this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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GenZedong
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If we consider the Predator movie, at least the first one, to be an allegory for the Vietnam war because it featured jungle warfare and commando bros facing off against an enemy that is virtually invisible, implacable, utterly alien and incomprehensible, and entirely determined to hunt down and kill the invaders (often in torturous ways) while the commando bros are pretty much helpless against the predator as they get picked off one by one...
Then they've kinda missed the entire message underlying the movie.
If they think "better equipment = we're like the predator" then they're failing to grasp the fact that the true terror in the film doesn't come from better technology but from an enemy which can blend seamlessly into the environment, which could be anywhere at any time, and is completely unstoppable. The technology is just window-dressing because if it were about a regiment of small Vietnamese people armed with AK-47s it wouldn't be much of a spectacle and it wouldn't play into macho power fantasies.
So, if the story is a metaphor about an enemy which is comparatively poorly armed using their skills and the terrain to their advantage, defeating what is assumed to be the best of the best, then why are they using it to brag about having better equipment again?
Next they're going to use Starship Troopers in completely the wrong way as a metaphor for the war in the Ukraine, aren't they?
Errr why should we? Because jungle and imaginary yankee toughs? I'm not sold on this analogy. Predator reads more like Wells' "War of the worlds" - turning the situation upside down on the colonizers. Suddenly they're the ones being hunted for sport by uncaring invader with absurd levels of technological superiority (while still acting as if it's fair and square).
Oh this I agree with
Nowadays drones fullfil this function
Didn't nafo already use the "I'm doing my part" bit from the movie, completely serious and missing the satire?
I mean, your interpretation is as valid as mine. But I think you haven't done my words justice in your summary of the points that I made to support my interpretation. You've either responded before reading my whole comment or you've spent too much time on Reddit.
An analogy is such because it's not a 1:1 representation and it never will be. If it were meant to be a perfect representation of the Vietnam war then it would be a biopic or a documentary. There's no inviolable rule that you can't invert parts of your allegory and clearly this was done to make a Hollywood blockbuster action-scifi film.
The predator wasn't a coloniser imo. There's less in the movie to support the idea that the predator was colonising the jungle than there is for the Vietnam war allegory. A foreigner in a different land doesn't amount to colonisation.
I was trying to find the quote from someone who was involved in production who said that if it were a few years earlier then Predator would have been set in Vietnam when I came across this opinion piece which makes a better case for the film being a Vietnam War allegory (while explaining the predator's high tech) than I did.
Maybe I'm blessed because I haven't been exposed to nearly anything from the NAFO chuds but I'd absolutely believe this from a group of people who are rapidly circling the ideological drain hole that is fascism.
The technology in Predator isn't window dressing really, it's icing on a cake, because predator is able to defeat the Murican Heroes^TM^ largely because it, so by extension they suggest that the Vietnamese (not having that tech obviously) must had some kind of ~~magic~~ to be able to do it too.
Already seen it. And not surprising at all, combined with complete amputation of the sense of irony and satire because prerequisite is to take ST movie completely seriously on face level.