at least according to social media, is one of gung-ho patriotic jingoism -- of the "well then we'll just bomb them into the stone age" variety.
I might also humbly suggest that such an instinctual and joyously defensive appeal to said patriotic impulse distracts the populace from such domestic issues such as financial crisis -- instead, giving people a shared threat to rally against. Some say that Kim Jong-un looks as if he just stepped out of central casting for a James Bond movie.
Let's look at the cast for "Olympus Has Fallen," for there are several actors involved who have subtextual meaning as it relates to discussion and their previous movie roles.
The film's protagonist is played by Gerard Butler -- who of course played the mighty warrior King Leonidas in "300." Leonidas is the ulitmate macho war-dude, rallying the "troops" to battle.
The president is portrayed by Aaron Eckhart, part of the symbolically-loaded Christopher Nolan "Dark Knight" trilogy. POTUS has the name Benjamin Asher, which has very Biblical overtones; both Benjamin and Asher are part of the Tribes of Israel.
One person the president in "Olympus Has Fallen" does NOT seem to allude to is our current president, Barack Obama. Often, movies such as this will choose an "analogue" to the sitting president. But this does not seem to be President Benjamin Asher's function. Asher seems to function as some sort of idealistic character straight out of the Good Book; functioning in what is essentially an Apocalyptic film as the representation of the United States as a "promised land" that needs defending from the Philistines.
HOWEVER, when Asher is incapacitated in the Korean takeover, Morgan Freeman's character, Speaker Allan Trumbull, is made Acting President. Freeman also played the U.S. president in "Deep Impact," alluding to the recent spate of asteroid paranoia that has recently filled the news.
While Freeman resonates both the President-During-The-Apocalypse symbol as well as a possible "stand-in" for our own president, I would also suggest that in the bigger scheme of things, he also resonates a paternalistic, transcendent, "God" figure (as he literally was in "Bruce Almighty).
And Freeman, of course, was also a figure in the Nolan "Dark Knight" movies, especially the third one in which his character was the creator of a bomb that Bane hijacks and threatens to use on Gotham; as Kim Jong-un threatens to do to the U.S. as present.
All-in-all, rather than being a true eschatological movie as "Deep Impact" or "2012," "Olympus Has Fallen" is more a narrative designed to rally the American public against the outside Enemy -- as the successful "Red Dawn" remake has done (featuring the North Koreans), as the upcoming movie "Iron Man 3" will do (with the Asian Mandarin as villain), and as the immanent movie "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" will do (swapping out a specific ethnic group for the generic evil of "Cobra").
In truth, we have moved out of the end-of-the-world cycle of films, spurred on by the 2012 prophecy, and are travelling into a "we can win this war dammit we are Americans!" phase; the phase of "let's bomb them into the stone age!"
And why is this? As I've mentioned before, this appeal to patriotism distracts the public from economic turmoil at home. It also more helpfully "defines" what it means to be a Patriot; taking control of the word and concept from various Constitutionalist groups etc. labelled as "fringe."
In short: this narrative, running through both news media and entertainment, attempts to push the United States out of the "paranoid," untrusting-of-government periods of the 70s, 90s, and 10s and into something more manageable. Witness the 80s and "Aughts" -- both eras where the U.S. have been threatened with, in the latter even hit by, attacks from abroad.
And if "Olympus Has Fallen" doesn't float your boat, you can check out the #1 movie in America, about cavemen.
I might also humbly suggest that such an instinctual and joyously defensive appeal to said patriotic impulse distracts the populace from such domestic issues such as financial crisis -- instead, giving people a shared threat to rally against. Some say that Kim Jong-un looks as if he just stepped out of central casting for a James Bond movie.
Let's look at the cast for "Olympus Has Fallen," for there are several actors involved who have subtextual meaning as it relates to discussion and their previous movie roles.
The film's protagonist is played by Gerard Butler -- who of course played the mighty warrior King Leonidas in "300." Leonidas is the ulitmate macho war-dude, rallying the "troops" to battle.
The president is portrayed by Aaron Eckhart, part of the symbolically-loaded Christopher Nolan "Dark Knight" trilogy. POTUS has the name Benjamin Asher, which has very Biblical overtones; both Benjamin and Asher are part of the Tribes of Israel.
One person the president in "Olympus Has Fallen" does NOT seem to allude to is our current president, Barack Obama. Often, movies such as this will choose an "analogue" to the sitting president. But this does not seem to be President Benjamin Asher's function. Asher seems to function as some sort of idealistic character straight out of the Good Book; functioning in what is essentially an Apocalyptic film as the representation of the United States as a "promised land" that needs defending from the Philistines.
HOWEVER, when Asher is incapacitated in the Korean takeover, Morgan Freeman's character, Speaker Allan Trumbull, is made Acting President. Freeman also played the U.S. president in "Deep Impact," alluding to the recent spate of asteroid paranoia that has recently filled the news.
While Freeman resonates both the President-During-The-Apocalypse symbol as well as a possible "stand-in" for our own president, I would also suggest that in the bigger scheme of things, he also resonates a paternalistic, transcendent, "God" figure (as he literally was in "Bruce Almighty).
And Freeman, of course, was also a figure in the Nolan "Dark Knight" movies, especially the third one in which his character was the creator of a bomb that Bane hijacks and threatens to use on Gotham; as Kim Jong-un threatens to do to the U.S. as present.
All-in-all, rather than being a true eschatological movie as "Deep Impact" or "2012," "Olympus Has Fallen" is more a narrative designed to rally the American public against the outside Enemy -- as the successful "Red Dawn" remake has done (featuring the North Koreans), as the upcoming movie "Iron Man 3" will do (with the Asian Mandarin as villain), and as the immanent movie "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" will do (swapping out a specific ethnic group for the generic evil of "Cobra").
In truth, we have moved out of the end-of-the-world cycle of films, spurred on by the 2012 prophecy, and are travelling into a "we can win this war dammit we are Americans!" phase; the phase of "let's bomb them into the stone age!"
And why is this? As I've mentioned before, this appeal to patriotism distracts the public from economic turmoil at home. It also more helpfully "defines" what it means to be a Patriot; taking control of the word and concept from various Constitutionalist groups etc. labelled as "fringe."
In short: this narrative, running through both news media and entertainment, attempts to push the United States out of the "paranoid," untrusting-of-government periods of the 70s, 90s, and 10s and into something more manageable. Witness the 80s and "Aughts" -- both eras where the U.S. have been threatened with, in the latter even hit by, attacks from abroad.
And if "Olympus Has Fallen" doesn't float your boat, you can check out the #1 movie in America, about cavemen.
