Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/12/why-some-movies-and-tv-shows-n.html
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I’d been looking for another reason not to watch “Extraction.”
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I first noticed this in Soderbergh’s Traffic twenty years ago, so it’s not a recent innovation.
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I was really hoping for some reference to the King in Yellow, or Hastur.
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It’s lame.
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Problematic geo-politics aside, it’s actually a pretty good action flick. It does all the things it needs to do, and while it is very much Hemsworth’s story, the West Asian cast actually gets some decent meat to work with in the script and action beats. It has more of a feel of being about a corrupt criminal underbelly and less of a “isn’t this foreign place so dangerous and uncivilized?”, which isn’t to say that it isn’t still problematic.
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Maybe because Hurt Locker won the Oscar?
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So you can see the racism.
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I like actions movies, and I’d like them better if they weren’t tools to help reinforce the American imperial narrative… 
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I mean, yes, the movie would have been better if it’d been less exploitative about the subject matter, but it’s still less exploitative than it’s being made out to be. I’m not saying anybody has to like it: I’m saying that I recognize that it’s problematic but it still has a number of good elements to recommend it, in spite of that.
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Okay… that’s fair enough… I was just speaking in generalities, too. It’s often a problem with the genre.
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Scenery in a movie is a character, and sometimes characters need wardrobe to achieve a desired look.
Next comes the complaint about why things shot in Antarctica are so bright and featureless.
But… back to reality. Years ago I shot part of a documentary at Auschwitz. Outside on a sunny day, I kept the majority of shots rather warm looking… then we venture into the gas chamber so I went blue & cold. Watching that part, you could feel the gloom in the room, no reds, no warmth.
Then we emerge outside again, one person shields their eyes from the sun, back to warm, richness in colours. A relief from what just was.
It is only when I told people about the colour shift that they watched a second time and remarked how effective that was.
So big shock, editing and other vFX tools were used to add texture and depth to some scenes, it happens.
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As a huge fan of exceptionally dumb action movies, I get it. I actually almost didn’t watch Extraction because of the buzz around it, but one critic who tends to have a good perspective on these things recommended it. So maybe my expectations were suitably low going in?
But yeah, I tend to avoid action movies with cops or movies with soldiers for exactly those reasons, which sadly is a LOT of them.
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YES, we JUST watched Extraction and I wondered about this! And I feel like the bridge scene used the same structure as a similar over-crowded bridge in The Bourne Supremacy (the second one). Both films had that yellow tinge over the scenery. So weird.
I get it–and agree. Though it’s worth pointing out there were zero references to America and the main character is Australian just like Hemsworth. But I agree with your general principle!
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Me too. That’s also why I’ve never taken to Star Trek.
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I still like Star Trek, despite that.
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That was where my head was at a couple years back when my now-wife and I took a cruise which had a day in Mexico.
Us: Get off boat.
Me: Looks around
Me: “Nothing’s Orange!”
Her: Chuckles, rolls eyes
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