I like Bone Tomahawk and was willing to give the guy a pass;
Then I saw the Puppet Master movie he wrote, a goofy series usually about dolls killing Nazis and he made the puppets Nazis themselves and it was just one of the most mean spirited movies I'd ever seen.
I can see making a western racist on accident but that Puppet Master thing rubbed me the wrong way enough to read what his other flicks were about and Yeah, none of this shit sounds interesting or fun and with leads like Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn it's easy as hell to avoid lol
What convinced me was the bit in in Dragged Across Concrete when a character turns to the camera and goes "Being called a racist, even for being massively racist, and doing highly racist things, is the worst thing ever. Also don't record cops."
God, I am so tired of having to “debate” with horror fans that insist that the troglodytes in bone tomahawk aren’t meant to be native Americans, despite the name of the movie being BONE TOMAHAWK
For the first couple films (& books) I gave too much good faith in this, that he was trying to portray a type of person or politics without endorsing it. But nieveity in me died & tinted glasses off, anyone can see the deep racism & misogyny that informs and celebrated in his art.
It really ain't though.
As fan I think taking the goofy novelty series about dolls killing Nazis, making *them* Nazis and all their targets being minorities killed off in mean spirited ways is deeply insulting to the brand generally and not a fun flick to sit through specifically
It's funny because it's probably one of the more technically competent films in that series but it's written by a guy who...
I just keep coming back to mean spirited. Like it's just petty, bigoted and cruel in ways that aren't fun to watch.
I had some idiot try to argue with me that Zahler's movies aren't exactly that a few months ago. "How are his movies right wing propaganda?" I don't know man, maybe try watching them.
I think I can put it into words: all of Zahler's characters are terrible, racist, misogynist, violent people, but something in the lives of the white protagonists has shaped them into racists while the minorities simply are ontologically bad.
Mel Gibson's wife didn't want to be racist, but she had to be, because some BLACK teens threw some soda on her daughter. And that means they were going to rape her!
Dragged Across Concrete has an entire monologue about how "being called racist is like being called a communist in the days of McCarthy" even if it's "an indelicate remark in a private phone call"! As though we can't see Mel sitting right there!
Between playing the racist police chief in DAC, a Klan member in Django Unchained, a Klan member police chief in Watchmen, and a racist rich guy in Knives Out, I'm starting to have some questions about Don Johnson.
i love that bone tomahawk has a native american bit character whose existence is solely to fend off criticisms that the troglodyte monsters totally aren't a stand in for savage natives
I viewed the antagonists as basically the Native American equivalent of the cannibal family from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I haven't seen any of the guy's other films, but IMO that one is a legitimately good horror film.
I tried to think of potential ways of how to approach that film's story without feeding into... all that, but pretty much everything I could think of was already done by the movie Ravenous back in 1999. Which, funnily enough, also featured David Arquette.
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Then I saw the Puppet Master movie he wrote, a goofy series usually about dolls killing Nazis and he made the puppets Nazis themselves and it was just one of the most mean spirited movies I'd ever seen.
But Blue Ruin and Green Room are like a Zahler movie but not racist
Yeah that one’s fine.
As fan I think taking the goofy novelty series about dolls killing Nazis, making *them* Nazis and all their targets being minorities killed off in mean spirited ways is deeply insulting to the brand generally and not a fun flick to sit through specifically
I just keep coming back to mean spirited. Like it's just petty, bigoted and cruel in ways that aren't fun to watch.
I assume