I was thinking about some movies I liked as a child a few days ago, one of which is Mighty Ducks. I was mentally going through the story and it occurred to me the way they got Adam Banks on their team. Basically they invoked an obscure districting rule to force a middle school age child to change teams in the name of poaching the other team’s best talent. Isn’t that just AWFUL? They didn’t ask what was best for Adam, they forcefully separated a kid from his friends because it was just that important for Emilio Estevez to win a youth hockey title and avenge his childhood failure. What other films have things in them that seemed normal at the time but when you think about you realize how awful it was?
Taxi Driver comes to mind. Travis/DeNiro was on the trajectory of a violent killing spree of the politician but then ends up becoming the unlikely hero. The sum total of insomnia, detachment and rage: disgust for Travis turns to admiration. Many viewers interpret the ending as a fantasy as it doesn't match the rest of the film... but yeah, the more you reflect on Taxi Driver after watching it... the more you think about it, the more awful(ly brilliant) it is.
Real Genius was fun romp... but now that I've worked for a US military contractor for 37 years, I'm pretty sure those self-righteous little bastards committed treason and sabotaged a United States military test program.
I think that was supposed to come off as horrific and be a comment on public perception of heroism. The same inner violence and insanity is either perceived as a crazy assassin or a vigilante hero depending on the perceived legitimacy of the evil being fought. But I agree the first time you see the movie it’s easy to focus only on the fact the girl was rescued and not think about that.
Not a movie, well it was but I'm more thinking about the TV series but I watch the way Hawkeye and Trapper degrade Frank in M*A*S*H now and it isn't funny. Plus some of their heavy handed politicising doesn't strike the same notes anymore.
Any part of Batman Returns. As a seven year old 'Batman is awesome!!!' and everything is fine. As an adult I'm like 'damn, I watched this as a child'.
I don’t remember that well but probably, he’s a movie villain. Even so. His motives weren’t to save him from a jerk coach, they were to win. And separating a child from his friends can be worse than an overbearing authority figure.
What about the attempted rape and incest in Back to the Future? Not to mention the underage drinking and drug use....
That is defending the action based on the consequences. The other team were kids movie bad guys, so they are by nature going to be jerks about everything. All the information the characters had at the time is that Banks was the star, and that neither he nor his parents wanted him to change teams. The result was good, cause it’s a kids movie, but the action in and of itself was still pretty terrible. Agree about BTTF, as a kid it didn’t sink in that his plan was to pretend to try to rape his mother so his father can swoop in and save her.
The Harry Potter 'verse: with all their magic, wizards could stop all of Earth's wars by easily apprehending any and all tyrants, and handing them over to the Hague. The fact that they choose isolationism, except when potential wizards are born to Muggles, makes them... not really heroes at all. Oh, wait, this thread is about stuff we realized in retrospect, rather than at the ti-
This is especially true in the film. Frank, played by Robert Duvall, was an incompetent bully. He nearly drives Bud Cort's character Boone to suicide by belittling him and accusing him of killing a patient after Frank can't figure out how to prevent the patient's turn for the worse until drastic intervention becomes necessary, and blaming Boone for Frank not having the right medical tools on hand to fix the problem when Frank should have had them with him to begin with. This is played much more for laughs in the series, but scenes like this one are the origin of the contempt for Frank many of the other cast, not just Hawkeye and Trapper, have. In both versions Frank Burns shouldn't be a frontline surgeon, as he isn't qualified.
I haven't read Harry Potter so can't comment on specifics. But you could make the Star Trek argument for that. Exercising that kind of power may be well intentioned but it's impossible to hold that kind of control over people without doing awful things or limiting freedoms, so it would make them into a tyrannical master race.
^ Maybe, except in this analogy, Starfleet would be actively recruiting unusually bright individuals from Prime Directive-protected planets.
Yeah I sort of get the justification of why Hawkeye and Trapper insulted the crap out of Frank but it makes me cringe now. You know when someone hates the behaviour of say a Frank. Frank is a bully, so if the better way is to bully Frank too isn't that just perpetuating the behaviour? Frank was an incompetent doctor with military rank. Hawkeye was an excellent doctor but a smartarse.
I have mixed feelings about the above. Bombay was kinda a jerk for about the first half of the movie in a number of ways, and some of his dialogue during the scenes in question certainly read that way. On the other hand, everybody in the situation - including the coach and the dad - agreed that legally Adam continuing to play for the Hawks would have been wrong (the best that they could negociate was a temp exemption which Bombay had to agree to), and Bombay was fine with Adam stopping playing - he was merely protecting his players' interests by minimising the opposition against them. It was Adam's decision to go against his father's wishes ("my son would rather not play than play for District5") to play for the Ducks, because he "just wanted to play hockey".
I think if the same situation happened in real life they'd have negotiated an exception for the child's best interest. And even if you can argue that Bombay was a jerk and things worked out for him in the long term, it's hard to argue that the motives were to act in Adam' best interest.
Caught part of American Pie on cable a few weeks ago - hadn't watched it in years. The whole Nadia webcam incident seemed funny at the time the movie was released, but now it just reeks of lack of consent. Although, I guess it depends on when she noticed the webcam after entering the room.