What is wrong with people?
I don't know how other people feel but this was a pretty gut wrenching movie.
"Cant' believe how long that was, I almost fell asleep..."
"I thought there would be a lot more action..."
"Why did the Marines have to shoot them so many times? They looked pretty dead (referencing the compound assault..."
Are people really this disconnected to what's really going on?
** Potential Spoilers***
IMHO, the issue with Zero Dark Thirty is if you try to look at it as either a political film or a hard edged docu-drama. It actually is neither.
I find the film is simply internal fan service for Bigelow to project an "avatar" type character and try to mirror her perceptions of herself onto a contemporary topic. It's the only rational explanation for the film.
This is where celebrities, particularly actors and sometimes high profile writers, get themselves into trouble. In some cases, the "avatar" character is in a controlled situation and doesn't particularly damage the narrative. Dr Miranda Bailey from Greys Anatomy is an "avatar" representation of how show runner Shonda Rhimes feels about herself and sees herself. It's why the character is never wrong and the character progressively behaves in an unreal manner. The list is pretty long - Hermoine Granger is an avatar for JK Rowling's Potter series. She at least admits as much, but casted a girl, Emma Watson, far more attractive than what was described in the book, if only for self service. The vampire Lestat is an avatar for writer Anne Rice, which is why the character progressively turned from interesting villain to misunderstood bedrock of pseudo liberal pro homosexuality. Jack Ryan is the fictional version of Tom Clancy, who literally wrote the character into a corner as President because he simply couldn't contain making the character more super hero like.
In ZD30, Jessica Chastain's character, "Maya" is supposed to represent Bigelow. An "interloper" as a woman in a system run by men, for men, and dominated by men, but she carves her place into it anyway because she's smarter, better and more awesome. There is no other reason to explain the amount of torture in the film, which crosses over the line in Hollywood about how hard edge most liberals there would tolerate and actual allow such a bloated stilted poorly paced film to be an Oscar contender. IMHO, Bigelow essentially flushed the rest of her movie making career and what was left of her credibility through Hurt Locker to basically pat herself on the back on camera for three hours.
Maya, proclaims, "I'm the mother ####er who found UBL" to Panetta in a roomful of her superiors. In what could have been conceived in Bigelow's small mind as a high water mark moment where a female character shows shes just as good as the boys, comes off as bizarre and out of touch. It takes some serious arrogance to create a scene where a woman beats her chest and demands her equality when it's her female status in the first place that tempers all the male voices around her to allow it in the first place. I think this is what Bigelow doesn't get. Yes, she's the first woman to win Best Director and nail an Oscar for it. But most of her films were seen as either gifts or influenced by her ex husband, James Cameron, the literal money making printing machine for Hollywood.
The torture doesn't exist to serve the story. The torture exists to show "Maya" can take it like the big boys can and handle anything anyone dishes at her. Then her coworker interrogate her about her social and sex life, where the film devolves into a statement about the sacrifices a woman must make to be a career woman. But the scene is tinged enough to make absolutely sure that the character is not a lesbian, lest anyone pull attention away from her awesomeness. Then the coup de grace shot to the back of the head is the closing scene with the cargo plane lifting off, with one passenger, a crewman noting openly how important she must be and then having Chastain cry, to preserve her feminity in the bask of all her awesomeness. No wonder the movie was so stilted, there was no character development, lest anyone actually outshine the "Maya" avatar.
No wonder some Hollywood major players are furious. Not because of the torture, but because of the double cross. What should have been essentially a straight forward propaganda movie basically turned into Bigelow's three hour opus that reeks of masturbation of her infinite ego.
I get it. You won best director. You are one of the few female directors in Hollywood. But the entire film simply turns into a giant t shirt decrying her own awesomeness in a system designed to make her fail.
So instead of the pro Obama movie to help public sentiment for reelection, promised by major Hollywood players to DC, the film got pushed back release wise, not because of it's potential conflict of liberal interest from objective storytelling, but because it was simply a vanity vehicle that couldn't rely on good pacing, good storytelling and compelling characters because Bigelow has never shown to be able to effectively bring those to screen except when gift wrapped a package like Hurt Locker with Boal writing, Cameron leveraging and an elite young cast who elevated the material into just the right kind of liberal war movie that Hollywood does like.
Typical woman.
It's her world, the rest of us, including UBL, are just passing through. There were probably fifty different ways to have told this story and make it compelling. Instead it serves a proxy for Bigelow to figuratively rub one out for us on screen and demand we thank her for it afterwards. Now Hollywood has to make her pay for this type of high level rope a dope. The major players will smile when Chastain wins Best Actress but are certain to doom Bigelow's opportunities from here on out.
But I agree with you. I have no idea why parents think it's OK to take their kids to age-inappropriate movies.
Is this sentence in English? Cause I can't decipher it.
