5 Kick-Ass Action Movies That Are Pure Propaganda
These days, we don't go for propaganda via posters or showy military parades. No, if you want the populace subdued, you'd better dress up your message with some high-wire kung fu and guys running in slow motion from fireballs.
Some fine examples of thought control via the kick-ass action movie:
On Deadly Ground
The Plot
Steven Seagal IS Forrest Taft, an ex-CIA badass who puts out oil-well fires for a living. How does he put them out? He blows them the fuck up, that's how! But, when his Big Oil employer (Michael Caine) kills Forrest's best friend so that the company can keep letting faulty equipment start deadly oil fires and so they can rip off the local Eskimos in some complicated way, Forrest becomes slightly curious. So, his boss tries to blow him up too.
One Eskimo spirit journey later (he fights a fucking bear) ...
The Message
Big Oil is Bad. Let's Kill the Fuckers.
Think of it as An Inconvenient Truth II: This Time It's Personal. Of course, Seagal is so ahead of his time that he had the idea more than a decade before Al Gore decided that a slideshow about global warming would be a cool thing to put in a movie. Seriously, the movie ends with our hero giving a 3.5-minute speech (we timed it) about the need for alternative-energy sources.
Significant Quote
"How many of you out there have heard of alternative engines? Engines that can run on anything from alcohol to garbage or water. Or carburetors that can get hundreds of miles to the gallon. Or electric or magnetic engines, that can practically run forever. You don't know about them because if they were to come into use, they'd put the oil companies out of business... Big Business is primarily responsible for destroying the water we drink, the air we breathe and the food we eat. They have no care for the world they destroy, only for the money they make in the process." -Forrest Taft
Bonus Message
Eskimos rock, even if we can't tell them apart from the Chinese.
Yeah, But Do They Still Blow Some Shit Up?
Motherfucker, they blow shit up in the first scene. And, the explosions just keep getting bigger from there. For somebody who cares so much about the environment, this Taft guy sure burns a lot of fossil fuels. Add in some solid fight scenes, excellent shoot-outs and enough blood to fill the dolphin tank at Sea World and kill all the fucking dolphins, and you've got one hell of a crazy, dumb action flick.
Red Dawn wasn't PG, it was PG-13. The only reason I know that is because it was the first PG-13 movie ever, cmon cracked, that was an easy one.
ReplyD market suicide bombing in valley of wolves was awesome. Guilty me
Replyshooter was a good one. i think these are all examples of people looking too far into something, and twisting it to what they want to hear or see.
ReplyIf you want to see the funniest bullshit propaganda movie ever
Replygo watch "reefer madness"
It's probably the most ludicrous propaganda I've ever seen.
I hardly think any environmentalist message can be considered propaganda by definition.
Reply Hide All See All 4 Repliespropaganda:
Information, esp. of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
The dissemination of such information as a political strategy.
In order for something to be considered propaganda, it has to be false or misleading and environmental messages are anything but. Propaganda in this case would actually be the opposite. Like how the harper government is hiring oil industry scientists to mislead the public on how damaging the oil sands are to the environment.
I'd definitely consider the anti-communist movies that were listed as pure propaganda, but the only way you can consider environmental messages in a movie as propaganda is if you choose to ignore what every single credible scientist in the field is saying.
It said especially not that it has to be biased or misleading.
Just because some environmental messages are true doesn't mean they all are. There are plenty of environmentalists out there who are complete whackjobs.
hey guys...just because some a*****e spouts some bad figures does NOT render the entire field suspect...that's basically an ad hominem attack, and it is the sign of a weak mind. The scientific consensus IS that ecosystems are being altered in an irreparable manner, and it is not "biased" or "whackjob" to rely on this interpretation, seeing as how these people BY DEFINITION know more about the subject matter than you or I. In short, it's not "environmental propaganda", it's a SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS, and anybody who tells you differently has a political agenda that involves THEIR profit, not yours...
There are some things that have been "biased and misleading" among environmentalist groups, especially concerning fusion. Greenpeace's opposition to ITER is mostly on grounds of "ZOMG we'll get another Chernobyl!" when in fact a Fusion reactor will never, ever do that kind of stuff, simply because there's no "nuclear" fuel used. Radiation is small, and radioactive material inside the reactor decays in a matter of days or even hours. There's a reason I no longer trust Greenpeace...
good article, i hate when i have to go to the next page for every single entry though. it's getting pretty old
ReplyWhat about '300' and 'Avatar'?
ReplyEDIT: ah. Written in 2007. Still, '300' could have made it on.
How is '300' any kind of propaganda?
Any and all articles about Hollywood action movies serving as propaganda FAIL if they don't include Rocky IV.
ReplyI especially like the part where he rolls down the power window in his humvee.
ReplyI hate reading something, that is written as if it was 100% fact, when i KNOW that it is not. This guy hasn't got a clue about the Turks!
ReplyAs far as "Shooter" for Wahlburg's character "Swagger" is pretty accurate.
ReplySwagger is Marine Crops Gunnery Sergeant, putting him around 10 to 12 years of services.
As for Swagger's "swag" and training. Supposedly Oswald who was just a Infantry Rifleman was able to assassinate Kennedy with an old Italian surplus Carcano.
Swagger is also a Marine Scout-Sniper. Scout-Sniper is a Secondary MOS to the primary MOS Infantry or Recon.
It's apparent due to his actions that Swagger was most likely Recon before entering Scout-Sniper School. (He would have enter STA
So we know that Swagger attended Dive School, SERE, SOTG, Airborne School, along with any other courses or schools he chose...and there are plenty.
We know he attend Scout Sniper School, so we can add applicable courses and schools under Swagger's belt.
It is also telling that because Swagger and his spotter were preforming a single team operation in support of a PMC, that Swagger was mostly certainly attached to a SOC or SO unit (Special Operations Capable / Special Operations), which tell us that Swagger chose to attend SF schools while attached to a MEF during his time with Recon.
It really pays to know what you're talking about.
47th samurai is the best book ever.
The f**k does the possible training of a fictional character have to do with this article?
Love the way that in Seagal's speech about alternative engines he refers to engines that run on water or magnets...ie:obviously bogus perpetual-motion, snake oil type ideas that have been roaming the internet and the back pages of magazines for decades. And super-special carburetors sound like bollox to me as well.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesAnd before you berate me for not doing enough RESEARCH to find out the TRUTH about FACTS, take a turbocharged engine, for example. A turbocharger is designed to cram as much air as is feasible into an engine, works by salvaging waste energy from the exhaust and is a hell of a lot more effective than a carburetor. Turbochargers have been around for a long time, are a mature, developed technology (ie: in no way being suppressed by oil companies) but do not give your car 100s of mpg. They do make it more efficient but...well...my point is, STeven has made himself look like somewhat of a fool here.
Right. I've typed too much, now I look like some sort of fanatic.
It's not the amount of typing that gave you away: it's putting words like "facts" and "truth" in all-caps. That just scream fanatic.
Researchers did create a carburetor that gave significantly higher MPG, but it had a tendency to explode.
watch gashole. It's SO interesting, and it shows what jerkoffs big oil companies can be. I'm not saying cars can run on water, they can't. But seriously, watch the movie, if nothing else, it's entertaining, but I really did learn a lot from it. It's on netflix instant.
Heh. They can't run on water themselves, but water can be separated into hydrogen and oxygen, and the H2 can be used as fuel, with water being the "waste" from such an engine. The snake-oil idea you refer to is the "water generator" thingy that supposedly does both the separation and the burning at the same time, generating more energy than what's being used. Which would violate the 2nd Thermodynamics law.
wtf... where's star-ship troopers?
ReplyI think Starship troopers was more a satire. I mean I laughed at it when I was a kid.
Its writer.. heinlein.. was an absolute no bs no apologies believer in fascism. He was also a sexist racist dirtbag. But an awesome scifi writer
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Sure, I'll hit you up- Upside the head with an aluminum bat. Then I will bury you alive in a cornfield.
No Green Zone on this list?
ReplyI was amazed it was not on this list myself. Green Zone was completely Left propaganda, though I do question the merit of occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.
Wait, wait, wait. Die Harder is the second best Die Hard movie?! Die Hard with a Vengeance clearly kicks the s**t out of the second one, and if your favorite in the series isn't the first one I will be truly disappointed in you as a fellow "dumb action movies are awesome" aficionado...
ReplySo true, my friend, so true. Die Harder was okay but it was kind of just a stale carbon copy version of the first one (it's like they said "Let's take this script and put it in an airport instead of a tower." Also, Samuel L and Jeremy Irons were in 3, which is so friggin cool. I think even 4 is better than 2.
WOLVERINES!!!!
ReplyAll the videos in this article are disabled
ReplyI'm so sick of these action movies where some lone guy tears straight through impossibly superior forces because he's so f*****g magical. Even when there's some sense of support, he gets sent in alone because only he is up to the task of making no sense. Then sometimes they catch on to the idea that maybe soldiers don't fight alone, so they send in a team of like, 5 guys. 10 at the most. They act as human shields until the hero gets to finish it alone, just as he always should have.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI wish I could blame someone convenient like America (or France, because I blame France *for* America), but I'm pretty sure that just about everyones responsible for this absurd view of heroism.
Waaaaahhhh. What a dumb thing to get mad about.
No one with any sense watches these type of movies expecting reality. In fact, the whole point is to watch something that supersedes reality. I want the hero to be beyond this world (and yet almost believable). These are not documentaries and they're not meant to be.
Why the hell do you think James Bond and Indiana Jones are so popular? It's because in real life you know they'd get killed a hundred times over. Well that plus they get all the good chicks and punch commies and nazis.