Does Matt Damon Hate America?
What's the deal with Matt Damon? Such is his popularity that it would seem he could pick just about any role but he seems to pick an awful lot of movies where the America or at least the American government seems to be the villain.
Now I'll give some mad cred to Damon because he was in Saving Private Ryan but let's go over some of his most recent movies:
Bourne Identity: Bad Guy? American Government.
Bourne Supremacy: Bad Guy? American Government.
Bourne Ultimatum: Bad Guy? American Government.
Wouldn't you think that with all of Jason Bourne's super assault skills we could actually point him in the direction of someone who actually wants to harm America? I don't know? Maybe an Islamic terrorist or something. I'd even take the obligatory former Soviet Spy who's gotten his hands on some nukes storyline.
But now Damon changes things up with...
The Green Zone: Bad Guy? American Government. Seriously, New York Post columnist Kyle Smith writes:
I can’t believe what I just saw, so I’ll think about it some more before I go into detail. But if I were the kind of excitable guy who believes in boycotts, I’d say “Boycott NBC-Universal” for its appalling new anti-American flick “Green Zone,” an absurdly awful would-be actioner that stars Matt Damon as a US warrant officer in 2003 Baghdad who, during ongoing combat operations, security scares, political problems and the search for weapons of mass destruction, takes a break on his own initiative and decides to launch a one-man crusade to investigate….the United States and its intelligence-gathering operations.You sensing a pattern?
I would never have accused director Paul Greengrass, who made the astonishingly powerful “United 93,” of being simplistic. But he has made a $100 million war film in which American troops are the bad guys.
The Original Script for Goodwill Hunting by Damon and Ben Affleck has Will being hunted down by the American government.
Damon had a cameo in a movie glorifying Che Guevara. Even the cartoon Spirit which Matt Damon voiced had the American military as the bad guys.
He starred in Syriana which Charles Krauthammer said "burns with the certainty of its malign anti-Americanism. Osama bin Laden could not have scripted this film with more conviction."
I think one of the reasons is likely that anti-Americanism passes as depth for the cultural elite. And now I hear some very ironic rumors in the blogosphere that Damon may star in the "Captain America." I really hope not because I, for one, am taking a Damon break.
19 comments:
Not quite in the same boat, but lest we forget the anti-catholic film Dogma.
Not a MD fan, but wasn't his most recent film the one about the S. African rugby team or whatever? I didn't see it (not gonna), but was that also anti-American?
Syriana sucked dolphins. It was very namby-pamby liberal tripe, but not really anti-American (more like, "ohhhhh, those poor Arabs are just trapped by fundamentalists and uneducated. We're no better than they are. We just really need to be tolerant and they'll warm up to us.")
"Matt Damon!"
Gosh I HATE Matt Damon, and I don't know why anyone finds him attractive.
I don't know of any other nation who produces so many movies that mock that very same nation, and have citizens who enjoy those movies, too.
To be fair, in the Bourne trilogy the enemies were corrupt and power-drunk people in the US government who were doing illegal things and trying to hide it.
Landey, in the second and third, was also a representative of the US government, and she was not Bourne's enemy at all.
Blame Damon if you want (that's fine), but also spread that blame to those who write, produce, and direct these anti-American-Government movies.
And that brings up another point. The movies I've seen from the examples given don't show hatred for America so much as paranoid distrust of the US Government, and deep-seated belief that the government is filled with corrupt and evil people.
But, yeah, Damon seems to have a thing for picking those roles.
As a Catholic, I am morally obliged to be anti-American...
lets not forget Paul Bettany: may he be anti-Catholic???
1.The Da Vinci Code-Opus Dei "monk"
2.Legion-he plays a rebellious St. Michael
3.Creation-plays Charles Darwin
4.Priest-Plays a warrior priest who turns against the church to track down a murderous band of vampires
Since when does the American Government = America?
America, schmaschmerica.
oh yes, I said it
Matthew Siekierski writes...The movies I've seen from the examples given don't show hatred for America so much as paranoid distrust of the US Government, and deep-seated belief that the government is filled with corrupt and evil people.
The government is not quite "filled" with corrupt and evil people, but the government is heavily infiltrated with them. Far to few Catholics actively "live" their religion 24/7, as required.
Anti-Catholicism would be of concern, but anti-americanism is just something that Americans will increasingly have to cope with, particularily if their government insists on invading countries looking for non-existent "weapons of mass destruction".
It seems to be very fashionable to be apologetic for being American, to walk around perpetually rolling one's eyes saying, "Yeah, I know." I catch myself at it too. We're going to Europe for the first time this summer and we were thinking about visiting France, which seems to have this reputation for disliking American and British tourists. And I was saying to a friend of mine how I might just pretend to be Australian or something like that so I get treated well. But then I started thinking about it after I read this last week and I decided that I'm not going to hide that fact that I am an American and I'm proud to call this country my home (for all of the stupid things our elected officials get us into). I'm not planning on getting all ugly when we're there, but I am planning on learning to say, "I'm American, not stupid, and my Euros and I are leaving."
Damon was close with Howard Zinn. Zinn babysat him as a child. What else do you need to know?
Matt Damon as Captain America?
No.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO!
He's too old, looks nothing like Cap, and generally is not the kind of person I could see playing him.
Bad enough that Jensen Ackles (Who would have been my own personal choice to play Cap) has made it pretty clear he won't be doing it, but to get that whiny loser Damon?
I think I preferred the rumor that Will Smith would play him!
Hope you don't mind...
I snipped a peice of your article here:
http://normanhooben.blogspot.com/2010/03/green-zone-isnt-cinema-its-slander-its.html
Norm
I will never watch anything Matt does again!!! He is not educated enough to tell me how I could live my life as an American!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OH CAUSE THE AMERICAN GOV'T IS JUST OH SO PURE N HONEST :)
First off, any anti-Americanism on the part of Catholics should be singularly focused on the ongoing, subsidized murder of the unborn, not crappy intelligence about WMDs (by the way, the French, who lefties love, had it all wrong on the WMD thing too). Secondly Matt Damon is an imbecile who should be smeared with feces for having the audacity to shoot his mouth off. His commentary on anything political is akin to most of us arguing with Stephen Hawking on the nature of matter in the universe.
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