Post by Harkovast on Dec 16, 2014 0:50:08 GMT
Last of the Mohicans was a very popular film.
As far as I can tell, it had three things going for it.
1) An awesome score. (The main theme is fantastic, I am listening to it as I write this review.)
2) The scenery is breath-taking, capturing the sense of a wild, untamed land.
3) Daniel Day-Lewis looks good with his shirt off (if you are into that sort of thing)
As far as I can tell it had also had three key problems-
1) It had no story
2) It was incredibly racist
3) It was complete BULLSHIT!
The movie is a waste of film which serves only one useful purpose.
That being to successfully highlight some of the things that I most despise in Hollywood movies.
So rather than lay into this movie in particular, I am going to use it as a way to explain and demonstrate the MANY stupid and shitty things that Hollywood regularly pulls.
Things Hark Hates in Movies-
White Guy Raised by Indians
Now these days we always want to seem PC, and we feel a bit guilty for portraying
the red man as an evil savage, only fit for being killed by John Wayne. So in our show we want to portray the Indian as a noble guy, with a great culture that has so much to teach us. But there is a problem! Lets face it, the audience are all mindless racists who will be offended at the site of an Indian as the main character, so what are we to do?
I KNOW! Let's have a white guy who is RAISED by Indians! That way we have a nice handsome white hero we can all relate to but still get all the benefit of showing off the native culture.
Then the white guy can become the best at everything in the tribe (after all, he is white, so he must be better at stuff than those stupid Indians!)
WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS RACIST CLICHE KEEP REPEATING?
Did every tribe have a white person living with them?
In Dances with Wolves they had TWO!! (I guess so Kevin Costner could hook up with a chick who acted Indian, but looked white, so us racially insecure morons in the audience wouldn't get upset)
I have this image in my mind of the Indian Chief getting nagged by his wife-
"Running Stag, how come we don't have a white guy? The Cherokee on the other side of the valley have a white guy!"
"Look, I told you, we don't have room for one! And they're expensive! They cost at least two bags of beads, even for a skinny one!"
"The Chief of the Crow tribe just got his wife two white people!"
"Alright, alright! I'll go and get you one...I won't get a moment's peace till I do!"
A white guy to raise in the ways of their village must have been the old west equivalent of the latest fashion accessory!
And, as I mentioned, the white guy is always the best fighter in the tribe. Because...you know...he's white. And that gives him mighty whitey powers....or something.
I HATE THIS RACIST BULLSHIT!
There were only two Indian tribes in America
Now as I mentioned, we don't want to portray Indians as screaming savages that get shot by the heroes any more, because that is no longer cool.
But damn, shooting hordes of screaming savages without mercy was soooo cool!
If only there was some way we could still do that without seeming like the racist pricks we really are....
I KNOW! We just use the two tribes!
Who are the two tribes? Oh you already know who they are!
They are the same tribes that appear in every American movie about native Americans that has come out in the last 20 years!
The are called the Good Tribe and the Evil Tribe, and these two cultures are apparantly the only two that existed in America back then. As the name suggests, one was good, the other was evil. But they had many other interesting traits, which I will now list-
Good Tribe Traits
Long hair, braids.
All covering buckskin outfits
peaceful and wise
enjoy taking in white people to live with them.
Evil Tribe Traits
bald head or mohawk hair
Only wear a loin cloth and war paint
war-like, aways attacking/ambushing people
shout and make "woop" noises a lot
Recognise them now? You should! The exact same tribes appear in this film, Dances with Wolves, Shanghai Noon and many more.
This is not only cliche, but it is racist and moronic. Why is it that the tribe that dresses in a way more familiar to westerners (covered by clothing, more conventional hair cuts) is the good one? That is of course a rhetorical question. The answer is because Hollywood believes the audience consists of nothing but racist fuck wits.
So we can shed a tear for the good tribe (a noble people, losing their land) while cheering for the slaughter of the bad tribe (ugly, blood-thirsty savages who are better off dead). Wooohooo! Thank goodness the two tribes were there to deal with my white mans' guilt!
Only idiots fight in lines with muskets
Sometimes I despair for just how ignorant people appear to have become, based on the dross they allow Hollywood to spoon feed them.
A big part of the American sense of cultural identity is the image of the plucky American minutemen overcoming the dastardly British redcoats.
Unfortunately, this conflict has become so exaggerated and over simplified in the minds of many Americans that they have come to believe things which literally make no sense.
It has reached a point where Americans seem to genuinely believe that they invented the concept of hiding behind an object to avoid getting shot.
I wish that was an exaggeration.
If we are to believe this movie, the British lined up like morons every time a battle started and then just got slaughtered. In this film they even give a long winded countdown before firing during which the enemy has the time to duck down, wait for the British to stupidly fire into their cover, before resuming their attack.
Again, I wish that was an exaggeration.
Medieval battlements had blocks sticking up for bowmen to hide behind, so they knew how to hide from projectiles back then.
So presumably in the intervening time people simply forgot how to do that?
Am I the only one who can see how fucking stupid this is?
Standing in a line and all firing at once takes a lot of training and coordination, whereas taking cover and running around as individuals does not (it is what people would do naturally if you just gave them a load of guns and said 'have at it!' )
So Americans seem to believe that the British went to the trouble of training their troops to fight in a special way that was deliberately WORSE than just all running around on their own!
Presumably they just thought that throwing in some formation dancing would help make things look pretty while they all got killed. And oddly, every other army in Europe got the same moronic idea at the same time.
Wow.
Just wow.
News flash, jack asses! People fought in lines, because it worked! All firing at once made up for the inaccurate nature of the guns of the time. A single devastating volley would have more effect (especially on morale) then gradually picking at them with individual shots.
I hate to ruin it for all my American readers, but the British did not come to America and go "what? hiding behind a tree? What is this sorcery?"
The British had light infantry called flankers, whose job it was to seek cover and go around the sides of the enemy, flush out skirmishers etc.
They had these guys at the START of the fucking American Revolution!
And by the end of the war, the Americans had an army of guys in uniforms who fought in lines! These line tactics were still being used years later. Why were people doing this if these tactics were so fucking goofy?
The answer is that they FUCKING WORKED!
The Americans were locals who knew the terrain and so made better use of guerrilla tactics, but it was not like no one had ever heard of them before!
Because of this cultural myth that pervades American thinking, any time in a movie that red coats form a line to fire, it invariably fails miserably. The audience is left wondering why these morons spend so long setting up an elaborate formation which does nothing but make them easier to fucking kill!
In this film the natives are not only massively better shots then those dopey red coats, they have vastly better tactics for using the muskets, which is odd considering the British actually PRODUCE THE FUCKING MUSKETS!
(Also, while I am on the subject, the British did not lose the American Revolution because they had red uniforms. If you believe this, well done, you are a moron.
The Americans had BLUE uniforms. Seen many navy blue trees lately? Even the militia troops were not dressed as trees or wearing camoflage! Get a fucking clue!)
Hundreds of Muskets are useless, one pistol is deadly
In movies, especially shit movies like Last of the Mohicans, a hundred guys stood in a line firing their muskets won't ever do shit (as explained above), but one named character firing a pistol will always hit.
ALWAYS!
Now a musket is much more accurate than a pistol (obviously, think about it) and a pistol is only meant to be used at point-blank range.
But not in Hollywood. Pistols are like hand-held sniper rifles!
During the the battles in this film, the only guys in the British army who hit anything are the commanders with pistols (again, not exaggerating, they are literally the only ones that ever ever hit anyone.) If pistols are so fucking awesome, why doesn't everyone bring one? They are smaller and thus cheap to make!
I'll tell you why....because this is BULLSHIT!!!
The British are weak...and more often than not, evil
The British are evil. Fact!
They are also mincingly gay, weak-willed and stupidly do things by the book rather than doing the smart thing that would make them win. Also fact!
Wait...not fact. I was thinking of that other word....BULLSHIT!
Unfortunately, because the American Revolution looms so large in the American mindset, and because no Americans identify themselves as 'British-Americans' we are pretty much fair game for Hollywood.
Despite the fact that in this film the American colonists are on the same side against the French (as they were historically) the film makers go out of their way to make sure that we know how bad AND how stupid the British are.
The American colonists don't like them! After all, we can't have good decent Americans being pally with the filthy British can we? That might force the audience to actually fucking think! So instead the Colonists are not keen to join the battle...a little odd considering that if the French win, the British will lose an overseas colony....BUT THE AMERICANS WILL LOSE THEIR FUCKING HOMES!
The battle is about a million times MORE important to their future than to the British. But we still have to show them to be reluctant to fight for the British. Also Daniel Day-Lewis is quick to CONSTANTLY remind us that he doesn't work for the British. The guy can't seem to go 5 minutes without reminding us of how much he doesn't work for the British. He ought to get a T-Shirt with 'I don't work for Limeys!' written on it. Which is weird because he quite clearly does. He guides them around and kills their enemies (and without him killing the evil tribe, the evil tribe would not actually be taking any casualties!) I guess he is just a moron who does all the dirty work for them but doesn't ask to get paid or something. The movie left me wondering why Daniel Day-Lewis helps the British at all, when he obviously dislikes them so strongly. Maybe he sees the noble spirit of freedom in the eyes of the colonists (who it should be noted, he has no ill will towards, he only resents the British...yes he likes white people who have just come over here to fight other white people rather than the ones settling ON THE INDIANS' FUCKING LAND!)
American film makers have always been uncomfortable with the idea of having the British be on the same side as the Americans. This causes especially large problems when they want to make a WW2 film. Evil British on the same side as the Americans? That don't sit right! That's why in war films the British are either absent (Saving Private Ryan, U-571) or actively get in the way and make the war more difficult through their stupidity (Band of Brothers, various Dirty Dozen films.)
In last of the Mohicans The British are (of course) snooty and arrogant. They look down on the colonists, they never listen to the Daniel Day-Lewis and his wise advice and every time there is a battle they die like the pathetic spineless cowards they are.
The one of them that does something good to save Day-Lewis is shown to be laughably weak in a fight and loses the girl to Day-Lewis, to ensure he is completely demasculinated. And of course, Day-Lewis always acts like he hates the guy's fucking guts for the entire film, belittling him at every opportunity. The guy has no real comeback. How could he? He's British and thus is completely shit at everything!
The movie has two big battles, both of which are just the British standing around getting slaughtered and not really fighting back. In fact that seems to be what the movie substitutes for a plot. Half the pages of the script were probably just the phrase "kill some fucking Limeys!" written in red marker.
Perhaps this sort of thing gives Americans a Liberty Boner or something?
But even putting aside the overt racism, watching a bunch of red coats who have been demonstrated to be complete assholes, morons and weaklings, getting slaughtered by a bunch of the evil tribes' savage, blood thirsty killers is not exactly thrilling entertainment. Who am I supposed to cheer for? Why should I care about either side? They are all total dicks!
A bunch of over-dressed wankers getting slaughtered for ten minutes by a group of under-dressed wankers? Yeah, really building up the drama there.
It did leave me wondering why the Indians don't just kill all these losers, steal some boats and go over and take over the mother country. These red coats seem to be such a joke, that it is sort of odd that they defeated both the French and their Indian allies and set up colonies all along the eastern coast of North America. I guess the two tribes must have wiped each other out somehow.
It also leaves me wondering why the British bother with all those steel swords and bayonets when wooden and bone clubs seem much more effective. Funny that! Then again, you could probably give these red coats rocket launchers and they would still get slaughtered, such is their pathetic nature.
If you portray British people this way in your movie/webcomic/anything else, well done. You are a racist. Fuck you.
An amusing side note is that the Movie has absolutely nothing bad to say about the French. It even makes them seem like an honourable bunch, despite the fact that the are technically the bad guys in the plot (if you can call this nonsense a plot).
This was pretty common with American movies, right up until the Iraq war, when the French lack of support turned them into public enemy number one in the states.
This movie is Shit
This last point is the most important of all.
This movie is bollocks. It is just moronic racist stereotypes of the British and the Indians put through the ultra strong filter of how Americans like to think of their own history.
It barely has a plot, barely has any characters and certainly has no point.
This sort of drivel only serves to make the human race more prejudiced and ignorant of our own history.
I just wish Last of the Mohicans could have been "last of the shitty movies with these moronic faults."
Sadly, I am not that lucky!
As far as I can tell, it had three things going for it.
1) An awesome score. (The main theme is fantastic, I am listening to it as I write this review.)
2) The scenery is breath-taking, capturing the sense of a wild, untamed land.
3) Daniel Day-Lewis looks good with his shirt off (if you are into that sort of thing)
As far as I can tell it had also had three key problems-
1) It had no story
2) It was incredibly racist
3) It was complete BULLSHIT!
The movie is a waste of film which serves only one useful purpose.
That being to successfully highlight some of the things that I most despise in Hollywood movies.
So rather than lay into this movie in particular, I am going to use it as a way to explain and demonstrate the MANY stupid and shitty things that Hollywood regularly pulls.
Things Hark Hates in Movies-
White Guy Raised by Indians
Now these days we always want to seem PC, and we feel a bit guilty for portraying
the red man as an evil savage, only fit for being killed by John Wayne. So in our show we want to portray the Indian as a noble guy, with a great culture that has so much to teach us. But there is a problem! Lets face it, the audience are all mindless racists who will be offended at the site of an Indian as the main character, so what are we to do?
I KNOW! Let's have a white guy who is RAISED by Indians! That way we have a nice handsome white hero we can all relate to but still get all the benefit of showing off the native culture.
Then the white guy can become the best at everything in the tribe (after all, he is white, so he must be better at stuff than those stupid Indians!)
WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS RACIST CLICHE KEEP REPEATING?
Did every tribe have a white person living with them?
In Dances with Wolves they had TWO!! (I guess so Kevin Costner could hook up with a chick who acted Indian, but looked white, so us racially insecure morons in the audience wouldn't get upset)
I have this image in my mind of the Indian Chief getting nagged by his wife-
"Running Stag, how come we don't have a white guy? The Cherokee on the other side of the valley have a white guy!"
"Look, I told you, we don't have room for one! And they're expensive! They cost at least two bags of beads, even for a skinny one!"
"The Chief of the Crow tribe just got his wife two white people!"
"Alright, alright! I'll go and get you one...I won't get a moment's peace till I do!"
A white guy to raise in the ways of their village must have been the old west equivalent of the latest fashion accessory!
And, as I mentioned, the white guy is always the best fighter in the tribe. Because...you know...he's white. And that gives him mighty whitey powers....or something.
I HATE THIS RACIST BULLSHIT!
There were only two Indian tribes in America
Now as I mentioned, we don't want to portray Indians as screaming savages that get shot by the heroes any more, because that is no longer cool.
But damn, shooting hordes of screaming savages without mercy was soooo cool!
If only there was some way we could still do that without seeming like the racist pricks we really are....
I KNOW! We just use the two tribes!
Who are the two tribes? Oh you already know who they are!
They are the same tribes that appear in every American movie about native Americans that has come out in the last 20 years!
The are called the Good Tribe and the Evil Tribe, and these two cultures are apparantly the only two that existed in America back then. As the name suggests, one was good, the other was evil. But they had many other interesting traits, which I will now list-
Good Tribe Traits
Long hair, braids.
All covering buckskin outfits
peaceful and wise
enjoy taking in white people to live with them.
Evil Tribe Traits
bald head or mohawk hair
Only wear a loin cloth and war paint
war-like, aways attacking/ambushing people
shout and make "woop" noises a lot
Recognise them now? You should! The exact same tribes appear in this film, Dances with Wolves, Shanghai Noon and many more.
This is not only cliche, but it is racist and moronic. Why is it that the tribe that dresses in a way more familiar to westerners (covered by clothing, more conventional hair cuts) is the good one? That is of course a rhetorical question. The answer is because Hollywood believes the audience consists of nothing but racist fuck wits.
So we can shed a tear for the good tribe (a noble people, losing their land) while cheering for the slaughter of the bad tribe (ugly, blood-thirsty savages who are better off dead). Wooohooo! Thank goodness the two tribes were there to deal with my white mans' guilt!
Only idiots fight in lines with muskets
Sometimes I despair for just how ignorant people appear to have become, based on the dross they allow Hollywood to spoon feed them.
A big part of the American sense of cultural identity is the image of the plucky American minutemen overcoming the dastardly British redcoats.
Unfortunately, this conflict has become so exaggerated and over simplified in the minds of many Americans that they have come to believe things which literally make no sense.
It has reached a point where Americans seem to genuinely believe that they invented the concept of hiding behind an object to avoid getting shot.
I wish that was an exaggeration.
If we are to believe this movie, the British lined up like morons every time a battle started and then just got slaughtered. In this film they even give a long winded countdown before firing during which the enemy has the time to duck down, wait for the British to stupidly fire into their cover, before resuming their attack.
Again, I wish that was an exaggeration.
Medieval battlements had blocks sticking up for bowmen to hide behind, so they knew how to hide from projectiles back then.
So presumably in the intervening time people simply forgot how to do that?
Am I the only one who can see how fucking stupid this is?
Standing in a line and all firing at once takes a lot of training and coordination, whereas taking cover and running around as individuals does not (it is what people would do naturally if you just gave them a load of guns and said 'have at it!' )
So Americans seem to believe that the British went to the trouble of training their troops to fight in a special way that was deliberately WORSE than just all running around on their own!
Presumably they just thought that throwing in some formation dancing would help make things look pretty while they all got killed. And oddly, every other army in Europe got the same moronic idea at the same time.
Wow.
Just wow.
News flash, jack asses! People fought in lines, because it worked! All firing at once made up for the inaccurate nature of the guns of the time. A single devastating volley would have more effect (especially on morale) then gradually picking at them with individual shots.
I hate to ruin it for all my American readers, but the British did not come to America and go "what? hiding behind a tree? What is this sorcery?"
The British had light infantry called flankers, whose job it was to seek cover and go around the sides of the enemy, flush out skirmishers etc.
They had these guys at the START of the fucking American Revolution!
And by the end of the war, the Americans had an army of guys in uniforms who fought in lines! These line tactics were still being used years later. Why were people doing this if these tactics were so fucking goofy?
The answer is that they FUCKING WORKED!
The Americans were locals who knew the terrain and so made better use of guerrilla tactics, but it was not like no one had ever heard of them before!
Because of this cultural myth that pervades American thinking, any time in a movie that red coats form a line to fire, it invariably fails miserably. The audience is left wondering why these morons spend so long setting up an elaborate formation which does nothing but make them easier to fucking kill!
In this film the natives are not only massively better shots then those dopey red coats, they have vastly better tactics for using the muskets, which is odd considering the British actually PRODUCE THE FUCKING MUSKETS!
(Also, while I am on the subject, the British did not lose the American Revolution because they had red uniforms. If you believe this, well done, you are a moron.
The Americans had BLUE uniforms. Seen many navy blue trees lately? Even the militia troops were not dressed as trees or wearing camoflage! Get a fucking clue!)
Hundreds of Muskets are useless, one pistol is deadly
In movies, especially shit movies like Last of the Mohicans, a hundred guys stood in a line firing their muskets won't ever do shit (as explained above), but one named character firing a pistol will always hit.
ALWAYS!
Now a musket is much more accurate than a pistol (obviously, think about it) and a pistol is only meant to be used at point-blank range.
But not in Hollywood. Pistols are like hand-held sniper rifles!
During the the battles in this film, the only guys in the British army who hit anything are the commanders with pistols (again, not exaggerating, they are literally the only ones that ever ever hit anyone.) If pistols are so fucking awesome, why doesn't everyone bring one? They are smaller and thus cheap to make!
I'll tell you why....because this is BULLSHIT!!!
The British are weak...and more often than not, evil
The British are evil. Fact!
They are also mincingly gay, weak-willed and stupidly do things by the book rather than doing the smart thing that would make them win. Also fact!
Wait...not fact. I was thinking of that other word....BULLSHIT!
Unfortunately, because the American Revolution looms so large in the American mindset, and because no Americans identify themselves as 'British-Americans' we are pretty much fair game for Hollywood.
Despite the fact that in this film the American colonists are on the same side against the French (as they were historically) the film makers go out of their way to make sure that we know how bad AND how stupid the British are.
The American colonists don't like them! After all, we can't have good decent Americans being pally with the filthy British can we? That might force the audience to actually fucking think! So instead the Colonists are not keen to join the battle...a little odd considering that if the French win, the British will lose an overseas colony....BUT THE AMERICANS WILL LOSE THEIR FUCKING HOMES!
The battle is about a million times MORE important to their future than to the British. But we still have to show them to be reluctant to fight for the British. Also Daniel Day-Lewis is quick to CONSTANTLY remind us that he doesn't work for the British. The guy can't seem to go 5 minutes without reminding us of how much he doesn't work for the British. He ought to get a T-Shirt with 'I don't work for Limeys!' written on it. Which is weird because he quite clearly does. He guides them around and kills their enemies (and without him killing the evil tribe, the evil tribe would not actually be taking any casualties!) I guess he is just a moron who does all the dirty work for them but doesn't ask to get paid or something. The movie left me wondering why Daniel Day-Lewis helps the British at all, when he obviously dislikes them so strongly. Maybe he sees the noble spirit of freedom in the eyes of the colonists (who it should be noted, he has no ill will towards, he only resents the British...yes he likes white people who have just come over here to fight other white people rather than the ones settling ON THE INDIANS' FUCKING LAND!)
American film makers have always been uncomfortable with the idea of having the British be on the same side as the Americans. This causes especially large problems when they want to make a WW2 film. Evil British on the same side as the Americans? That don't sit right! That's why in war films the British are either absent (Saving Private Ryan, U-571) or actively get in the way and make the war more difficult through their stupidity (Band of Brothers, various Dirty Dozen films.)
In last of the Mohicans The British are (of course) snooty and arrogant. They look down on the colonists, they never listen to the Daniel Day-Lewis and his wise advice and every time there is a battle they die like the pathetic spineless cowards they are.
The one of them that does something good to save Day-Lewis is shown to be laughably weak in a fight and loses the girl to Day-Lewis, to ensure he is completely demasculinated. And of course, Day-Lewis always acts like he hates the guy's fucking guts for the entire film, belittling him at every opportunity. The guy has no real comeback. How could he? He's British and thus is completely shit at everything!
The movie has two big battles, both of which are just the British standing around getting slaughtered and not really fighting back. In fact that seems to be what the movie substitutes for a plot. Half the pages of the script were probably just the phrase "kill some fucking Limeys!" written in red marker.
Perhaps this sort of thing gives Americans a Liberty Boner or something?
But even putting aside the overt racism, watching a bunch of red coats who have been demonstrated to be complete assholes, morons and weaklings, getting slaughtered by a bunch of the evil tribes' savage, blood thirsty killers is not exactly thrilling entertainment. Who am I supposed to cheer for? Why should I care about either side? They are all total dicks!
A bunch of over-dressed wankers getting slaughtered for ten minutes by a group of under-dressed wankers? Yeah, really building up the drama there.
It did leave me wondering why the Indians don't just kill all these losers, steal some boats and go over and take over the mother country. These red coats seem to be such a joke, that it is sort of odd that they defeated both the French and their Indian allies and set up colonies all along the eastern coast of North America. I guess the two tribes must have wiped each other out somehow.
It also leaves me wondering why the British bother with all those steel swords and bayonets when wooden and bone clubs seem much more effective. Funny that! Then again, you could probably give these red coats rocket launchers and they would still get slaughtered, such is their pathetic nature.
If you portray British people this way in your movie/webcomic/anything else, well done. You are a racist. Fuck you.
An amusing side note is that the Movie has absolutely nothing bad to say about the French. It even makes them seem like an honourable bunch, despite the fact that the are technically the bad guys in the plot (if you can call this nonsense a plot).
This was pretty common with American movies, right up until the Iraq war, when the French lack of support turned them into public enemy number one in the states.
This movie is Shit
This last point is the most important of all.
This movie is bollocks. It is just moronic racist stereotypes of the British and the Indians put through the ultra strong filter of how Americans like to think of their own history.
It barely has a plot, barely has any characters and certainly has no point.
This sort of drivel only serves to make the human race more prejudiced and ignorant of our own history.
I just wish Last of the Mohicans could have been "last of the shitty movies with these moronic faults."
Sadly, I am not that lucky!