Pretty much. There's a line by Amanda Waller in the fourth season of JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED, speaking about the goverment's fear of metahumans compared with the old days with the Russians - "Our enemy is never as evil as we make them to be. And maybe we're not quite as good as we like to think we are."
The best thing about Nazis as villains, is that you can go as far over the top as you want to, because their evil was so great, and people will accept it. The Russians were intimidating & mysterious, but it never did come to war with them. Plus, they had many socialist sympathizers in North America & abroad; locking such people up just made the U.S. look as heavy handed.
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"I'm not smart so much as I am not dumb." - Harlan Ellison
Stalin did terrible things, but his legacy in Russia is mixed, to this day.
Just like Mao in China, where even more people died. The people in both countries were grateful for how they were transformed from backward, rural nations with a small ruling class, into world superpowers. Both suffered the worst during the Second World War - Russia by the Germans, China by the Japanese - and became far stronger against any future invasions after the war. It was just the draconian, unforgiving process of reform & change in both countries that made them wonder why so much suffering was needed.
They're even talked about renaming Volgograd back to Stalingrad in the past few years. Though by his last days, he had become so despotic & paranoid he may have been poisoned to prevent starting war against the West (similar conspiracy theories still float about Gen. George Patton - stationed in Germany after the war, constantly blowing off about the Russian threat - dying in a bizarre traffic accident.)
Winston Churchill was always suspicious of Stalin & Russian motives, but he had no problem siding with him against Hitler & the Axis. They did need Russia to occupy the Nazis for most of the fighting while they prepared to re-enter Europe; it cost 25 million Russian lives by the end, nearly half of the wars total.
The interesting thing in the film is, Stalin had been dead for four years by 1957. I thought they're could have been a line joking about Premier Khrushchev in there.
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"I'm not smart so much as I am not dumb." - Harlan Ellison
Nazi do make for better villians they bring an attitude of we're going to destroye you all and rule the world kind of feel, they were more willing to do horrific things toward people witch makes you want to see Henry Jones kick some ass a little more then against a communist. Now im not saying that some of those communist governments around the world haven't done some mest up stuff to but come on now were talking about Nazis. Plus you feel more satisfied at the end of the movie when the bad guys head shrivels up and explodes all over the screen. either way I still liked the movie.
Last edited by BuddasPalm on Jun 3rd, 2008 at 10:15 AM
Its like having Jaws the shark as your villian for Jaws and Jaws two, then having that little Hitler monkey from Raiders be the villian in the 3rd. And the monkey wears little armbands/waterwings.
But not in this movie, regardless of their past credits in the world of evil.
They were the villian equivalent of Star Trek redshirts.
"The diet coke of evil, the margarin of evil" as Mike Myers would say.
The 'Raiders' Nazis and the 'Crusade' nazis rested on no laurels and spent a good amount of screentime being genuinely evil, convincing and assuring the audience of their evil crudentials.
You didn't have to be a student of world history to see that those were some serious bad mofos, as the evil was there to see, and by the end of the movie, you were ready to see them get exploded and melted and stuff which was a fantastic popcorn moment.
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"Van Zan is the Pinocchio of feces." - Lestov16
Last edited by Sadako of Girth on Jun 18th, 2008 at 12:20 PM
the Soviets could have made good villains, but unfortunately lucas and whomever else decided to make this film geared more towards kids then people who could handle guys getting their hearts ripped out/faces melted off.
I love how the whole movie is all light hearted and then there's the randomly placed ant death scene from hell lol. The tone was just way off IMO
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May 30th, 2008 06:44 PM
