For an artist, their work is a way to express themselves.
They can put what they are thinking into the at they make. Their thoughts,
emotions, fears, and world views come through to the audience. It could be in
the strokes of a painting or the shadows in a sketch. When it comes to film,
those expressions can be much clearer. Film is a combination of many different
art forms, and as such, can paint a much more detailed picture of what the
artist wants to convey. When an artist has a message that they want to get
across, it becomes apparent through the movies they make.
There can be various messages that a filmmaker may want to
present to their audience. Last Ounce of Courage and God’s Not Dead
presented the message that people were no longer allowed to believe in
Christianity, but the good Christians of America had to fight back to show that
they still believed. Frogs, Birdemic, and The Happening
were a message of respecting nature through the guise of nature fighting back
against humans. Another message that frequently enters movies involves the
shady dealings of the government and how that harms the citizens of a country.
The idea that the government could be doing some shady stuff
that the public doesn’t know about is a fear that has permeated through the
population for as long as government has existed. In America, it’s more present
because of the mass media. The massive news outlets can create that kind of
paranoia, which is warranted, in many cases. The Watergate scandal still has
ripple effects. Nearly every president has some sort of revelation about their
presidency come out. The NSA can hack their way into cell phones and computers.
Assassinations and wars keep happening. There are all sorts of shady government
things going on, and the filmmakers of America frequently have something to say
about it.
Consider the Purge franchise. The first film might
not have had the same sort of government slant as the rest, but the films got
very political as they went on. The Purge was a home invasion movie in a
world where all crime was legal for one night, every year. That idea of the one
night was kind of a shady government move, but there was nothing more to it
than that backdrop for the film. The Purge: Anarchy, the first sequel,
brought the government more into the story. It was set outside on Purge night,
instead of in a house. There were government transport trucks travelling around
with machine guns in the back. The government was killing people on Purge
night. The Purge: Election Year was even more political, with one of the
protagonists being a woman who was running for office to try and stop the
Purge. Then there was The First Purge, which saw the origins of Purge
night, and had the government tampering with the experiment to make it work in
their favour. The entire franchise opened things up about how bad the
government of that America was. They were doing bad things behind the scenes,
and it was leading to a genocide within the country’s borders.
On a lighter note, there’s a movie like Geostorm. It
wasn’t about the entire government being shady. It was about one person within
the government doing some questionable to bad things in order to try and
further themselves. The secretary of state was going to use the Dutch Boy
device to kill everyone in the line of succession to president above him so
that he could become president and control the country, then the world. It
highlighted the desire for power that so many politicians have. This man would
do anything to secure the most powerful position in America, and he was going
to take the world while he was at it. People like Richard Nixon come to mind
when thinking of this want for power. He might not have killed people through
catastrophic natural disasters, but his Watergate scandal uncovered how far he
would go to stay in power.
Neil Breen is a director who has repeatedly hit upon the bad
things that the government does in order to further themselves. There have been
three of his movies featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, and each one has had a
storyline dealing with what kind of things the government does. His debut film
was 2005’s Double Down. The main character, Aaron Brand, had worked for
the government until they assassinated his fiancée. When that happened, he
turned to terrorism and fighting against the government. He had many skills and
put them to good use.
Double Down was a movie that revolved around the fact
that murder was illegal, unless it was government sanctioned. People could be
killed by the government and nothing could be done about it, in terms of due
process and justice. If government spies wanted someone dead, they could kill someone
without any repercussions. Aaron Brand used his own form of justice to fight
back against the government agents that had his wife killed. He used his
superior hacking skills and bio-chemical warfare to make sure that injustices
like his wife’s death never happened again.
Neil Breen followed Double Down with his 2009 film I
Am Here… Now. Breen starred as The Being, a version of God that was taking
human form to see what had gone wrong with civilization. Twin sisters Amber
(Joy Senn) and Cindy (Elizabeth Sekora) were former renewable energy workers
who were forced out of their jobs due to budget cuts and went on to become
prostitutes and escorts. Eventually, they would be redeemed and The Being would
see how messed up the world he created was.
The government played a large role in the corruption of the world
in I Am Here… Now. Renewable energy was fighting to become a bigger,
cleaner form of energy for the world. Non-renewable energy companies didn’t
want to lose to the competition and would pay off the government. They would
use money and prostitutes to keep politicians happy, and the politicians would
shoot down any funding for renewable energy. Amber and Cindy worked for
companies that strove to bring renewable energy to the forefront of energy
sources. Because the politicians wouldn’t give them money, they lost their jobs.
When they lost their jobs, they turned to prostitution. Then they had to
service the politicians that caused their job security to disappear. They were
corrupted through the government corruption.
The government corruption didn’t stop there. Fateful
Findings, Neil Breen’s 2012 follow-up, continued that concept. The main
character was a novelist with super-powers. He also had some mad hacking abilities
and used them to find information with which to write a new book. It wasn’t a
novel. It was a tell-all tale that would reveal the real conspiracies of the
government and corporations. The government kidnapped the writer’s girlfriend.
He saved her, revealed their secrets in a press conference, and avoided his own
assassination. Then a bunch of corrupt politicians and corporate employees
killed themselves.
Fateful Findings had the best of both sides of the government
corruption. It showcased the above-the-law assassination stuff with the
attempted assassination of the main character as well as the kidnapping of his
girlfriend. It was up to him to expose them as a form of justice, since the government
wouldn’t be policing themselves for these actions. Their ties to corporations
were also apparent through the bank’s links to the government. All the
conspiracies involved corporations, banks, and the government. The conspiracies
involved how those three entities tied together to create a corrupt America.
Fear of the government and the abilities that they have is an
ongoing thing. People are worried about their privacy because the government is
always looking to spy on them. Wikileaks and the Snowden leaks revealed how the
different government agencies are able to hack into phones and computers to
watch what people are searching, sending, and taking videos of. Cameras and
microphones could be turned on at any time to monitor what people say and do.
The government can spy on people at any time through their electronic devices.
Then there are the cases of the government doing things that
overstep their authority. They will torture, hurt, kill, and start wars over anything
they want, as long as they come up with a convincing story. Laws will change on
a whim as politicians work to show their loyalty to their party, rather than
their loyalty to their constituents. The oppressed remain oppressed, while the
other people thrive. Further gun restrictions and advances in environmental protection
are not put in place because of the money being used to re-elect the
politicians. The system is corrupt and movies highlight that in great fashion.
Artists express their inner emotions and thoughts through
their work. Filmmakers are artists. Whatever is pent up within them will come
through their work. For some, it might be a childhood trauma. For others, it
could be the fear they have for powerful people. Others yet might want to show
stories about family relationships. Each are as important to their respective
filmmakers. If a filmmaker wants to say something they will, through their work.
Good or bad, they get their thoughts out there and share them with people. And
that’s the magic of movies.
Now it’s time for a few notes before we get going:
- Neil Breen directed I Am Here… Now. He also directed Fateful Findings (week 147) and Double Down (week 215). On top of that, he starred in all three of them.
- Last Ounce of Courage (week 369), God’s Not Dead (week 230), Frogs (week 103), Birdemic (week 100), and The Happening (week 185) were mentioned in this post.
- Have you seen I Am Here… Now? What did you think? What do you think of Neil Breen’s filmography? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
- You can find me on Twitter or in the comments if you want to share a suggestion of a movie I should check out for the Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’m always looking for something I might not know about.
- Check out the Sunday “Bad” Movies Instagram if you haven’t. There’s stuff going up there on a regular basis as a celebration of this blog and the movies included in it.
- One final note is about the next movie to roll through the Sunday “Bad” Movies. Disney+ will be releasing a new season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on February 21, so I’ll be checking out the movie that came before the series. Star Wars: The Clone Wars is up next week. I’ll see you then, as I dive into the stories of that galaxy far, far away for the second time.
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