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marbleglove
Okay, so I went to see The Bourne Legacy this weekend. It was fun, even though, wow, it had more than a few flaws. One of which is not really a spoiler but Jeremy Renner should never, ever have facial hair. Luckily, the facial hair doesn't last long.
Anyway, the rest of this is a rant that is maybe spoiler-y? Given that it's about a recent release, I'll put the rant behind a cut.
In any good action movie, there are good guys and there are bad guys. And sometimes it's not that easy to tell them apart, so you just root for whichever team is wearing the color you like best. And that's fine. Okay. I have no problem with random people beating up on each other in pretty ways in Hollywood movies. However, there are some things that define good guys and some things that define bad guys and you can't just switch them around.
Cracked, had an awesome list (pretty much all their lists are awesome) called 6 Tricks Movies Use to Make Sure You Root for the Right Guy. But this is for when there's no noticeable difference between the good guys and the bad guys.
Do not go and try to tell me that a Nazi doctor is a good guy or that Marta Shearing wasn't a fucking Nazi doctor. If Aaron Cross wants to use a Nazi doctor to get what he needs, then more power to him, especially when her equally-evil coworkers are turning against her. But do not try to convince me that she's a good guy because, what, she's pretty? Her equally evil coworkers are trying to get rid of her? She didn't realize that human-subject experimentation where she's not allowed to publish and the "participants" are called by number and never ever treated as human wasn't ethical? She's shocked and horrified that the people she's experimenting on are people? That when you are working on programming people to attack on command, those programs could be turned against you? That's not innocence. That's stupidity. So she's a willfully stupid Nazi doctor. She does not get to defend herself by saying it was "for science!" If she were a proper scientist she would understand about ethics, about the scientific community, about informed consent, and about consequences.
She's a crap scientist and she's a crap human being.
And okay, yeah, my rant is definitely spoilery, so it's a good thing that I put in the cut.
And another thing: when Aaron Cross told her she was a warrior and could manage on her own if she needed to...? I can only assume that that was evidence that he was hallucinating pretty severely.
Anyway, despite the awfulness of the female lead (and the weird bait-and-switch bad guy of the later half of the movie), the I still enjoyed the vast majority of the movie. Jeremy Renner is awesome, and I love the backstory for his character and his motivations. Clearly some script writer had read Flowers for Algernon, but it just worked so very well to make him sympathetic. I just wish the plot had hung together a bit better, they hadn't decided the original bad guy was too hard to fight and so introduced a different bad guy with no back-story at all half-way through, and that the love interest hadn't been such a miserable person. I just really wanted Aaron Cross to get what he needed from her and then get rid of her.
I will console myself with the thought that maybe he is sailing off into the sunset with her as a ruse for getting her back onto US soil and turning her over to the proper authorities for questioning and then charging with suitable crimes. He could continue to be the good guy by making sure the authorities he gives her to are the ones that will actually charge her with her crimes rather than kill her in order to cover their own.
Anyway, good guys versus bad guys. Make sure you understand the difference.
Anyway, the rest of this is a rant that is maybe spoiler-y? Given that it's about a recent release, I'll put the rant behind a cut.
In any good action movie, there are good guys and there are bad guys. And sometimes it's not that easy to tell them apart, so you just root for whichever team is wearing the color you like best. And that's fine. Okay. I have no problem with random people beating up on each other in pretty ways in Hollywood movies. However, there are some things that define good guys and some things that define bad guys and you can't just switch them around.
Cracked, had an awesome list (pretty much all their lists are awesome) called 6 Tricks Movies Use to Make Sure You Root for the Right Guy. But this is for when there's no noticeable difference between the good guys and the bad guys.
Do not go and try to tell me that a Nazi doctor is a good guy or that Marta Shearing wasn't a fucking Nazi doctor. If Aaron Cross wants to use a Nazi doctor to get what he needs, then more power to him, especially when her equally-evil coworkers are turning against her. But do not try to convince me that she's a good guy because, what, she's pretty? Her equally evil coworkers are trying to get rid of her? She didn't realize that human-subject experimentation where she's not allowed to publish and the "participants" are called by number and never ever treated as human wasn't ethical? She's shocked and horrified that the people she's experimenting on are people? That when you are working on programming people to attack on command, those programs could be turned against you? That's not innocence. That's stupidity. So she's a willfully stupid Nazi doctor. She does not get to defend herself by saying it was "for science!" If she were a proper scientist she would understand about ethics, about the scientific community, about informed consent, and about consequences.
She's a crap scientist and she's a crap human being.
And okay, yeah, my rant is definitely spoilery, so it's a good thing that I put in the cut.
And another thing: when Aaron Cross told her she was a warrior and could manage on her own if she needed to...? I can only assume that that was evidence that he was hallucinating pretty severely.
Anyway, despite the awfulness of the female lead (and the weird bait-and-switch bad guy of the later half of the movie), the I still enjoyed the vast majority of the movie. Jeremy Renner is awesome, and I love the backstory for his character and his motivations. Clearly some script writer had read Flowers for Algernon, but it just worked so very well to make him sympathetic. I just wish the plot had hung together a bit better, they hadn't decided the original bad guy was too hard to fight and so introduced a different bad guy with no back-story at all half-way through, and that the love interest hadn't been such a miserable person. I just really wanted Aaron Cross to get what he needed from her and then get rid of her.
I will console myself with the thought that maybe he is sailing off into the sunset with her as a ruse for getting her back onto US soil and turning her over to the proper authorities for questioning and then charging with suitable crimes. He could continue to be the good guy by making sure the authorities he gives her to are the ones that will actually charge her with her crimes rather than kill her in order to cover their own.
Anyway, good guys versus bad guys. Make sure you understand the difference.
