I’m going to do a quick piece of non-angry art criticism here. This had better remain civil; I dislike the Pit.
I’m getting real tired of Hollywood and “Eeeevil.” Specifically, Hollywood tends to portray various corporations, industries, political groups, governments, etc. as Eeeevil conspirators. They do this regardless of the logic involved; Hollywood types love sneering villains who enjoy engaging in overly complicated plots and doing horrible nasty things for no reason.
Some of this is politically charged. Some is not. When it is, it desfitely tends to be lefty, but that’s not what this is about. No, I’m irritated by the sheer insanity of it all. They treat sanity more or less like actual science in movies.
Take The Constant Gardener. This acclaimed thriller stands a good chance of picking up an Oscar, given the kind of buzz surrounding it. Captain’s Quarters Adeuately explains. Left-wing Dopers should note this is a conservative-leaning website, but tyhe analysis here is spot-on regardless of your politics.
On a non-political scale, look at the wacky shenangans of Live and Let Die, one of the wierder Bond movies. The villains goes through extremely wild gyrations so he can… smuggle drugs into the U.S. Like this requires fake faces and voodoo and prophets and so on. :rolleyes:
So bring it on Dopers. Toss up and grind down crazy plots. Heck, go ahead and make your own if you like!
No evil plot has ever been as convoluted as last season’s 24 (perpetrated not by an eeevil corporation or governement agency but by some Middle Eastern terrorists).
[ul][li]the crashing of a commuter train[/li][li] the attempting melting down of every nuclear power plant in th U.S.[/li][li]Kidnapping the Secretary of Defense[/li][li]Shooting down Air Force One by a stolen Stealth fighter[/li][li]To capture the nuclear football to launch a stolen nuclear warhead at Los Angeles[/li]Done with the aid of a Chinese National, leading a diplomatic situation with China[/ul]
“Passion Network” is about a group of rich people who have set up this secret society so they can pay young people to have sex with them. They even fake a death to make someone who’s planning to go the police about their Passion Network look like a nut. Didn’t somebody tell these horny, wealthy people that there exists a large coterie of sex industry professionals who would happily have sex with them, that a secret society for such purposes is, like, TOTALLY UNNECCESARY!!!???
[QUOTE=Gangster Octopus]
No evil plot has ever been as convoluted as last season’s 24 (perpetrated not by an eeevil corporation or governement agency but by some Middle Eastern terrorists).
[li]the crashing of a commuter train[/li][li] the attempting melting down of every nuclear power plant in th U.S.[/li][li]Kidnapping the Secretary of Defense[/li][li]Shooting down Air Force One by a stolen Stealth fighter[/li][li]To capture the nuclear football to launch a stolen nuclear warhead at Los Angeles[/li][li]Done with the aid of a Chinese National, leading a diplomatic situation with China[/li][/QUOTE]
You forgot about the Defense Contractor who was trying to kill a government agent and black out half of LA with an EMP bomb because they didn’t like the government looking through their files. Oh, and they have their own little private army.
Actually, Dr. Kananga’s plot is a bit more challenging than that – it’s to flood the U.S. with dirt-cheap heroin and drive all existing suppliers out of the business. And later, presumably, once his monopoly is safely established, raise his own prices. Don’t know if it would work. But the voodoo stuff is just to keep his own people, on their little Caribbean island, terrified/submissive/entertained.
Why, I’m watching one right now! Sneakers, in which eeeevil and crazy Ben Kingsley wants to use a code-breaking box to wipe out all records of private ownership in order to bring about a worldwide classless utopia. Yeah, that’ll work.
The first movie that comes to mind is Warren Beatty’s Parallax View, which deals with presidential nominee assasinations and the like - very disturbing in a '70’s sort of way…
The most ludicrous eeeeevil plot of them all had to be Blofeld’s scheme in “On Her Majesties’ Secret Service”. To wit, Blofeld has rounded up a gaggle of international supermodels and intends to give them toxic makeup which will spread widespread disease throughout the world.
Even without Bond’s interference, the plot wouldn’t work. Given that supermodels are, like, totally into this velvet rope culture, not enough ‘normal’ people would ever get close enough to them for contract the infectious diseases. The only folks who would be infected would be the 1960s equivalents of Paris Hilton, the Jessica & Ashlee Simpson, and Britney Spears…eh, hmmmmm.
Well, actually maybe the plan WOULD work as once these people are dead, the common man would exalt Blofeld to the status of living saint for ridding the world of useless, overexposed supermodel types. (Of course, killing off people like Paris, Jessica, Britney is a plan which may not be considered eeeeeevil! )
The movie “The Wicker man” has a nice little conspiracy that you suspect early on, but works pretty well regardless. Though the victem almost deserves it because he’s an asshole and stupid to boot.
The Manchurian Candidate had a nice aspect to this, and the movie “Invasion of the Body Snacthers” had a very nice feel of not knowing who you can trust because anyone could be a pod person.
How about JFK? It was pretty incoherent but my understanding of it was that a vast conspiracy composed of right-wing Texan CIA homosexuals wanted to wear make-up and dance with each other and have a big war in Vietnam so they decided to kill the President.
How about movies where the conspiracy isn’t what it seems? 12 Monkeys revolved around a conspiracy by the Gang of 12 Monkeys to wipe out the humanity by spreading a deadly virus, but they were, in fact, a bunch of wannabe losers who did nothing more that set a bunch of zoo animals stampeding through Manhattan
The Bourne Identity (& Supremacy), and, to really show my age, The Osterman Weekend and Three Days of the Condor. These movies had plots so complicated I can’t even begin to synopsize them.
As Smeghead noted, The X-Files: Fight the Future. Something about an alien bio-assimilation virus designed to be spread by bees that mutates and turns the victims into slavering alien beasts (which may or may not have been a design feature) and because The Conspiracy doesn’t invest in decend security they have to blow up their bases every time someone slips in the back door. And Scully still doesn’t believe Mulder.
BEL as in THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE BELL- a made-for-TV potential-pilot movie in which Glenn Ford refuses to obey an order from his old college frat, only to find that it’s the Secret Society which launched his business success, arranged his marriage, and controls damn near everything.
It’s gotten to the point where “large corporation” is shorthand for “evil” these days. They don’t even feel that they have to establish that a large company is evil, but just expect us to assume that it is.
The aforementioned Manchurian Candidate remake is a prime example. Instead of a Chinese conspiracy, like in the original, they changed it to a corporate conspiracy for no real reason, even though that forced them into some lame backfilling so the title would still make sense.
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