Films with questionable messages

[KJ]

Another one: Ghost:
Patrick Swayze kills two people and still gets to go toward the light? I'm pretty sure several religions have a bone to pick with that...

[Drezzy]

Hamill in anything but Time Runner is proof that Lucas is a pretty good director,  but nothing extraordinary. C'mon! The Guyver was a good Hamill performance, if only for the over-the-top cheesiness he purposefully provided!

Plus, the guy's a God at doing cartoon voices.

[Fearless Freep]

Plus, the guy's a God at doing cartoon voices.

That he is, that he is.  Should've skipped "Laserblast" and gone straight to The Joker :)  

I had a hard time taking *anything* serious in "The Guyver"

[Squishy]

This is how good Mark Hamill's Joker is: he's voicing over the onscreen actor who plays Mr. J for a few seconds of "Birds of Prey," premiering this Wednesday.

Fearless, it's a trivial thing, but Hamill was in "Laserhawk." "Laserblast" was that awful flick about the kid and his space bazooka who gets kilt by the unshelled turtle-people from the planet Lite-Brite. (It's reviewed here at BMO. Hoorah!) And "Lightblast" was a turdy Eric Estrada movie about a beam that melts people. And "Nighthawks" was a Sylvester Stallone cop movie. In approximately five hours, the last possible variant movie title ("Blasthawk") will be copyrighted and every computer in the world will promptly explode.

Fun moment: Hamill seems to accidentally "drop" his toon-voice for one line in "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm." He doesn't sound like the Joker at all, he sounds like Luke Skywalker. Now THAT's creepalicious.

[Pokethulhu]

How about "Lost World" (Jurassic Park 2) ?

- It's all right to get lots of people killed, as long as the animals are fine.

- Being an Earth-First-Dude makes you a moraly superior good guy, even if your actions result in quite a body-count.

Also a nice turn in Goldblum's Malcolm-character from "you're one sick idiot for bringing dinosaurs to live" to "dinos are all natural and catching them is really, really mean".

Nice contrast to "Ghostbusters" though.

[Fearless Freep]

Fearless, it's a trivial thing, but Hamill was in "Laserhawk." "Laserblast" was that awful flick about the kid and his space bazooka who gets kilt by the unshelled turtle-people from the planet Lite-Brite. (It's reviewed here at BMO. Hoorah!

*Doh*

I've seen both movies so that's probably why I messed up the name.

[Neville]

Working girl: Don't worry if you are overexploited and underrated at your job just for being a woman, sleeping with your boss will solve all those nasty problems.

Thelma and Louise: Once a woman has known personal freedom and realisation, there's no way she can be reenter male ruled society, so it is better to commit suicide, if possible in slow motion and in a picturesque landscape.


And this ones were suppossed to be  feminist flicks? It is nauseating.

[Luke Bannon]

Neville wrote:

> And this ones were suppossed to be  feminist flicks? It is
> nauseating.

Totally agree with you.

I also agree with the Mark Hamill being awesome as a voice artist.

[Akira Tubo]

Maybe a little off-topic, but there was an episode of Deep Space 9 with a questionable message.  (Ok, more than one episode but this one is the one I remember the best.)

The episode was about a woman from a planet with low gravity, so low people literally float around.  She was a metaphor for the disabled about as subtle as a whack on the face with a 2x4 with "METAPHOR FOR DISABLED" written on it.  The episode was mostly about her overcoming adversity and the condescending helpfulness of others (i.e. doing things for her when it would actually be within her abilities and to her benefit to do them heself).  The message, at first glance, would seem to be "You are only as disabled as you make yourself."

However, let us examine that a little.  Her body wouldn't even function in our gravity.  She'd die almost as soon as she stepped into it.  She really *is* disabled in our environment and there's nothing she can do about it.  It's a simple fact, not discrimination.

Furthermore, after she overcomes all sorts of obstacles and proves to everyone and herself that she's not a helpless little cripple . . . SHE GIVES UP AND GOES HOME!   Star Trek, from TNG forward, p**ses me off quite a bit with its overly-simplistic and ofttimes misdirected morality messages but this got me going like little else.  Why?  Because, with her taking that action, the message actually is:

"No matter how much you think you contribute, you're just getting in the way because of your disability.  Sit at home and let the normal people do everything."

F#$%ing Star Trek.

[D]

You know that reminds of a Star Trek TNG episode. i can't remember what the name was, it went something like this
There are some aliens, and they are convinced that wrap drive is bad, stating how there is a slim chance that going really fast in space will somehow mess everything up. While everyone is talking about it, one of the aliens decide to prove his point by blowing up a shuttle, which causes all the damage his race was talking about to actaully happen. And nobody seems all that upset at what the fool did. isn't that like saying:"I'll prove how dangerous this gun is by shooting myself in the head"
Anyway, that's just my thoughts on that

[AndyC]

D wrote:
> You know that reminds of a Star Trek TNG episode. i can't
> remember what the name was, it went something like this
> There are some aliens, and they are convinced that wrap drive
> is bad, stating how there is a slim chance that going really
> fast in space will somehow mess everything up

Ohhhhh, I hated that episode. Somehow, in all the vastness of space, enough ships were passing over the same spot at warp to wear down the space there. What a crock.

If that wasn't bad enough, this was in a show that had space being bent, folded and twisted in all kinds of ways, with no ill effects.

Worst of all, at a time when environmentalism was fashionable, and I'm was beaten over the head by the evils of cars (which I was really into at that time), suddenly even Geordi LaForge can't enjoy his warp engines without having guilt trip laid on him. So much for Roddenberry's dream of a clean, efficient and relatively safe means of space travel.

Funny though, we never heard anything more about that problem, or the ridiculous speed limit that was stuck on the galaxy at the end of the episode.

[J.R.]

The Cider House Rules- Abortion saves the day!

The Other Sister- The mentally disabled are just as sex-crazed as everyone else. Also, the only problem they really have is that they talk very, very slowly.

Any Julia Roberts movie- The world is a fabulous wonderland of happiness and fun as long as you're Julia Roberts.

[Cullen]

Any Julia Roberts movie- The world is a fabulous wonderland of happiness and fun as long as you're Julia Roberts.

That was the message of Michael Collins and Mary Reilly ?  :-)

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Cullen, SA at large.

[D]

How about Fatal Attraction? It's ok for a man to sleep around, and if the other woman gets pregant, then have your wife kill her.

Breeders-once a woman is raped (and turned into a lesbian) they are useless and there is only one humane thing left to do...DEEP FRY 'EM!

[Chadzilla]

Sudden Impact - It's okay, in fact down right honorable, to go off on a vigilante killing spree (Gee Harry, get a piece and you go all soft, maybe the Vigilante Cops in Magnum Force didn't misjudge you).

Pretty Woman - Being a Hooker will land you the man of your dreams!  (Been said, but I just wanted to write it down myself)