If we learned nothing from the MOVIE version of "Sum of All Fears" it is that our biggest threat is from neo-nazi right winters (e.g. the GOP).

Ignore the BOOK version of "Sum of All Fears" which (racism?) depicts peaceful Muslims plotting to kill large numbers of Americans in a public place.

Boosting military morale at the cost of upsetting the loons on the left? Unthinkable!

The dude is fifty-eight, it should be set in a nursing home. He could have a set of "survival dentures," with waterproof matches and a wire saw hidden on the inside.

Hollywood subscribes to the Nigel Tufnel Plan when dealing with our enemies:

Nigel Tufnel: Look... still has the old tag on, never even played it.
Marty DiBergi: [points his finger] You've never played...?
Nigel Tufnel: Don't touch it!
Marty DiBergi: We'll I wasn't going to touch it, I was just pointing at it.
Nigel Tufnel: Well... don't point! It can't be played.
Marty DiBergi: Don't point, okay. Can I look at it?
Nigel Tufnel: No. no. That's it, you've seen enough of that one.

I love the fact that Stallone is writing and directing a biopic about Edgar Allen Poe.

Why not just cut to the chase and have Rambo vs. the Nazis.

Well at least lets hope the White Supermacists all have English accents. You can't be a good Nazi without one.

In this installment, John Rambo has been living a domestic life with a wife and a 10-year-old daughter, but when he moves to the countryside, white supremacists object to the presence of their new part-Navajo neighbor and kidnap his daughter, forcing the former Green Beret to mount a rescue operation.

Isn't this Steven Seagal's shtick? Who want's to bet that these white bigots are being led by either a) rich businessman or b) rich, corrupt politician?

''It's a franchise,'' explains Nu Image/Millennium chief Avi Lerner in his studio's statement. ''If No. 4 works, then you have a No. 5.''

Rambo #5 will have Steven Seagal teaming up with John Rambo to drive off all whitefolk out of the US, and return the land back to Native Americans.

Ass-stabbing goodness!

Lethal Weapon, again? Is the Navajo guy going to retire from his job just a few days before his daughter is kidnapped?

And why does it always have to be a daughter? Wouldn't the kidnapping of a son by repressed gay Nazis be more horrifying for all of the macho action-movie-loving guys out there?

Good point Sue.

How about nazi trannies.
Really good-looking nazi trannies.

That'll scare em.

"How about nazi trannies."

If they're type-casting I know somebody who could play that role.

Ooo, lauraw, that's a good one! You're so evil. :D

Brewfan, shhhhh
ROFL

Thanks Sue ;)

How about if stalone makes a movie about a hypocrite that dodges the draft to avoid fighting in the Vietnam war, heads over to Europe and makes porno films to support himself until it's safe to return to the U.S. and then proceeds to make films where he portrays a brave and honorable man. Oh wait, thats right, that would be his BIOGRAPHY.

Evan Kirchoff has a hilarious rant about this at his blog:

Of course nothing taps into "rah-rah nationalist fervor" like a movie pointing out that all regions of America's red states more than 50 yards from a Whole Foods are crawling with Nazi hicks. Sieg heil, Jesuslanden! Also, please give us your money!

What would be so cool is if Rambo teams up with Billy Jack to kick all that white supremicist ass they run into.

I want to say I don't necessarily mind White Supremacists getting their asses kicked. Dead Bang -- featuring an actual near-great performance by Don Johnson, of all people -- featured White Supremacists as bad guys, and it was great seeing them get popped.

However:

1) It is annoying that Hollywood can't make anyone except neo-Nazis the villains.

2) It's getting old.

3) They say they don't want to "demonize" Muslims, but of course they're just demonizing Muslim *extremists* when they feature terrorists as villains. If you can demonize white extremists, why not Muslim extremists? They deserve to be demonized; they are demons.

4) I do appreciate that one should be careful about negatively portraying even villainous members of a minority group-- yeah, bad people can get bad ideas. But Hollywood trafficks in bad ideas all the time, ideas that sometimes result in deaths (Natural Born Killers, anyone?), and they say that it's more important to make art than to avoid such bad ideas.

Can't have it both ways.

5) Ten years ago, for some reason, Slavs suddenly became the go-to bad guys, and EVERYFUCKINGMOVIE featured Slavic bad guys. Yeah, they're white, but they're also an easily-identifiable ethnic minority. Why no Hollywood love for the Slavs?

6) There's no getting around this: Almost all neo-Nazis and White Supremacists are irredeemably stupid, and thus not really very good bad guys. Yes, there are some bright ones, and sure, you can have the one smart one as the main villain, but most White Supremacists are fairly pitiful people. Hans Gruber they're not.

7) Which leads me to my conclusion: If you need bad guys, and you can't abide making them some sort of protected minority, make them South African white mercenaries or former Russian special forces soldiers who've now turned to gangster-style crime and armed robbery to pay the bills. At least with such bad guys there's the feeling that they might actually be competent and have more than eight teeth in their heads.

Just please-- enough with the White Supremacists. It's pandering politics.

Actual politics is a tricky business in movies. Some movies need a political motivation for the Big Bad Thing That Will Happen Unless The Hero Stops It (the Peacemaker, for example), but most don't actually require any political motivation. Die Hard sure proved that with a vengeance.

The weakest entry in the series -- Die Hard 2 -- came closest to actual politics (sort of), and it was just sort of silly. The other two featured bad guys with no political interest at all (although they pretended to have some), and they were better, partly because of that.

Bad guys are bad guys because they kill people, commit serious crimes, and oppose the Good Guy. You don't need to give them some bad political motivation to make an audience dislike them; people will dislike them just because they're giving Travolta/Cruise/Willis/Stallone etc. such a hard time.

Here's a general problem though with real-world politics in action movies. And this sort of makes Muslim extremists unsatisfying bad guys too:

Real world problems can only be solved by real world solutions. Action movies are fantasy movies, providing fantasy world solutions. When a fantasy movie tries to mix in real world politics, there's something just off about it. It doesn't work.

I liked First Blood (loved it at the time), and actually enjoyed Rambo III (the funnest movie of the bunch). But I hated Rambo: First Blood Part II. (Trivia: There was no Rambo II.) And I hated it because it featured a real-world problem (possible POW's still being held in Vietnam) being solved by a cartoonish superhero.

As Superman IV --horrid for a hundred reasons -- featured the real-world problem of nuclear weapons being solved by a cartoon hero.

It just doesn't work. Medicine Man didn't do well at the box office, and I never saw it, but I bet if I did I'd've been annoyed that a serious problem -- cancer -- was being solved, or almost solved, by a silly action-adventure hero.

Because of that, maybe Muslim jihadists wouldn't work now in a comic/cartoonish action-adventure movie; maybe that threat is too real. Maybe it worked in Executive Decision because the threat was still perceived as being largely hypothetical.

But how about a gritty war movie, guys? Or a somewhat-realistic special-forces movie?

No, wait-- can't promote war. Not during a Republican administration.

(Yes, I know: Tears of the Sun. Decent movie. But I haven't seen many others in this vain.)

My all time favorite smack-down of a white supremacist villain was Henry Gibson in The Blues Brothers.

Ok, I know he was actually a neo-Nazi. And it was a comedy. I just had to say something.

I hate Illinois Nazis.

Bad guys are bad guys because they kill people, commit serious crimes, and oppose the Good Guy. You don't need to give them some bad political motivation to make an audience dislike them; people will dislike them just because they're giving Travolta/Cruise/Willis/Stallone etc. such a hard time.

Right fucking wing? I had no idea. I don't recall any reference to the guy's fucking politics. I should pay more attention. This means the character Stryker, played by Brian Cox, must have been really bad. Not just a diabolic, megalomaniacal killer, a right wing diabolic, megalomaniacal killer.

[slaps self on forehead]

Yes, I really should pay more attention. Because the movie would have so much more exciting had I realized at the time the bad guy was a right winger.