Trailers: Pacific Rim & GI Joe Retaliation; Out On Video: Total Recall & Pitch Perfect

While this particular image doesn't show up in Total Recall, Rekall is about changing your identity and becoming what you want to become in spite of anyone else holding you back or deciding you are going to do something different. "Don't let them blow your mind" is a government warning to its citizens (under socialism) to stay away from imagining yourself as something the government has told you you are not, for example,  Doug (Colin Farrel) goes to Rekall to find out who he really is, because who he really is is the same as what it is he wants to become; we are our hopes, our dreams, our fantasies, and that's why capitalism in America has been so important, because a nerd like Bill Gates deciding he was more than a nerd and that he was going to do something great could and did happen in America, whereas the world of Total Recall shows us how their greatest agent, Doug, is caught in a job where he's wanting to advance and he has done he work to advance but he's not allowed, the government is going to keep him in the exact same position they put him in and there is nothing he can do about it. This film was well scripted and executed.

Out on video this week is one of the films which proved to be the biggest surprise for me: Colin Farrel's Total Recall (my review at Recall/Rekall: Memories Of Dreams & Total Recall). The film depicts a socialist government in the future manipulating the minds of its people, particularly Doug (Farrel) who, as the police force's leading agent, switched sides in the fight and went from being a socialist supporter to a guerrilla fighter against the changes taking place (but the government catches him and make him undergo mind surgery so he forgets switching). The dominant vehicle of the film, to me, was the role of "dreams," because there is not only the dreams we have as we sleep, but the dreams we have to keep alive our hope that we can achieve and accomplish something better and greater, dreams that don't exist in a socialist system. Again, this film was the biggest surprise for me, in not only choosing to support capitalism, but the angle from which it attacks the socialist system.

No joking, this film just left our theater two weeks ago, and it's out on video now? I'm glad to hear it, because I was really intent on seeing it. You can find my brief analysis of the film's trailer at this link here.

The film I did not get to see, but most desperately wanted to, was Pitch Perfect. Why? Obviously, this is just a throw away film for a girls' night out, or date night, or just a solo rental over the weekend from Red Box, but we've been keeping close track of the debate in socialism and capitalism over which economic model takes better care of the world of art, and being primarily concerned with singing, this film certainly qualifies to "take note" in that debate. Like I said, I really wanted to see it, so I might get to watch it this weekend, but when I do, either way, I will post on it!
 If you went to see The Hobbit this weekend, you saw this great teaser for Pacific Rim (July 12 release):

 "Today, we have chosen to believe in each other!" (rather than the government). Like Mirror, Mirror, Snow White and the Huntsman, Total Recall, Skyfall, Battleship, Men In Black, and so many other films, Pacific Rim shows us our world falling apart because a ruling force that doesn't belong is trying to assert itself over us. On the title card in the trailer, it reads, "To fight monsters, we created monsters," and usually, that connection would not be made: the mechanism used to fight a monster would be called a "weapon," a "new weapon," an "important weapon." a "new, important weapon," you get my drift, but it would not be called a monster; so why do it? To establish that what the "weapon" is is the same as what the monster is, i.e., if the monster is socialism, an economic model, than the weapon is also an economic model, capitalism. Can we see that, so far thus, in this trailer?
Absolutely!

Does this publicity still for Pacific Rim remind you of anything? It should remind you of World War II: "Now is the time to join!" (sounds like Captain America, doesn't it?). It's because WWII will be invoked throughout the film that such a visual imagery is being employed, linking up the great historical defeat of socialism to us, today, having to make the same choice to defeat it once more. You may be saying, but the Pacific Rim battle in WWII was against Japanese Imperialism, not socialism, and that's correct, although WWII was, in general, a fight against socialism, and other wars (North Korea and Vietnam) were waged in the Pacific Rim, where socialism spread more readily; the film might also be readying us for the concept of a communist attack from across the Pacific from the Chinese.

When the soldiers enter the giant robots, and control the movements with their own movements, that becomes (at this point, it may change in the greater scheme of the film, but we can see it this way right now) a new metaphor for the difference between the way capitalists respond to changes and demands in the marketplace, and the way the beast, a socialist government, responds. As in the case of Obama's multi-billion dollar failures into the "green energy" domain, artificially trying to generate a business that wasn't there in the market, capitalists have a tighter, more secure sense of what the market will do, thereby allowing them to reap greater benefits for their exertions. I expect--though, as always, we all know I could be wrong--that the robots will become a metaphor in the battle for the well-run company by capitalists vs. the clumsily run monster of a socialist government.
And the newest trailer from GI Joe Retaliation (release date March 29):

"They didn't say anything about re-enlisting," Joe says, and the same men fighting the same battle--and helping the younger generation--is a theme we have seen several times all ready (Red Dawn, Expendables 2, Men In Black III) but, let's take a quick look at that "new weapon" we're shown. If you noticed, it didn't blow up the buildings in London, there wasn't an explosion, rather, the new weapon broke up the foundation of the city; BUT in the meeting of world leaders, North Korea--a communist country--is mentioned as having their country destroyed fifteen times over by this new weapon; so what's going on? It appears we will have to actually wait to see the film! This might be a scathing critique on Karl Marx that, even though he thought socialism would put an end to nationalities and patriotism, GI Joe Retaliation may suggest that the Chinese (Cobra and Zartan) will use communism to enslave the rest of the world, regardless of which economic model they are based upon (including fellow socialist countries like North Korea).  But I will be watching GI Joe before going to see this new installment!
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner,