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Full Metal Jacket
1987 · Film · 117 min
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the U.S.-Vietnam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue.
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I think Full Metal Jacket is the only war movie that correctly delays the sound of an explosion.
The sounds in combat footage of WW2 are all dubbed in, as the cameras did not record sound.
Your set of statements and their surrounding context reminds me very much of the mass grave scene in Kubrick's Vietnam War movie Full Metal Jacket: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=670Y3ehmU74>
when I first watched Full Metal Jacket (as well as other films by Stanley Kubrick), I couldn’t understand a lot of the content - for example, the “War Face”
Sideways
Back To The Future
Cinema Paradiso
Spaceballs
Up In Smoke (Cheech & Chong)
The Incredibles
Indiana Jones 1-3
Indiana Jones: Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (Rifftrax only)
Falling Down
Office Space
Man Bites Dog
Nothing To Lose
Idiocracy
Space Mutiny (MST3k)
Goodfellas
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Groundhog Day
Barbie
Full Metal Jacket
Mallrats
Flight Of The Navigator
The Founder
One Hour Photo
---
I'm pretty certain I've rewatched Sideways more than any other film.
> We watch A24's Civil War the same way that Vaughan and Ballard would watch a car crash.
Civil War was a very interesting movie. The three main characters are all photographers, and the movie turns them into both the observer and the observed. This creates a distancing effect when we are confronted with the violence of war. But the movie also challenges the way we interact with war movies as a genre (many critics picked up on the Full Metal Jacket call-outs, they were so obvious).
I'm just saying, a lot to unpack in that movie.
Kubrick’s results were all over the map. He made maybe three great films:
Dr. Strangelove
Full Metal Jacket
A Clockwork Orange
A bunch of not bad films:
2001
Lolita
Barry Lyndon
The Shining
Spartacus
One real turd of a film:
Eyes Wide Shut
And a bunch of forgettable filler:
All the other films he made.
Compare this to the Anti-Kubrick, Clint Eastwood, who made:
Unforgiven
Mystic River
Million Dollar Baby
Letters From Iwo Jima
Gran Torino
And a bunch of okay films:
Pretty much everything else
And it’s pretty obvious that you don’t need to be an abusive taskmaster like Kubrick to make great art.
These are just my favorites, and in the order of which the popped into my mind.
- Office Space, 1999 (especially for people who work at offices) - The Matrix, 1999 - Fight Club, 1999 :)
Umm, what else? - Spirited Away, 2001 (and many others from Miyazaki) - Requiem for a Dream, 2000 (Very Heavy addiction-related film! I actually got watery eyes just by typing this, I've seen it too many times.) - Joker, 2019 - Full Metal Jacket, 1987 (and many others from Kubrick, such as Dr. Strangelove and The Shining) - Django Unchained, 2012 (and many others from Tarantino, at least Pulp Fiction) - Alien, 1979 - The Silence of the Lambs, 1991 - Saw, 2004
I made a bit longer list, so that I can share the link to my friends.
Actually there are many quirky ones which came to my mind, such as Borat, the South Park movie, Team America, Airplane! (alternatively titled Flying High!), Idiocracy and Hangover, but I wouldn't say these are in the must-see category. Actually I wouldn't even recommend these to most people, if I didn't know what kind of humor they like.
'Full Metal Jacket' was shot in or around London (urban scenes), with countryside scenes in Kent, Essex, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and RAF Swinderby, Lincolnshire. Kubrick was reclusive and refused to fly.
The link I already gave above lists all locations for FMJ, with map pin and picture: https://www.latlong.net/location/full-metal-jacket-locations-906
> Full Metal Jacket was filmed in Bassingbourn (for Parrish Island), Beckton Gas Works, Cliffe, Epping Forest, Isle of Dogs, Pinewood Studios, RAF Swinderby and The Broads.
And here's another description of several locations and which scene they're in:
https://giggster.com/guide/movie-location/where-was-full-metal-jacket-filmed
For all of Kubrick's talent he was always more interested in the villains than their victims and this manifests in a lens that gives sympathy to the villains while portraying the victims as mere two-dimensional canvases. The Shining is another perfect example for this and from what we know about his treatment of the actors/actresses this sentiment seems to have also influenced his direction on set: he felt the lead actress would need to feel abused and exhausted and terrified to play the part but the actor just got to be a natural menace.
Morally, I'd say it's fair to call many of his great works failures: even Full Metal Jacket failed at being an anti-war movie even though it is still referenced as such. But artistically they're interesting and, if you ignore the supposed intentions and the moral implications of his failure, indeed very good.
> Kubrick's movies weirdly bloodless
Full metal jacket
I've seen some of the videos published by Hamas. Some of them are literally filmed with "gopro" or similar cameras during their attacks.
Generally I don't recommend watching these. These kinds of videos are incredibly disturbing.
--- Trigger warning: violence.
One thing that struck me is how horror-like all of it seemed and how invisible the opponent in such an engagement is. The invaders would often not see where the defenders were and would get shot seemingly out of nowhere. Vice versa they would shoot into small nudges and windows here or there and its often unclear whether they hit anyone or not.
My cousins who fought in Bosnia would often tell me similar stories. Their enemies were invisible most of the time, while sometimes someone would get hit on their side.
For reference: I once watched Full Metal Jacket with one of my cousins and there was a scene where suddenly, out of nowhere, the protagonists would get attacked in an urban area but they couldn't even see their enemies, just flashes of rifle fire here and there. He said: "This is exactly like war."
---
I don't know what to make of it. It all just feels like pointless horror.
>>> I can't believe that anyone who has seen "Full Metal Jacket" would be enthused about going to war.
I don't know. I'm definitely not blaming the film or its maker. But I can't deny that is does kind of awaken a fantasy in me. I have never been involved in any military, but a part of me has always wanted to be transformed like the men in that film.
The thing is, when I imagine being in the story, I don't see myself like Private Pyle or Cowboy. Their stories don't discourage me. So I do wonder if Kubrick missed the mark by making a film that horrified him but actually inspires others. Maybe there's just something wrong with me. Even Platoon has an allure to it. Even Barnes was a hero in some ways. I could be like Barnes without the evil parts.
Apocalypse Now on the other hand, now there's a movie to kill recruitment if ever there was one. There's literally no upside in that movie and very few characters have any redeeming qualities.
The milestones (from the source code):
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As an example, I recently saw Full Metal Jacket on 35mm. The last Boot Camp scene, the one in the bathroom, while unsettling in any context becomes positively haunting in 35mm. The lower light conditions introduce artifacting even in digital, but the slightly wobbly frame motion and the scratches and dust marks exaggerate that artifacting further. The resulting image is almost expressionistic, as though reality has become so horrifying our very perception of it is starting to breakdown. The same sort of effect recurs with the sniper at the end of the film. In between, the rougher, less pristine frames create a sense of grittiness that amplifies the mood of the film. In short, I thought seeing Full Metal Jacket on 35mm was a fully superior experience over watching it on digital (although I’ve only seen digital presentations of it at home and not in a theater).
What? Plenty of movies are super critical of the military and the 3 letter agencies in tons of ways, heck there is a whole genre out there about Government military agent realizes he's doing bad things and goes rogue to correct those misdeeds.
Then you've got things like Full Metal Jacket, which I don't think is getting anyone to sign up for the forces.
Like Top Gun did well recently, but is one of the only movies I can think of in the past couple of years that actually portrayed the US military in a mostly positive light rather than the usual gamut which runs from ineffective bumbling ossfied and useless to straight up evil.
I'm just saying you can make whatever you want in the US and portray pretty much any idea or theme, that doesn't mean people will like it, but you can make it. In China there is no similar comparison they'll take your studio at best or imprison you at worst.
In my teens I spent a whole paycheck on the Stanley Kubrick DVD box set. In hindsight this was dumb but then again all of the films are amazing.
The set: Stanley Kubrick Collection (Lolita / Dr. Strangelove / 2001: A Space Odyssey / A Clockwork Orange / Barry Lyndon / The Shining / Full Metal Jacket) https://www.amazon.com/dp/6305440093/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_i_4XQ999X4XZC1T0K6HY3N?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
Short of helping people to value and protect human life, I’m not sure how this can be stopped. A very quotable line from the movie Full Metal Jacket is apt: “It is not your rifle but a HARD HEART that kills!”
>How many reviews of movies have you seen from a senior, experienced reviewer got a film really totally wrong?
Tons. Even legendary critics like Ebert got movies wrong. He gave thumbs down to Full Metal Jacket, Blue Velvet, The Thing, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Usual Suspects, Ace Ventura, Tommy Boy, and many more.
Those are all pre-modern people before the invention of vaccines and antibiotics and who had terrible health and suffered by now preventable childhood diseases. Their 35 is not our 35. Shakespeare, I believe, wrote about joint pain, aging, and losing his memory and mind at 35, which is not typical of a modern 35 year old. Substance abuse and artistry go hand in hand and a lot of these artists were addicts and drunks who badly damaged their brains. Many of them had mercury poisoning from medical treatments of their day and other edge cases not common today.
Not to mention these people were elite global competitors, so if they felt less sharp at 35, that means they were merely just the top 1% instead of being the top .1%. They still were amazing thinkers and producers after 35.
Just off the top of my head, Stanley Kubrick's career peaked with his decade plus long Lolita, Strangelove, 2001, and Clockwork Orange period in the 1960-70s, which was around his 30-40s. Then nearly 20 years after Lolita, well into his 50's he made The Shining, which is considered an important American film, perhaps not as groundbreaking as the others, but something miles ahead of his younger competitors. So even as these people supposedly age out of their peak years, these super high performers are still amazing. The Oscar winner that year? Kramer vs Kramer, a largely forgotten piece of art and "safe pick" that played to social issues of the time. The best screenplay? Breaking Away, a completely forgotten movie. The Shining is still a beloved classic, cultural icon, horror master-class, an iconic actor's defining role, and a movie studied in film school religiously today and for the foreseeable future.
Then almost a decade later in 1987 at age 59, he directed Full Metal Jacket, a lesser work, but considered one of the best anti-war films, arguably stealing or matching the crown from beloved critic favorites like Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter, long after the 60s and 70s fad of anti-war movies faded away and Vietnam a now faded memory and during the right-wing, pro-military, pro-interventionist foreign policy Reagan administration. This was a bold and provocative move you'd associate with a younger director trying to get attention and not a man close to retirement. So even "old" Kubrick was competing on a world class level and doing interesting and challenging things.
A genre horror film from a famous director who hasn't delivered a great film in a decade? An anti-war film in the late 80s on the tail of Top Gun? Both of these genres were fads once and decidedly uncool at the time of their release. This on paper sounds almost foolish, but in practice, an artist of his calibre pulled off something very special in both cases.
For modern people, career peaks are mid-30s. The "wisdom" of two hundred old plus composers and poets is a nice toilet read but isn't scientific at all. Science has its own ideas about aging:
The journals Psychological Science, Science Direct, and Harvard claims various mental peaks come later in life. New vocabulary peaks at 67, learning new information at 50, concentrating at 43, learning new faces 32, etc.
https://nextluxury.com/mens-lifestyle-advice/what-age-do-men-peak/
So yes 35 is not only a good age, its the start of a peak, and a 35 year old modern worker has still another two decades of high performance waiting for them.
> in the end the american has a good heart and conscience and should be forgiven.
Nothing about Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket says that at all. Have you even watched them? They’re both about how war and the military machine are devastating and dehumanizing to the soldier, and to the enemy. All words seem like egregious understatements for them so I recommend seeing them (or seeing them again).
To my horror I did find out that the first half of Full Metal Jacket was attractive to enough teenage boys in the late 80s to eventually cause Jarhead to be produced [1]. I guess they stopped watching after the first half, or the idea of murdering teenage girls was attractive to them? Either way it is anything but propaganda.
As for the other movies that do involve righting a wrong or at least exposing them, that’s not state propaganda. Primarily because the state is the villain in them and they encourage suspicion of the state, neither of which promotes state power. A movie which gives the feels about being an American doesn’t make something propaganda it makes it a movie that wants to sell to Americans.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/magazine/full-metal-jacket-ermey-marine-corps.html
When I joined the (Canadian) military in the mid 90s, many of the guys there cited anti-war films such as 'Apocalypse Now', 'Full Metal Jacket' and 'Platoon' as inspirations for signing up.
Nobody cited 'Rambo' or 'Top Gun'
I'm glad that thanks to the internet and proper journalism, we have a better view on things. I grew up mainly in the 90's, with action movies from the time - think Rambo and co.
I don't remember watching anything that glorified the Vietnam war though. Full Metal Jacket showed how it was a shitshow. On a weird kind of lighter note, Forrest Gump showed how people died or were gruesomely injured. Rambo may have been the only one that tried to portray it somewhat positively? I don't quite remember.
> Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, All the President’s Men, or The Post
Those movies are also propaganda, but in a more subtle and effective way; The message of these movies being that while america sometimes makes mistakes, in the end the american has a good heart and conscience and should be forgiven.
You don’t see in these movies american soldiers raping civilans, laughing about it, and suffering no ill consequences
Eh, depends on the lens you're looking through.
Some would say a movie with a hero named Captain America who is literally wearing a flag is clearly political - even if in terms of plot and message the film is disneyfied and chinese-film-censor-approved.
Lots of iceberg above the water, very little below.
In comparison, Full Metal Jacket doesn't have a hero dressed in a flag - but oooooh boy does it have a message about the experience and nature of war.
I've never seen, "Full Metal Jacket" so I could not say.
To be very specific, I am talking only about combatants. I am not generally talking about the kind people that get interviewed for documentaries or whonwrite their own books. Leadership often has the luxury of cool detachment.
I think I did speak to generally in my OP and then bit down on the argument. I was answering the question of why some batteries continued to fire until amrasitice. It wasn't my intention to indicate this was primarily due to hate.
The truest answer is that they were ordered to. People follow those orders for a collection of reasons. The general obedience developed by being part of war machine is probably paramount.
I should reorder my points. Primarily that war machines like modern militaries and the conflicts they participate in create their own rationale. And you should never be surprised to find irrational violence in war because that rationale is not of your peacetime world.
Beyond those that are simply following orders there area many whom the propaganda and trauma of war has made enthusiastic about inflicting every last bit of punishment possible upon the enemy. You are correct that we cannot number these and it probably changes depending on the violence and desperation of the conflict. But I think they are more than we like to admit. And this is a further cause of seemingly irrational violence and particularly atrocities.
US military refused to cooperate filming Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and many other films
The story goes that the US Army refused to cooperate with Heartbreak Ridge once they read the script, but the USMC agreed without reading it. That’s why you’ve got the corrupt supply sergeant, the useless platoon commander, the cowardly company commander, the unit that is forced to repeat basic training and everything else that portrays everyone but Clint Eastwood’s character in a poor light.
US military refused to cooperate filming Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and many other films. For Apocalypse Now they pressured Australian and Philippine governments to deny assistance as well. US military has successfully removed lines from silly action movies like James Bond films and Marvel movies.
It's not comparable to what Chinese do of course, but the intention is there. Anyone who directly compares Chinese censorship to US censorship is an idiot.
> Yeah, the fact that any appearance of US military assets requires Pentagon to approve the script means that Hollwood is unable to record a movie depicting modern US millitary in any critical or non-heroic manner.
Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon ... There are probably more movies critical of war than promoting it. Actually, the general theme is to display the senseless of war than to glorify it. To say hollywood is in the pocket of the pentagon is to ignore most of its history.
China on the other hand, won't approve a movie if winnie the pooh appears in it.
Specifically, Jackson et al. chose a 3D conversion company to do the coloring, because one of the steps in a conversion is to separate out the various parts of the frame. So much of the work was already done.
I "liked" this movie, as much as anyone can like seeing dead bodies. It really makes you realize how much most war movies, fiction or not, leave out. I wonder to what extent the lack of the true horrors results in a pro-war propaganda film, regardless of the intent of the director. Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket tries to be realistic in a sense, but still glamorizes war. It takes a documentary like "They Shall Not Grow Old" to give the full picture.
Yeah, I find the name very off-putting. It just doesn't sound professional, and I can't picture myself explaining to a client that I would be providing them with Full Metal Jacket source files.
In particular, in the UK, I suspect the terminology for bullets is almost unknown, so it would be seen exclusively as a film reference.
Call it FMJ and it would be fine, though!
Tbh, Stanley Kubrick is vastly overrated. Yes every one of his movies has great cinemotography, and is technically excellent, but many of his movies are not excellent as movies. Eyes Wide Shut, full metal jacket, and the shining are not 10/10 movies, and David Fincher, Harmony Korine, Charlie Kaifman have all created movies better than all those movies listed. The problem with Stanley Lubrick is because he has a style that is very attractive to viewers, and his movies are very accesible also, he gets massively overrated by a lot of casual film watchers, which is fine so are a lot of directors, but his hype has leaked even to actual film critics with years of experience. It also doesn't help that movies like Room 237 come out that jack of Stanley Kubrick and draw meaning out of things that had no meaning. Sad that people glorify Kubrick but don't even know who Charlir Kaufman or Harmony Korine are, even though both directors have created movies that are just as good as a lot of Kubricks films.
You picked a good example, and IIRC Starship Troopers is not the only Verhoeven film that veers heavily into satire. (The book is an ode to fascism.)
But for me there is one satirical film above everything else: Full Metal Jacket.
When I read the book, I thought that too. However, Clarke's book is separate from Kubrick's movie. Kubrick focused a lot of things in the movie that were ignored in the book. Essentially, Kubrick and Clarke have two different interpretations. That's why I was asking the question. For example,
* The number 4 and 3 keep appearing in the movie. * Lots of 90-degree angles in the movie compared to the book. * Why everyone is cold and sterile as the move away from Earth. * Rectangles and circles. HAL is a black rectangle and a red circle. The monolith is a black rectangular object. * Kubrick excited at making the biggest "religious" movie. * The original cut of the movie had the scene of the broken wine glass jerk/skip, giving the impression Bowman had realized he was in an artificial environment created by others. * The appearance of diamond shapes in the movie and his other movies, The Shining and Full Metal Jacket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSo6s_xrj4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpWMnlMIWAU
Seconded as well. I've yet to see the final episode, but so far it has been very good. As a non-US'an the Vietnam War was dealt with by a few paragraphs in the high school history books. Oh, and of course by watching movies like apocalypse now, full metal jacket, and, yes, Rambo 2. So it has certainly been very interesting to learn about the background, politics and the higher level military situation.
I'm sure you have heard about sublime messages in Kubrick's movies. Stuff like a poster of a native American in Hue, the "we worship Satan" message on the water tower, the picture of a black man on the advertising billboard of a brand named "black buzzard batteries" [1] etc... which sure doesn't make much sense in an SE Asia country's setting. BTW, there is actually a brand named "buzzard batteries" now, but the "black" one I think is made up.
My parents, who are Vietnamese and don't know about Kubrick, exclaimed in the middle of the movie that none of the fighting scenes in Full Metal Jacket were representative of Hue/Vietnam at all. I think Kubrick probably knew that. My interpretation is the same as Apocalypse Now, the point of it wasn't that the movie is about a specific war. It is about the symbolic nightmare that any unnecessary war brings. To me, that's quite different from how movies about World War II were portrayed -- those often tried to be realistic.
1: https://beersonfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Full-Metal-Jacket-1-962x539.jpg
PS: I agree with you that 2001 was long and drawn out, and I consider that to be among Kubrick's less favorite movies of mine.
Ha! I actually remember reading that comment.
I really hated 2001, except for the 2nd act with HAL. All the rest of it just seemed so pretentious and devoid of story. I remember when they were landing on the moon for instance, that scene was insanely drawn out. I don't mind a slower pace for a movie, but I like to watch youtube film making critics [1]. Something I hear from them all the time is that everything in your film must serve a purpose. So much of 2001 seemed to serve no purpose at all, if it did, the purpose was so unclear it was akin to having a fever dream.
Full Metal Jacket on the other hand was brilliant, and while I enjoyed the 1st half more than the second (as I tend to like more light hearted media), the tone shift was incredible. I think that kind of shift really did say something about the experience of soldiers. Bootcamp was still safe, they were home, then when they were about to actually leave, it really sunk in for them what they were about to go through.
1 - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG5h8yHSUS4n7zPnh0dG0SA I find this guy to be particularly interesting/funny and relatively unknown
Watching movies has to be one of my most inspiring accidents. In 2017, due to some external circumstances [1], I watched maybe 50+ movies on the IMDB top 250 list. Kubrick is definitely my favorite director that I didn't know about before. His stuff takes some time to digest, but they are definitely worth watching. Besides 2001, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, and Full Metal Jacket are all worth watching. I have to re-watch Dr. Strangelove at some point because last time I didn't finish it.
The other director that I think I started to 'get' (however hard to believe) is Coppola. I didn't get Godfather before that at all despite having watched the movie 3 times. After the second Godfather movies, I started to see the Godfathers as human and empathize with them ("Yes, I can totally see myself doing that"). I haven't read the novels, however, I hope to get to the novels at some point.
At the same time, when I re-watched Tarantino's movies, I became less impressed in his style. After gore and somewhat snarky theme, I failed to see anything else. I still equally love Coen brothers regardless of how many times I watched their movies.
My old boss who owned a wine importing business used to tell me when you have tasted enough wine, you will know what good wine is like without having to describe it. After watching 50 movies or so, there was a moment when something started to 'click.' I think it gave me inspirations to do take notes of human feelings and emotions and empathize with them. I am more inspired to produce meaningful software that does not have to be technically challenging to write, and write blog posts that are not about technically hard/clever code. After watching "Sunset Blvd," I decided that money was never my problem, so I think less about money.
I'm 30 now and have always been a nerd before. Good movies have partly changed my life.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360380
CHELSEA E. MANNING 89289
1300 NORTH WAREHOUSE ROAD
FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS 66027-2304
---
Found that by following a link. https://www.chelseamanning.org/learn-more/write-to-chelsea-manning Make sure to follow the on-page instructions or your correspondence will be rejected/returned. The conditions are quite strict. They check for obscenities which is hilarious -- assuming movies like Full Metal Jacket are an accurate depiction of Army life. Append USA from overseas obviously.
Perhaps if we wrote it would hope alive as the cliché goes.
hey! VHS is actually a tribute to the old "Video Home System" :) We also name our releases with 80s movies, here are some examples of the latest versions:
- 2.63.0 Coming to America - 2.60.0 The Terminator - 2.59.0 Full Metal Jacket
Thailand's sex industry is indeed massive, but the vast majority of it caters to Thais; the bits that target Westerners -- a few dozen gogo bars in a country of 67 million -- just happen to have a much higher profile. Essentially all the women working in it are there of their own free will, if almost always because of economic hardship. (Typical scenario: Poor rural girl gets pregnant, boy disappears/dies in traffic accident. Girl can't support child and herself with farm labor or factory work, so she leaves the kid with grandparents and goes off to Pattaya.)
And oh: the "me so horny" line comes from Full Metal Jacket, a Vietnam war movie.
My uncle back when I was really young showed me and my cousin "Full Metal Jacket". I still remember some scenes, the film traumatized me, literally. I don't know what age I was but I was way too young for that.
Kids can get terrified by horror and violence. Sex? Not so much. I don't understand why we hide nudity from kids.
Full Metal Jacket had it's moments of blue and orange, but I'd classify most scenes in the film as 'green'. Then again, Kubrick was known to be obsessive in regards to attention to detail, especially when it came to lighting and colour reproduction.
A bunch of exceptional films in that list.. you have good taste.
So, you acknowledge that there is a default, and that the films you mention challenge that default. I think everyone can agree on this.
Why are films like 'the thin red line' or 'full metal jacket' so powerful. The only pro-american-military film which I can remember having such a deep impact on me was 'black hawk down', and I think we all know the story behind that one.. I would argue that they tell a truth, and in the face of 60 years (give or take) of holywood military propaganda. And what does it matter that a dozen critical films come out over a thirty year period when, lets say 50 films a year come out pro-military.
Breaking it down your essential argument is - there is no propaganda because people like the propaganda. Question you should be asking is, who created that default?
Full Metal Jacket.
• Three Kings.
• In The Valley of Elah.
Good Morning Vietnam.
A Few Good Men.
Platoon.
• Jarhead.
Casualties Of War.
• The Men Who Stare At Goats.
The Deer Hunter.
The Thin Red Line.
• Syriana.
• The Green Zone.
• Stop Loss.
Also, • HBO's "Generation Kill".
(•'d relatively recent movies)
I don't think "The Hurt Locker" was particularly critical of the military and didn't count it. Also not counting documentaries like "Restrepo".
I hereby dispute the idea that the DOD has made it impossible for big-budget Hollywood movies to criticize the US military, and suggest instead that the bias Hollywood in favor of the military is responding to customer preferences and not leading it. Given what I presume to be America's default position of "supporting our troops", I'm struck by how many films Hollywood produce that challenge that default.
Remember also that Hollywood confronts at least two vectors of consumer preference in marketing films: first, Americans (in the large) have a (typical) diffuse nationalistic home-team support for our overseas adventures, and, more importantly, there's a less-political less-issue-oriented reverence expected for the sacrifices made by the young people we send into combat which is especially intense during times when large numbers of people are serving in combat zones. In other words, it's especially tricky to criticize the military during active conflicts.
Also, Three Kings is a fantastic movie.
Both of those sites that you cited are terrible, filled with conspiracy theories and shrill rhetoric. Unfortunately more and more people on HN seem to be citing them.
Anyway:
> Do you recall any big American movie in the last decade (or even more) that painted America's military in a non-positive light?
The Bourne series. Though that was about the CIA.
Safe House, also CIA.
Avatar, as someone else mentioned, analogously painted the US military in a bad light.
Full Metal Jacket certainly shows some of the more brutish and shameful sides of the US military.
> I do remember The Hurt Locker, and a whole list of other movies, Iron Man and Captain America
So are you upset that these movies didn't pause to lecture the audience about the horrors of American imperialism? Are you upset that they don't serve your particular political agenda?
> To me, truly the most amazing thing about this is that pretty much no-one knows about this!
The people who don't know don't care. This information is readily available. And even some of the people who do know don't care (like me).
The last film to mock the U.S. military was Dr. Strangelove? You're kidding, right? Even if you only count Kubrick movies, there's Full Metal Jacket.
Don't forget the constant drill-and-ceremony, both in training and once stationed to a permanent post.
For those who don't "habla", drill-and-ceremony (D&C) is the "attention, left face, forward march" stuff that fills a good portion of footage about military life, not to mention certain films such as Full Metal Jacket.
Oh, and don't forget the role played by PT (Physical Training) in producing human drone-killers.
No, they're real - or appear to be, from a quick google search:
http://tomsachs.com/
http://visionpointmarketing.com/blog/entry/on-process/
Although it does seem to be some sort of parody for an artist's studio to be claiming that "creativity is the enemy" and everything should be clean and arranged at right angles. Certainly the stuff in his store doesn't appear to be world changing: http://tomsachs.com/store
Also, anyone that uses Full Metal Jacket as some sort of team-building employee rah-rah should definitely put $2000 in a jar somewhere. Did they actually watch the movie?
> And here’s something no one has stopped to consider: Maybe making movies is too damn expensive. Or rather, far more expensive than it needs to be.
Hmm. I went to the theatre (first time since a long time as the experience feels antiquated and overpriced) with friends to see Sherlock Holmes, and the opening scene perfectly exemplifies the point: for about ten second you see a shot of the cathedral of Strasbourg. Half of it consists of a CGI explosion. I live there, and to produce this shot, they locked this part of the city for one week.
Ten seconds. One week. A whole team plus equipment. To the other side of the world. Seriously.
When seeing the scene I found that downright shocking, especially given the 10€ hole burning my pocket.
By comparison it takes Turn10 Studios three days[0] locally to gather enough information on a track to subsequently work on for one year. That's a full-length, five kilometer track.
I know this is not the same, and various other things come into play, but I just can't help but have an alarm bell ringing when I see movie production costs. See for yourself (budget in $):
- 2001 and Star Wars: 10 million each - Independence Day: 75 million - Transformers: 150 million - Kill Bill 1+2: 50 million - Jurassic Park: 65 million - King Kong: 200 million - Blues Brothers: 30 million - Fast & Furious: 90 million - The Fellowship of the Ring: 100 million - Harry Potter: ~150 million each - Full Metal Jacket: 15 million - Jarhead: 72 million - Apocalypse Now: 30 million - Black Hawk Down: 90 million - Terminator: 6 million - The Matrix: 60 million - Terminator 2: 100 million - Casino Royale: 100 million - Quantum of Solace: 230 million - Sherlock Holmes: 125 million - The Godfather: 6.5 million
I know those $ do not mean the same across time, but still, you can see going from simple to double produces crap (CS vs QoS), or produces twice the length at arguably the same 'quality' (whatever that means) for a significantly smaller cost (LotR vs HP). I don't see either why F&F costs thrice as much as BB, and almost twice as much as KB.
Bottom line: MAFIAA, please produce non-crap and control your costs instead of blaming piracy.
[0] http://forzamotorsport.net/en-us/underthehood4/
This would need to include the voice of the drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket. Or allow users to pick a voice that best suits them. I can only imagine a call like this: "What, you incompetent maggot? You couldn't finish that code because an episode of Battlestar Galactica came on.... Turn off that boob tube and start writing some code, you filthy useless piece of shit"
I suppose it is possible that Steve Jobs is the Forrest Gump of technology: for thirty years, he has just happened to be standing next to the biggest innovators in consumer technology. I've never met Steve, and Apple doesn't leak many rumors, so it's hard for me to know.
But if Steve's secret is being in the right place at the right time, he sure has a knack for finding that place. First the Apple II. Then the Mac. Then NeXT (which, once rebranded as "Mac OS X", finally became a huge success). Pixar. The iPod. The iPhone.
I think Steve Jobs is more than merely lucky.
And the fact that so many of the engineers who worked for Jobs are famous is evidence of his management skill. I've heard it said that the job of a good manager is to hire the best engineers and then get out of their way. You have to relentlessly clear all obstacles from their path, give them whatever they need to do great work (which includes holding them to high standards) and constantly promote them and their work, both inside and outside the company.
I'm not saying that Steve Jobs is necessarily the perfect manager. I often wonder whether I would enjoy working for him. (Just as, when I watch a movie like Full Metal Jacket, I wonder whether I would survive basic training.) But you can't argue with the results: people who work with Steve Jobs become geek legends. Woz. Raskin. Hertzfeld. Atkinson. Ive.