Dabbling in the psychology of big budget movies.
Clearly state the problem: The US government is corrupt at the highest levels.
Hold up a lone hero: He has super skills, and knows good from evil.
There are secret, ancient powers keeping us safe: Yes, our hero is a member.
In the end: the hero dies, cut to a TV screen with a reporter announcing that all the bad people in the government are being locked up. (if sequels are likely, the hero won’t die.)
How did this get past the censors?
In this movie, the US president (king) is dead. His wife (queen) now rules America. The shit-bag royal son is doing cocaine at the white house, and is reaping millions from criminal business built on the government connections and technologies.
I would have expected a plot with more subtle image, analogy, symbol, scent, movement. But this movie plot is almost literal. It leaves very little to the imagination. How then did it escape the censors?
Our superhero wins, the shit-bag royal son is killed, the Queen realizes that she must tell the truth to the US population.
What did I just watch? I feel like a fast one has been pulled.
Go back to sleep, the Beekeepers have everything covered
While watching the movie, I was trying to follow my own internal trajectory, and it felt to me that I could walk out of the theater and not have to do a darn thing. The super-hero had it covered. I could go back to sleep, and even feel superior just by knowing that super-secret-beekeepers existed, and they will take care of everything.
If angels stepped in and solved human problems, that would not require the growth of any humans - in fact it would make human growth impossible. What parent does not already know this? I can give wise advice all day long to my children, but they need to solve moral hazards themselves, just as I did.
When the movie’s superhero solves our problem, then we in the audience feel no need to do anything. We should probably just stay out of the way.
I feel like I am stumbling around, trying to describe some subtle psychology that these Hollywood/CIA-folk figured out long ago in the days of the Manchurian Candidate. With large $$$ budgets and decades of experiments in crowd control, the people who foster such movies as The Beekeeper are miles ahead of you and me in terms of psychology.
If you want to save the world, become a saint
“If you want to save the world, become a saint,” great quote from Jonathan Pageau.
But the movie is skillfully silent on this.
Outer success, like a Martin Luther King Jr’s famous protests, always turn out to have required inner methods. Funny that the books & teachers who told me MLK’s story never mentioned that MLK would only let his people protest after undergoing extensive training in “seeing their oppressors in themselves.” That is, when you are out there, and white police men with their dogs and water cannons are having at you, you must see that you are no different from those men. If you were them you would do the same thing. You have no personal moral high ground. This is an example of how growth of the soul is meshed with heroic actions in life.
The movie does not address this need for inner transformation. But, at the same time, the movie touches something real in us. We all know that we personally could change the world. There is no known limit to what one person can accomplish. These movies awaken this knowledge.
Mankind is a battleground, in several different ways. I do wonder if in these movies there is not some deal being made, some compromise between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. The truth will be told. And it will be told in a way that will generally put everyone back to sleep.
Very aware review. Movies were programming before there was TV programming. Cartoons are similarly social manipulation tools - the indoctrination occurs much sooner.
Best thing to do is spend time with our children face to face doing practical and real things that are self evidently true. Nature cannot lie and has no agenda, it just does and being in nature living things that are real is the best way to remain grounded.
This observation about the hero movie seems so obvious, but not. I've never realized it until Mike pointed it out.
When Mike observes, "I feel like I am stumbling around, trying to describe some subtle psychology that these Hollywood/CIA-folk figured out long ago... With large $$$ budgets and decades of experiments in crowd control..." Perhaps it is continuation of the Roman Gladiator Circuses all funded by the Caesars.
Humans are funny: most blockbusters are about the brash independent often violent person who thwarts authority, whereas simultaneously in actual life such characters are considered-- by the same public-- a danger and threat to our lives.
The ending sentence, "The truth will be told. And it will be told in a way that will generally put everyone back to sleep." I feel a bit ashamed as after I type this comment, I myself will go to sleep, to get rested for work tomorrow. And maybe forget about the movie, and all that implies.