After the horrors of 9/11 one thing seemed clear. Hollywood had a new enemy for a generation of film goes to hate.
The Al Qaeda madmen could fuel countless stories of heroism and danger without anyone complaining about stereotyping or other PC concerns.
Except it didn’t happen.
But now, with the death of Osama Bin Laden inspiring talk of a Navy Seals film adventure and news that two of Vince Flynn’s books are coming to the big screen it seemed Hollywood is finally determined to fight terrorism.
The news breaking today seems to confirm it.
Relativity Media just announced it has acquired worldwide rights to market and distribute Bandito Brothers’ “Act of Valor,” a film showcasing an elite group of active duty Navy Seals who take down a web of terrorist cells itching to slaughter innocents.
The film, slated to hit theaters next year, is directed by ex-stuntmen and documentary filmmakers/commercial directors Mike “Mouse” McCoy (“Dust to Glory”) and Scott Waugh (“Ste Into Liquid”). And, best of all for right-minded movie goers, the film was written by Kurt Johnstad of “300″ fame.
The project promises “never-before-seen military operation scenes which are composited from actual events in the lives of the men appearing in the film and their comrades,” according to the studio’s press release.
“‘Act of Valor’ is truly one-of-a-kind—ripped from today’s headline-making heroic missions, an incredibly crafted film featuring active duty Navy Seals, in a remarkable and fast-paced story that will give audiences an authentic inside glimpse and make them proud of America’s finest,” said Tucker Tooley, Relativity Media’s President of Worldwide Productions in a statement.
What? No moral equivalence arguments or hand wringing? No talk of Seals creating as many terrorists as they wipe out? Hmm. It might just make more coin than “Rendition” or ‘Lions for Lambs.”
Makes you wonder why the dam is breaking now. The U.S. military has been fighting terrorists for the past decade with alacrity. How is 2011 different from 2003, 2005 or 2007?
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{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
If I had to guess, I’d say Hollywood didn’t want to in any way affirm, let alone associate itself with, the Bu$Hitler administration. Now that Obama is in power, it seems safer to them. That’s my cynical response.
Mine, too, Hunter. But I wanted to leave it open for readers (like you) to respond. I’d be open to hearing other points of view …
@ Hunter +1
What’s interests me is how are they going to handle the non-PC aspects? Of course, the Afgans aren’t Arabs, so perhaps that’s not an issue since they won’t be dealing with CAIR.
The U.S. military has been fighting terrorists for the past decade with alacrity. How is 2011 different from 2003, 2005 or 2007?
Easy. Obama is in office now, and he’s trying desperately to recast himself (no pun intended) as a War on Terror leader in the Bush mold. So Hollywood execs are now free to greenlight these projects without worring about being associated with the Bush administration.
I can sum up Hollywood’s explanation quite succinctly: “There has been no shift. We have always supported the war
with Eastasiaon terror.”I believe director Roland Emmerich stated he didn’t want to do an Independence Day sequel while Bush was in office … need to find that quote.
Here it is:
http://io9.com/5398470/president-obama-inspired-roland-emmerich-to-make-independence-day-2
Ben Shapiro is going to need another chapter in his book after this.
Yes, Roland Emmerich, one of the great auteurs of our time.
More patriotic properties are being made now that Bush is out as well. See: CAPTAIN AMERICA, G.I. JOE (albiet the patriotism was toned down a great deal in the latter, but Stephen Sommers said it was an “Obama” era action film)
It’s great that they’re finally making these movies, now that they no longer have to worry that supporting the troops will inadvertently support Bush. So what I wonder is this: can they make a movie that glorifies the bravery and accomplishments of our military and leave it at that? Or will the succumb to the habit of drawing a moral equivalence with our enemy, or celebrating the individual soldiers while still criticizes the evil/incompetent military leadership?
@K — too true, and looks like I’ll be buying the paperback as well. I also hope you’ll call in with a related question when — shameless plug alert!!! — Ben’s our scheduled guest on Radio Free Threedonia next Sunday.
I heard that one thing making Hollywood NOT want to offend muslims/arabs is that the middle-east imports a lot of Hollywood films.
I hear they really love the anti-American slant in most everything Hollywood churns out.
It will be interesting to see if Hollywood goes weak in the knees (and spine) when the arab street doesn’t want to see the atrocities they have commited.
Here is a leaked script from “ID4-2″
GENERAL: “Mister President! All our fighters and military are destroyed by the alien hordes!”
CHRIS MATTHEWS: “The aliens have destroyed all the red states and eaten all the gun-clinging bible-believing throw-backs! Maybe they aren’t our enemies after all. Wait…they are attacking peace loving muslims! HELP! HELP!”
PREZ OBAMA (playing himself): “Calm yourself, coward! Reverand Wright…Release the hordes of anarchists, code pink and ACORN…Send in the SEIU shocktroops! I will lead the charge by flying a new super secret attack jet that I alone created and only I am trained to pilot!”
Congressman WEINER: “Thank you, Mister Prez! We are all saved!”
I won’t hold my breath on a whole slew of films being churned out for the anti terrorist films. Remember these are the same people that when we entered Iraq, capured Saddam, won the war and are winding down are still claiming its too early to have any movies about the war or that there arent any real interesting stories out there.
I met Kurt Johnstad during the writers strike. super, super nice guy.
How sure are you that they won’t get the “Sum of All Fears” treatment with Arab terrorists being replaced with NeoNazis or similar villains?
Out of respect, you guys really should learn how to refer to these people. The Navy calls them SEALs in print. Four capital letters, an acronym for Sea, Air and Land.
They are not to be confused with flippered mammals.
I can always tell when someone is writing about something they know little of… they call a magazine in a gun a “clip”.. they call Navy SEALs “Seals”…
Dave in Dallas
I checked to see how other news outlets referred to the SEALs before writing this post. The majority of outlets used the lower case letters, and typically journalists follow a set of rules when dealing with certain topics. I followed suit.
For example, I’ve worked at newspapers where PhDs were not referred to as Dr., since that title was reserved for medical doctors.
The state of Colorado is shortened to Colo., as another example.
No disrespect was intended here.
Oh, don’t get your hopes up. Hollywood hates real men; they can’t help themselves. There might be a “Battle: L.A.” or two that slips through, but most movies will have Hollywood’s go-to villains: American soldiers, the American military, and American technology.
I won’t be seeing “Super 8″ for example. I don’t care to spend my hard earned dollars on any movie where the U.S. Military is the bad guy.
The magazine/clip thing makes me nuts—the difference isn’t that hard to learn—but often rendering “SEALs” as “Seals” is due to the former being auto-corrected by word processors. But I would question whether journalists ought to be regarded as authorities on military terminology (ask one to define the difference between “assault rifle” and “battle rifle” sometime, if you want a demonstration of my meaning).
As for America always being the bad guy in movies, as with “Blame America First” in politics, I like to refer it to leftists’ weird mutated Jingoism. As House put it, “You can only believe that everything is your fault if you also believe that you’re all-powerful.” Fundamentally they still think white males are the prime movers of everything that happens in the world, far more even than the Victorians did.
Frankly, I don’t believe it. I’ve heard similar “news” before. Marcus Luttrell’s “Lone Survivor” was supposed to be a movie. So was “Crisis Four” by Andy McNab and one of Brad Thor’s books.
Never happened.
I actually wrote a screenplay which featured Islamic terrorists as the villains. It was a very cynical and broad comedy so I figured there was hope. Nobody wanted to read it. Nobody.
I’ll believe it when there is an actual movie in actual theaters featuring actual terrorists as actual antagonists, and not in some sort of wishy-washy, morally equivalent, “we’re no better than they are” way.
“Makes you wonder why the dam is breaking now. The U.S. military has been fighting terrorists for the past decade with alacrity. How is 2011 different from 2003, 2005 or 2007? ”
Hollywood’s actions are not surprising. Their reaction is different because Obama is President now. Any earlier and such films would have supported the actions of George Bush. Now anti-Terrorism films will glorify Obama’s assassination of Osama, his war in Libya and so forth. Therefore the nation must be reminded that these terrorists are evil, our military is right to fight them and the President is a hero to destory their threat. Hollywood is nothing more than a PR puppet for the Democratic Party.
It is all a plane to try and make Obama look like some great war leader. That is why it is coming out in an election year. Hollywood sucks.
I am not completely annoyed just yet. These two films are being made by studios that are not that big yet. Act of Valor does not appear to be a big studio film with a massive budget (unlike Body of Lies or Green Zone, The Kingdom, Syriana). American Assassin is by CBS films, which is also not a massive studio yet. The reason I bring this up is because, at the moment, these two films appear to be acting against the grain of what is accepted in Hollywood. The creator of Mitch Rapp himself said that major studios would not make Mitch Rapp films because they were “more Bush than Bush”. I will wait to see if there is a major uptake in these kinds of films by major studios all set for the same time period. At that time, I will be convinced of the last minute push for Obama. That said, i will give props to the folllowing films that do not drink the Obama Kool-Aid
1. Transformers 2: While not dealing with jihadists, it is Pro-American,Pro-Military and considers the Obama Administration part of the problem, not solution, when dealing with the enemy
2. Iron Man 2: no jihadists, but again Pro-American, pro-military and rails agaist big government, takes a dig at the liberal agenda, and makes a small joke out of Obama (the scene with the poster)
3. The Expendables: pro freedom, pro action with a Hugo Chavez/Fidel Castro villian. In addition, the villain has an Obama like painting in the town that says “Libertad y Fuerza”. I wonder if that is a coincidence
4. 24 Season 8: Villians are Middle Eastern terrorists and Russians; and the hero must contend with highly placed government officials who think it is better to appease a hostile government rather than directly call it out because it is not politically convenient to do so.
5. Toy Story 3: a movie that calls out the abuses and hypocrisy of the big government mentality, especially when it claims it is trying to act in the name of fairness. (Especailly see the Barbie speech)
Don’t worry Republicans will still portrayed in a negative light.
I’m still in shock in seeing The Chicago Code episode in which a current terror bomb campaign is based around a 1970s leftist domestic terrorist turned academic (who in all but name is Bill Ayers) .. and it turns out he IS a huge sh+t.
He’s perp walked out of a conference at the end finally being brought to account for his crimes.
Kudos Sean Ryan!
At this point there is little that is more boring than watching an actor reciting lines about how he feels about duty, honor, country, glory, or killing people. None of them know, and watching a good looking 20 something mouth platitudes just doesn’t do it for me.
If they haven’t been in basic, if they haven’t been on deployment, if they haven’t been under military discipline they don’t know. They can’t know! All they have is their imagination and their own bullshit experiences, which don’t come to much.
I couldn’t help but notice that the film about to be released doesn’t contain anything about Iraq or the American Soldiers who fought during the Bush administration. That war didn’t exist unless the story can by used for moral equivilence and bashing the Bush administration. So the lefties in Hollywood should accept this movie with open arms as it is a political tool that can be used to prop the Obama re-election. The flurry of new films will be about the SEALs and the parts of the military that Obama wants to use to help his re-election chaces, I am sorry to say. Even though, I will see them and cheer heartly whenever a Navy SEAL or RECON Marine sends a terrorist to meet the 72 virgins! Those are my boys and my Heroes! HUUURAH!
Let’s guess. At the end of the movie Obama awards himself the Medal of Honor for making a “gutsy” call in the golf-cart between the 18th and 19th holes.