Now, it’s possible that his comment to Entertainment Weekly was just some off-the-cuff nonsense that just sort of slipped out.  That’s understandable.  Everyone says something mind-numbingly stupid once in a while.  Just ask Senator Coakley (D-MA).

You want to give the benefit of the doubt to the guy who, despite the freakin’ stupid  Avatar, made great movies like The Terminator, Aliens, True Lies, Titanic and, of course, the moving Piranha 2: The Spawning.  The guy has what the hep kids today call “mad skillz.”  We really want his unbelievably dumb statement to be just an unbelievably dumb statement.

But more likely its part and parcel of the Hollywood culture of disconnected privilege and provincialism that allows its members to stay utterly detached from the human consequences of their ideology.  Just ask those union grips and teamsters hanging around the set who’ll be paying the Democrats’ 40% tax on their health-care insurance just for the privilege of having negotiated good benefits.  The big guys like Cameron rake in so much dough that they won’t notice it; only their business managers care because the tax will leave that much less in the pot to embezzle.

It’s the same culture that allows A-list stars to jump onto the crummy commie dictator circuit, swooping into Havana, Bogota, Tehran or wherever for a quick bite with the resident thug-in-chief.  Somehow they forget not only that they are eating a lot better than the locals, but that in many cases they have another advantage too – they get to leave.   Of course, before they hop back into an enviro-friendly Gulfstream for their lift back to the Santa Monica airport, they have to pose with Fidel, or Hugo or whatever other dictator du-jour for some photos and some declarations about how their host’s deep thoughts rocked them to the depths of their eighth-grade educated minds.  Lenin apocryphally called them useful idiots; well, he was half right.

Of course, radical chic morphs into self-preservation when things get dicey.  If you were around for the L.A. riots back in 1992, you might recall how everything seemed to be on fire except for the areas like Beverly Hills and Bel-Air.  That was not because the rioters particularly appreciated the noblesse oblige of the liberal Hollywoodiods living there.  It’s because the liberal Hollywoodiods living there called out their cops and brought out their guns, both in large numbers.  But, of course when the fires died down after the Army took control again, they went right back to trashing the police, privately owned firearms, and for that matter, soldiers.

The fact is that Cameron doesn’t believe in eco-terrorism – can you imagine his tantrum should some ELF twerp dynamite his high-tech Avatar soundstage for being located on the paved-over Playa Vista wetland or torch his Central California ranch?  He believes in posing.  And saying stupid things like “I believe in eco-terrorism” is just a pose. 

Come to think of it, with his track record, what Cameron should be hoping is that eco-terrorism doesn’t believe in him.   But if it does, he’s fortunate that someone he probably has nothing but contempt for will protect him.

I much prefer the balance of say the great 1951 black and white classic The Thing, where James Arness’s murderous, but very smart alien runs amok in an isolated Arctic research station.  That is until captain Ken Toby and his wisecracking Army Air Corps crew and few common sense scientists manage to fry said killer alien’s ass with a makeshift electric chair.

The Thing’s military guys get all the really good lines, too.  In level headed response to the naive head scientist’s crazy insistence that “…our lives do not matter.  Knowledge, that’s the only reason to live, it knows far more then we do.  We can learn from it.  Just think we’ve split the atom.”  Toby’s co-pilot responds wryly, “Yeah, and that sure made the world happy didn’t it.”   But what do I know?   I love westerns and military films; only the rare common sense science fiction film like The Thing or a grand adventure like Star Wars captures my fancy.

Fortunately I also know a good amount of military and western history, too.  Since Avatar really is a politically correct sci-fi fantasy version of our own Indian Wars.  More then one critic has accurately compared the plot to Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves, while even a National Public Radio reviewer dared suggest that the script was actually a bunch of scripts thrown into a blender.   Though no one mentioned whether the blender was put on chop or grate, since the story line is so crude it certainly wasn’t blended in any sort of smooth fashion.   Like Plains Indians Cameron’s Na’vi break and ride horses, six-legged ones on their home planet of Pandora and domesticate dragon-like flying creatures bringing to mind Plains Indians who used to lay in wait for eagles to turn their feathers into war trophy head gear.

Both Avatar and Dances With Wolves share the most evil, villainous and genocidal military killers since Little Big Man in 1970.  It wasn’t true then and of course it isn’t true in Afghanistan or Iraq today.  All modern civilized countries armies have had rare murderous aberrations in their history like My Lai or Sand Creek, but these have always been the exception not the rule.  The Sand Creek massacre in 1864 featuring scum of the earth militia recruited out of the dregs of Denver’s saloons wiping out a good part of a Cheyenne village promised official government protection.  Still, Sand Creek was also a ill-fated response to the continuing line up of mutilated settler’s bodies, women and children as well that the Cheyenne were leaving on the Colorado and Kansas plains.

To the uninformed, and let’s face it we haven’t taught fact-based history in this country for several generations, Avatar’s chief of security is just a evil George Armstrong Custer clone from Little Big Man and his “soldiers” copies of that same film’s cowardly and murderous cavalry troopers.  Top professional western historians like Robert Utley, Paul Hutton and most recently James Donavan in his suburb 2007 book A Terrible Glory have repatriated Custer’s reputation based on facts.

From time in memorial in the heat and confusion of battle non-combatants have often been killed.  Yet at the battle of the Washita in 1868 against the same Cheyenne from Sand Creek (numerous young hot headed warriors had continued unabated murderous raids on the Kansas frontier, partially because of the atrocities at Sand Creek) but Custer went out of his way to stop any killing of women and children and took over fifty prisoners, including old warriors.   It was Custer’s Osage scouts who killed most of the non-combatants, just another day at the “office” against their tribal enemies.  Yes, he did wipe out the Cheyenne’s 1,000 horse herd because they were war materials, the same as destroying buffalo meat in the village or a gasoline dump or truck park in Iraq today.   An unhorsed Cheyenne warrior wasn’t much of a warrior at all.  As a cavalryman who loved and depended on horses, Custer didn’t like it much either, but that’s war.

Actually I really like Costner’s Dances With Wolves even if I disagree with the politically correct stances that it takes.  It’s a beautifully made film, captures the warrior spirit quite well and shows that each tribe like the Lakota Sioux and the Pawnee were distinct tribal groups unto their own.  Though through strength of numbers, white man’s guns and the decimation of tribes like the Crow, Pawnee and Arikaree by small pox it was actually the Sioux who were the “imperialistic conquerors” chasing the weaker Crows, Kiowa and Cheyenne out of the Black Hills in the Dakotas around 1800.   So much for Sioux claims that, “this land has been ours for as long as the sky has been blue and the grass has been green.”

By the way, the Sioux escaped the ravages of small pox because United States contract medical teams vaccinated them back in the 1820s!  You can look it up, the “evil” old US of A was worried that the disease might wipe out the western tribes and sent out those medical expeditions, except the Pawnees, Crows and a few others were at odds with white folks back then and kept their distance. It wound up being good for the Sioux and bad for other tribes, since the Lakota eventually grew into the most powerful tribe on the northern Plains. That’s why the Pawnee, Crows and Arikaree eventually became scouts for the U.S. Army.  One year after Custer’s death at the Little Bighorn, once the army had run the Sioux to the ground many Lakota warriors signed on with the U.S. Cavalry to fight their age old enemies Chief Joseph’s Nez Perce.  Once a warrior it was best to do your damnedest to stay a warrior, if only in spirit and demeanor.

Avatar’s twelve foot tall, blue-skinned Na’vi and the film’s themes of socialistic and egalitarian hunters at one with nature are right out of all of those numerous “Noble Redskin” movies, but not factual history.  Yet even some American Indians – that’s right Indian, since that is what almost all American Indian people refer to themselves as and Native American is a 1970s title that some comfortable, white, liberal college professor with a guilty conscience made up somewhere along the line – generally Indians recognize that their ancestors were warriors, generally pretty damn fierce ones at that and not a bunch of “happy hippies” peacefully fornicating in the hills.   Even today most American Indians remain some of the most patriotic people in the United States and send an incredibly large percentage of their young people to serve in the U. S. Military, the same military that James Cameron insults so egregiously in Avatar.

Today, one successful film on a particular historically themed subject becomes the benchmark for knowledge on that subject.   High school history teachers and even college professors often pick one film to show a class or give extra credit for watching out of class.  Want to know about the Civil War, show them Glory, D-Day and World War II then show them Saving Private Ryan, the Kennedy Assassination show them Oliver Stone’s JFK.  History is so out of fashion today that most students won’t watch a film on history out of the classroom.   Films may indeed mainly be entertainment, but they can have tremendous influence for the better or the worse.

I grew up during a time when there were a number of films and even dramatic television shows on a particular historical subject over a matter of a few years.  For some of us the fact that the movies and TV episodes didn’t even agree on say Custer and the Little Bighorn or what happened at the Alamo sent us to the library.   On those library shelves we quickly learned that the books didn’t even agree and some of them appeared to be written and researched far better then others.  It did something for our critical thinking eventually we even got curious about those pesky little numbers called footnotes and primary sources.

The danger of a vapid politically correct fantasy like Avatar is that for most of the audience there is no alternative opinion to the “America as Evil Fascist Empire” train of thought that it passes off as entertainment.  That is particularly disturbing when director James Cameron freely admits that the evil corporate lackeys and military contractors who serve as his films antagonists are his comment on American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

[Ed. Note: This is part one of a two-part series which concludes tomorrow.]

My beloved United States Army is a blunt instrument, a magnificent club that has pummels our nation’s enemies into submission.  But the Marines are America’s rapier, a razor sharp weapon of war that has never been bested and never will be.  For over two centuries, the United States Marine Corps has been fighting our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea.  They don’t give up.  They don’t quit.  There’s no word for retreat in a Marine’s vocabulary.  And they are making history even today in the mountains of Afghanistan and elsewhere.

November 10th is the Corps’ 234th birthday.  With the indulgence of my Devil Dog brethren, here is this Army veteran’s countdown of the Top Ten Marine Corp movies:

10.  55 Days at Peking:  The Boxer Rebellion in China provides the backdrop for this epic true-life tale of Marines (with help from a few others) protecting civilians from rampaging Chinese peasants.  Charlton Heston is the head Marine; Ava Gardner and David Niven show up as well. 

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9.  Jarhead:  This film of Anthony Swofford’s book about Marines in Operation Desert Storm is a mixed bag.  Perhaps director Sam Mendes was trying to make up for his slander of military men in American Beauty by making an attempt to understand how men function in wartime.  He effectively captures the unreality of that war, but his depiction of the desert environment itself is somehow off (though not as inaccurate as the awful Three Kings).  The clouds of oily smoke after the Iraqis set off the wells did bring back some memories.   Look for Jamie Foxx as a tough Marine sergeant.

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8.  Gung Ho:  This World War Two story recounts the real-life story of the Marine’s raid on the Japanese position on Makin Island early in the war.  Watch for Robert Mitchum as a Devil Dog named “Pig Iron.” 

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7.  A Few Good Men:  This is problematic film for several reasons.  First, it promotes the idea that lawyers as attractive, interesting people, which is demonstrably untrue.  Second, it is positively schizophrenic in its attitude toward the Corps.  Noted Hollywood liberal Aaron Sorkin penned the script, which features Jack Nicholson’s legendary “You can’t handle the truth!”speech.  Many look on that speech as an inspiration, not an indictment.  Regardless, the issue of a society that demands protection yet questions the manner those who protect it do so resonates even more powerfully today than when Sorkin wrote it.

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6.  Aliens:  Okay, so James Cameron’s classic sci-fi flick is not technically about the United States Marine Corps, but ditch the space ships and hi-tech weapons and this band of Colonial Marines would be at home in today’s USMC.  The interplay between the Marines is priceless.  Their gunnery sergeant, played by Al Mathews, is calm, capable and scary.  And as Private Hudson, Bill Paxton plays the most amusing military screw-up in film history.  “Game over, man!  Game over!”

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5.  Generation Kill:  This a miniseries is a tough call because there is a lot good and a lot bad about it, but it honors the Marines who have been fighting for us since 9/11 and so deserves a spot here.  The bad first – there’s too much talking and pondering of the bigger issues going on.  Those portions feel forced into the script to fit the filmmakers’ pre-existing anti-war narrative.  What is accurate is the look and feel of the film.  This light recon battalion is quite similar to an Army cavalry recon squadron, and the way the men lived in and around their vehicle feels true.  One particularly good scene involves a young Marine asking to medevac a wounded civilian.  You expect a typical movie conflict between the sensitive young officer and his uncaring superior, but instead the filmmakers have the battalion commander explain his perspective and the consequences he has to consider when deciding whether to divert evac resources away from his own wounded.  It’s a powerful scene that demonstrates how high ranking officers, often portrayed on film as self-absorbed, obtuse and insensitive, bear enormous responsibilities for making difficult decisions that their subordinates sometimes do not fully appreciate.

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4.  Pride of the Marines:  This is the story of Marine Al Schmid, blinded fighting the Japanese in the Pacific, and his return home.  It is a moving testament to the human cost of war and it demonstrates the price paid by many Marines over the years – and a price many continue to pay today.  It is also the story about how once you become a Marine, you remain a Marine, and how that pride will stay with you throughout your life.

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3. Heartbreak Ridge:  The great Clint Eastwood does a tour of duty here as Tom Highway, a Marine gunnery sergeant his obnoxious new commander labels a “dinosaur.”  When all hell breaks loose on a tropical paradise called Grenada, Clint and his platoon smack around Castro’s minions.  It’s very cool.  One theme of the film is how a great sergeant grows his lieutenants into real leaders, and anyone who has been a platoon leader will smile as the nerdy LT learns to take charge and finally seizes the initiative to win the fight.  Look for Mario Van Peebles as the world’s least likely Marine.

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2.  Full Metal Jacket:  Don’t see this a week before you ship to basic training.  Take it from personal experience that this is a poor idea.  R. Lee Ermey’s hilarious and horrifying turn as a Marine drill instructor is a legend, and properly so.  His four minute verbal assault on his recruits is appalling, and yet one cannot turn away.  The second half of the film, which covers the retaking of the Vietnamese city of Hue during the Tet offensive, is a solid depiction of the terrors of urban combat.  Watch Big Hollywood’s own Adam Baldwin and the rest of the cast as they demonstrate the awesome firepower of a Marine infantry squad:

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1.  Sands of Iwo Jima:  A classic Hollywood story told against the backdrop of the greatest battle in Corps history, it features the Duke in his legendary role as Sergeant Stryker.  As much as we all love R. Lee Ermey, John Wayne remains the gold standard for hardass Marine sergeants.  This is the story of a tough NCO welding a gaggle of recruits into a lethal team of Marines, and this story is being repeated today with a new generation of tough NCOs and recruits.  Only the battlefields, uniforms and weapons are different.  The fighting spirit is the same. 

I bleed Army green, but even I have to admit that the Marines are something special.   But they don’t need validation from me or from anyone else.  They are Marines.  That says it all.

Semper Fi.

The aliens are called “visitors,” shortened to “Vs,” thus the title of the program. They appear over major cities in large hovering spaceships that project messages in the local language. More than just the classic we-come-in-peace message, the messages say, “We’re here to help you.”

The opening episode makes it very clear, however, that they are not here to help. It turns out the Vs have planted many of their kind, who look human, prior to their dramatic arrival in spaceships. The alien plants have done their best to foul up life on earth in order to encourage a hunger for “change” (salvation). The Chicago Tribune draws a parallel to the Obama administration but, while many believe President Obama was not born in the United States, it’s unlikely he was born on another planet. Even so, it’s interesting that the evil aliens offer “universal health care” to all people. Thus, the first episode clearly seems to be saying that President Obama’s health care proposals, now making their way through the U.S. Congress, are a false hope that will lead to tyranny and slavery.

The initial episode does a good job of setting up several threads to keep audiences interested. A young priest bucks the judgment of the Vatican that the Vs were sent by God to help. He warns his congregation to be wary. An FBI agent uncovers the truth about the planted V cell groups even while her son signs up to be a stooge for the Vs. A news anchorman compromises and is used by the Vs for propaganda purposes. Finally, a V plant turns out to be a renegade V opposing the V leadership’s plans.

The production quality here is high for television, and the acting is excellent. There is moderate violence in a battle between the Vs and an underground resistance. However, unlike “Flash-Forward,” “V” is not tainted by babysitters sleeping with their boyfriends and the threat of a family falling apart due to infidelity. The potential exists for this program to be truly outstanding, but, as with many other series, it’s difficult to say if it will stray into murky waters down the road.

The theme of being wary of false saviors is very biblical as well as politically and culturally astute (see my book co-written with legendary entertainer Pat Boone, “The Culture-Wise Family”). Jesus said, “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”

This is a message Americans really need to consider, not just in regard to big government but also such things as environmentalism and the humanism so prevalent in our government-run public schools. All the isms claiming to save you from belief in a “repressive” God promise freedom but often lead to bondage instead. Real freedom is freedom from sin. That can only be provided by the world’s true Savior, Jesus Christ.

“V” could actually go in that direction, but will it? We shall see.

Sadly, the dead white males who imposed the Constitution on America enumerated only negative rights that limit the power of the government over its citizens.  But if you squint your eyes and look beyond obstacles like the plain text, lurking in there somewhere behind the penumbras and emanations is the positive right of every American to be a TV star.  Those with MAD are not cretins to be shunned but civil rights visionaries at the edge of a new frontier of governmental largess and probably a lot of profitable litigation.

It’s obvious that American society has failed the Heene family.  After he and his brood’s triumphant appearances on Wife Swap, Heene was left media-deficient and was forced to feed his addiction with crude YouTube videos.  In one, he speculated that Hilary Clinton is a shape-shifting space reptile, which would be totally cool if true.  In another, he claimed that he spoke to aliens at a local fast food restaurant, which is actually pretty typical, at least at Southern California fast food joints.

This sad state of affairs was a direct result of the deep, black emptiness in Heene’s life that could never be filled by superficial things like work, religion or family.  Like all MAD-men, he craves, needs, must have the validation that only comes from having his mug flashing across America’s television screens.  He not only wants his MTV, he has to have it.  And we owe it to him.

But, typical of the kind of divided America left behind by the Bush regime, we failed to give it to him.  TLC, that paragon of class television, passed on his reality series proposal.  What is clear is that Heene’s rights have been grossly violated – this likely constitutes a full-fledged hate crime.  So his actions are understandable, even admirable, in light of the oppression visited upon him.  Roping his wife and kids into a project that had cops, pilots and others chasing a glorified Mylar “Happy Birthday” balloon across Colorado was not a giant scam but a cry for help.

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America – will you answer the challenge?  They certainly would in Europe.  Surely America can spend a few billion dollars to ensure that unfortunate victims like Heene can have their 15 minutes and then some.  Is it too much to ask America’s wealthiest to pay just a bit more so MAD victims can receive the validation that our Constitution clearly holds they are owed?

Our government must address this terrible crisis!  The only real question is the extent of the MAD public option – should the government undertake to directly provide media access in a “single media” system?  Or should it allow – at least for a while – private media to continue, but with a “public media exchanges” designed to provide the competition that is utterly unknown to media companies now.  However, to bend the cost curve down it can cost no more than $900 billion.  Perhaps we can impose a tax on those with a “cadillac” media profile.

And don’t let yourself by distracted by the Right Wing’s lies - this plan will not provide free media coverage to aliens, whether they are illegal, cabinet officials, or hanging out at your local Burger King.

Senator Snowe, I think I hear history calling again.

Or, as an alternative, we could just express our contempt for dumbasses like Richard Heene and stop celebrating the antics of every buffoon without a shame gene.

From The Hollywood Reporter’s interview with “Avatar” Director James Cameron at San Diego Comic-Con 2009:

THR: You’ve mentioned this ["Avatar"] is a parable.

Cameron: Really what this film ultimately does is hold a mirror to our own blighted history, where we have a culturally advanced civilization supplanting more “primitive” civilizations. Some of these civilizations and cultures have a lot more wisdom than we’ve shown. We just have bigger guns. We have ships that can cross oceans, we have horses and armor. And this country we’re in now was taken from its indigenous owners. And it’s kind of owning up to our own human history.

From earlier in the interview:

Cameron: We use the term Aliens twice. Once in (alien language) Na’vi, “Faketuan,” and once spoken in English towards the end of the film. Both times, they are talking about us.

Cameron on “Avatar”:

Cameron: I like this film. It’s the shit.

Read the entire interview here.

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FLASHBACK: John Nolte’s “Dances with ‘Avatar’“:

According to Cameron, the story tension centers on a conflict between Earth’s “Military Industrial Complex” and the Na’vi, who are peaceful, live happily in the forest “when humans are not trampling their planet,” and ultimately “prove to be wiser than we are.” When provoked, though, they are “ferocious warriors.”

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Hollywood movies often focus on the commanders, the captains and colonels, but they have also managed to highlight some great sergeants as well.  When you are picking out DVDs for next weekend, remember that May 16th is Armed Forces Day and consider a few selections that show the sergeant in all his gruff and grumbling glory. 

If you have never experienced the joy of going through basic training and do not plan to, your first stop should be Full Metal Jacket, with R. Lee Ermey’s legendary portrayal of a Marine drill instructor who must have missed out on the block of instruction on sensitivity.  I saw this in the theater about a week before I reported to Basic.  That was a poor idea.

The Marines I know seem to prefer Jack Webb in the more realistic The DI, but I am partial to Warren Oates as the “Big Toe” of a platoon of Army foul-ups in Stripes.  This is one great performance – as Sergeant First Class Hulka, Oates is both hilarious and moving.  You can see how this veteran NCO (his character wears the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, meaning he had seen action) truly cares about teaching his men to survive, and you kind of sympathize with him when Bill Murray’s smart-assery pushes him into slugging our hero in the gut.  Hulka’s contemptuous rejoinder to “Psycho” – “Lighten up, Francis” – is classic, as is his inventory of baffled expressions while watching the antics of his recruits.  I remember getting some of those looks myself from Drill Sergeant Whittlesey. 

And do not forget Louis Gossett, Jr. as another Devil Dog making Naval officer candidates earn the right to receive his salute in An Officer and a Gentleman. My only objection to this movie is that it made Squid School look a lot more fun than Fort Benning’s Army Officer Candidate School, but then I didn’t look like Richard Gere.

The tough sergeant turning a band of screw-ups into a well-oiled fighting machine is classic Hollywood.  The archetype is Marine Sergeant Stryker in The Sands of Iwo Jima, in which John Wayne supposedly utters the quintessential NCO aphorism “Life is tough.  It’s tougher if you’re stupid.”  But even if the Duke actually never says those words in the film, he should have, and generations of NCOs have shared that particular insight with their soldiers. 

Right up there is Clint Eastwood as another jarhead in Heartbreak Ridge.  It’s a good action flick, but what was particularly interesting is how he developed his nerdy lieutenant into a tough, confident leader who ends up saving the platoon.  But not all sergeants get to work with top notch officers.  In the miniseries Band of Brothers, Donnie Wahlberg does a great job as Easy Company’s First Sergeant Carwood Lipton, who was faced with protecting his men from a cowardly commander.  He does, but suffers a terrible fate – he receives a battlefield commission and becomes a mere lieutenant.  As Colonial Marine Gunnery Sergeant Apone in the fantastic Aliens, Al Matthews not only contends with an incompetent platoon leader, but flesh eating space bugs and Bill Paxton’s loudmouth Private Hudson.  “Game over, man!  Game over!”

The definition of an NCO is someone who makes things happen – whether or not strictly within the bounds of the regulations.  Don Rickles embraces this as the entrepreneurial and sharp-tongued supply sergeant Crap Game in Kelly’s Heroes.  Steve Martin played another NCO who didn’t let little things like rules get in the way in Sgt. Bilko.  James Caan, as real-life WWII Staff Sergeant Eddie Dohun, rescues his critically wounded officer from the battlefield and takes him to an aid station in A Bridge Too Far.  When the doctor refuses to look at what seems to be a hopeless case, SSG Dohun did what any good sergeant would do and improvised – by sticking his cocked .45 in the surgeon’s face.  The wounded officer lived.

Behind every good officer are literally dozens of great NCOs.  Even Lee Marvin could not have handled The Dirty Dozen without Richard Jaeckel’s Sergeant Bowren.  In Crimson Tide, the feuding officers vie for the support of the Master Chief Petty Officer, the “Chief of the Boat.”  Tom Hanks may have been the commander, but the heart of his company was Sergeant Horvath (Tom Sizemore) in Saving Private Ryan.

That is not just a Hollywood cliché – that is real life.  In fact, some of the best portrayals of NCOs in the movies have simply been the telling of the true stories of what they really did.  Black Hawk Down accurately shows modern urban combat as a confusing and deadly amalgamation of separate firefights involving small units led by young sergeants.  Josh Hartnett does a good job as a Ranger squad leader trying to keep his men alive, while Eric Bana and William Fichtner are Delta sergeants who take the fight right to the enemy. 

But the portrayals that best show the reality of the American NCO are that of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Johnny Strong as Delta Force Master Sergeants Gary Gordon and Randall Shugart.  As the movie shows, when one of the Blackhawk choppers went down, they repeatedly requested permission to fast rope in to protect the injured crew knowing it would mean near certain death.  Finally getting permission, they set up a perimeter and fought until overrun, littering the streets with the bodies of Somali militiamen and saving one member of the crew.  They earned the Medal of Honor, but I suspect that if we could ask them both would say that they were simply doing what NCOs do and nothing more.

Sam Elliot played another real-life hero, Command Sergeant Major Basil Plumley, in We Were Soldiers. As the movie shows, most enlisted troopers in the Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry, and the wise officers as well, treated CSM Plumley with an awe verging on terror.  But when the battalion was surrounded by a division of North Vietnamese at Ia Drang, CSM Plumley stayed cool, keeping morale strong in the face of what should have been a massacre.  In the film, and in reality, these cavalrymen fought a massively superior force to a standstill.

Though I am a former cavalry commander, my favorite NCO portrayal is of an infantry sergeant in the British Army.  Zulu depicts the true story of the legendary near-last stand of a company of Welsh soldiers at Rourke’s Drift in South Africa.  The tiny band held their ground against a brave and deadly enemy force forty times their size.  As Colour-Sergeant Bourne, Nigel Greene is the ultimate NCO.  From keeping up standards in battle – “Button your tunic!” – to advocating for his exhausted men to facing down an iklwa-wielding Zulu warrior with his bayonet, Colour-Sergeant Bourne was the backbone of the company. 

Sergeants truly are the backbone of the Army and of the other services.  Right now, a young buck sergeant is leading his Marine fire team through the mountains of Afghanistan, a platoon sergeant is prepping a cavalry patrol through the streets of Kosovo, and a command sergeant major in Iraq is double checking his troops before another convoy mission.  These men and women are the heart of our military.  Take a moment to think about them as you pop in a movie and sit back and relax next weekend, safe and secure.  And raise a beer to them.  I will.

I got more and I didn’t want it. 

Why don’t sequels do well? Obviously, I’m not alone in feeling the way I do about Raiders or Star Wars or Jaws or any other great character-rich, dynamically set film that pulls you in and doesn’t fully let go even after the end titles trail up and we see that film certification symbol fade out. So, why is it that more of what we love, we hate? Well, maybe not hate, but not love quite so much. What’s going on here? 

Perhaps like many of you, I get excited when I hear shooting has started on a new installment of a film series I enjoy. Back when I saw the first leaked images of Jones on horseback going up against a German tank in the employ of the Afrika Corps, I was “giddy as a schoolboy.” I couldn’t wait to for that thing to be in the can and out in the theaters. I was thrilled, anxious and ready for the journey. But then another feeling took hold. Again, like many of you, when mention of a sequel or prequel leaks out, a small fear creeps up the back of one’s neck that somehow curiosity will lead to a deep regret, rivaling that of John Hurt’s as he poked his nose over that egg in Alien. And, like John, our feelings are often very well justified. Because many times, almost always, if anyone’s counting, sequels fail to capture the magic of the first film. “You just can’t repeat it,” many repeat.  Well, I’m not so sure about that. I don’t think it’s that the filmmakers are not trying hard enough, I think it’s more that they’re trying too hard. 

People change, and so should characters, right? Well, not quite. I have been wondering for a long time now, why it is I can’t fully enjoy Return of the Jedi, Aliens,  Alien 3,  Alien Resurrection,  any Rambo emptying a SAW past First Blood, or any Rocky beyond the bell where an out-of-breath voice gasped wisely, “No rematch!” And where an equally wise one gurgled out, “Don’t want one.” Well, a little voice, similarly exhausted, tells me this could be said of Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John, Radar, Burns and Hot Lips Houlihan. Of the cast and crew of the Minnow, and that other ship, where some rogue muttered, “Look, I’m not in this for your revolution, sister. I’m in it for the money.” 

What am I talking about here? It’s what has been defined as Character Development. Somewhere along the way character development, the arc or course a character’s actions, words, and behavior take along a story line has been replaced with something different, something not-so-natural, not-so-healthy, something very formulaic. The increase in depth of a character’s personality, is, we are told, a sure sign of good writing, good acting, and lot’s of other good stuff. It signals to us that the characters are being fleshed-out, are growing, just like us. Changing, just like us. And doing the things we normally do, like becoming superhuman, multi-dimensional, and, best of all, not at all in it for the money.

I’m here to say that it isn’t working. Not for me, anyway. Using Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces as a tuning fork, Lucas played the characters of Star Wars with perfect pitch and tone. He hit every note right. Yes, I happen to like Luke Skywalker as an innocent, awkward, and yes, sometimes dopey farm boy, a kid out of his element fighting a huge empire. I don’t know many farm boys who have much experience fighting huge empires (though that’s no reason to deny them the job). I also happen to like Han Solo looking out for number one, and of course, also watching his trusty sidekick Chewie’s back. Sure I want Han to come to the rescue every now and then, saving everybody and maybe the universe, too.  But not as a full-time job! And I want him complaining about his predicament with every discharge of his blaster all the way down the celestial pike. What I don’t want to see is his transformation into a benevolent, altruistic, selfless stick figure, volunteering for the toughest assignment without so much as a quip, an insult or at least a good joke. In Return of the Jedi, his character became flat and blocky, more inert than when he was frozen in carbonite. 

I have an idea. It might even pass for a theory. It goes something like this:

In Ridley Scott’s Alien, Ripley made a interesting heroine because we didn’t expect her to be the heroine. Let’s face it, Tom Skerritt had higher billing and thus, a greater chance of coming out of that pickle with a heck of a lot more than a highly lubricated pile driver alien jaw through his head, or worse. So did John Hurt, Yaphet Kotto, and Ian Holm. Sure, Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, by rising to the occasion and becoming the hero achieved the unexpected, it’s true. Yet her actions were not out of character. Why not? Because we had already been shown hints of her strength. No, not in any oiled-muscle, gearing-up scene – as in Aliens,  and now almost every other film which has a David on the way to slay a Goliath – but in her behavior toward Ian Holm’s Science Officer Ash. When Ash makes the rash decision to violate quarantine protocol and let the landing party re-enter the ship and mind of Conrad’s Nostromo, she’s pissed. He blatantly disregards her authority. Soon after, she confronts him and lays down the rules. That’s all that was needed.  Hints are what we like. Not HITS, as in ‘…over the head.’

Aliens changed things. Don’t get me wrong, I loved this film, as I do many of James Cameron’s. But it’s another good example of writing going past the point of believability that is more distracting to me, and maybe others, than an audio pop, a jump cut, or violating the 180 rule. With this sequel the filmmakers decided to develop her character into a somewhat neurotic and unstable fusspot, suffering from insomnia, and having to still feed the same moody cat after 57 years. This is fine and understandable, and, very much in keeping with her character and what she’s been through, but it doesn’t really explain the superhuman strength and Delta Operator focus we see in her later on in the same film. Where did her fear go? And where did those skill sets mysteriously come from? Hicks? Spunkmeyer?  

Surrounded by goo-oozing aliens, pulsating eggs, and god knows what else, she charges back into the breech and certain death to find that darn cat again. Well, no, not really. But it might as well have been the cat. Instead, it’s the little girl, Newt, perhaps the most obvious in a long list of Cameron tributes to Gordon Douglas’ original “bug hunt” flick Them!  Ripley crawls into the growling belly of the beast with little more than a souped-up pulse rifle and spare magazines. And all through this mission, which would make John Rambo pause, she’s not even breathing heavy. While in the first movie, Alien, just one of those creatures hiding somewhere on a ship the size of Greenland made her hyperventilate into something resembling sheer panic. Justifiably so. But here, she calmly, and very professionally goes about her new task of rescuing a small girl from amongst several hundreds or maybe thousands of “Ripley’s bad guys”. Let’s not forget, this is within the dark, dank depths of a burning nuclear power plant that is about to do an impression of the Hindenburg at Lakehurst. Sure, the mother instinct is a crucial element of the theme here, mother vs. mother and all that. But, still, her behaviour takes on a super hero quality that transforms the story into more science fantasy than fiction. Where the original rules set down by the writers are being violated by who else, but the writers, in situations where anything, even the absurd is possible and to be expected. This is not to be confused with a suspension of disbelief. Rather, this is an expelling of belief that the setting and situation the writers have created for us is being transformed into a veritable Westworld run by renegade deus ex machina. 

Alien Resurrection displays more character development with our hero Ripley going gothic with touches of  arcade Street Fighter and left-over marine grunt mixed-in. Granted, to be fair she is merely a shadow of her former self, quite literally. She’s a clone. This time, an off-the-rack Ripley with a shelf life much longer apparently, than a synthetic Bishop, Ash and, while we’re at it, a Zhora, Priss or even Rachel could ever hope to get from the original manufacturer. But this unreasonable facsimile is just that, unreasonable. She’s not a whole lot of fun, either. Because we can guess rather confidently from the opening shots of her determination, that here sits our hero. This isn’t character development. This isn’t even a character. Unless you happen to be considering the cartoon variety.

Which brings me back to Luke, Leia, and Han (sorry Chewie). Principle players in the original Star Wars, they had their respective characters fleshed-out in fine form by the third act, the battle. We loved it, as did most of planet Earth. Which doesn’t really explain why the creators of the third installment, Return of the Jedi, would want to change that. Of course, we want change, but not at the expense of the things we have loved which connected us to it in the first place. I don’t want to see new facets of a character if I feel the filmmakers are showing me these new facets, these changes, these twists because they’ve exhausted all their original ideas in earlier installments and are now resorting to drastic means to keep the gravy train rolling, with add-ons that are more a product of meetings with merchandisers than anything else. If that’s the case, if in fact the characters are out of ammo, fleshed-out as far as their flesh will go – inevitable no matter how rich the character is written initially – then give us a new character or another adventure. For example, look what was done with the exceptional Leigh Brackett and Larry Kasdan penned Empire Strikes Back,  a rare winning sequel. It had taken the original idea, expanded on it and led us to places undreamed. Yet, all the while, retaining the character traits of all in attendance and firmly anchoring us to the original franchise without so much as a hiccup in believability or anything that a healthy smack on a cockpit control panel couldn’t fix.  That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how you do it. You don’t pervert the characteristics of each member of a story, transforming them beyond believability, simply to get more mileage out of them or to justify a production, an episode or a sequel. Lovers of the original film, the fans, will rebel against that. They want to see more of what they love. They don’t want to see entirely new characters masquerading as the old ones for no other reason than to reel-in a duped loyal fan base at the box office. Not a good idea. 

Which leads us to Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  Certainly, it was no Raiders, no Last Crusade nor my and many others’ least favorite, Temple of Doom. Simply, it just didn’t measure up. But, with that said, I did enjoy it and was happy to see the settings and the characters, well, some of them, again. I missed Sallah, and Marcus. Who didn’t? I wasn’t crazy about the time period, though I’m a big fan of cold war anything. But for me, Indy belongs in a pre-atomic age, when leather satchels, whips and dusty bomber jackets were worn by men other than those without a cause to rebel against. That’s a change that didn’t need to be. “Yeah but it’s twenty years since they made Last Crusade!”, they cried. So? Harrison Ford is an actor, so are the other people in the film who call themselves actors. Hollywood makes magic, doesn’t it?  Now, more than ever, we’re constantly told. There is no reason why we couldn’t have had this fourth Indiana Jones installment, and most likely the last, set in the mid-forties. In an attempt to make the story more ‘real to life’ they made it too real, and lifeless.  Was this another mistake by Spielberg? Judging not by the reviews, which I never judge anything on anyway, but by the fans and of course, my own feelings, that humorously understated line by Last Crusade’s last Templar knight comes to mind:  “He chose poorly.”  

Before I forget, I want to mention one other thing about Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that bothered me. Something on the poster, something about Indy was missing. His smile. Indy wasn’t really smiling. They continued the poster style, keeping it consistent with the serial nature of the cliffhangers that Raiders re-pioneered, if I can say that in mixed company. And I applaud that with gusto. But they changed the illustrated Indy too much by leaving out that cockiness, even after 20 years. If he’s not going to smile, not going to be displaying that adventurous grin, not going to display that false bravado, that winning lovable mixture of Joel McCray, Bob Hope, and yes, Han Solo that made Indiana Jones come alive for us, making even the most harrowing situation and death defying stunt seem fun and something we’d like to try at home, then why bother? They missed it with the poster. So, right out of the gate, they went in the wrong direction, with the wrong approach. Sure, he’s 20 years older, so what? Ever hear of people like John Glenn, Malcolm Forbes or Michael Korda? There are plenty of examples of men and women in their middle and senior years pursuing endeavors that healthy college kids would run from. So, for a character like Indiana Jones to run out of steam, it’s disappointing to say the least, and certainly not a topic for a sequel. Frankly, I think they played on the age element far too much in order to introduce a new angle to Indy. A big mistake. They didn’t need a new angle. I think even a poor story – and this one was not up to par with the previous three by any stretch of the imagination – could have been a heck of a lot more fun and much better cinema if they retained the Indy that we knew and loved in Raiders, felt a bit distanced from in Temple of Doom and re-united with in Last Crusade.  That’s my feeling. But heck, I’m making this up as I go along.   

Here’s a plea to budding writers out there: 

If you want to write such huge character changes, don’t experiment with an existing, beloved creation, adding-on simple shock value and steroids or fatigue and a lack of collagen. You may hit on a winner, and you may not. In the meantime, though, you’ll be changing irrevocably the things from the original that we grew with and held close to our hearts. Don’t do it. 

Start with a new, original story. There, you can experiment with a clean slate and see for certain why the lines are forming, along the story arc and around the block. In the meantime you may find quite unexpectedly that the big screen isn’t the only place where your character is being developed.