Ixion Watches First Blood

Let me get one thing straight: I got the wrong impression of this movie, and of the Rambo character. I had the osmotic impression of a heavily-armed hero, a man of righteous action, delivering justice to the forces of evil in the form of automatic gunfire.

Frankly, I don't know where I got that impression anymore. The film supported it only awkwardly at first, then fell through as we see the poignant sympathy with which the victimized small-town cops are portrayed. Rambo's tearful breakdown at the film's climax smashed that impression like a wrecking ball. This man was not a hero, but a tragic victim-- a living, breathing human being transformed into a weapon and unable to turn himself back.

I find it sad that this character, it now seems, has been so myopically Flanderized into nothing but a scowling, M60-brandishing slab of man-meat, forgetting entirely the powerfully delivered message by the film. I don't know who's fault it is, if it's anyone's-- having not yet seen the later films, it may be that the sequels are themselves to blame. Peering through the foggy glass of the accumulated stereotype overlaid upon the facts, we find ourselves cheering and rooting for the very warlike force that the film so pointedly expresses the bitter tragedy of-- egging on the broken soldier for the gratification of the crowd. It's an uncomfortable feeling, I find.

I liked this movie a lot more than I was expecting to, and for entirely different reasons than I'd anticipated. It took all the guns-blazing action, all the gore and violence, and made it mean something-- the only thing it could realistically mean-- and I love it for that. See it if you haven't. If you have, see it again. It's good stuff.

On the ever effervescent topic of the undead

You know, I just realized something the other day. Zombies are boring.

I can think of three just core purposes for zombies that seem to get used in everything in one capacity or another:

1. Mass numbers of sluggish, mindless targets for spectacularly gory slaughter
2. Widespread disaster creating a chaotic, lawless environment fostering survivor camaraderie and rampant looting
3. Roundabout social commentary on the uniformity of post-industrial society or some such fartsy folderol

Now, there's nothing stopping anybody from taking the concept in other directions, but even the freshest take on the shuffling (or running, or crawling) dead is still spreading perfectly good dressing on a cut of veal dating from the Persian Gulf War-- you can lay it on by the pine box, but it's still old meat, and no amount of thousand island can mask the smell, nor save your dinner guests from nasty stomach bugs.

I think it's representative of a larger problem. Zombies, despite not being a terribly good idea anymore, still seem to have a lot of clout, being a well-understood and accepted staple of video games and movies. But take away their rotting infectious exteriors and slap on some dollar store shades and you're left with generic mooks, no better than humanoid goombas-- not people, but cardboard targets for an actual character to kill en masse without guilt or hesitation (assuming your action hero is an actual character and not just as cardboard as everything else he meets).

So many "action" pieces rely on this by their very nature-- the faceless, soulless nobodies that The Hero fells like so many bottles lined up on a fence. Every video game comes packaged with an infinite supply of them just so the player has something to do, just as every movie provides an ample pile for whenever the writers bow their heads and admit to themselves they're writing "action" and toss in another fight scene. Many works will try to characterize their masses in some way, maybe making them an alien race or magical constructs or amok robots or something dumber than any of those, making up their own rules for them or recycling some existing monstrous mythos, but it's all the same, really.

There is nothing beyond that festering single-celled nucleus to define the zombie, and as a result they can only serve the one function-- cardboard target, even if they're presented as being more menacing in the abstract way and causing some kind of worldwide cataclysm that severs phone connections and downs power lines with its mere existence.

I never got that, either; why is it when zombies invade, suddenly the city looks like its been carpet bombed? There are usually craters and collapsed buildings and unchecked fires and damaged infrastructure. I know it's supposed to suggest collateral damage from people suddenly going all funny in the head during whatever important industrial task they were engaged in at the time, but you'd think the shambling hordes all received C4 charges as free gifts instantly upon zombification.

In conclusion, I'm tired of zombies, but more than that, I'm tired of ready-made slaughterable throngs of uniform bad guys that exist only to get killed with chainsaws duct-taped to lawnmowers or make an implausibly oversized mess for less dead characters to try and worm their way out of through trench camaraderie and the plundering of shopping malls.

And don't even get me started on warrior races.