Comments on "Action Movies" - Faerye Net

Re: Hopelessness

2003-07-15T19:54:36+00:00

I remember asking my Dad what the big deal was about the Russians getting a sports car (eleven-year-old me thinking that a coup d’etat was some sort of automobile). Beleive it or not, I still have a copy of the map that The Oregonian ran a few days after the whole shift from Communism, showing each of the new countries (my favorite: Kyrgyzistan) and who had which warheads, and all sorts of other interesting newsy information.

Re: Hopelessness

2003-07-15T13:30:50+00:00

Dude, I only had Star Wars figures. The Empire will be your enemy forever. At least they’re dependable.

Re: Hopelessness

2003-07-15T12:58:13+00:00

The Cold War was great. When I was a kid playing soldier or pitting GI Joes against one another, the badguys were always Russians. Russians were the ultimate evil. Then when Dad told me the Russians were our friends, I was so confused. I couldn’t figure out who the enemy should be. I had to send my GI Joes through a time portal to World War II so they could fight Germans and Japanese. Luckily, Desert Storm came along and soon my GI Joes were fighting Iraqis and shooting down Scuds.

[mild Aliens SPOILERS] Re: Hopelessness

2003-07-15T12:45:19+00:00

Hmm. I don’t really get that from those movies—maybe because the characters DON’T give up, so it seems like an affirmation of hope. But I guess I see what you mean. By the time Newt falls through the air-wheel you’re just going “they’re never getting out of there!” I guess what comes after just changes the tenor of the bad situation for me.

What I miss is cold war movies. “Terminator” and even T2 make me remember how, when I was a child, I really believed the world could end tomorrow. Every time I saw a cartoon of a mushroom cloud (thanks a lot, Gary Larsen!) I remembered that my life could be snuffed out any moment by war. What’s worse, I didn’t really understand nukes, so my mental image of “the world after nuclear holocaust” was literally our planet with bites taken out of it, an apple core world. Terrifying. At any rate, I feel that menace in the Terminator movies. That sense that life, happiness, prosperity, is on loan, and any moment the gods of war will collect.

Why the hell do I miss that??

Hopelessness

2003-07-15T12:14:10+00:00

If there’s one consistent theme that runs through James Cameron’s pre-True Lies action movies, it’s hopelessness. I remember watching Aliens and thinking to myself “My God, if I was in a situation as hopeless as that, I’d probably just find a quiet corner and stop breathing.” That made watching those movies really stressful for me, since I have a habit of imagining myself in other peoples’ shoes.

For some reason they don’t make many movies like that anymore. I think I miss them.