Sicario, the special forces industrial complex, this bizarre hunger to be at war (or pretend to) 24/7, the obsession to be an “alpha,” it all blends together into a bizarro form of (overcompensating) masculinity
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The number of times I’ve seen this image with “be a wolf,” “the boys and I off to fight evil,” “men want only one thing,” “why men live longer” bla bla bla, dude, your a middle manager at a investment firm
A lot of people don't get that Emily Blunt's character is the humanity in the story, the sense making contact with the nihilistic violence. Because it's a woman they think contempt is appropriate. But her character is braver than most.
She barely survives it physically, thematically doesn't.
I think the second movie is the chud gung ho crap let loose. It doesn't have Villeneuve's sensibility on it and the writer maybe only had one good story in him.
In any given line of work, these types of people want to be an "operator" or James Bond or whatever, but really you're very lucky to be George Smiley and more likely to be... Chad.
real men want nothing more than to go into a dark claustrophobic labyrinth of booby trapped tunnels and engage in brutal close-quarters combat; nothing more soyboy-coded than thinking that would actually be a bad time
It’s because these guys spent their entire lives playing COD and can’t even change a tire so they dress up like soldiers to convince others they’re men. It’s all performance.
They've never been allowed to get into fights, build a business selling candy to other kids, and their parents have pretty much controlled their lives to a T. Most of these kids never even got the chance to work once they turned 16, since adults performed the jobs now instead.
When given the opportunity to learn, and slowly build up their self, they do well. These kids desire to be mentored, and that's why they're drawn towards these scenarios—because these scenarios offer a larger degree of freedom to control their lives than their present lives.
And this is equally true of young women as it is young men. Many of my daughter's friends post and talk about these things. They talk to their parents about the desire to be the characters in movies and video games, post about these ideas in their group chats, make tiktoks about monsters.
if they want to be at war 24/7/365, they should have supported kamala, since they said she was going to draft them (albeit into her they/them army of darkness).
I'm glad you pointed out the Fight-Club'ization of the movie, where the point of the film is missed entirely in exchange for the surface warrior worship, something regarded in the movie as very bad.
As a movie, Sicario does a lot of work to not valorize “operators” or the war on drugs or the feds or local LEOs or intelligence agencies or druglords. The only “hero” is Emily Blunt, who although generally well-meaning is ambitious, naïve, ineffectual, and is being used as a catspaw.
Villeneuve’s talent for, and deep love of, landscapes and natural light gives everything he makes an epic feel - and no one with any real screentime is pure ogre here except Bernthal. But a normal person would rather not be alive than be del Toro’s character.
I think the problem here is that showing someone, anyone in a movie is bound to make some people like them. No matter how much effort you put into making them evil or unlikable or whatever. Why are there so many people saying the empire was right in SW?
I think rather than heroes, it's the fact that both White and Soprano, for a very limited time, did act like men with means, skills, and resourcefulness.
And a lot of young men seem to want that, and I can't really blame them for it.
'being a man' these days is a horrifying empty headed reactionary violent existence, if you listen to the media, and as a man *you should want that*, according to them.
Those values aren't valued by society. If you're polite or honest or upstanding, that's 'gay' now, and our fascist overlords can't have their soldiers being weak and womanly, or questioning things like gender roles, because that's anti traditional, and therefore bad.
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If you're bored, idk, pick up a hobby or something, lol
It ain't the world-at-large's job to provide entertainment for you
She barely survives it physically, thematically doesn't.
I have some Gen Z employees, and it is clear that they've been underserved by the educational system.
And a lot of young men seem to want that, and I can't really blame them for it.
fwiw, Sicario's a complicated movie and I think you're both kind of right
Some wars are necessary and some warriors are heroes.
I do not think Glory or Saving Private Ryan glamorize war qua war.
So these are two different arguments.