The American Soldier: Hollywood's Newest Big Screen Villain

Oh Hollywood, what has become of your greatest on screen bad guys?  Russians have lost all relevancy since the end of the Cold War, terrorists are offensive, zombies have become completely overused, and Russian terrorist zombies are just too high concept for the likes of Hollywood. If only we could find a new villain for American and world-wide audiences to pick on.

But wait! We have! Finally, a vile, despicable group of people that Hollywood film producers and directors can rally behind, a monster that surely all people must understand is the true villain in this world… this asshole.

I really try to keep politics out of my film blog, but I’m breaking this rule this one time because if you’re like me, you have probably noticed a growing trend in Hollywood films and television shows of making soldiers, marines, and the U.S. military in general the bad guys. Even worse, this trend is exacerbated by the idea that the reasons for their dastardly plans stem from either some form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, combat experience, or insanity caused by a war they fought in. This trend has been growing exponentially in the last few years, but one film in particular has brought it to a head in such an over the top manner that I had to write about it, Liam Neeson’s newest action film Non-Stop.

Now I’m a big Liam Neeson fan, but shortly after this film came out I began to notice that a lot of people on Facebook were telling people to stay clear of this film and not to support it. The most curious thing about this however, was that the predominant group of people telling me to avoid this film were friends of mine from the military. So out of curiosity I decided to look up the ending to see what was so horrible about this film. After all, I had certainly seen my share of films portraying the military in a negative light, so how bad could this ending really be?

What... the... piss?!?

For those of you who haven’t seen the film, please scroll down past the END SPOILERS section if you don’t want to have the film ruined for you. Also, please note that while this is what I have found online, it's been substantiated by several friends of mine:

SPOILERS

The villains of the film are American soldiers, one of which was the family member of a person who died in 9/11. After they joined the military they were “disgusted and disillusioned by the pointless wars they were forced to fight in, and the innocent people they were forced to murder under orders”. To top this all off, the villains then begin spouting off the importance of the Constitution in a psycho rant, making anyone who believes in it look like a complete asshole in the eyes of the audience.

END SPOILERS

At least, that was the intention…

I don’t know how much of this is true, but people who saw the film said that viewers in their theaters audibly groaned or booed when the villain was revealed, which makes me feel a little better, but how the heck did Hollywood make this the growing norm of films and television?

Now I would have to be blind not to realize that Hollywood is liberal central, and that any films released with a political agenda is guaranteed to be a liberal one. The problem is that I’m not going to the movies to see liberal agenda laden films, especially ones where people like  me are made out to be the bad guys. I’m jus going to see an action shlock film. Does Hollywood really feel it’s that important to pound it into my face how much of an asshole I should feel like and how I should be ashamed of myself for not feeling the same way they do?

Now that soldiers of every branch are being persecuted and poorly portrayed on film, I tried to think of why Hollywood would make this decision (other than the obvious political one). I mean, they wouldn't have tried to get away with this in the months or years directly following 9/11, so why is it acceptable now? I've come up with three main reasons why this is OK:

1.       Worldwide Marketability-In the last decade or so there has been a massive shift in film priorities to appeal to worldwide audiences instead of just domestic ones. Theaters have become more accessible in all countries, so the last thing we want to do is offer up villains that the rest of the world can’t get behind. Make the bad guy a Russian, and Russian audiences won’t go see the movie. It’s simple economics, and the bottom line is always the winner.

A few years ago, when they were making the Red Dawn, the villains were originally going to be the Chinese. The story was supposed to be that America defaulted on its’ national debt, so the Chinese invaded in order to settle the score. It was a plot that actually made sense, but the problem was we wouldn’t want to offend China, oh no! So now that we couldn’t release this blasphemous idea to the world, and we wanted China’s money, how should we go about doing this? Simple! They made the villains North Korea! They digitally changed the flags to North Korea, a country that doesn’t pull in any revenue for American films, and hey! Who cares if the actors are Chinese and not North Korean, they all look the same, right Hollywood?

Remember G.I. Joe? A childhood memory and toy with the tagline “A real American hero”? Well… not so much anymore. To appeal to mass audiences, the heroes in the film were changed from American soldiers to soldiers from all over the world. G.I. changed from Government Issue to Global… something. There’s a Chinese soldier, a middle eastern soldier, a Brit (I think), and every other country you could think of. All they were missing was a kid in a wheelchair! But don’t worry America, we’ll fill out the American roster by making COBRA (the faceless villain of the G.I. Joe franchise) an American Special Forces soldier. That should make everyone happy, right?

One final example was Hollywood’s obsession with changing the name of Captain America to The First Avenger, a move that Joe Johnston had to fight tooth and nail to overrule, at the cost of removing pretty much every American flag from the film. Iron Man 3 had a special edition released in China, where they filmed extra scenes without Shane Black’s knowledge and featured none of the cast. The scenes completely re-worked the plot where Iron Man was now fighting for China, and the Chinese were the good guys! YAAAAAAAY! The list goes on and on for worldwide audience pandering, and if the Chinese release of Iron Man 3 is any indication, they aren’t buying it. Which is a good thing to happen to companies selling out their pride in their country for a couple extra bucks.

2.       The Rise of Special Interest Groups-Not long ago, ESPN editor Anthony Federico was fired for describing a basketball player’s nine turnovers as a “chink in the armor”. Why? Because said player was Asian superstar Jeremy Lin. And even though Anthony had used the phrase countless times in past columns and it was a very common phrase, it didn’t matter once Asian special interest groups got involved and demanded his job.

What does this have to do with soldiers as movie villains? Well in the last fifteen years or so special interest groups have made it impossible to portray any race or creed that isn’t white as the “bad guys”, even when it makes no sense not to do so. Nowadays all villains are white guys with militaristic and Constitutional ideals, so much so that the frequency of this has gotten freaking obnoxious. The terrorists in White House Down? American white guys who worked in the pentagon. The terrorists in Die Hard 4? American white guys who worked in the Pentagon. Terrorists are all white in films, despite the fact that almost no terrorist acts are perpetrated by white Americans.

Now listen, I understand Muslims have just as much right to be the good guys in a film (non-Stop accomplished this as well). They are a vital part of the American mixing pot, and a great majority of them are peaceful American citizens. But when seventy percent of worldwide terrorist attacks are committed by Sunni Muslims alone (I did NOT wing that number, that is a real statistic from the National Counter-Terrorism Center), then you can’t act surprised if the terrorists in a Hollywood movie are portrayed as Muslim. Muslim interest groups were angry that the bad guys in Zero-Dark-Thirty were Muslim, even though it is based on a true story!

Racial statistics are going to be reflected in Hollywood films, it wouldn’t make any sense not to do so if you are telling a story based on demographics and context. Do the Right Thing isn’t going to have a predominately white cast in it, nor is Saving Private Ryan going to have an African American army storming the beaches of Normandy. And while I understand that the former example is a narration of racial inequality and the latter is a historical recount of a war, the point shouldn’t just end there. People need to stop being so offended if they see art mimicking life.

But nah, we don’t want to rock the boat or take any risks would we? So where can we get a group of militarily trained people who are white, in country, and can appease all special interest groups? If you replied “soldiers of course!” then YOU TOO can be a Hollywood film producer. Hollywood is not a fan of the United States soldier, so if they can offensively write them into a script to make them the bad guys then it’s win-win! And they do it out of cowardice for the next reason.

3.       We Make Easy Targets-If a director was to grow a pair of balls and make a protected group of people the villains in a film for statistical accuracy, I would have mad respect for them. I would also quickly accept that their days in Hollywood were over because their job would be gone in seconds. When upset, special interest groups love to resort to mob tactics in order to get what they want, a move that usually works, but one group of people can be labeled monsters by everyone and don’t have the ability to fight back… the military.

You see, where most special interest groups don’t believe in Freedom of Speech if it hurts their feelings, almost everyone in the military has accepted this point as a necessary cost of freedom. It’s why when people create Facebook pages like “F**k the Troops” you will notice that a surprisingly small number of people demanding that the page be taken down are military. It’s where you get the saying “While I don’t agree with what you say, I will fight to the death for your right to say it”, it’s just a small part of a greater good.

So when Hollywood releases films with stories and messages like “evil military are punished for things they did in Iraq”, you never ever see military groups boycotting the picture or demanding the director’s job. We understand that film is an art, and art is protected under freedom of speech. The few who do actually protest the film are often met with the cowardly response “Oh, I see you don’t believe in what you fight for”, which is also the front contender in the field of “Quotes that make me want to punch someone in the face until they look like Clint Howard.”

Ladies…

Now as if picking on the military isn’t bad enough, shows and films have a tendency to make Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder the reason for the soldier to be so evil the first place. It’s like a serious medical handicap has given Hollywood Carte Blanche to make soldiers as vile as humanly possible, all under the guise that they are doing it “to show how hard it is for veterans to adjust”. Steven Hiller from Cracked.com probably worded this American conception best.

“If First Blood, The Deer Hunter, Jarhead, and countless other films have taught us one thing, it’s that every serviceman who has ever set foot in a war zone is just one flashback away from suicide, homelessness, or violent murder. If we’re lucky, he will just quietly drink himself to death. If we’re not, he’s gonna lay a beat down on your ass, because he’s having a violent flashback and thinks you’re the ‘Cong. But while the public understands that most trips to Vegas don’t end in wacky accidental marriages… it’s somehow become general knowledge that the movie image of veterans is pretty spot on.”

Now before you bombard this man for the comment in a firestorm of angry emails, he’s actually writing a satirical observation of American’s conceptions towards Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder because he knows it is BS. But that doesn’t change the fact that Hollywood’s newest trend is beyond offensive. PTSD is a horrendous disorder that has affected countless veterans and many of my friends. It’s a terrible disability that doesn’t get the attention it deserves, but Hollywood thinks it is a great excuse to make veterans rampaging Snidely Whiplash caliber villains.

How could anyone do this in respects to a disability and think it is OK? Imagine if they made a film where the villains were a group of kids affected with Down’s Syndrome? America would lose its’ collective mind. But since the bad guys are just soldiers, well… bring on the Oscars at our expense! As my fellow soldiers return home from multiple deployments we are seeing support, benefits, and programs designed for us drying up at an alarming rate in the last few years, but heaven forbid Hollywood make a film portraying veterans dealing with THIS difficulty of civilian life because we wouldn’t want to hurt the collective ideals of Hollywood and the current administration behind it.

Now luckily we have a few directors in Hollywood who still support us and our way of life, directors like Kathryn Bigelow, Peter Berg, and I can’t believe I’m going to say this, Michael Bay. Yep, the director I rail against more than anyone is one of the soldiers’ biggest supporters (I would also like to take this moment to point out in the most cowardly way possible that I have always defended Bay as a fantastic cinematographer).

Now you may say “But Kyle! The military were the bad guys in The Rock!”. And while OK... yes, it is true that General Hummell and Major Baxter were the masterminds behind the hostage taking, Bay did his damnedest to show that they were in the wrong and did not represent the ideals of the military. Even Navy SEAL Michael Beihn puts him in his place with a lovely little soliloquy in the infamous shower scene…

Well… before he gets murdered that is…

And in the end Hummell and Baxter come to their senses and try to rectify their mistakes. Hummell was just a confused and frustrated man who was fed up with the way the country was dealing with veterans and tried to make it right for his me. He was more of an anti-hero than he was a villain, and in the end he redeemed himself. Now true, the other Marines were the TRUE villains, but their actions, dialogue (I want… my F**KING… MONEY!!!) showed that they never really believed in the military, and as a result, never reflected their values. In the end I don’t have a problem with this film because the level of respect it shows the military is far more apparent than any level of disrespect.

The point is that making military trained veterans the villains in TV shows and films is OK, as long as you go out of your way to explain how they’re crazy people whose ideals don’t reflect the values and ideals of the military. The problem is that this new breed of military villainy is perpetually shown doing their evil deeds because they say they are SUPPORTING the values and ideals of the military and America in general.

Now a few of you may jump in about now and comment “Well Kyle, the director of Non-Stop is French, so he isn’t going to share the same beliefs as an American”, to which I reply “Well then that’s even MORE insulting”, because this film was produced and funded by an American film studio. So now instead of making a statement by taking a dump on what you perceive as another countries’ problems, you do so with their money! It’s like instead of trashing your own house, you go over to a friends’ house who was kind enough to offer you dinner, and then piss on their rug.

I'm actually a little disappointed that Liam Neeson, an actor I've liked and respected for years, didn't stop at some point and say "Wait, what? The villains are who? Why? That's kinda weird Mr. Director man, couldn't we just make them... I don't know... not soldiers?"

Now I could go on and on about the increasing level of disrespect being shown in film, but one thing that’s bothering me more than even this is the increasing amount of disdain and hatred these same films are leveling against the Constitution. Now obviously I’m not a Democrat, but I’m not a Republican either, I’m a Moderate Constitutionalist with some conservative ideals (namely smaller government and the promise of Constitutional rights). But one thing that overrides all of that however, is the vow that I took along with every other service member to uphold the Constitution, so what do these films and TV shows love to do in return? Take potshots at the Constitution.

This is what I find unacceptable.

Movies like Non-Stop love to have the villain be a Constitutionalist because it is a document that ensures people rights that the left does not agree with, so what better way to have the audience hate it than to have the villain misquote and pervert it like a lunatic? A very popular show on CBS called Person of Interest revolves around a group of heroes who seek out terrorists by using the government to illegally wiretap, record, and spy on people, but it’s OK because they’re the good guys everyone! And then last week the “Bad Guys” were… you guessed it… a group of former military Constitutionalists who then violently murder people to “uphold the people’s rights”. The heroes say things like:

“We need this system to weed out the true evil and protect Americans' rights!"

Oh, you mean the system that violates pretty much every right guaranteed to the American people? Yeah, great rationality you got there. Again, I know that Hollywood and the media are liberally biased, but do they really need shows like this to push political agendas like “PRISM is the hero!” and “Your rights aren’t as important as your safety!” or “Don’t listen to the military, they don’t have your interests at heart.” As one final thing, I’d like to point out that while every one of the things supported by this show and others was put in place to “fight terrorism” (PRISM, NDAA, the IRS), the only things they have been used for in real life is targeting their political enemies… just food for thought.

So how can Hollywood get over this little problem and still keep films intact? I’ve thought about it and I’ve come up with a pretty damn good idea. OPERATE IN THE GRAY! Things in Hollywood movies have gotten so black and white that they forget the best films tend to be the ones that work in the middle, with no sides to the story. The best people in show business when it comes to practicing this idea are actually the creators of the greatest satirical program of all time, Matt Parker and Trey Stone. Both of them are very right wing, but watching South Park and their films you wouldn’t even notice it. For every joke about the left, there is a joke about the right. For every jab against Obama, there is a praise. It’s not hard to remain unbiased in Hollywood, as these two have proven time and time again.

Hollywood is getting really comfortable taking shots at the military, and while I can’t really give them too much crap about it for the reasons listed above, I can sure do my part by refusing to watch these movies and hurting their bottom line. I understand that film-making is now a much more world oriented business than it used to be, but do film makers really need to abuse the powers that people like me fought to ensure them? I don’t know, I really do try to keep an unbiased opinion about such things, but I do believe that if I had never enlisted and had lived my life as a civilian, I would still be disgusted by the things they are trying to currently perpetuate.