You may have suspected that this MAGA-tinged hagiography would be absolute trash, but it turns out you didn’t think low enough.
  • Sgt_choke_n_stroke@lemmy.world
    167·
    3 months ago

    They should do an anti documentary. Show Reagan as the blood hungry man that actively sought to gut government spending for mental health institutions, show him in backrooms smoking cigars to cut taxes, and talk to the CIA director to funnel crack in neighborhood.

    Bonus points for downplaying aids specifically to target the gay community.

    • hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world
      35·
      3 months ago

      This is comically hyperbolic. Ronald Reagan isn’t even the greatest monster in the history of US presidents. Frankly I’m not even sure he was the greatest monster to serve as president in the second half of the twentieth century.

      • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
        20·
        3 months ago

        Jeez, have you never been on internet forums where people say things they don’t mean in the most literal sense possible?

          • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
            19·
            3 months ago

            Because I’m not. I’m just not saying literally he’s a worse monster than tons of other monsters. But I do blame him for a lot of the terrible shit in USA society. And Tatcher for doing the same. They’re both awful. They are two of history’s greatest monsters.

            • hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world
              5·
              3 months ago

              If there are a multitude of other monsters, then he is not one of history’s greatest monsters. You could probably name half a dozen more evil world leaders from the twentieth century alone. I was initially thinking of Hitler/Stalin, but honestly even people like Saddam are objectively worse people than Reagan and Thatcher.

              That’s just one century out of recorded history. It’s just an absolutely absurd statement.

              • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
                9·
                3 months ago

                You’re not very good at interpreting internet comments. I already said it isn’t meant exactly literally. You know who else are some of history’s greatest monsters? Five hundred people who aren’t literally history’s greatest monsters. I’m done going back and forth with you. You either come at it in bad faith or don’t understand what I’m trying to convey.

          • EarthShipTechIntern@lemm.ee
            2·
            3 months ago

            I’m starting to remember that they hated each other. I’m inclined to think it was because he knew Bush Sr held the reigns (having been CIA stooge for Nixon) and had no grasp of play-acting for the people (not an actor like magistrate Reagan)

            The damage done under Reagan was vaster than Reagan had brains or connections to make.

            • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
              4·
              3 months ago

              I agree with this. Reagan was culpable because he was the damn boss. H.W., Olly North, and a bunch of others were doing all kinds of fucked up shit while he smiled for the camera.

              I think the same thing about Bush Jr.'s time in office. He “aww shucked” his way through shit while Cheney and the crew did irreparable damage. I don’t think either of them felt strongly about anything that didn’t personally affect them and they allowed the road to the 2016 shitshow.

              H.W. was the only conservative who held the reigns while he was president in the last 4 decades and he wasn’t likable enough by the base to get a second term. That’s why they put up “aww shucks” and a crazy demagogue that they could manipulate. Don’t get me wrong, Trump is evil. He just doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together to do the damage that the federalist society and project 2025 wanted/wants all by himself.

              • EarthShipTechIntern@lemm.ee
                2·
                3 months ago

                Solid. Trump is Putin’s prime puppet. Dumbing & diminishing the (self proclaimed) land of democracy & Union. He (Putin) put some shiny social bombs at play in his extension of the cold war. And he’s happy to watch us set them off on ourselves. Even won Elon over to dip in to the charade front.

                Trump is the Cockwomble mascot of robbing his (real & imagined) tenants of time, attention and truth. That’s his (previous) mental limit.

  • teft@lemmy.world
    58·
    3 months ago

    That’s saying something since Borderlands was also dropped this year.

  • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
    45·
    3 months ago

    I haven’t seen the movie or read anything about it.

    But the writer also wrote a sequel to God’s Not Dead, if that gives any indication of where this sits on the reality/lunatic spectrum of right wing shithousery.

    • Homescool@lemmy.world
      6·
      3 months ago

      It’s like Christian rock in that with regular rock and roll, artists express themselves through music, but when evangelists produce music, it’s still just regular people making music.

    • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      3 months ago

      lol I’ve seen clips of the first one and holy shit it’s so obvious they only read Wikipedia and Spark’s Notes for anything longer than Green Ham and Eggs.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30·
    3 months ago

    I’m not really looking forward to the inevitably Obama hagiography, but releasing a movie like that right now would at least be timely. Reaganism might still rule our world, but Reagan - as a personality - hasn’t been relevant in decades.

    Left out of this scene is Reagan’s “Make America Great Again” remark, no doubt to avoid drawing parallels between its protagonist and Donald Trump, and it’s the first of innumerable instances in which McNamara and screenwriter Howard Klausner warp history for one-note lionization.

    Which is a shame, because Trump really is the modern incarnation of The Gipper. He cribbed from Ronnie’s playbook extensively and won with similar constituencies in a comparable upset campaign. Where Trump really failed was in his lack of an Evil Empire motivate the country against. Instead, he got a killer virus, which his own brand of cynical bumbling fascism was ill-disposed to confront. If Reagan had been held to Trump-esque standards for the AIDS epidemic, I wonder if he’d have suffered the same fate to Mondale in 1984. But AIDS was a disease for minorities, rather than rich old white men. So Reagan got to be the hero standing at the end of Cold War history, rather than the plague bringer that decimated the domestic economy.

    Nonsensicality abounds, never more so than in Petrovich’s explanation for Reagan’s success: “People will not give their lives for power or a state or even ideology. People give their lives for one another, for the freedom to live those lives as they choose, and for God. We took that away. The Crusader gave it back to them.”

    A bit of a shock to hear this, given the steady slide church attendance takes with the Gen X, Millennial, and Zoomer cohorts.

    Considering its ceaseless hero worship, it’s unsurprising that Reagan concludes with an Alzheimer’s-afflicted Reagan riding off into the sunset. Yet for all the effort it expends trying to sell the late president as the embodiment of American virtue, McNamara’s film is so ungainly and transparent that it plays like embarrassing propaganda.

    I can’t think of a more perfect ending to a movie about one of America’s premiere propagandists. But it feels like a message totally out of time with the modern audience. A “Hopey Changey” conservative throwback to a period of political optimism and a utopian vision of a single all-encompassing (fascist) movement that could sweep the nation.

    If the movie falls to deliver, perhaps that’s less the fault of the producer and the director than the man they sought to embody in their work.

  • fsxylo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    29·
    3 months ago

    The crow: get in line!

    Borderlands: Amateurs!

    Seriously though… What the fuck, 2024?

      • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        3 months ago

        We tried to watch that a few nights ago. We couldn’t figure out how a group of middle schoolers all got their driver’s license and doctorate jobs. Seriously, WTF? The original cast were all in their 30’s, which was believable. The stars of the new movie look like they’re teenagers.

        • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
          8·
          3 months ago

          So did I, which is why it’s extra creepy when Glen Powell, the most generic white guy imaginable, tries to bang one of them.

          I’d almost completely forget the whole movie by the next day, but my wife continued to think about it and then sent me this about the ending. Which makes it even worse than the ending you’d guess at about ten seconds into the film.

          spoiler for ending, like it matters

          So, they were going to test their tornado killing chemicals on the big tornado, until they realised it was heading for a town, so instead of killing the tornado before it hit the town they drove to the town to shout at running people to run, until it had destroyed half the town and killed several people, at which point they used the tornado killing chemicals to kill the tornado…

  • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
    28·
    3 months ago

    I HAAAATE biopics about recent history. It’s not entertainment. Doesn’t matter if red or blue tinged it’s still trash because the story needs to be “interesting” instead of the horrifying truth:

    There is only power. And those who desire power above anything else.
    And people who want other things. The rest is just window dressing.

      • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
        1·
        3 months ago

        I’m sort of fine with fictional shows like The White House which are basically fantasy. I also like cop shows even though I know they are basically cop propaganda, it’s just the justice fantasy and solving crimes is fun. As long as they don’t muddle the water with recent real events.

        • visikde@lemmings.world
          2·
          3 months ago

          For cop shows
          Play a drinking game
          When ever a DA or leo talk about or actually violate someone’s rights
          Drink
          When probable cause & warrants, give way to exigent circumstances
          Drink Cops are lazy & or overworked
          Bonus round are people within the episode seeking rehabilitation, justice or retribution
          Retribution
          Drink

  • xyzzy@lemm.ee
    22·
    3 months ago

    I wonder if they include the conversation between Reagan and Nixon where Reagan called black people “monkeys.”

    Or the Lee Atwater quote where he talks about his strategic use of dog whistles and starts it off by saying the N-word three times.

    Man, Reagan sucked.

    • smayonak@lemmy.world
      4·
      3 months ago

      They kept the war on drugs going and started smuggling drugs into black neighborhoods to fund anti democratic despots overseas

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
    14·
    3 months ago

    I saw the trailers for this and was like “Wait, is this a ‘real’ movie? It looks like one of those religiously funded ‘Fathom Events’.”

    • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      3 months ago

      Even the gags are real movies now. Somehow we went from ads that are trailers for fake films, to actual movie films for theaters being glorified $30M ads, which you pay to watch.