014 · Film · 112 min
Part of Jump Street Collection
Directed by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
After making their way through high school (twice), big changes are in store for officers Schmidt and Jenko when they go deep undercover at a local college. But when Jenko meets a kindred spirit on the football team, and Schmidt infiltrates the bohemian art major scene, they begin to question their partnership. Now they don't have to just crack the case - they have to figure out if they can have a mature relationship. If these two overgrown adolescents can grow from freshmen into real men, college might be the best thing that ever happened to them.
2 positive4 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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6 comments on Hacker News
The 22 Jump Street movie kiss/fight scene could never be done today, nor could the other kissing scenes, but the kiss/fight scene was a pivotal part of the movie.
Borat is racist, it's not 'satirical' and that's ok, the world's complicated. It's also ok to hide behind 'satirical' as everyone does, except when you get picky on movies you personally don't think are 'satirical'
Hollywood's inability to deal with kissing is academically interesting. Currently combining sarcasm with the 'correct' actions they are told to follow. It's a dangerous path towards the religious moralism we left behind in the 60's, but perhaps I fear change.
The idea nothing is happening is incorrect.
Yawn, everyone always uses this film as a "prime" example. I don't even think it's true. This film (like Borat) was clearly satirical and the real targets of the jokes quite obvious...
I think a better example of movies which "wouldn't be allowed today" is probably something like the Hangover, which just mines outdated stereotypes & slurs for laughs. Just a sign of society moving on really (as much as Todd Phillips likes to cry about it, I feel his inability to adapt to the comedy landscape is really just a failure of the imagination). I thought the 21 / 22 Jump Street movie addressed this issue quite well it seems the shift took place sometime between the two releases
I think it's changing quickly. Not sure if you remember the movie 22 Jump Street? The old guys show up at a high school to be "undercover" high school students and it turns out that the "cool" kids are who used to be the nerds. They are vegan, don't make fun of gay kids, stand up to bullies...and wear backpacks with two straps (lol).
I think that image of high school has some truth to it, as I graduated high school a couple years before the movie came out and it was already beginning to change. Kids playing pokemon at lunch were the same kids on the varsity sports teams. It was okay to like video games, and to be upset about getting a C on a test. The image of bullies as "cool kids" was changing to "kids whose parents probably never told them they love them" - and everybody knew it. The cool kids are nice now. Not totally sure if the shift has continued in the last 7 years, but it is definitely happening.
> Audiences did not want to see remakes of old TV shows (bad news for Baywatch and CHIPS).
21/22 jump street suggests the problem isn't with remakes of old shows but rather the quality of the remake. I was interested in baywatch, it got bad reviews so I didn't bother.
People don't want to see bad movies. I'm tired of the idea that comic book movies and sequels are all bad movies.
> Most of the dud movies are broken at the script and actor selection phase.
Nothing kills a movie quite like a bad script. You can pair up a lot of very similar winners and losers and see that the key difference is the script. Compare for example Baywatch and 22 Jump Street. Both rehashed Gen-X era TV shows about good-looking people. 22 Jump Street was smart, self-aware, and successful.
Since few bombs do have good scripts, you would think studio execs would simply never put a weak script into production. While you can have a successful film with a shitty script, why risk it? Especially given how cheap it is to change a script early on.
Given that they seemingly don't, there's probably some other forces in play. Probably some combination of:
1. Maybe it's just really hard to evaluate a script early on. There's probably some truth to this, but I don't think much. Film execs read a lot of scripts and it's an easily trainable skill.
2. Maybe the script starts out good but gets screwed up because of perverse incentives. This is, I think, a bigger part of it. The director wants to put their mark on it. A big-name star wants their character to get more screen time. All of a sudden, there are forces pushing on the script that make it better for the people making the movie, but not for the view.
3. Corporate politics at the studio comes into play. A studio brings on a script doctor who is compelled to earn their check by making a certain amount of changes even if the script didn't need them. An exec owes someone a favor and gets a role jammed in for a particular actor. An exec got burned on a previous film about shark and says all sharks must be removed from all scripts.
4. Then the reality of production, scheduling and budget. You read a lot of stories about subplots that had to be cut because they ran out of money, scenes that were rushed because of location access, etc. I think a lot of times, the movie you watch is not the movie that was described on paper. It's not uncommon for screenwriters to take their name off a film because the final result of production hell isn't what they wrote.
Yup, and I suppose that's why they went up from something like $100k to pushing $500k now that the market demand went up. No accident picking that car out specifically, just to mention it. I know it's a loaded concept.
If you're curious, the dynamic you mention was already used in the movie "22 Jump Street" where the undercover, older guy has a Countach poster and the investigation target, the college age guy, had a Murcialago poster.