rawr rawr rawr why does everyone have to read into movies with current events. can't a movie just be a movie? rawr rawr rawr.

Even the dumbest summer action movie has meaning even if it is unintentional.

I frankly get tired of the rejoinder "it's just entertainment," so we should make allowances for the profane, the immoral (and worst of all) the stupid, because after all it is entertainment.

Perhaps some people find it easy to check their brain at the door when they are watching action flicks. Unfortunately I believe this tendency is too easily transferred to too many occasions. Once you begin to employ the "it's just a.." phrase it become s a hab8it it is too easy to resort to.

Given that... I would expect the person trying to deduce moral implications from a summer popcorn flick to put their popcorn down and pay closer attn to the movie. S/he (Dana) got that scene completely backwards.

I guess then we may infer that there are also some people (like the OP here) who want all their entertainment analysed for sociopolitical nuance and meaning. Oh, and Mr. Reviewer, make sure that we know by the end of this movie review what your personal political leanings are, especially if they happen to be the ones that are generally shared by the readers of a left leaning website.

Look, I don't even disagree with the view the reviewer puts out there. Yes, the Bush administration are a bunch of dunderheads, and dangerous ones at that, and we are all only being sensible if we have concerns about the way American military power is being deployed in the world, but that has nothing really to do with this movie, except in that it showed an oversimplified comic book example of how cool it would be if we could dispense with all the ambiguities that plague the guys who are out there actually fighting these wars. But at the heart of it, this was just gratuitous pandering on the part of the reviewer.

Yes, a move can be just a movie. Heres the problem with reviewers attempting to glean political significance out of movies... any writer and director worth their weight, will make it so the moral of the story is not obvious. You don't leave the theatre going... Golly Gee... that Iraq Soldier killing innocent civilians for fun, sure proved a point. The very act of being able to clearly discern a political point, shows that the director and possible the writer did a horrible job.

patron002:

Yes, a move can be just a movie. Heres the problem with reviewers attempting to glean political significance out of movies... any writer and director worth their weight, will make it so the moral of the story is not obvious. You don't leave the theatre going... Golly Gee... that Iraq Soldier killing innocent civilians for fun, sure proved a point. The very act of being able to clearly discern a political point, shows that the director and possible the writer did a horrible job.

no, you're just a dullard. there's nothing wrong with that. until you try to describe it as an opinion. it's like someone saying, "this steak is good" and someone else trying to say "what is wrong with you, it's just a piece of meat"

the difference is vast, and that's allowed, but when people come up and oppose the view because they just want "to eat a peice of meat" those of us who have any hand in knowing what art is want to go slash your tires. we do these things for you, to make you think about what you don't already know. it's like telling a coal miner that all they do is hit rocks with a pick, and that you have no interest, all the while sitting in a comfortably heated room and saying it has nothing to do with the heater in the basement.

Sorry, the steak analogy doesn't really work. Because we're not talking about someone saying that we shouldn't judge the quality of the art at hand, but rather someone who is judging the quality of the art by standards that most people are not interested in.

My objection is, first, that any reasonable person who saw the movie will conclude, as has been pointed out, that the reviewer completely misread the scene in question. There was no question of being able to tell the good guys from the bad guys. It was obvious who the bad guys were, but there were four or five of them, holding guns to the heads of the innocent villagers. Only because ultra cool comic book figure Ironman was there, was there a cool techy way to shoot all the bad guys simultaneously without harming the hostages. The issue of not knowing who are civilians and who are combatants in the conflicts in the Middle East is a real issue, but had absolutely nothing to do with this movie or this scene in the movie.

The second objection I have is that the reviewer is pandering to an audience that mostly shares his view of the world events going on. His political comments served no purpose in this review other than to establish his bona fides as a politically correct compassionate dude.

I think anyone who reads too much into a movie shouldn' t go to them. If you've ever seen any superhero movie its always some good fighting against some good. Why not judge a movie based on actor performance, dialogue, and presentation as a whole. If you want political meaning to something go read a book or watch a documentary.....ITS JUST A FREAK'N SUPERHERO MOVIE....

Heh Tex, don't waste your breath. Obviously we are low class scum who have no idea what true art is about and our dullard minds can not comprehend these things.

Ah Iron Man, if only you were a modern Richard II, then there could actually be real political discussions!

By the way, I do not think a coal miner will disagree that all they do is hit rocks all day. That piece of meat /is/ good if prepared right to the taste of the one that requested it. If your heater is in your basement, then it is fair to say it does indeed heat your house. And a monkey can slam out a review if given enough time and you peice together the letters into words that /you/ want to see. Ha-ha! Monkies...

Blktom:

Heh Tex, don't waste your breath. Obviously we are low class scum who have no idea what true art is about and our dullard minds can not comprehend these things.

Ah Iron Man, if only you were a modern Richard II, then there could actually be real political discussions!

By the way, I do not think a coal miner will disagree that all they do is hit rocks all day. That piece of meat /is/ good if prepared right to the taste of the one that requested it. If your heater is in your basement, then it is fair to say it does indeed heat your house. And a monkey can slam out a review if given enough time and you peice together the letters into words that /you/ want to see. Ha-ha! Monkies...

i know. take the "you think i'm too dumb to understand you" tack. yeah, you win. i'm a neo-liberal absolutist that wants to eat babies from abortions.

lol, see, i took your hyperbole, and tried to make it my own by playing the person you think i am. lol. want to go bowling after this?

huh:

I think anyone who reads too much into a movie shouldn' t go to them. If you've ever seen any superhero movie its always some good fighting against some good. Why not judge a movie based on actor performance, dialogue, and presentation as a whole. If you want political meaning to something go read a book or watch a documentary.....ITS JUST A FREAK'N SUPERHERO MOVIE....

you're right. it's just a movie.

how hard is it to read media at an adult level, just how ignorant do you have to be to not want to consider anything anyone says.

Dude (okay, I'm assuming), you say, "how hard is it to read media at an adult level, just how ignorant do you have to be to not want to consider anything anyone says. "

I know you weren't responding to me, but I have to address this. I don't think that holding the opinion that movie reviews (especially silly superhero action movies) would be better without the gratuitous political commentary means that the person holding this opinion (as I do) objects to political or sociological commentary as a whole.

I like being well informed and reading media at "an adult level." Part of reading at an adult level is forming opinions about the quality and intent of the writer's work.

The writer made a choice to inject politics into a review gratuitously. I call bullshit on him. That doesn't make me an uneducated cretin, it makes me discerning.

That said, I do think there are movies where political commentary is appropriate in the review. Ironman wasn't really one of them.

Totally agree w/Tex.

When Dana first started reviewing TV, then movies for Slate, I thought she was a revelation--her work was so witty and intelligent...I even went back and read her old reviews at The High Sign. But, like many posters, I now wish she'd dial it back.

That's not because Slate readers are intellectually lazy; as a generalization, we probably enjoy this magazine because it cannily and critically explores ideas and themes in art, commerce, and current events. But searching every film for hidden messages is like playing all your records backwards, listening for a secret track from the Beatles--the occasional reward is drowned out by the noise. And by imposing politics on films that don't really have them, Dana keeps detracting from her generally insightful reviews...a few poorly chosen passages (from her misunderstood targeting of "bad guys" to the suit as "overcompensation" for our country's current vulnerability) overshadowed her clever prose, at least for me.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and a big-budget action movie is simply escapist entertainment. It doesn't make Dana less of a critic--or me a lazy reader--if her reviews better reflected that.