Keepin' It Really Reel Award - June '09

Well, it’s here. Summer is finally here! And that means movies; tons and tons of blockbuster movies. Grab your popcorn and strap in for eye popping, heart pounding, ear deafining action this summer. Not long ago Terry and I discussed our veiws on the modern action hero and the state of today’s action films. On our podcast, which you can listen to here, we talked about men like John McClane, John Connor, and Indiana Jones. What you won’t hear or read is anything about the female hero. Who was she and what, if anything, happened to her? Who was the lady John McClane? The answer is this month’s recipient of the Keepin’ It Really Reel tip of the hat – Sigourney Weaver/Ellen Ripley.

The other day I was watching Aliens on AMC and I was forced - once again - to reflect on the movies of old (by old I mean 70’s and 80’s; yeah, I’m not yet 30). There is just something about the state of movies today that…well, to put it simply: if movies were food they’d be White Castle. You always think you’re getting more than you pay for, you think, “this time around I won’t be disappointed.” But damn it if you don’t always end up on the toilet holding a roll of two-ply like it’s the bible bargaining with the heavens “please make it stop!” That was me after a long list of quickly forgotten action flicks, but this was not the case after my viewing of Aliens. As I said it got me thinking about action, heroes, women in movies and specifically women as heroes.

Lets get it out the way now – a woman is just as able to be a convincing action hero as a man. Of course, they may have to do it in a different way, but I believe in Ellen Ripley as much as I do John McClane. Maybe she needs body armour resembling that of a forklift and McClane chooses C4 and a machine gun, but she is very capable.

My real problem with today’s female heroes is that they’re too glamourized. If you watch Charlie’s Angels or Mr. and Mrs. Smith these women are flying through the air, fighting tons of dudes, all while rarely bleeding and they always manage to keep their air-brushed, blown out, revlon look. Forget that BS! Ellen Ripley torched acid bleeding aliens and got her ass kicked all while in her underwear. Now THAT is sexy! I challenge the man or woman who says they can find something sexier to some form of duel...or at least a heated game of connect four.

Women are naturally beautiful and everyone knows they don’t take crap; it’s the perfect formula for an action hero! Hollywood doesn’t need to force these women to all conform to this same idea of beauty. And don’t tell me or anyone else what beautiful is. I mean if – and no disrespect here - Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti can pull off the ladies man (see Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead and Sideways), then shouldn’t women have a little more leeway and varied appearance? I don’t want Charlize Thereon (Aeon Flux) or Charlie’s Angel’s or anymore of Angelina Jolie’s garbage (unless she’s bringin back the Hackers look). Just give me another great female hero who only knows how to kick ass and take names. Everything else will fall into place after that. So let the hair get messy, let the makeup run, and just give us – all of us – more Sarah Connor, more Trinity...dammit, we want more Ripley!

Thank you Sigourney Weaver/Ellen Ripley for always Keepin’ it Really Reel. We tip our hat to you this month June 2009.

Last Action Hero

I am a child of the ‘80s. Other than listening to one-hit-wonders, wearing zubaz, and consuming mondo and bubbletape, I pretty much spent my time watching heroes from 80’s action films. Time passed and I grew up. But the more things changed the more they stayed the same. I traded my zubaz for jeans, my bubbletape for a much healthier diet and stowed away the mondo for… well, let’s be honest - who can resist a mondo? But one thing that never changed was my love for the 80’s hero. Original heroes, not the ones from tv series or comic books. Men like John McClane, John Connor, and Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones.

At a young age these movies were the epitome of action for me. Though I never actually saw John Connor in action, it was the myth and the legend of the man that enticed me. Plus kicking the hell out of Terminators is always a good way to spend your day. McClane was a no b.s. cop that flipped the script on the good vs bad dynamic -- he was the reckless mess, but he always fought on the side of good. And then there was Dr. Jones – he always got the girl, always saved the day, and looked cool as hell doing it too! None of the movies required crazy graphics. All the stunts were just enough “over the edge” that my young mind thought it to be plausible, but only for these men. As the years went on these movies began to mean a lot more to me. Die Hard was a quintessential action film served with the comedic garnish, which is something that never got old. I began looking into the art and science of film making and Raiders of the Lost Ark became one of the greatest screenplays - more specifically, one of the best opening acts I’ve ever read or seen. And the themes within Terminator resonated with me, especially the idea of “no fate but what we make” and the constant play and influence of/on time. Even though each of these heroes saved the day in different eras in their movies, they represented the original action hero of the 80’s. And with their adventures they took us on an incredible journey and delivered a great story, and for that I loved them well into my young adulthood.

June 27, 2007 everything changed. That was the day Live Free or Die Hard was released and the day my heroes began to fall one by one. You see, our original heroes cannot survive in today’s entertainment environment. Is the modern world too tough for them? No, in fact it’s too soft and over-glamorized. Our tough guys cannot make it in a world that turns rated-R movies into PG-13 popcorn flicks just to fill seats over a long weekend, and they cannot make it in a world where dollars are pumped in in hopes of getting more dollars out. It is no secret that sequels often fall victim to the “bigger and/is better” strategy, but all of these films made it passed that quite successfully. It was the 4th installments in all of these franchises that were their ultimate downfall. Studios accepted mediocre products just to monetize our loyalty to 80’s classics. It isn't fair and it doesn’t work, no matter if the movie takes place in 2018 or during the Cold War – It Just Won’t Work!

Perhaps it’s because the generation before mine created the good stuff and my generation, as we have done with most things, has only extracted bits and pieces of the great arts and turned them into fluff. Our Woodstock sucked. Our Rock n’ Roll has been shot to hell and has so many sub-genres ripping off specific elements of Rock n’ Roll that it’s gone from groundbreaking to comical to seizure inducing. Even our inventions are worthless - yes, I’m looking at you snuggie. To borrow a quote from one of “my generation’s movies”: God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars.

With no purpose or place we’ve taken our heroes with us. We have nothing to say and they have no stories to tell. Generations before us knew what struggle was and their heroes reflected it – those were the guys we grew up on. Now it’s our turn to take the helm and we’ve turned the perennial badass into a softy with a CGI addiction who uses unoriginal one-liners as a chaser. The McClane’s of the world cannot survive in our day where stunts and explosions matter more than the story, where 20minute action sequences mean more than “how the hell did they get from point A to point B?” We have killed off our original 80’s heroes one by one.

To summarize my feelings in a sentence I look to the end of Tyler Durden’s quote: [I’m] slowly learning that fact. And [I’m] very, very pissed off!