Check Out the New Trailer for Kathryn Bigelow's Bin Laden Killing Film Zero Dark Thirty
Say, remember the Bin Laden raid? Aaron Sorkin helpfully reminded us all of May 2011's weirdest news on the latest episode of The Newsroom, but if you need a refresher course in what happened, Kathryn Bigelow knows more than you do.
Okay, so maybe it wasn't as bad as the cranky conspiracy theorists say, but still, the new trailer for Zero Dark Thirty, to be released in December allegedly so as not to suggest a pro-Obama agenda (even though the president is not a character) is very "the story you think you know" but guess what… Kathryn Bigelow and company know more! Because she had access to CIA people, and you didn't.
It could be a good movie. Bigelow is talented. But for once, the urge to say "too soon" is not about sensitivity, only that we should have gotten the truth about the raid before it was fictionalized. We should be trusted with the photos of the body of the former number one enemy of the United States not because he was kept on ice for a decade, or whatever the hot new conspiracy theory might be, but because the fact that the people of the U.S. are treated like children who cannot handle proof that their government did what it said it did, is always infuriating. So is, a little bit, the editor of the trailer and the decision to use a declassified documents motif.
Check it out.
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Lucy, if you knew the truth you’d just get all argumentative and say they were overstepping their constitutional bounds and stuff. Frankly, it’s your own fault you don’t have the truth, because you just can’t be trusted to treat it with the proper perspective and subtlety.
You just can’t, uh, handle the truth, if you will.
It does some a little odd. I can’t think of a fictionalized depiction of a major news story that came out this quickly. It took about 4 to 5 years for the 9/11 movies to start rolling out. It took 10 years for Black Hawk Down. Heck, it took 25 years for JFK.
*seem
Seriously, it’s taken like 150 years for the truth about Lincoln and his talent for slaying the undead to come out.
In Bigelow’s ‘defense’ I think they were working on this movie anyway, and then just adapted what they already had (like it was a generic Seal Team 6 movie where they were going after some regular terrorist, then they just adjusted the script and attached Bigelow to what they already had). Kind of like how Star Trek TWOK was just stock footage and rehashed from old episodes with only a couple new scenes shot.
Off the top of my head, the Watergate story fully broke in 1973, Nixon resigned in 1974, and All the President’s Men was released in 1976. During WWII, there were films with fictionalized portrayals of battles released within a year of when the battles were fought. A quick bit of Googling shows, for example, that Back to Bataan was released on May 31, 1945 and the movie opens with a fictionalized recreation of US Army Rangers’ raid on the POW camp at Cabanatuan City that took place on January 30, 1945.
I was hoping it was going to be in the vain (!) of Act of Valor, but with Obama playing all the roles. (Except for the role of the Secretary of State with the vapors.)
Was Act of Valor any good?
It was like watching the plot of a military first person shooter like Medal of Honor or Call of Duty.
Better to just play the game.
I didn’t not kind of enjoy it in a mindless way.
I can’t really blame them for using that angle for the trailer, after all, the motive here is to get your butt in a theater seat, and that certainly sells it. However, this selective release of information, how can you justify putting anyone with a security clearance in jail when you are so busy flaunting classified information for the purpose of propaganda? Either it serves the national interest, or it is the usual arbitrary distinction made by the one wearing the jackboot.
how can you justify putting anyone with a security clearance in jail when you are so busy flaunting classified information for the purpose of propaganda?
Because propaganda in service to Dear Leader IS in the national interest. Also, because fuck you, that’s why.
I find the title a little odd. We used to say ‘Oh Dark Thirty’ not ‘Zero Dark Thirty’. But then, we was only a little high speed, not super high speed like SEALs.
We should be trusted with the photos of the body of the former number one enemy of the United States not because he was kept on ice for a decade, or whatever the hot new conspiracy theory might be, but because the fact that the people of the U.S. are treated like children who cannot handle proof that their government did what it said it did, is always infuriating.
Not being able to see such graphic stuff works, unfortunately. Actual pictures of dead bodies are much more horrific than the violence in even gritty movies like The Hurt Locker and, if nothing else, Top Men are keenly aware of that. So even if it’s enemy #1 OBL, let’s keep that icky realism away from the voters and on bigscreen shaky-cam where it belongs.
Aaron Sorkin helpfully reminded us all of May 2011’s weirdest news on the latest episode of The Newsroom
I have never seen the portrayal of so many poeple cheering and smiling over the death of another human being then I did on Newsroom.
Also it seemed the news organization portrayed was pretty excited about reporting it…which i guess makes sense, it is news…but the show portrayed it as some sort of noble melodramatic gesture of duty. Several times it appeared that the characters felt they had something to do with killing Osama…as if the news show was some sort of arm of the government or the military.
One thing Jeff Bridges character when he announced Osama had been killed was stoned.
Seriously he was high afrom eating some pot brownies at a party.
Jeff Danials
We should be trusted with the photos of the body of the former number one enemy of the United States not because he was kept on ice for a decade, or whatever the hot new conspiracy theory might be, but because the fact that the people of the U.S. are treated like children who cannot handle proof that their government did what it said it did, is always infuriating.
It wasn’t the reaction of the U.S. people that they were worried about.
Kathryn Bigelow and company know more! Because she had access to CIA people, and you didn’t.
Anyone else noticing Lucy’s bitter and catty attitude lately? Or is it just me?
Trailer was good. I love a good trailer.
Eh. Felt kind of generic. Like a “24” episode trailer.
The film may be released in December, but we will be bombarded by the commercials all through November.
The official story: We found his hideout, shot him while he was resisting (but not shooting back, or was that using human shields while shooting back? oh never mind), then dumped his body in the sea (against his religious beliefs) so as not to leave his body unburied and violate his religious beliefs.
What really happened:
A) – he was dead a long time ago, we know not where
B) – we captured him in the raid, but the copter he was on crashed
C) – we captured and tortured him, and he uh, died, but we didn’t want to show the evidence
D) – the official story is as good as any