It would be funnier if they had Leslie Chow as Kim Jong-un. And I don’t mean Ken Jeong, the actor that portrays Mr. Chow. I mean Ken Jeong, as Leslie Chow, as Kim Jong-un.
Seth Rogan tweeted about the threat last night. I don’t have the exact wording but the jist was:
Usually people don’t threaten to kill me over my movies until after they’ve paid for a ticket.
I’d love this.
I think that is a pretty fair assumption given the trailer and articles about the movie.
Please point out where I said Rogan doesn’t have a right to make the movie? One has the right to do plenty of things that are in poor taste. I think the movie you linked to is in very poor taste as well. I think the fact that it was a low budget British movie might speak to my point. I would think most major studios in this country would not put their name on a movie with that subject matter.
Is that a joke? Do you really think movies like JFK are analogous at all? Most of the others that I have seen are not about killing a real world leader. Even if they some of the others are, it doesn’t make it right in my opinion.
Again, assuming the script and quality are great, do you really think a major studio would back a comedy about Netanyahu or Obama or Jinping being assassinated? Why or why not?
Probably already making plans to kidnap Rogan and Franco and make them make a NK propaganda movie.
I don’t know Seth Rogen’s politics, but my assumption would be that he’s a liberal. Generally, liberals are neither pro-assassination nor are they pro-CIA. I imagine that the film just makes the Glorious Leader and the CIA both look like idiots, but no one is killed except innocent red shirts.
How about The Naked Gun? That was a comedy about a plot to assassinate the Queen.
There’s a simple rule: Whenever a thing you don’t like is depicted in the media, it is being glamorized.
Bingo!
Given that it’s a movie starring Seth Rogen, I’m pretty sure there’s going to be virtually nothing “glamorous” about the assassination. Given the type of role he usually plays, I suspect the assassination attempt will be portrayed as painful, humiliating, ineffective, and conceived by idiots. Seth Rogen is a clown: he plays endearing doofuses with substance abuse problems, and I don’t see any reason to expect this to be any different. If Tom Cruise announces he’s going to do a movie about assassinating Kim Jong Un, you can reasonably expect a degree of glamor in the depiction. In a Seth Rogen film, you can more or less expect exactly the opposite.
Not all of those links were great, but there’s still plenty of precedent for showing contemporary foreign leaders being killed or assaulted as part of a comedy:
Det. Frank Drebin beats the shit out of a room full of world leaders, in The Naked Gun.
Saddam Hussein catches a bomb in his lap, courtesy of Charlie Sheen, in Hot Shots.
Saddam Hussein is cast into the fiery pits of hell, where he’s impaled on a spire of rock. In French.
And, of course, not a movie, but Captain America punches out a certain German leader. This was a full year before we entered the war, mind.
Sure. It depends on how the material is handled. Sure, a movie about killing Obama where the assassin’s actions were justified wouldn’t make it, but make it about a bunch of incompetent rednecks comically inept assassination attempt? Sure, I don’t see a problem with that. Particularly if they aren’t successful. The other two are less likely, simply because American movie-goers don’t really give a shit about things in other countries. Someone comes to a studio head with a dark comedy about a bungled plot to kill Netanyahu, the first thing he’s probably going to say is, “rewrite it so it’s about an American.”
But the protagonists were trying to stop the act, not perpetrate it. There is a HUGE difference between a movie where the protagonists are doing the killing and one where they are trying to prevent it. Doubly so when the movie is about a real person, and where the act is instigated by a government that very well could try to assassinate that person in real life.
How exactly does what we know about this movie not glamorize the act of killing a world leader?
Again, this movie seems to fit the textbook definition. Let’s say for argument’s sake the Rogan successfully kills him in the movie. Do you think his act would be seen as anything but heroic? The whole premise only works if killing Kim Jong-un is seen as a positive irrespective of whether Rogan is successful or compelling as a movie star.
Which means absolutely nothing. I don’t think anyone has said Rogan’s particular act of bad taste is unprecedented.
Why not in your opinion? Because I think this movie likely functions on the basis that killing Kim Jong-un is justified and appropriate.
An American like Kim Jong-un, right? :smack: I get your general point, but the reality is a movie like that wouldn’t be made primarily because there is almost no way to make killing a friendly foreign leader (especially an Israeli) justifiably to an American audience.
Regardless, I just think making comedies about killing real people, especially world leaders who are often actively subject to such things, is generally in bad taste. I wouldn’t care if the movie is about some worthless dictator like Kim Jong-un or someone like Scalia or O’Reilly. Sure someone should have the right to make whatever movie they want, but it doesn’t mean doing so is in good taste.
Obama announced in a press conference today that the U.S. regrets this movie being made. However, Seth Rogen is actually Canadian. So Obama said that he would be O.K. with North Korea bombing Canada back to the Stone Age.
Since it’s a Seth Rogen movie the Koreans probably consider it a drone attack.
We don’t. And I didn’t say we did. But we don’t know it is glamorizing anything, either. See Miller’s first paragraph for a good explanation of why it seems unlikely there will be much glamour involved. I expect the CIA to be depicted as incompetent/evil/insane/all of the above.
I agree that it’s somewhat in bad taste to depict the deaths of real, living people. Personally, if making the film, I’d just make up a fictional stand-in for North Korea with a Kim-eqsue leader. In this case, I don’t expect the assassination to be successful, anyway.
Why would you assume it will be heroic? This isn’t an action film, it’s a comedy. Have you never seen farce before? The motives of farcical characters are very often ones we don’t approve of.
How is it a huge difference? In what context?
It’s a movie.
It stars Seth Rogen.
Yes, I’m confident that the assassination of Kim Jong Un will be portrayed as anything other than heroic. Because, again: Seth Rogen does not play heroes. He plays clowns. Even when he plays a superhero, he plays a clown. So, I think the odds of the movie ending with a badass ation sequence where Seth Rogen guns down Kim and escapes to a ticker tape parade back home are remote. Almost certainly, Kim doesn’t get killed in the end, and Rogens character learns an important and heartwarming lesson about international diplomacy. Less likely, Rogen’s character decides at the last moment not to kill Kim, who is then killed in some comically unlikely way, probably of his own doing. A remote third possibility is they go dark, and Rogen kills Kim, which triggers some Dr. Strangelove style Armageddon. Rogen kills Kim, big happy ending is the least likely way the film resolves.
You expressed surprise that a major studio would make a movie with this theme. I was just demonstrating that it shouldn’t be surprising, because it’s actually quite common.
Seth Rogen is a liberal Canadian who lives in Hollywood. What do you think the odds are that he believes it’s appropriate to assassinate world leaders?
Heh. Touche.
Yes, and it’s also harder to make a movie that justifies murdering an orphan, versus killing Krolax, Destroyer of Worlds. I’m not sure what that proves, though. Angela Merkel is a president of a friendly democracy, and is no more corrupt than is average for a politician of her stature. Kim Jung Un presides over a hostile regime that has been compared, without hyperbole, to the Third Reich. There’s not a whole lot of meaningful comparisons you draw from the two of them.
I think there are a number of ways it could be handled poorly, for sure. But there are also a number of ways it could be handled tastefully. While I wouldn’t generally call Rogen a “tasteful” filmmaker - his stuff is pretty raunchy - his narratives tend to have very conventional moral centers. I fully expect the movie’s message, to the extent that it has one, to be firmly against assassinating world leaders.
Mind, if the film does end with Rogen putting a round in the back of that porky little fucker’s head, I’ll be perfectly okay with that.
From what I have read, the “good guys” agree to kill an evil dictator. That is very different from the good guys trying to STOP an assassination. The Naked Gun doesn’t ask the audience get on board with the morality or the comedic value of actually killing the queen. We are rooting against it happening, not for the perpetrators. I suppose the movie could sidestep this issue somewhat, but I don’t see any reason or evidence that that is the case.
Glamorizing something doesn’t just mean to make it glamorous. There is a important element of making something seem desirable. I think there is evidence that movie is attempting to do that.
So where exactly are we in disagreement? I would actually suggest that same change you would. Again, my main point is that I am surprised a major studio would get behind a movie like this given the sensitivity of the issue and how unnecessary it is to use his actual name and country.
Except that you haven’t demonstrated that at all. Many of those movie linked to are not backed by major studios, and the few that are, that are in any way analogous, are not numerous enough to be “quite common”. There is a reason most studios often don’t even make terrorists Middle-Easterners, or use real names or countries. It’s usually just gratuitous and tasteless to do so. To make a comedy where the whole premise seems to be having the protagonists kill a real life world leader is both uncommon and tasteless.
Probably low-ish. I think a healthy portion of our public (the audience) could be swayed to back Kim Jong-un’s assassination. It’s not like we are above killing world leaders or at least supporting factions that have that goal.
I am not comparing the character of the two. I think we can all agree Kim is pretty despicable guy. I am saying that as a blanket rule, it is fairly tasteless to make comedies depicting the assassination of real world leaders. Given the aggravating circumstances in this case (eg. the volatility on the Korean peninsula, the thin-skinned nature of the Kim, etc.), I think the decision to use his real name is stupid.
Obviously I haven’t seen the movie, but I would be surprised if I saw anything in particular that justified the decision.
Except, again, that it’s starring Seth Rogen.
:dubious:
What is that evidence?
Where you appear to be in disagreement is that you’re automatically assuming the least tasteful approach to this story possible, and condemning it on that basis, with, as far as I can see, no reason to do so beyond a vaguest outline of a plot.
What are you talking about? The films I linked to were released by Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures (twice) and 20th Century Fox. Those are three of the biggest studios in Hollywood. Timely Comics (this was two name changes before it became Marvel) didn’t have quite the same reach, but the image of Captain America beating the shit out of the Fuehrer is a classic piece of Americana. All of the works I cited were highly successful - even Hot Shots did well enough to spawn a sequel.
So, why are you so certain that he’d make a movie “glamorizing” an act he almost certainly morally opposes?
I’d say it very much depends on the leader. As for it being a bad idea because he’s so fucking crazy… doesn’t that apply equally to any treatment of him in the media? Shouldn’t we be equally concerned about, say, this portrayal of the previous Kim? Or any segment of The Daily Show discussing events in NK?
I think the justification is on CNN, and not in the film’s script.
I, for one, welcome any movie that glamorizes the assassination of Seth Rogen. The more realistic, the better.
Originally I saw his ability to shape international events when I saw this(nsfw):