Just a few weeks ago Alan Moore claimed that the popularity of superhero movies could be linked to the rise of fascism and has now been John McTiernanthe director of mythical films like ‘Predator’ or ‘Jungla de Cristal’, who has come to say the same thing, but going one step further.
McTiernan has chatted with Página 12 on the occasion of his visit to the Mar de Plata Festival, where they have discussed various topics, but the most striking part of it will surely be these incendiary statements about superhero movies:
They are basically fascists. It is fascist material that has been going around for twenty years. That’s the basic thing I said in the talk. Our profession has consequences and I have tried to make clear this situation that the audiovisual is the dominant medium of our times and, therefore, generates changes in our world. In the past, a small group of fine artists took control of their dominant medium at the time, around 1770. Twenty years later came the French Revolution. I can’t prove it, but I’m convinced it had something to do with it. That one thing could not have happened without the other. The painting was a significant prologue to the revolution, one of the things that made it possible. The question now is to ask what can happen – and it is something that worries me a lot – if true fascism takes control of my country. If I look at what happened twenty years ago with the dominant media of our times, I can’t help but worry.
In addition, the person in charge of ‘The last great hero’ also highlighted that the big problem with these movies is not the overdose of special effects, something that he sees as a tool that many do not know how to use correctly. For him, the problemit is of a political nature, it is the idea of making films that do not have human beings as protagonists. It is as if they told you that they are making films for an audience that will never be like those people on the screen. From there, something like ‘it’s not worth telling a story about people like you. You have no power, you can’t value’. That is when you have to start thinking about the guillotine“.
In addition, McTiernan also influenced the moment the hollywood i knew went to shitwell according to him “it was in the mid-90s when money took over everything. By 2005 money was already the master and lord“. He also had time to make this forceful reflection:
I paid attention to what other directors were doing and I learned a lot of lessons, but not necessarily the good ones. Kubrick made one big movie for a studio and then said ‘fuck off’. He did ‘Spartacus’ and left there to make good movies. Australian George Miller made a huge movie for a studio and said ‘fuck you’ and went home to make ‘Babe the Brave Little Pig’ and other amazing movies. I stayed too long at that fairground, I should have left sooner. And it was something that was driving me crazy, to the point of hating what I was doing.
Of course, it was not all bad news, since the filmmaker revealed that “there are currently five projects that I am working on and that I like, that I want to do“But he did not want to give more details so as not to jinx them. Let’s hope at least one comes outwho has already released his last film 19 years ago…