Flipping around today I saw that there's a movie on AMC called, simply, "Bataan" about the Bataan Death March. Well, what the fuck else would it be about, I guess.
"You seen 'Bataan'?"
"The movie about 5 high school students in Bataan forced to spend a whole Saturday in detention, wherein they learn that while they're all different they're also the same?"
"Naw, bout the death march."
"Oh. Nah."
Any movie named "Bataan" is PROBABLY gonna be about the death march, just like any movie titled "You Ruined My Life and I Want My Letter Jacket Back" is prolly gonna be about my high school girlfriend. Obviously.
Anyways, turns out this movie came out in 1943...smack in the middle of the war! Hell, it came out in 1943, and the damn death march was in 1942. Were they writing this thing as it was happening, for chrissakes? "Where are they now?...ooooh, PERFECT for the third act...!" Nowadays it takes four years to put together a movie about a fucking bee, for christs sake. If this happened today, it would take 9 years to get the movie done and it would feature of course Bruce Willis literally carrying all 70,000 POWs on his back while nursing a "motherfucker!" of a hangover as hot chicks desperately tried to fuck him. "Christ...I picked the WRONG death march to quit drinking!" And what does this say about all the crying the Right does nowadays re: if you question the war or report any bad news, the troops are gonna hear about it and crumble into the fetal position clutching their stuffed unicorns while wetting themselves? "Oh, no, the troop's morale, you'll ruin it!! wwwaaaaaah" Meanwhile in the middle of The Big One a flick comes out thats about A FUCKING DEATH MARCH! It's called the Bataan Death March, not the Bataan Marshmellow and Pillows Skip-a-Long; even if Hollywood sprinkles on it's "happy" dust, it still can't be appetizing to watch or hear about if you're serving at that time. And yet these troops carried on after this was released and saved the planet. Whadd'ya know. Yes, I know information doesn't travel as fast as it does now, but still. Pretty amazing.
And on the "too good to be true" front, turns out there's a sequel - "Back to Bataan." wow. First of all, even the SEQUEL came out before the war was over! And that title - "Back to Bataan" - doesn't that reek of "Hot Dog 4" or some shit? Can you NOT picture this being about a group of POWs coming back to "PARTY HARD!!" with their former captors, hijinks and titty shots ruling the day? Long Duck Dong as Lt. General Masaharu Homma! Love it.
4 comments:
Haven't seen Bataan, but of course the difference would probably be that it highlighted how much the brave soldiers went through with courage and manliness, instead of today's theme of how Big Oil and Big Energy manipulated a dimwitted president into needlessly slaughtering soldiers to provide blood for his ranch's swimming pool. Hollywood of old actually supported the war effort and shaped the public positively unlike today's constant undermining efforts. That is how Hollywood USED to be cool!
its the Jews ruling Hollywood!! Mel was right!!!!!!!!!
and my point was that it came out in 1943 - the war was barely 1/2 over. As I said, even if Hollywood dresses it up nice as they're want to do, it was after all called a "Death March", which no matter how it's dressed up sounds bad. 18,000 gruesome deaths during a tortuous march can only be so sissi-fied by Hollywood. Yet they made the movie, put it out and we still, amazingly enuff, persevered. Maybe Will Ferrell can star in the remake?
Where there's a hero, there's almost always a series of sequels, right? Watch for Baatan Returns, Beyond Bataan and Bataan Forever.
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