The other day I found myself revisiting Braveheart, the story of William Wallace and the role he played in Scotland’s rebellion against the English, and was struck by something that I find bothers me more and more these days. I was so excited to see some great medieval action.
Should I feel guilty for this? Or should the filmmakers feel guilty?
One of the films that I feel is the most aggregious in this is Saving Private Ryan. The film, set in WWII, is Spielberg’s (he just keeps coming up these days) war movie which focuses on a small group of individuals out to retrieve this one soldier and get him home. While the story and the characters all nail it pitch perfect, at the very same moment the film serves as a great action film but I wonder if I should be deriving the same joy watching those scenes as I do from watching Shoot ‘Em Up or 300. Aren’t I supposed to be feeling some form of real emotional connection with the film rather than just enjoying these bullets whizzing by and killing all unnamed individuals – even if their Nazis?
What really spurred on this thought was recent episodes of The Indoor Kids with numerous references to the hosts’ problems with the Call of Duty games. While I have played a lot of the COD games, and it’s been very well documented how much Saving Private Ryan’s style helped shape the look and feel of the now multi-million dollar franchise in which teenagers all across the world get to relive WWII in their living rooms where their elders, who lived (and some even served) through that war. Seeing the elation as little Jimmy gets that 50th headshot trophy on his PS3 at the end of the day seems some version of warped reality.
To bring this whole thing back to the initial question: is this wrong? I know that movies are fake and even when based on reality at the end of the day are there for entertainment’s sake, but don’t they also have a certain level of social responsibility to not completely misrepresent what an act truly meant or am I just thinking too much on this one?