WARNING! THE FOLLOWING MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR UNRELEASED MOVIES! I have attempted to edit them out. - BI


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Hollywood's New War Effort: Terrorism Chic
Jason Apuzzo (archive)


August 10, 2005

Slow to awaken after the 9/11 attacks, Hollywood has finally come around to contributing what it can in the War on Terror: namely, glossy, star-studded movies that sympathize with the enemy.

Here are just a few films already in the pipeline:

"V For Vendetta." From Warner Brothers and the creators of "The Matrix" comes this film about a futuristic Great Britain that's become a 'fascist state.' A masked 'freedom fighter' named V uses terror tactics (including bombing the London Underground) to undermine the government - leading to a xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Natalie Portman stars as a skinhead who turns to 'the revolution' after doing time as a Guantanamo-style prisoner.

- "Munich." Steven Spielberg directs this film about the aftermath of the 1972 Olympic terror attacks that killed eleven Israeli athletes. "Munich"'s screenplay is written by playwrite Tony Kushner ("Angels in America"), who has been quoted as saying: "I think the founding of the state of Israel was for the Jewish people a historical, moral, political calamity ... I wish modern Israel hadn¹t been born." The film focuses on the crisis of conscience undergone by Israeli commandos tasked with killing PLO terrorists - rather than on the barbarity of the terrorists themselves.

- "Untitled Oliver Stone 9/11 Project." Paramount will distribute Oliver Stone's new film recounting the rescue of two Port Authority officers after the 9/11 attacks. The film will star Nicholas Cage and Maggie Gyllenhaal - who recently suggested that America was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

As for Stone, he had this to say only a month after 9/11: "This attack was pure chaos, and chaos is energy. All great changes have come from people or events that were initially misunderstood, and seemed frightening, like madmen."

"Syriana." Starring George Clooney and Matt Damon, this Warner Brothers film - set during the first Bush administration - features a plot by American oil companies and the U.S. government to redraw Middle East borders for greater oil profiteering. The film even depicts a handsome, 'tragic' suicide bomber driven to jihad after being fired by an American oil company! The film's climax xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
as American oil barons and Saudi officials look on.

"The Scorpion's Gate." Sony has optioned former terrorism-czar Richard Clarke's novel about oil companies and Washington politicians colluding to reshape the map of the Middle East for greater oil profiteering -xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

"The Chancellor Manuscript." Paramount reworks Robert Ludlum¹s 1977 thriller into an anti-Patriot Act star vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio. Here's the film's screenwriter, Michael Seitzman: "We live in this crazy post-Patriot Act environment where Benjamin Franklin¹s warning that 'those that give up essential liberties for temporary security don¹t deserve either one' are being ignored, so the subject matter seemed ripe."

"No True Glory: The Battle for Fallujah." Universal has attached Harrison Ford to star as real-life General Jim Mattis - in this story blaming the White House for the deaths of fifty Marines in one of the Iraq war's deadliest battles. Based on the book of the same name by Bing West.

"American Dreamz." This 'satire' from Universal Pictures deals with Pakistani suicide bombers out to kill the US president. The film stars Hugh Grant, Richard Dreyfuss, Willem Dafoe and Mandy Moore. According to writer-director Paul Weitz ("American Pie"), "The film is a comic examination of ... cultural obsessions" like the War on Terror "and how they can anaesthetise us to the actual issues of our day."

"Terminus." Set in the Middle East of the future, this Warner Brothers film depicts a 'disillusioned' war correspondent covering an 'insurgency' he decides he must support. The producer, Basil Iwanyk, says: "It deals head on with what some call insurgency, what some call guerilla warfare and what some call freedom fighting."

"Jarhead." This Universal release, starring Jamie Foxx and Jake Gyllenhaal, deals with the 'dehumanization' of Marine trainees prior to and during the 1991 Gulf War. Based on Andrew Swofford's notorious and questionable memoirs of the same name.

The above list, incidentally, should not be taken as comprehensive. For example, Paramount also has projects in the works about a 'reformed' al-Qaeda operative, and about the victim of an Iraqi suicide bomber. Little about these projects has been made public.


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And they say hollywood isn't liberal.

I can't wait, only thing crazier then fiction is reality.

Well, you can gloat if the movies don't do good box. If they do, then I see it as the pendulum swinging back from movies being pulled or delayed after 9/11 because they might have had a bomb attack or plane crash depicted in them.

Jarhead looks really damn good. It is from the director of American Beauty and Road to Perdition. There is a trailer floating around. I think it is way to early for this guy to start judging the content of these films. None of these films may be the traditional pro American war flick, but that doesn't neccasarily mean they will all be handled in an overly biased fashion.

Here is the Jarhead trailer

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/jarhead.html

Not to mention the fact that many pro-American movies are made every single year in which the foreigners are demonized. None of these movies look particularly preachy to me, and all seem pretty interesting. It's called art for a reason, and not everything is politics.

All of those movies look interesting except for Syriana.

At the very least, they look more interesting than most of the current remake/sequel-crazy crap that the industry's been pumping out recently.

but hang on

V for vendetta was written long before sept 11 / Iraq....