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You couldn’t make Blazing Saddles these days. They’d take one look at the script and go
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“We can’t make this, this is Blazing Saddles, they made it 50 years ago. Do you want Mel Brooks to sue us?”
Funny story Mel Brooks actually did an animated version of Blazing Saddles called The Legend of Hank to prove that he absolutely could make it today.
It’s basically the same concept but with samurai instead of cowboys.
“Ain’t no business like shogun business.”
Huh. TIL.
Though the actual argument for why you couldn’t make Blazing Saddles now is the the entire genre it’s lampooning is dead.
The humor is pretty much still fine and flies, other than Mel playing a Native American, but even that is still kinda-maybe-sorta-okayish-maybe? since Mel’s character isn’t the butt of the joke, but other than that brief scene I can’t recall anything that watching now makes me cringe.
I think the Mel Brooks scene is satirizing old Hollywood’s habit of casting whites in the roles of poc. Plus, I don’t see how a yiddish speaking native could be offensive to anybody.
3 weeks after release Israel starts setting up fences around a small bit of Arizona and calls it the very west bank.
Missed opportunity for wild west bank.
Oh, that is much better.
You might be right, and maybe the reference to old Hollywood was more subtle and went over my head.
I think it’s the fact that he speaks Yiddish in that scene rather than…well anything else. I can kind of read it as a comment on the tendency of the Western genre to cast white actors in deerskin clothing and feather headdresses instead of actual Native Americans…so I’m kind of willing to file it in the same folder as Robert Downey Jr. wearing blackface in tropic thunder. For that scene to be made today I’d want to see that point more clearly made, and I’d want real Native Americans involved in the production to be on board with it.
I think the big difference with Tropic Thunder is that the IDEA of black face is very explicitly the joke. Robert Downey Jr’s character and the idea of black face is what is being made fun of.
You might be right that it’s a commentary on Westerns, and it went over my head, and maybe because it was made when it was you didn’t have to be as explicit with the target of the joke it was just more subtle. The scene certainly doesn’t feel hateful, but it’s definitely odd to watch today. But given how explicitly the movie is making fun of racists and racism I’m certainly willing to give it some benefit of the doubt.
Yeah the blackface in Tropic Thunder is very much in the text of the film. I seem to remember it being a direct parody of a Vietnam War movie where a white actor unironically played a black man, but I may be Mandela Effected because I can’t find any references to this.
Mel Brooks playing an Indian Chief in a short scene in Blazing Saddles…doesn’t really have room for it to be in the text, but given the movie has an overall theme of racism in Westerns I think the subtext at least could be there. Especially since this movie leans on, breaks, then demolishes and spills out through the fourth wall, it has that same “we’re actors playing roles” mechanic that Tropic Thunder does. Slim Pickens even delivers the line “I’m working for Mel Brooks!”
Men in Tights, however…
What’s wrong with Men in Tights?
They roam around the forest looking for fights.
Every decent joke in the film was a repeat from a previous, better Mel Brooks film.
I watched it recently with my kids and it was a bit cringey, in that the humor seems to be targeted at teenage boys. Spaceballs was much better.
I feel that people who think Blazing Saddles is too risque to get made today are the butt of the jokes they thought were funny.
As a side note: I thought I liked Westerns because I loved Blazing Saddles. Then I watched a few Westerns during the pandemic and now I realize I just like Blazing Saddles. lol
Westerns can either be amazing or terrible.
Not much in between IMO.
Love watching this movie on network TV.
They leave in all the N-words and censor the farts.
well no one wants to hear such an abbhorant sound coming from their television now would they?
*Marge farts* “Well, that shut me up…”
I am looking forward to whatever he comes out with in Space Balls 2 though. That’s going to be fun. And Rick Moranis will be back!
I thought they would go:
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I wanna see a modern Zombie movie with how people would actually react to news of a zombie outbreak given how people behaved during the pandemic
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Half the population claims it’s all a hoax and lets zombies bite them because anything else is a violation of their freedoms
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Large swaths of gun owners take to the streets, and half of them die quickly because they put more money into the number of guns they had or making them tacticool instead of putting rounds through them or sighting them in.
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It gets overly politicized.
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The literal collapse of civilization, yet some corners of the government and billionaires are still trying to milk out the last drop of money
Don’t look up was basically this but a meteor instead of zombies. It was honestly kind of a depressing movie lol
What’s crazy is that they made the movie before the pandemic, but it was almost a parody of the trump administration and the response to covid.
Well, It also works as a nice allegory for climate catastrophe.
That’s what it was written as.
Ah shit I said this but didn’t bother to see this first
Shaun of the Dead kind of did it.
Gun owners patrol the streets shooting at the cdc
I actually think it would be good uniting force for a divided country:
- The “it’s a hoax” portion of the population will simply become zombies
- The “we love guns” portion of the population can now take their life frustrations out on the zombies
- The “we need to fix this world” portion of the population will learn to fight too and provide vital aid and supplies to the (likely growing) “we love guns” group
- The “we need run away from this madness” portion of the population will just hunker down and play on their smartphones
Either way, everyone kind of wins
I think you’re a little off on the “we need to fix this world” guys.
Although zombie films / TV series lean heavily into the action side of things, that’s just because it’s more entertaining than watching people building things, developing tech, doing scientific research.
Remember with COVID 19? Huge numbers of people immediately set out to find a cure, inventing and deploying ways to prevent and monitor the spread, creating pop-in treatment centres, etc.
true, they would be coordinating the attacks
The game series Dead Rising does the last bullet point with Zombrex, the 24 hour zombie prevention drug, which they need zombie outbreaks to make the drug so the pharmaceutical company starts causing them.
You forgot the activists protesting for zombie’s rights to eat our brains
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Zombies ain’t rea…OH GOD ITS EATING MY FACE…still don’t believe it, he’s just on drugs.
Krokodil!
