I know that Braveheart and Gladiator are not historically accurate. The distinction that I'm pointing out is that there is a difference between historical inaccuracy for the sake of entertainment/narrative, and white-washing. In Gladiator and Braveheart the historical inaccuracies are things like "those uniforms didn't exist during that time period", "this character never existed", "actually this king was killed by this guy and not that guy" etc. Arguably the greatest inaccuracy about Wallace is that in the film he's portrayed as le humble farmer man whereas in reality he was a nobleman.
That's a far cry from sweeping the principle reasons for the conflict under the rug for the sake of a good vs evil narrative. The Dahomey were a facist empire whose ENTIRE economy was built upon invading their neighbors so that they could sell them into slavery. The King's Wives regiment that the movie is focused on only existed because the Dahomey had sustained so many losses from invading their neighbors that they were desperate for manpower, and one of their chief duties was to break slave-revolts and capture more people to enslave. The wise and troubled king that we see in the trailers for the movie personally decapitated hundreds of enslaved children per year, every year, as part of a Voodoo ritual that had been a core part of their society for over a century.
Say what you want about Gladiator but Roman society was portrayed in the movie as a bloodthirsty people who enslaved others and forced them to fight to the death for entertainment. The Roman nobility were depicted as conniving backstabbers. Yes we don't know what this film will portray, or not portray, but that doesn't change the fact that the story of the Dahomey-French war is a tale about one of the greatest evils the World has ever known getting their just-deserts. Would you really just shrug and say "well you know no movie is historically accurate" if Hollywood put out a movie today about Nazi soldiers heroically slaughtering hundreds of Russian troops as a desperate last stand in the Battle of Berlin? "Christian Bale stars as Adolf Hitler and Chris Pine as Lieutenant Fritz in this epic tale of the brave German peoples' defiant resistance against barbaric Communist aggression... coming soon to a theater near you".
And yes I'm aware that this entire conversation is just speculation since we don't know anything about the movie yet. But these are my initial thoughts upon seeing the trailer, and I would be very surprised if the heroes are portrayed as the cartoonishly evil individuals that they were in real life. It's crazy that this movie could even be considered black empowerment when this Empire was one of the greatest contributors to the Atlantic Slave Trade. One of the kings of these dudes literally helped the Portugese assassinate his Dad (or maybe brother) so that he could take power and become King, because he and the Portugese were worried that the old King was going to outlaw slavery.
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"The Daemon lied with every breath. It could not help itself but to deceive and dismay, to riddle and ruin. The more we conversed, the closer I drew to one singularly ineluctable fact: I would gain no wisdom here."
Last edited by Tzeentch on Aug 9th, 2022 at 06:01 PM
As I told Ares in following msgs, I suspect this will be complete fiction and they'll sugarcoat all the bad or outright ignore it to build a heroic story, still curious to see how they do it.
I'd watch that fantasy movie just for Christian Bale :P
I suspect that the producers expect the average movie viewer to not know about the Kingdom of Dahomey at all. US Black history is barely taught here, African Black history, I don't think at all.
Will be interesting if this film inspires people to read up on the Kingdom of Dahomey after being thrilled on screen. I read up on the real Zulu nation after watching 'Shaka Zulu' as a kid in the 80s, which lead me onto the histories of other African kingdoms.
Speaking of, they need to do another film about vikings coming to the Americas first and doing stuff with the Natives. Only two films like this come to mind and one of them had this:
The difference being, there is no political agenda against vikings. [SPOILER - highlight to read]: Except Thor'
And before I get called on that for an -emacy, what I mean is I bet they left out the culpability of other groups, like how Muslims bought them from Natives and sold to Europeans.
Saying this is not to wash the hands of European culpability.
__________________ What CDTM believes;
Never let anyone else define you. Don't be a jerk just to be a jerk, but if you are expressing your true inner feelings and beliefs, or at least trying to express that inner child, and everyone gets pissed off about it, never NEVER apologize for it. Let them think what they want, let them define you in their narrow little minds while they suppress every last piece of them just to keep a friend that never liked them for themselves in the first place.
Remember when nobody cried about the political agenda of Zulu or Zulu Dawn or Amistad or The Last King of Scotland or Blood Diamond or Tarzan or Shooting Dogs or Hotel Rwanda or Sometime in April or Black Hawk Down or........................
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Viola Davis ignoring the achievements of Precious, Jackie Brown, Hidden Figures, Monster's Ball, What's Love Got to do With It, Gothika, Sister Act etc etc etceteraaaaaa
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I hope this does very well at the box office, not because I care about the movie, but if the sensitives are angry that it's doing poorly opening week, imagine the tears if it does well
Still want to see it, but I might just wait for the free download. There's a few other movies I want to see in the theater over this and have limited time to go.
Never let anyone else define you. Don't be a jerk just to be a jerk, but if you are expressing your true inner feelings and beliefs, or at least trying to express that inner child, and everyone gets pissed off about it, never NEVER apologize for it. Let them think what they want, let them define you in their narrow little minds while they suppress every last piece of them just to keep a friend that never liked them for themselves in the first place.
When was this, because all I remember is comedy relief wiseasses ala Chris Rock. Even Event Horizon, a flipping Horror Movie had the jive talking black man. 😏
__________________ What CDTM believes;
Never let anyone else define you. Don't be a jerk just to be a jerk, but if you are expressing your true inner feelings and beliefs, or at least trying to express that inner child, and everyone gets pissed off about it, never NEVER apologize for it. Let them think what they want, let them define you in their narrow little minds while they suppress every last piece of them just to keep a friend that never liked them for themselves in the first place.
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Aug 9th, 2022 05:55 PM
