Conservatives: shut the fuck up about the movie "Stop Loss" (Boxed spoilers)

The BBQ Pit
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I haven’t seen it in here yet, so my rant isn’t directed to anyone at the SDMB, but elsewhere whenever I see talk about the upcoming movie Stop Loss there’s always a bunch of conservative idiots who ignorantly spout off about how this movie has some “Hollywood liberal agenda” or some such ignorant tripe. And that’s just based on the trailer. I’ve seen wishes that the movie will bomb, I’ve heard calls to boycott it, I’ve heard the director called every negative name in the book, I’ve heard so much fucking shit about this movie and it hasn’t even opened yet!

Well, I saw the movie, along with a Q&A with the director, and conservatives should just shut the fuck up. You can’t tell what happens based on the trailer, you can only guess. Questioning and protesting does NOT equal treason. Questioning and protesting is NOT unpatriotic.

The filmmaker, Kimberly Pierce (Boy’s Don’t Cry) isn’t a “liberal Hollywood bystander” (as I heard her called, among other things). Her brother served in Iraq (he’s safe and out of the military now) and that’s how she first got interested in doing a project about today’s soldiers. She spent a couple of years researching a documentary about soldiers who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq and heard so much about the the subject of the Stop Loss program from the soldiers themselves that she switched her focus to do this movie instead, incorporating much of what the soldiers themselves, including her brother, told her. She has nothing but the highest respect for the military and anyone who’s served, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Not to say that it’s inevitable, but just in case, before any conservative idiots reading this feel like chiming in with their ignorant crap, let me tell you what happens in the movie. You’re not going to go see it anyway because of course you’re probably sure you know what happens. Well, here you go…

[spoiler]The character, a decent guy who’s a decorated war hero and who has already served two tours in Iraq, is stop-lossed and is angry about it. In the film he has two chances to leave the country (first to Canada, then later in the film, to Mexico) and he decides not to do it both times. He decides after much thought and anguish that his duty is to support his fellow soldiers and his country by returning for a third tour.

Let’s hope no one spoils the ending for Rush and Hannity and O’Reilly and other conservative blowhards before they spout off about the film, so they’ll have some pretty fine-looking egg on their face when they do find out the ending. Even if they are spoiled in advance, it’ll be a hoot, because then they won’t dare rant against this highly patriotic film, but their conservative idiot audience will be all up in arms wondering why they’re not ranting against the film, so to cover their own asses, they’ll have to spoil the ending of the movie for their audience.

Of course, they might have already ranted against the film. I wouldn’t know because I don’t keep up with what these people do or say. I would expect it to happen closer to the movie’s opening at the end of March, though the trailers have been playing in theaters for a couple of months now. If anyone does keep up, I’d love to know how Stop Loss the movie is or isn’t (will or won’t, rather) be addressed.[/spoiler]

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I just realized something (spoilered juuuuuust in case): if conservative commentators DO end up recommending it, might that not be, in of itself, spoilering for the ending?

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Yep, you’re absolutely right.

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So, uh…conservative posters = ignorant idiots?

Welcome back, Granny.

I was almost admiring you for a while as it seemed you’d decided to abandon this crude, vulgar and un-grandmotherly style of posting (or at least I seem to recall your alluding to it at some point in one of the other forums).

I found myself admiring your posts in CS and was even beginning to develop a grudging regard for both the depth of your knowledge and the accuracy of your analysis in regard to movies and music. Based on your recommendation I even bought what will undoubtedly be the first of many Happy Rhodes CDs.

But now I see you’re back to your old tricks (and prejudices).

I guess leopards don’t change their spots after all.

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She didn’t say that. She seemed to be addressing specifically the conservative ignorant dolts who would judge without thinking.
I don’t see that she said all conservatives are ignorant dolts.

Although there is a correlation. :smiley:

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Did you even read the OP?

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It’s implied in the thread title, then she backs off when she says she’s not addressing specific posters here, then she implies it again when she says “before any conservative idiots reading this feel like chiming in with their ignorant crap”, as though any comment by a conservative who may not agree - especially in light of her preemptive efforts to set us all straight on the subject - are ipso-facto ignorant and typical of ‘conservative idiocy’.

And given that there are only three or four of us here ( :smiley: ), it doesn’t leave a lot of room for equivocation.

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Did I say that? No, I didn’t. Conservatives who rant and rail against a movie they haven’t even seen based on a trailer = ignorant idiots. Really, if you were to look at any message board that has a thread about Stop Loss, you’ll see what I mean. They’re just so sure that it’s some “Hollywood Liberal Agenda” movie and therefore to be scorned and denigrated in any way possible. The bulk of this nonsense hasn’t even started yet, since the movie’s release is a few weeks away, but I’m already sick of it and thought I’d get a head start on my own rant.

Here’s an example:

Are you going to defend this ignorant and childish point of view? No, because I don’t think you’re that stupid. That’s just a taste of the silliness that’s out there. Luckily none of that has made its way to the SDMB, but (this added on Preview) you can not tell me that there aren’t at least SOME conservatives here who would be against this movie just in principle just because it questions a military policy.

Well, I have cooled it on participating in political threads. I’ve gone from being very passionate about politics (too passionate, really) to not giving a shit one way or the other. And btw, you’re talking to a former long-haul truck driver. I learned to swear with the best of them, but I’m a wimp and a piker when it comes to blue language.

Color me shocked and awed. Which one?

(Thanks Lobohan and Larry Borgia)

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Fair enough. I didn’t know you used to be a truck driver…sort of goes with the territory, I suppose. :smiley: (How are the kidneys?)

Many Worlds Are Born Tonight.

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Still working, thank goodness.

You like that one? Sorry for doing this, but the only possible reaction is :eek:

I love you now. All is forgiven.

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Just to play devil’s advocate for a second, this post at least seems to be talking about how much money movies like this make, and in this case, the “conservatives” are right. There was a whole bunch of anti-Iraq movies of varying stripes last year and I think all of them bombed.

And a good portion of those were savaged by critics from “the liberal media” as being pretty poor movies as well.

I don’t know anything about Stop Loss, but it’s not exactly in esteemed company right now.

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:slight_smile:

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You’re right, so perhaps that wasn’t the best example. I picked him because based on all his other posts he’s a hard-core neocon conservative.

Here are a few others, from different people:

The one for sure thing all of these have in common is that they’re ignorant about the movie and they are fools for judging it so harshly based only on the trailer (ok, that’s two things). They have another thing in common. They’re most likely probably not liberals. (I do realize that most people do judge movies based on the trailer no matter what the subject matter, but to be SO harsh, it’s just politically-motivated based on a closed-minded perception. It’s not like Kimberly Pierce is Michael Moore where you know in advance that it’s going to be left-leaning. How do they know that the movie is left, right or center, or about politics at all? They don’t. They just assume.)

It’s not a great film, and it has its problems, but it is decent, with good acting, and it is an interesting subject. I hope this does well, for Kimberly Pierce’s sake. She has several projects in the works and could use the back. I don’t expect it to be a smash hit or anything, but it should hopefully make its money back.

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OK, those quotes back up your case quite a bit better and I agree with you, conservatives should definitely shut the hell up about something they know nothing about. And while we’re at it, conservative parent’s groups shoud shut up about video games that are still months away from completion too. They just look like idiots.

But as to your last remark, if Stop Loss is as middle-of-the-road as you say, it’ll probably bomb just like the rest of the anti-Iraq films.

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You haven’t yet figured out that Starving Artist is one of our stupidest members?

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Thing is, it’s not an anti-Iraq film, and doesn’t belong lumped in with those other movies at all. Not that it’s pro-war. It’s more complicated than that. It’s about these people dealing with a specific military policy, and not actually about the war itself (though that of course does play a part since that’s what they’re being stop lossed for). Only a couple of the characters say something political about the war and it’s not bolded and underlined. It’s just an opinion like a normal person would have.

Pierce said at the Q&A that in an earlier version of her script she had one of the characters give a monologue about the politics of the war, how it was started by a lie and all that jazz, but, as she put it (paraphrasing), ‘the story rejected it, spit it out’ because no matter how she wrote it, it sounded like something a screenwriter would add, not how real characters in this place and time, and in this situation, would think and talk.

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Actually, I believe it would be more grammatically correct to say ‘…one of our more stupid members’.

“Stupidest” just sounds, well, stupid.

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Reading your thread title took me back to 2003 and CBS’ “The Reagans”. Pre-emptive strikes are a good defense.

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Why is this what divides the left and right, seemingly always? Doesn’t this sort of preemptive bickering propogate the stereotype that the left are cowards and the right are warmongers?

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Sorry, I haven’t seen that movie, don’t remember any brouhaha over it, and don’t know what you’re talking about.

Maybe I didn’t need to say anything. Maybe every single conservative here at the SDMB, poster and lurker alike, is open-minded enough to not judge a movie as a product of the “Liberal Hollywood Agenda” before seeing it. Let me add a pre-emptive “Sorry!” to all those conservatives who would NOT have had a negative thing to say about the movie, for judging them in advance the way I assumed perhaps at least one or two would judge this movie.

But perhaps, just maybe, my spoiling the ending of the movie caused someone who otherwise might have posted to rant about this film to realize they’d look like a fool if they did. And if that’s the case (and I’ll likely never know) then I’m glad to be of service.

My rant toward the ignorant asses in other forums holds.

Why is what? The Iraq War? Movies that have anything to do with the Iraq war? People who judge (seemingly) “leftist” movies before seeing them? What?

Read the posts that I quoted from. There’s plenty more where those came from and will be plenty more in the coming weeks. Don’t those writings make it sound as if these people think the movie is left-leaning and the lead character is a coward? The opposite isn’t true. None of those people sound like warmongers, but if I find anybody on the left who says that those lambasting the movie without seeing it are warmongers, I’ll let you know. “Deluded” is the harshest I’ve seen (along with my own, worse, “idiots”).