Nerd Movie Reviews

Fury Review Part 1

Tanks for a great movie!

When you really think about it, the outcome of WWII was kind of a disappointment.  Sure, we won the war and for like six months America was the hero of the world but all it really did was set us up for the Cold War like your best friends date setting you up with her ugly cousin (and that date went for 50 years).  It didn’t take long for France to start hating us again no doubt based on their belief that in time they would have cast out the Germans through the strength of their Résistance (you know, I almost managed to type that whole sentence without laughing out loud) and over time some of the more morally ambiguous decisions we made started to haunt us (American internment camps of Japanese-Americans (thanks to George Takei for educating me on the proper term.  You rock!), dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a means of seeing what it would do, the ultimate rise of the American military/industrial complex that is steadily grinding our economy into dust, etc.).  Honestly when you really think about it the only good thing to come out of World War II (from an entertainment perspective at least) is the Nazis.

Not to say Nazis are good.  They are horrible people and the epitome of how bad humanity can get.  If I could go back in time to kill three people first off would be Adolf Hitler (followed by Melvil Dewey, inventor of the hated Dewey Decimal System and George Lucas at the premier of the Return of the Jedi.  Sure we would lose American Graffiti but it would a small price to pay for never having to watch the Phantom Menace or any of the other horrors.  Losing Red Tails would be a bonus.  Image courtesy of my own private collection of cool Star Wars t-shirts).  However, due to the increased importance of global ticket sales and the namby pamby super PC I-just-soiled-my-designer-Underoos fear of offending any potentially lucrative minority Hollywood has been cursed with the modern list of groups to be considered movie villains has been reduced to white trash racists, North Korea, rogue CIA elements, and Mexican cartels.  Literally every other group in the world has someone who will sue, protest, or potentially not buy a movie ticket.

However, when doing a movie in WWII all those problems dissipate like a mild fart in a wind tunnel.  Nazis are the perfect villains.  They are by definition all white so you don’t have to worry about offending any minorities, the are demonstrably evil, and even most of the Germans dislike or disavow their existence.  By being evil from the get go you can have them be as evil as you like and anything you do to them is fair game.  If you dressed a bunch of babies in SS uniforms and filmed a scene of them being tossed into a wood chipper no one would blink because they are Nazis.

(Notice we don’t have a lot of films involving the Japanese because that might be racist.  Also the Japanese are now our friends and are cute perverted wierdos who have game shows where guys in loincloths eat bugs and buy used panties from vending machines.)

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