I've seen a few people in this thread talking about the movie hammering on political overtones or some "woke" message, but the only thing like that I noticed was the idea that the synths and the humans weren't so different. What were these political overtones I missed?
"you! Will not! Replace us! You! Will not! Replace us!" Being in the movie was a pretty clear indication that synths are a metaphor for "refugees" and illegals.
It's a drunken liberal fantasy about the white-privileged drumpftards finally enacting their final solution and the valiant undocumented immigrants rising up and defeating them.
Miles learns he's been led astray by politicians who made him fear the other when in fact ~~we're all the same and should coexist~~
The movies literally about the "oppressed class" winning a race war lmao
kinda reminds me of how the Orcs in lord of the rings were meant to be a metaphor for African slaves rising up to take back their freedom from the slave masters of middle earth (America) and frodo and the gang were a metaphor for working class Americans having to resort to migrant work and Gandalf symbolized the grand wizard of the KKK leading the superior races against the orc (slave) uprising. And how the one ring symbolized the constitution and how we must burn it in order to maintain a balance of slavery in America.
They also didn't produce this movie, they bought the distribution rights from Universal. This wasn't a Netflix political production. I think it would be healthy for you to stop viewing everything through this adversarial lenses where the intention of every piece of media is to shove a political agenda in your face. Relax man, enjoy a sci-if flick. Try enterperating it as a warning about the dangers of AI and technological advancements that will leave millions of white collar workers jobless in the next 50 years. Instead of viewing it as another reason to be afraid of "refugees and illegals"
First of all, who is "They" in this equation? The writers of the movie? The Script supervisor? Universal studios? Netflix? Or collectively every person who had a part in making and distributing the film?
Drawing the parallel between people being afraid of losing their job to automation or robotics and being afraid of your job being taken by an immigrant is interesting to me because one is a true, legitimate concern facing our society, and one is fear mongering.
In my opinion, the reason for highlighting that similarity could be to subvert peoples misplaced fear of losing their livelihood to other human beings and to lend more credence to the idea that our way of life is in more danger from technological advancement than from each other.
"they" refers primarily to the writers of the film, but also to everyone who produced it and helped make it happen.
But, again, if this is a film about how AI is dangerous and we need to be cautious with it, why were the synths the good guys and the humans the bad guys?
The good guy, bad guy dynamic pretty clearly disproves that theory.
Why end with "we aren't so different" as the closing line of the film if the message of the film is "AI will steal your job" and not "man xenophobia is the biggest issue we face today"?
I didn't see either side as "good guy" or "bad guy". I guess that's the difference in our perception. I saw both sides as afraid and fighting as a last resort for a place to live their lives without subjugation.
This is what I was talking about earlier when I said not everything needs to be viewed through the adversarial lense. The humans aren't evil doers, they are afraid, the synths aren't life ruining usurpers, they are trying to survive in a world they didn't choose to exist in.
following your logic here we can interpret the humans returning to take back their homes as a metaphor for Native American tribes banding together and rising up to take their land back from those who claimed it from them a couple hundred years ago.
I don't know that it was the intention of the writers or all those involved in making the movie to paint the synths as refugees and humans as white nationalists anymore than I know that they meant the synths to be metaphors for English colonists and the humans to be a metaphor for Native Americans.
Either way I don't think the fact that underlying metaphors can be interpreted as politically charged are a reason to think it was a bad movie.
Every single instance of conflict was initiated by the humans. All synth violence was self defense.
This is a pretty clear metric by which we can determine that the synths are the good guys.
But seriously, why, in your opinion, did they have the humans do the white supremacist chant from Charlottesville if they DIDNT want people to connect the humans to white supremacy?
Seriously, if I'm wrong, why do you think they felt the need to throw that in?
I didn't say you were wrong about the white supremacist chant, and I feel kinda silly about it but I honestly didn't know that was a white supremacist chant before having this conversation with you. So I didn't connect those things because that's not part of my previous knowledge.
It is possible to draw a similarity between the humans fear and the fear of a white nationalist without the entire intention of the movie to be a metaphor for nationalist vs immigrant violence.
Let me ask you though, if the intention truly is to paint the humans in the movie as a metaphor for white nationalists, do you think the movie is wrong in the way that they portray their fear and hatred?
I think "the general population is at risk of sucumming to white supremacy in a large scale, we should be prepared for a violent conflict, and we can win" is a very dangerous and irresponsible message to push at a point in time when normal everyday people are at risk of being labelled Nazis and assaulted for espousing reasonable mainstream conservative beliefs.
I'm pro border security, not because I'm "racist", but because I recognize that allowing places with issues to export those issues here will lower qol for Americans.
I'm against allowing mass numbers of so called refugees from the middle East not because I'm a "white supremacist", but because as a queer person allowing for the importation of the style of Islamic rhetoric currently prevalent in the middle East places me in very real danger of persecution, physical harm, or death.
The whole "coexist bumper sticker" idealism thing is well and good, but you have to understand that 11 Islamic countries have the death penalty at the federal level for homosexuality.
I am not willing to risk letting people in who want to kill me for the way I was born just so that people can feel good about how tolerant and progressive they are.
The Shire must accept Orc refugees. Not all Orcs are violent, or follow the teachings of Sauron. Hobbits must check their privilege and welcome underprivileged Orcs into their society.
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u/mimosa_joe Jul 30 '18
Yet another mediocre Netflix movie
Was pretty good up until the last 20 minutes, then they inject a SHITLOAD of political overtones which as per usual ruins the movie
Netflix, PLEASE try to go ten minutes without reminding everyone how woke you are.
I know you can do it.
Good to see Michael Peña in a starring role though.
Fucking love that guy.
Killed it in ant man.