Iron Man 3 Treats Islamist Terror Like a Joke
Not even kidding.
Iron Man, though, is a smart franchise and initially, despite its comic-book soul, took an admirably unsympathetic view to Islamist terror...But then the kulaks got to them!
Yet Iron Man 3 is a huge step backward that openly mocks the War on Terror via the villain the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley).Shane Black could have made the villain Allah Ishkabibble, an Al Qaeda kingpin working with Hillary Clinton on Benghazi, but he chose treason.
Spoiler alert: Read no farther if you don’t want a central plot twist ruined. But what happens in the second half of the movie is critical to understanding the spinelessness of Hollywood and its revolting willingness to reduce the War on Terror to a cheap laugh.BuzzFeed oughta hire this guy. I will omit the spoiler, though you might find this bit spoilt in its own way:
Millions of fans too young to remember 9/11 will line up to see Iron Man 3, but it’s not just to them that Hollywood’s leading filmmakers have a duty. Reducing the alarmingly durable threat of Islamist fundamentalism to potty humor is an insult not just to Daniel Pearl’s family but to the millions of Americans who continue to wage the War on Terror. It’s as if, a decade after Hitler, a movie portrayed a Hitler-like villain as a harmless oaf who was no threat to anyone.Nobody tell him about Achmed The Dead Terrorist. Glimmer-of-self-awareness bonus: Boot asks himself --
Am I asking too much of a comic book movie?Doesn't last long, though. With this bunch it never does.
UPDATE. Responding to Boot's peculiar notion that it's counterproductive to make fun of the enemy in wartime, commenters point out that Hitler was a figure of fun in Der Fuehrer's Face, Plane Daffy, You Natzy Spy, To Be or Not To Be, All Through the Night, The Great Dictator, "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball," et alia. Of course it's possible Boot is familiar with all these entertainments, but unable to grasp the concept of "fun."
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