From the Guardian
The chairman of an organisation set up to honour the memories of the victims of the 7/7 terrorist strike on London has labelled a new trailer for the Hollywood disaster movie London Has Fallen “extremely insensitive”.
Babak Najafi’s film, a big budget sequel to 2013 action thriller Olympus Has Fallen, stars Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart and Morgan Freeman in the story of an attack on the capital. Chair of the Tavistock Square Memorial Trust, Philip Nelson, said the timing of the trailer’s release was wrong just a few days before the 10th anniversary of Britain’s worst terrorist strike of recent times.
So, how many days before should everyone not carry on with life? Does this also apply to things afterwards?
“This is not the first time that Hollywood has been insensitive,” he told the Mirror. “If the story is about terrorism then this is extremely insensitive. People have also recently died of a terrorist attack in Tunisia.
So, we shouldn't make any films involving terrorist plots, because someone will be offended?
“I have seen an image of Big Ben with the clock face blown out, that’s also insensitive. “[Our Trust] has had lots of help from America so I just think that these are the wrong images to portray. Is the summer the best time to be promoting this film anyway?”
Insensitive to who? Finn McMissile from Cars 2? Richard Hannay from the 39 Steps? Tim Burton for doing it first in Mars Attacks?
And, yes, the summer is the best time to be starting the promotion for this film. It's a teaser trailer. It's released months before to get people starting to talk about it.
Thursday, 2 July 2015
Bit Oversensitive, I'd Say
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4 comments:
"It's released months before to get people starting to talk about it."
.. oh look, it's working ;)
I wouldn't watch it anyway because I know how it ends.
It may be insensitive if, as usually happens in such films, history is altered to fit in with the "heroic but troubled American hero having flashbacks to when he prevented 7/7 being more of a massacre than it was but still feels guilty over those he wasn't able to save, yet puts himself in harm's way once again to defeat an implacable foe, find true love, and save a little girl and a dog". Hollywood has a long history of re-writing, er, history, from Errol Flynn and the US Army saving Burma, through to U241, or whatever it was called, to the racist, anti-Semitic, Australian American, Mel Gibson's versions in Braveheart and The Patriot. I understand that quite a few Americans actually believe that these versions are the truth. I also understand that I may have given the plot away.
PS, excellent plot summary, but you forgot the "troubled relationship with his ex-wife whom he still loves dearly somehow and she him too".
Perhaps, for the purposes of this particular film, she is of Muslimic background and initially suspect him of anti-Muslimicism, but after he heroically drags a couple of Mulsimicists away from the jaws of danger or gets a couple of initial Muslimicist suspects off the hook in the ensuing courtroom drama etc, they reconcile and they walk off into the sunset with their child holding each parent by the hand?
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