Monday, March 01, 2010

Case For The Hurt Locker

It may seem small and possibly irrelevant, but one of the main reasons I am pulling for The Hurt Locker over Avatar for the award is this.
While Avatar depicts the military as an evil thuggish right arm of corporations who are willing to take innocent life just to make a profit, The Hurt Locker depicts military men as courageous, compassionate who put their lives on the line to save innocent life.
And since Avatar has been seen by a wider audience, The Hurt Locker will gain a lot more viewers if it wins the academy award and maybe, just maybe more people will see our military for who they really are.

1 comment:

Maximum Colossus said...

Interesting. A lot of people saw the Hurt Locker as an anti-military film that portrays the way that war and military service twist the mind and the adrenaline rush of combat situations becomes like a drug that alters perception and saps young men of their ability to relate to the non-military world upon their return, to the point of abandoning responsibilities such as a wife and child.

As for Avatar, while it was certainly a big cliched mess as far as a story, at least they bothered to mention that the military personnel in the movie were merely hired guns for a greedy corporation. And I think we can all agree that corporations are evil, right? Who's with me?!

Anyway, I think both movies are deserving. The Hurt Locker had a very real feel to it and it really made you think about a huge polarizing real world conflict that is happening as we speak. And it's characters are heartfelt and lovingly rendered. Those are things that people really like to see in the Academy winners. Avatar is a game changer, and it succeeds on such an epic scale that you cannot deny it deserves whatever accolades get heaped on it at this point.

It's funny how it reminds me of the year Gump won. A fun story that got pushed over the top due to a special effects gimmick that was years beyond everyone else. Most people will tell you that it was in no way a better movie than Shawshank (still in most people's top ten all-time lists) or Pulp Fiction, a film that launched a million indy film directors.