I'm more cynical here. I suspect these are films (or many of them at least) are ones "they" don't want you to see... ever. It's censorship, so no remastering.
"due to our content licensing agreements" .. this is just Sony placating to someone else's demands. The question is who are "they" and why these films? Maybe these films end up being revised with alternate endings or tweaked characters.
If you see these films, what sort of person will you become? Is that someone who is undesirable?
Terminator 2, Rambo 1, Cliffhanger and Total Recall. We can't have that!
It's just a theory.
Are PlayStation users younger than average? That's important to note too.
Also interesting: recently YT removed the ability to see Likes in one's uploaded video list, only views and comment counts. The message could be: "be well-known, but don't be popular" Why?
Yet I think "Sort by Likes" would be a boon for YT creators and that never even existed, with the Likes column even removed a week or two after I suggested it.
The country I'm in dubs a lot of usa films. Rambo in another language is hilarious, other actors are played by different VAs so eg schwarzenegger sounds different every film. So sj will be played by many vactresses...In many countries.
i've been trying to "discuss" with anonymous people online for the past week and the idea of hamas=bad so any allegation, however wild including the beheading babies one is promoted because why can't it be true, right?
in the same breath, israel is only doing targeted attacks who are designed by experts and lawyers and engineers and social experts so they know what they are doing and they are only targetting terrorist infra.
again, militancy ≠ terrorism regardless of american designation. there is a concept of "Freedom fighters", today people seem to forget this concept that someone can fight for their rights and they might have to take up arms.
remember the propaganda movies like "rambo" who used to call afghans the "mujahideen freedom fighters" and countless others when they were fighting russians. Suddenly when 9/11 happened and usa went to war with afghans, they became the bad guys overnight trying to undermine democracy around the world.
I am not taking sides but they way the argument of why hamas took this step which caused their side more human and infra damage than their opponents isn't discussed. Only thing discussed is how they are terrorists and should be treated on par with ISIS. "no negotiation with terrorists", probably in the same tone as bush did with taliban when they proposed to extradite bin laden to a third neutral country and give him a fair trial.
My point again is, give some thought outside of the bubble.
Poorly designed, poorly manufactured, barely works in use and rounds the nuts you use it on so that subsequent attempts will be harder even with better tools.
It feels like there's been a strong Satanic / nihilistic philosophy at work among the hand tool industry for a while now. Started somewhere around the time period when the movie "Rambo" caused a fad for crappy "survival knives."
That's the funniest thing how USSR still existed when videocassettes became a thing.
If you were a rare and highly valued type of person who travelled abroad, with some luck you could bring a video player with you on your return.
USSR even shipped its own VC players and sold them for something like 2 years of median wage. Go figure if that's how communism should look like.
Improptu cinemas were the earliest example of Soviet small business - you only need a large room, a TV, VC player and a couple of benches. Repertoire included American action films such as Rambo and erotic movies - latter could get you behind bars. In fact even former could, as most ways of making money outside of an official job were explicitly prohibited up and until ~1987.
> ...I feel differently about army vets as a total population than civilian killers.
How about military combat vets who were involved in killing in unspecified circumstances in the civilian world?
> I haven't watched Rambo.
You should. It's a good movie. The later ones (and most especially the most recent one) are dumb action movies, but the original is pretty good.
> One is a group of people who will punch you for "looking at them funny". The other is every world heavyweight champion.
I would trust the first group to act less erratically than the second. It's well-documented fact that getting hit in the head as much as boxers (and pro football players) do fucks you up, and makes you violent and erratic.
I feel this article misses a lot of the historical context when RoboCop was created, it's themes and why it fit this time. I don't see how you can talk about RoboCop without mentioning the cultural climate at the time.
Rewinding to the 1980s.
Reagan was president for two terms, Giuliani was cleaning up the mob using RICO during these time periods. The War on Drugs was raging. Communism was still enemy #1 (See: Rocky IV). It was truly a very right-wing time. For whatever, themes around individuals taking power into their own hands to "Reform" corrupt systems (cities). Like Frank Miller's Sin City, these are absolutely right-wing themes. "Cleaning Corruption" is one of the most conservative motivations from a psychological standpoint.
Others here have mentioned the slate of 80's action movies but it felt like 100% of the culture was heading this direction. Frank Miller's Batman approaches at the time, for example, were strongly echoing similar themes: Vigilante justice in the backdrop of political deterioration. Rambo, Predator, Commando, Total Recall, Scarface.
I think it all started with movies like Dirty Harry and Serpico and then just got more and more extreme leading into the 1980s.
You also cannot leave out Judge Dredd comics. There are similarities between Judge Dredd and RoboCop, I have a hard time believing there was no influence. Judge Dredd also had this magic gun that could do different tricks like shoot through walls etc, lived in a corrupt mega city of the future.
I feel in some ways RoboCop was almost like "Serpico + Dirty Harry if you turn everything up to 1,000." Serpico also had this theme of the good cop who is nearly killed and sent to the hospital due to corrupt system etc.
Most people here said it already; that would be a very bad development imho. But one that will happen as, at least in my distributed developer team (all continents, many countries) everyone young hates reading; chat, email, books, subtitles; they all hate it and want to listen and talk, not read & write. So it makes sense. Hope there will be choice always; I grew up with English movies with Dutch subtitles which taught me English and saw, at the same time, how awful it was to watch Rambo saying 'Ich bin John Rambo' with a flinty German dubbed voice. The horror.
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.
I disagree. There are quite a few interesting movies out there. From 2019 alone: Uncut gems, Marriage Story, the Irishman, Us, 1917, Jojo Rabbit and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. All of those are good movies depending on the preference. In fact, they are innovative and creative. The main problem with judging now vs past, is the survivorship bias of the good movies, the bad ones are forgotten and lost.
Two of those are netflix movies - Irishman and Marriage Story, I don't see them any more synthetic than 1980's RAMBO 2-5? or God Father 2,3 etc. Movies were always based on the popularity, the difference being the better data.
> bad comic adaptations, getting their rating from wide fan base
The amount of haters and lovers might not offset each other perfectly, yet it should not matter after the hype dwindles. Besides, the top rated comic books adaptations are quite good - Joker?
Due to my age when I watched UHF I had not seen many of the movies that it referenced: Conan the Barbarian, Rambo, Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Close Encounters - only over time did I come to appreciate it.
But if there will be some place where, for some fee, you can watch all that old movies... Fuck, for years I'm looking for Toy Story (1) to learn what are that Debian names ! But no... 2, 3 but no 1. Ice age 1 ? Rambo ? THX 1138 ? <- everyone need to see how leftists are naive and what they planning for human genetic modifications.
Interesting movies on Netflix and HBOGO ends in like... 2 days of watching ? Why the fuck i need to pay for a whole month ????
Movie/music industry is double stupid: they do not know how to sell what they already have (century+ amount of movies/recordings) and they create such brain-dead organizations like RIAA and many, many others.
1. Some of those 37 situations are more interesting than others
2. You need more than one of them for a good screenplay
3. Some situations do not mix well in one story
You will come to conlusion that there is limited number of possible stories.
Now, Hollywood has been producing dozens of movies every year for over a century it becomes clear that it is slowly running out of stories to tell. That's why you see so many remakes/sequels: Star Wars, Rambo, Die Hard, etc. Or remakes with a twist: let's make main characters black/women/gay/trans and pretend that we created a brand new, original story.
When I was growing up, my country got engulfed into a pretty rough war. We went through air raids, bombings, artillery strikes, and a bunch of people died. I'm sure all the adults were freaking out and just spent all the day thinking how best to survive. My city wasn't hit that hard, but we still had some rough moments.
However, during the was I was young enough to not understand the seriousness of the situation. I liked Rambo movies, and for me running to a shelter, while the air raid sirens were blasting, was just an incredibly exciting experience. I had absolutely zero fear, and didn't truly understand why were my parents freaking out.
The original Rambo film is a remarkably thoughtful study of the challenges Vietnam veterans faced reintegrating into society, including a look inside PTSD (the book even more so than the film... the book was commonly included in high school history and civics courses in the decade after it was written). The sequels, which are the films best remembered today, were of course nothing but pure adrenaline rides with nothing to recommend them, but don't taint the original film with the sins of its sequels. Even the portrayal of the "evil" small town sheriff Rambo battles is remarkably interesting and nuanced. Yes, it's still a popcorn film, but it's one of the most thoughtful and intelligent action films you're likely to find (there is much more than meets the eye in Sylvester Stallone, writer of both the original Rambo script and the Rocky script).
Reminds me of an old science-fiction where all events on the media were computer-generated fakes.
There has been no "underestimating" of that potential.
"Mind-warping" has been researched and is being research extensively by the CIA for some time. Most of that research is still top-secret, but well known are the extreme psychological manipulations of subjects during the MK-Ultra experiments.
I will focus on the CIA and it's influence in the past, as this is more controversial and influential than that of other agencies/countries. The influence of MI5/6 or Mossad is great, but a lot of it is still hidden. The influence of the KGB was different, as the citizens did not really believe much in them to begin with. The Chinese are going a whole different way again.
The CIA also did experiments involving the manipulation of the control of subjects in social media, like facebook. But it did not stop there.
After the peace-protests during the Vietnam war, the CIA has infiltrated into the press and media and anti-war movements. They now use that influence to bend war and destruction into a peace-giving action. So we had "Freedom fighters" in Afghanistan etc. Which was portrait in the Rambo movie. And the US supported Saddam fighting Iran with US made chemical weapons. Later the US fights the parties that it created and armed. Some strange thing that keeps repeating in the US history.
At the same time the CIA has the Phoenix program and other society destructive programs. They worked together with the "economic hitmen" and with local crime-lords to strengthen their destructive programs.
The influence of the CIA in other countries was great, but it also worked into influencing the US elections. Jesse Ventura found himself talking with the CIA after he was elected, because they did not expect a "third party" candidate to win. And they wanted to prevent that in the future.
Whistleblowers also show that they spy on political candidates, and pressure them (via blackmail?) before they even get into office. That way they can have direct influence on decisions. One well known example is that they spied on congress when they where investigating the CIA-torture program. Also they were able to destroy much evidence before it became public.
Whistle blower Kevin Shipp explains how the CIA is out of control. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQouKi7xDpM
But the CIA is not the only US-agency influencing the US elections. Every company is doing it too.
Represent us: Corruption is legal in America:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig
And just a few companies own all the press and media in the US.
So while we are looking at potential fake videos, we have a fake press and fake democracy underneath that.
It does not mean that everything is fake, but that it is controlled by agencies and companies that have their own agenda.
And indeed we see videos and other media repeating agendas of certain political parties or of certain companies over and over again.
We can actually stop this by putting the agencies and companies back into democratic control, and back into justice. And both need to be moved out of the democratic system. For example: Flint can never get fresh water if the companies and politicians involved can do whatever they like.
It does not mean that other countries all do it better. Most have different kinds of corrupt systems in place. Small communities like Iceland, seem to be able to stop corruption. Maybe we can learn from them.
So how can we counter this mind-warping?
Well: How can you spot propaganda?
If the same thing is repeated over and over again. When no evidence is shown. When a certain party or person is portrayed as "Hitler" or "devil" or as "heroes". When a problem is shown as black and white. When people are "just crazy". If you are only limited to 2 bad choices. If investigations are shallow, and many important questions are unanswered.
Usually you can spot them with logical fallacies. So we need to learn to use logical fallacies and use critical thinking in all the news. And we need to be critical of all ideas. This includes your own ideas as our confirmation bias is also our downfall.
And this brings us back to the story. If our mind is bend, we can learn to bend it back via critical thinking.
And stop watching the news, if the same thing gets repeated over and over again.
Not only Captain America. They had everybody from Horatio Alger to Joseph McCarthy, all the tele-evangelists and their ilk, all their popular movies, books, comics, tv shows etc with overly simplistic morality plays and nationalistic narrative etc. Even the 60s rock n' rollers just added some tamed dissent to an otherwise hook line and sinker adoption of the "american dream", all the way to Rambo, Rocky, Top Gun, and so on.
It's people like HST, Kurt Vonnegut, black musicians and writers, directors like Cassavetes and Kazan and such that embedded a dose of realism to the popular narrative. But anything really mainstream was always 80% sugary propaganda.
30 years later Aliens looks like a cliché action movie. I think it looks that way because it set a lot of standards for action movies. Poke around at popular action movies from the early 80's. Aliens has no Star Wars mysticism. Aliens lacks Star Trek optimism. It's not 'a guy with a grudge' like Rambo or Commando or any of a dozen others.
It certainly pulled from old westerns and war movies, but did it in a (imho) pretty innovative way.
I've been sitting on this gem for a while. I present to you: The Bruce Wayne Gap Year.
Wealthy people with desires to become Batman can more-or-less do so.
First they sign a waiver and an NDA, removing any liability from the Bruce Wayne Gap Year company. Then they'll pay the company tens of thousands of dollars to pay for what is to come.
They'll be put into a real criminal gang [1], and taken around the world getting involved in all sorts of illegal [2] activities.
Sooner or later they'll be subtly led to the Himalayas, where they'll join a monastery, lead a simple life of celibacy and minimalism and slowly learn to meditate and fully understand themselves and their body.
After a while, they'll be groomed by a man [3] claiming to be working for a mysterious and powerful leader of a guild of assassins, and taught all kinds of martial arts over months and months, culminating in a complex battle which determines their eligibility. At that point, they will be asked to do something their morals will not allow (this will be determined in a psychological screening), and end up betraying and destroying [4] the guild.
Then they return home, better for the experience.
It can't fail. A friend of mine also suggested it be re-implemented for all sorts of action hero/film type situations. James Bond, Die Hard, Rambo, etc. It's essentially a very expensive, realistic roleplaying experience.
[1]: Actually, very highly paid and well-trained actors. We don't tell them that though.
[2]: Mostly not illegal, but they're made to believe that these things are illegal. Some things will be borderline (they may accidentally end up threatening people who are not part of the ruse, for example), hence the NDA.
[3]: Also an actor. A very good, very well paid actor. Possibly we'll just get Liam Neeson, and he'll act so well that he'll convince them that he's not Liam Neeson.
[4]: Not really. The martial artists will never be allowed to be worse than the client, and will also be stunt-trained and capable of faking death.
Any television series in a modern setting in
which characters that are portrayed as "good guys"
use torture to achieve their goals is despicable
propaganda.
Yes. Absolutely.
I must admit, though... when compared to the cartoonish patriotic jingo-fied violence of the 1980s, where Rambo and the A-Team defeated countless enemies in settings that always felt like a walk in the park... perhaps the torture thing is the lesser of the two evils?
The 1980s seemed to want to tell us that war was a melodramatic, often bloodless struggle between the white-hatted good guys and the black-hatted bad guys.
If there's a small silver lining to today's torture-promoting crap, at least it's that war is portrayed a bit closer to being the horrible, bloody, morally-confused hell where the "good guys" often look and act an awful lot like the "bad guys."
Doesn't take away from your point at all. Totally agree that when torture is portrayed as anything less than evil, there is a very serious problem.
I have barely noticed the color schemes. I do recognize different color in films from different ages--for example, I like the warm colors of 70's and 80's film--but generally I don't care much because it doesn't distract me from enjoying the film.
However, there's a huge issue that has practically stopped me from watching the recent films, or nearly anything made in the 2000's.
It's how cutting the film and camera tracking have changed. It used to be more about long takes and cinemaesque dolly shots that also give time to get immersed in the film. But there's a newer trend that started in the late 90's and developed fully a few years later: extremely short and rapidly changing cuts and excess hand-held filming with the camera shooting from within the scene, rapidly turning and changing positions. To me, it feels like watching a strobo light: I literally have no idea what's happening in the film. It just all flashes in front of my eyes.
The problem is that it's not just action-packed scifi films or anything: many films in all genres have become more fast-paced. You can barely find a romantic comedy or a drama without several scenes that enable this ADHD limbo. To make it worse, even European films have begun to adopt this style in the last decade.
I watched some old action films such as Rambo or Terminator recently and I must say that even they were more moderate in tempo than the last few, and not necessarily action, films I've seen in the cinema in the last five or so years. This is just terrible and I hope cinematography will recover soon or that these tricks will move on to the 3D videos.
Similarly to reading books, a good film gives you the essentials of the plot, characters, and the visual scene only and leaves the rest to your imagination. And giving space to this imagination is crucial to make a good film.
A good film must not give you everything because it can never be as good as if you had imagined it yourself. In opposition, these youtube flicks with 50M budget are only trying to make a first impression on you.
Hacker Cinema
24 comments on Hacker News
I'm more cynical here. I suspect these are films (or many of them at least) are ones "they" don't want you to see... ever. It's censorship, so no remastering.
"due to our content licensing agreements" .. this is just Sony placating to someone else's demands. The question is who are "they" and why these films? Maybe these films end up being revised with alternate endings or tweaked characters.
If you see these films, what sort of person will you become? Is that someone who is undesirable?
Terminator 2, Rambo 1, Cliffhanger and Total Recall. We can't have that!
It's just a theory.
Are PlayStation users younger than average? That's important to note too.
Also interesting: recently YT removed the ability to see Likes in one's uploaded video list, only views and comment counts. The message could be: "be well-known, but don't be popular" Why?
Yet I think "Sort by Likes" would be a boon for YT creators and that never even existed, with the Likes column even removed a week or two after I suggested it.
The country I'm in dubs a lot of usa films. Rambo in another language is hilarious, other actors are played by different VAs so eg schwarzenegger sounds different every film. So sj will be played by many vactresses...In many countries.
i don't know....
i've been trying to "discuss" with anonymous people online for the past week and the idea of hamas=bad so any allegation, however wild including the beheading babies one is promoted because why can't it be true, right?
in the same breath, israel is only doing targeted attacks who are designed by experts and lawyers and engineers and social experts so they know what they are doing and they are only targetting terrorist infra.
again, militancy ≠ terrorism regardless of american designation. there is a concept of "Freedom fighters", today people seem to forget this concept that someone can fight for their rights and they might have to take up arms.
remember the propaganda movies like "rambo" who used to call afghans the "mujahideen freedom fighters" and countless others when they were fighting russians. Suddenly when 9/11 happened and usa went to war with afghans, they became the bad guys overnight trying to undermine democracy around the world.
I am not taking sides but they way the argument of why hamas took this step which caused their side more human and infra damage than their opponents isn't discussed. Only thing discussed is how they are terrorists and should be treated on par with ISIS. "no negotiation with terrorists", probably in the same tone as bush did with taliban when they proposed to extradite bin laden to a third neutral country and give him a fair trial.
My point again is, give some thought outside of the bubble.
Poorly designed, poorly manufactured, barely works in use and rounds the nuts you use it on so that subsequent attempts will be harder even with better tools.
It feels like there's been a strong Satanic / nihilistic philosophy at work among the hand tool industry for a while now. Started somewhere around the time period when the movie "Rambo" caused a fad for crappy "survival knives."
That's the funniest thing how USSR still existed when videocassettes became a thing.
If you were a rare and highly valued type of person who travelled abroad, with some luck you could bring a video player with you on your return.
USSR even shipped its own VC players and sold them for something like 2 years of median wage. Go figure if that's how communism should look like.
Improptu cinemas were the earliest example of Soviet small business - you only need a large room, a TV, VC player and a couple of benches. Repertoire included American action films such as Rambo and erotic movies - latter could get you behind bars. In fact even former could, as most ways of making money outside of an official job were explicitly prohibited up and until ~1987.
> ...I feel differently about army vets as a total population than civilian killers.
How about military combat vets who were involved in killing in unspecified circumstances in the civilian world?
> I haven't watched Rambo.
You should. It's a good movie. The later ones (and most especially the most recent one) are dumb action movies, but the original is pretty good.
> One is a group of people who will punch you for "looking at them funny". The other is every world heavyweight champion.
I would trust the first group to act less erratically than the second. It's well-documented fact that getting hit in the head as much as boxers (and pro football players) do fucks you up, and makes you violent and erratic.
I feel this article misses a lot of the historical context when RoboCop was created, it's themes and why it fit this time. I don't see how you can talk about RoboCop without mentioning the cultural climate at the time.
Rewinding to the 1980s.
Reagan was president for two terms, Giuliani was cleaning up the mob using RICO during these time periods. The War on Drugs was raging. Communism was still enemy #1 (See: Rocky IV). It was truly a very right-wing time. For whatever, themes around individuals taking power into their own hands to "Reform" corrupt systems (cities). Like Frank Miller's Sin City, these are absolutely right-wing themes. "Cleaning Corruption" is one of the most conservative motivations from a psychological standpoint.
Others here have mentioned the slate of 80's action movies but it felt like 100% of the culture was heading this direction. Frank Miller's Batman approaches at the time, for example, were strongly echoing similar themes: Vigilante justice in the backdrop of political deterioration. Rambo, Predator, Commando, Total Recall, Scarface.
I think it all started with movies like Dirty Harry and Serpico and then just got more and more extreme leading into the 1980s.
You also cannot leave out Judge Dredd comics. There are similarities between Judge Dredd and RoboCop, I have a hard time believing there was no influence. Judge Dredd also had this magic gun that could do different tricks like shoot through walls etc, lived in a corrupt mega city of the future.
I feel in some ways RoboCop was almost like "Serpico + Dirty Harry if you turn everything up to 1,000." Serpico also had this theme of the good cop who is nearly killed and sent to the hospital due to corrupt system etc.
Most people here said it already; that would be a very bad development imho. But one that will happen as, at least in my distributed developer team (all continents, many countries) everyone young hates reading; chat, email, books, subtitles; they all hate it and want to listen and talk, not read & write. So it makes sense. Hope there will be choice always; I grew up with English movies with Dutch subtitles which taught me English and saw, at the same time, how awful it was to watch Rambo saying 'Ich bin John Rambo' with a flinty German dubbed voice. The horror.
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.
I disagree. There are quite a few interesting movies out there. From 2019 alone: Uncut gems, Marriage Story, the Irishman, Us, 1917, Jojo Rabbit and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. All of those are good movies depending on the preference. In fact, they are innovative and creative. The main problem with judging now vs past, is the survivorship bias of the good movies, the bad ones are forgotten and lost.
Two of those are netflix movies - Irishman and Marriage Story, I don't see them any more synthetic than 1980's RAMBO 2-5? or God Father 2,3 etc. Movies were always based on the popularity, the difference being the better data.
> bad comic adaptations, getting their rating from wide fan base
The amount of haters and lovers might not offset each other perfectly, yet it should not matter after the hype dwindles. Besides, the top rated comic books adaptations are quite good - Joker?
I don't know if that's true. Look at the Rambo movies. The first was a harrowing story of a man dealing with ptsd. The rest were just violence porn.
Due to my age when I watched UHF I had not seen many of the movies that it referenced: Conan the Barbarian, Rambo, Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Close Encounters - only over time did I come to appreciate it.
IMO thieves need be jailed.
But if there will be some place where, for some fee, you can watch all that old movies... Fuck, for years I'm looking for Toy Story (1) to learn what are that Debian names ! But no... 2, 3 but no 1. Ice age 1 ? Rambo ? THX 1138 ? <- everyone need to see how leftists are naive and what they planning for human genetic modifications.
Interesting movies on Netflix and HBOGO ends in like... 2 days of watching ? Why the fuck i need to pay for a whole month ????
Movie/music industry is double stupid: they do not know how to sell what they already have (century+ amount of movies/recordings) and they create such brain-dead organizations like RIAA and many, many others.
Given that:
1. Some of those 37 situations are more interesting than others
2. You need more than one of them for a good screenplay
3. Some situations do not mix well in one story
You will come to conlusion that there is limited number of possible stories.
Now, Hollywood has been producing dozens of movies every year for over a century it becomes clear that it is slowly running out of stories to tell. That's why you see so many remakes/sequels: Star Wars, Rambo, Die Hard, etc. Or remakes with a twist: let's make main characters black/women/gay/trans and pretend that we created a brand new, original story.
Hollywood is eating its own tail.
I have some personal experience on this subject.
When I was growing up, my country got engulfed into a pretty rough war. We went through air raids, bombings, artillery strikes, and a bunch of people died. I'm sure all the adults were freaking out and just spent all the day thinking how best to survive. My city wasn't hit that hard, but we still had some rough moments.
However, during the was I was young enough to not understand the seriousness of the situation. I liked Rambo movies, and for me running to a shelter, while the air raid sirens were blasting, was just an incredibly exciting experience. I had absolutely zero fear, and didn't truly understand why were my parents freaking out.
Kids are stupid.
The original Rambo film is a remarkably thoughtful study of the challenges Vietnam veterans faced reintegrating into society, including a look inside PTSD (the book even more so than the film... the book was commonly included in high school history and civics courses in the decade after it was written). The sequels, which are the films best remembered today, were of course nothing but pure adrenaline rides with nothing to recommend them, but don't taint the original film with the sins of its sequels. Even the portrayal of the "evil" small town sheriff Rambo battles is remarkably interesting and nuanced. Yes, it's still a popcorn film, but it's one of the most thoughtful and intelligent action films you're likely to find (there is much more than meets the eye in Sylvester Stallone, writer of both the original Rambo script and the Rocky script).
Reminds me of an old science-fiction where all events on the media were computer-generated fakes.
There has been no "underestimating" of that potential.
"Mind-warping" has been researched and is being research extensively by the CIA for some time. Most of that research is still top-secret, but well known are the extreme psychological manipulations of subjects during the MK-Ultra experiments.
I will focus on the CIA and it's influence in the past, as this is more controversial and influential than that of other agencies/countries. The influence of MI5/6 or Mossad is great, but a lot of it is still hidden. The influence of the KGB was different, as the citizens did not really believe much in them to begin with. The Chinese are going a whole different way again.
The CIA also did experiments involving the manipulation of the control of subjects in social media, like facebook. But it did not stop there.
After the peace-protests during the Vietnam war, the CIA has infiltrated into the press and media and anti-war movements. They now use that influence to bend war and destruction into a peace-giving action. So we had "Freedom fighters" in Afghanistan etc. Which was portrait in the Rambo movie. And the US supported Saddam fighting Iran with US made chemical weapons. Later the US fights the parties that it created and armed. Some strange thing that keeps repeating in the US history.
At the same time the CIA has the Phoenix program and other society destructive programs. They worked together with the "economic hitmen" and with local crime-lords to strengthen their destructive programs.
The influence of the CIA in other countries was great, but it also worked into influencing the US elections. Jesse Ventura found himself talking with the CIA after he was elected, because they did not expect a "third party" candidate to win. And they wanted to prevent that in the future.
Whistleblowers also show that they spy on political candidates, and pressure them (via blackmail?) before they even get into office. That way they can have direct influence on decisions. One well known example is that they spied on congress when they where investigating the CIA-torture program. Also they were able to destroy much evidence before it became public. Whistle blower Kevin Shipp explains how the CIA is out of control. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQouKi7xDpM
But the CIA is not the only US-agency influencing the US elections. Every company is doing it too. Represent us: Corruption is legal in America: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig And just a few companies own all the press and media in the US.
So while we are looking at potential fake videos, we have a fake press and fake democracy underneath that.
It does not mean that everything is fake, but that it is controlled by agencies and companies that have their own agenda. And indeed we see videos and other media repeating agendas of certain political parties or of certain companies over and over again.
We can actually stop this by putting the agencies and companies back into democratic control, and back into justice. And both need to be moved out of the democratic system. For example: Flint can never get fresh water if the companies and politicians involved can do whatever they like.
It does not mean that other countries all do it better. Most have different kinds of corrupt systems in place. Small communities like Iceland, seem to be able to stop corruption. Maybe we can learn from them.
So how can we counter this mind-warping?
Well: How can you spot propaganda?
If the same thing is repeated over and over again. When no evidence is shown. When a certain party or person is portrayed as "Hitler" or "devil" or as "heroes". When a problem is shown as black and white. When people are "just crazy". If you are only limited to 2 bad choices. If investigations are shallow, and many important questions are unanswered.
Usually you can spot them with logical fallacies. So we need to learn to use logical fallacies and use critical thinking in all the news. And we need to be critical of all ideas. This includes your own ideas as our confirmation bias is also our downfall.
And this brings us back to the story. If our mind is bend, we can learn to bend it back via critical thinking. And stop watching the news, if the same thing gets repeated over and over again.
You can relate to those who think Rambo movies have no political agenda when they clearly do.
Very similar to people who think the Rambo movies are just action movies. Every one of those movies had a political purpose.
Not only Captain America. They had everybody from Horatio Alger to Joseph McCarthy, all the tele-evangelists and their ilk, all their popular movies, books, comics, tv shows etc with overly simplistic morality plays and nationalistic narrative etc. Even the 60s rock n' rollers just added some tamed dissent to an otherwise hook line and sinker adoption of the "american dream", all the way to Rambo, Rocky, Top Gun, and so on.
It's people like HST, Kurt Vonnegut, black musicians and writers, directors like Cassavetes and Kazan and such that embedded a dose of realism to the popular narrative. But anything really mainstream was always 80% sugary propaganda.
30 years later Aliens looks like a cliché action movie. I think it looks that way because it set a lot of standards for action movies. Poke around at popular action movies from the early 80's. Aliens has no Star Wars mysticism. Aliens lacks Star Trek optimism. It's not 'a guy with a grudge' like Rambo or Commando or any of a dozen others.
It certainly pulled from old westerns and war movies, but did it in a (imho) pretty innovative way.
I've been sitting on this gem for a while. I present to you: The Bruce Wayne Gap Year.
Wealthy people with desires to become Batman can more-or-less do so.
First they sign a waiver and an NDA, removing any liability from the Bruce Wayne Gap Year company. Then they'll pay the company tens of thousands of dollars to pay for what is to come.
They'll be put into a real criminal gang [1], and taken around the world getting involved in all sorts of illegal [2] activities.
Sooner or later they'll be subtly led to the Himalayas, where they'll join a monastery, lead a simple life of celibacy and minimalism and slowly learn to meditate and fully understand themselves and their body.
After a while, they'll be groomed by a man [3] claiming to be working for a mysterious and powerful leader of a guild of assassins, and taught all kinds of martial arts over months and months, culminating in a complex battle which determines their eligibility. At that point, they will be asked to do something their morals will not allow (this will be determined in a psychological screening), and end up betraying and destroying [4] the guild.
Then they return home, better for the experience.
It can't fail. A friend of mine also suggested it be re-implemented for all sorts of action hero/film type situations. James Bond, Die Hard, Rambo, etc. It's essentially a very expensive, realistic roleplaying experience.
[1]: Actually, very highly paid and well-trained actors. We don't tell them that though.
[2]: Mostly not illegal, but they're made to believe that these things are illegal. Some things will be borderline (they may accidentally end up threatening people who are not part of the ruse, for example), hence the NDA.
[3]: Also an actor. A very good, very well paid actor. Possibly we'll just get Liam Neeson, and he'll act so well that he'll convince them that he's not Liam Neeson.
[4]: Not really. The martial artists will never be allowed to be worse than the client, and will also be stunt-trained and capable of faking death.
Any television series in a modern setting in which characters that are portrayed as "good guys" use torture to achieve their goals is despicable propaganda.
Yes. Absolutely.
I must admit, though... when compared to the cartoonish patriotic jingo-fied violence of the 1980s, where Rambo and the A-Team defeated countless enemies in settings that always felt like a walk in the park... perhaps the torture thing is the lesser of the two evils?
The 1980s seemed to want to tell us that war was a melodramatic, often bloodless struggle between the white-hatted good guys and the black-hatted bad guys.
If there's a small silver lining to today's torture-promoting crap, at least it's that war is portrayed a bit closer to being the horrible, bloody, morally-confused hell where the "good guys" often look and act an awful lot like the "bad guys."
Doesn't take away from your point at all. Totally agree that when torture is portrayed as anything less than evil, there is a very serious problem.
I have barely noticed the color schemes. I do recognize different color in films from different ages--for example, I like the warm colors of 70's and 80's film--but generally I don't care much because it doesn't distract me from enjoying the film.
However, there's a huge issue that has practically stopped me from watching the recent films, or nearly anything made in the 2000's.
It's how cutting the film and camera tracking have changed. It used to be more about long takes and cinemaesque dolly shots that also give time to get immersed in the film. But there's a newer trend that started in the late 90's and developed fully a few years later: extremely short and rapidly changing cuts and excess hand-held filming with the camera shooting from within the scene, rapidly turning and changing positions. To me, it feels like watching a strobo light: I literally have no idea what's happening in the film. It just all flashes in front of my eyes.
The problem is that it's not just action-packed scifi films or anything: many films in all genres have become more fast-paced. You can barely find a romantic comedy or a drama without several scenes that enable this ADHD limbo. To make it worse, even European films have begun to adopt this style in the last decade.
I watched some old action films such as Rambo or Terminator recently and I must say that even they were more moderate in tempo than the last few, and not necessarily action, films I've seen in the cinema in the last five or so years. This is just terrible and I hope cinematography will recover soon or that these tricks will move on to the 3D videos.
Similarly to reading books, a good film gives you the essentials of the plot, characters, and the visual scene only and leaves the rest to your imagination. And giving space to this imagination is crucial to make a good film.
A good film must not give you everything because it can never be as good as if you had imagined it yourself. In opposition, these youtube flicks with 50M budget are only trying to make a first impression on you.