You
may think that most Hollywood blockbusters are designed purely to
entertain punters and make a load of cash. Well, you may be surprised
that some of the most popular movies ever made often have hard-hitting
political messages woven throughout them.
Below are five hidden meanings in films that might surprise even their biggest fans.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead.
Star Wars
What it’s about: A plucky group of rebels fight against an evil space empire.
What it’s REALLY about: The Viet Cong fight the American empire.
When George Lucas began work on
‘Star Wars’ in 1971, the Cold War was at its height, as was the conflict
in Vietnam. Many fans of the franchise believe that the ‘Star Wars’ was
a political message about the Cold War, but in a 2005 interview Lucas
confirmed that “’Star Wars’ was really about the Vietnam War.”
In interviews for DVD extras
conducted for the original ‘Star Wars’ series, Lucas even said that he
thought of the tiny, peaceful Ewoks as like Viet Cong fighters battling
against the might of the American war machine. Lucas said, “That was the
period where Nixon was trying to run for another term, which got me to
thinking historically about how do democracies get turned into
dictatorships? Because the democracies aren’t overthrown; they’re given
away.”
Not content with one analogy
between his own space opera and America’s wars, Lucas drew attention to
the similarities between President George W Bush and the rise of Senator
Palpatine in the film ‘Star Wars VI: Revenge of the Sith’ and the war
in Iraq. Fans have highlighted in particular Senator Amidala’s line,
“This is how liberty dies: with thundering applause.”
The Lord of the Rings
What it’s about: Men battle hideous orcs and their armoured leader, Sauron
What it’s REALLY about: The Battle of the Somme
When World War I broke out, J. R.
R. Tolkien was mid-way through his studies at the University of Oxford.
He deferred enlisting in the army until he had finished his degree, but
signed up in 1915.
A year later his unit was sent to
the Battle of the Somme, where 60,000 British soldiers died one day
during the infamous ‘over the top’ trench assault. Overall, nearly a
million people were killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in
human history.
Speaking later of his experiences in France, Tolkien simply said, “It was like a death.”
Tolkien’s survival of the Somme
was in part due to the fact that his unit was held in reserve, seeing
action weeks into the conflict, by which time British troops had broken
through the German ranks.
As he recovered in hospital,
Tolkien wrote his first Middle-Earth story: a strange, stand-alone tale
featuring dragons which were half beast and half machine. These dragons
are a metaphor of the tanks, which the British used in the mud of the
Somme. Peter Jackson’s depiction of Saruman’s orcs being created recalls
this imagery of animal fused with metal, as does his metallic,
robot-like depiction of the villain Sauron.
In letters to friends, Tolkien
admitted that the hellish marshes which the heroes of ‘The Lord of the
Rings’ splash through were directly inspired by his experiences of
France. In a letter, he wrote, “The Dead marshes and the approaches to
the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the
Somme.”
Peter Jackson’s bleak, blasted
Mordor also recalls the landscapes of World War I. At one point Sam and
Frodo hide in a ditch which resembles a shell crater. The imagery of
real, human war is also present in the battle of Minas Tirith, and the
Ring Wraiths riding in triumph through the ruins. Both Tolkien’s book
and Jackson’s film dwell on this destruction.
Observers have also commented on the significance of the One Ring, which is widely considered to represent the atomic bomb.
Godzilla
What it’s about: A giant monster rears up out of the seas
What it’s REALLY about: Hiroshima
The original black and white
‘Godzilla’ film was made in Japan in the early Fifties, when the country
was still reeling from the twin nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.
The original ‘Godzilla’ films
were directed by Ishiro Honda, who had just served in the Japanese army,
and returned convinced of the futility of war and with a horror of
atomic weaponry.
The first ‘Godzilla’ film
includes scenes with scientists carrying Geiger counters taking
radiation readings from Godzilla’s radioactive footprints, and the
monster is revealed to have been created in a nuclear explosion.
When this news comes out, some
characters immediately argue that it must be kept secret. For Honda and
his Japanese audience, the real villain would not have been hard to
discern: the escalating Cold War, and in particular the arms race
between America and the Soviet Union.
In 1954, the year ‘Godzilla’ came
out, America had just detonated the most powerful hydrogen bomb it
would ever set off at its testing ground on Bikini Atoll. The test was
meant to be a secret, but a huge cloud of radioactive fallout dust blew
over nearby islands, giving their inhabitants radiation sickness. It’s
perhaps no coincidence that the first victims of the radioactive
Godzilla are also Pacific islanders.
Atomic weaponry is mentioned in
18 of the 25 fantasy films Honda would go on to make. These include
genre classics such as ‘Godzilla vs Mothra’ and ‘War of the Monsters’.
The War of the Worlds
What it’s about: Terrifying alien creatures invade Earth
What it’s REALLY about: Terrifying Europeans colonise the world
Written in 1898, the science
fiction classic ‘The War of the Worlds’ has been filmed many times, but
in none of those versions, nor the 1996 film ‘Independence Day’ (which
takes many of the themes of the book) would a viewer suspect that the
aliens are in fact meant to be white Europeans, and the plucky humans
battling them are meant to be Aborigines.
The book was written to horrify
readers with a vision of what it would be like if Europe were confronted
by a contemptuous, technologically superior force – much in the manner
the British Army had as it colonised countries around the world. Wells, a
lifelong socialist, was particularly horrified by the war of
extermination waged against the Aborigines in Tasmania by British
colonial forces.
In the novel, Wells writes, “The
Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of
existence in a war of extermination. Are we such apostles of mercy, as
to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?”
According to his biographer,
former Labour leader Michael Foot, Wells poured his scientific knowledge
into the book in an attempt to horrify white Europeans with the idea of
technologies far in advance of their own.
The alien craft and walkers in
the books and films were conceived long before the first tanks fought in
World War One, and Wells, a trained biologist, also dreamed up beam
weaponry such as lasers, long before such things existed, and the use of
chemical and biological weaponry.
Author Wells kills off the alien
foe with Earth bacteria. In ‘Independence Day’, a computer virus is
substituted. But in the novel, Wells can’t resist one last dig.
The aliens’ last words refer to
how their war machine would “fight no more for ever.” It’s a direct
reference to the last words of Native American Chief Joseph of the Nez
Perce as he surrendered to American forces in 1877: another victim of a
Western war of technological domination.
The Dark Knight
What it’s about: A deranged terrorist, The Joker, battles Batman and the police
What it’s REALLY about: The War on Terror
Even in the comics, Batman is a
dark, changeable figure who is psychoanalysed by the Joker in the
classic ‘Arkham Asylum’. In Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’,
despite a truly chilling villain in the form of Heath Ledger’s cackling
Joker, it’s no longer clear who the bad guy really is. Is it the
psychopathic terrorists who attack Gotham, or is it the increasingly
draconian authorities? Parallels with America’s War on Terror run
through the film.
The first parallel is the shift
from the regular comic book bad guys that shoot lasers from the moon in
order to take over the world. This time the threat was more sinister.
The Joker blew up public buildings (including a hospital) and convinced
weak criminals to become suicide bombers.
Once this realistic threat was
established, more similarities can be compared. The Joker drives
Attorney Harvey Dent to evil and eventually death, the Harvey Dent Act
is put into law in his memory, giving police extra-judicial powers
against criminals. It’s a direct echo of the Patriot Act, an Act of
Congress signed into law by George W Bush in 2001, giving the
authorities increased powers of surveillance and wire-tapping after
9/11.
The questionable ethics of this are highlighted further by Batman’s bank of surveillance equipment that enables him to spy on everyone with a mobile phone and use it as a 3D map.
The questionable ethics of this are highlighted further by Batman’s bank of surveillance equipment that enables him to spy on everyone with a mobile phone and use it as a 3D map.
There’s also the scene where
Batman forcibly extradites Lau (a criminal accountant) from Hong Kong
and delivers him to US officials which directly mimics the CIA’s
methods.
Legendary film critic Roger Ebert
wrote of the Dark Knight, “Throughout the film, [the Joker] devises
ingenious situations that force Batman, Commissioner Gordon and District
Attorney Harvey Dent to make impossible ethical decisions. By the end,
the whole moral foundation of the Batman legend is threatened.”
A comment that can be directly compared with the increasingly questionable methods the US Government are employing in the War on Terror.
A comment that can be directly compared with the increasingly questionable methods the US Government are employing in the War on Terror.
Source: Yahoo Movies
Comments
Post a Comment