I have to admit that I feel a little funny discussing this topic, but I feel like it’s important enough to warrant a bit of discussion. And I’m not nearly calloused enough to get through this without mentioning how awful the events in Aurora, Colorado on Friday morning were, but of course, you already knew that.
Of course we all know how Warner Brothers refused to report on the box office results of its summer blockbuster that saw one of it’s midnight showings turn into several paragraphs in a futuristic history book. But they’re not done with adjusting their normal course of events.
The Oscar-hungry noir flick Gangster Squad, directed by Ruben Fleischer, has already been affected by the tragic events. In the film’s first trailer, there was a brief shot of what appears to be a pivotal scene in the film where a number of gangsters open fire from behind the screen of a movie theater. Nothing is known of their intention (but it can’t be good) or the results (see my last parenthetical statement) but the scene looked intense and with the recent events in a movie theater, unquestionably insensitive.
So Warner Brothers is discussing what to do with the film, starring Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, and Ryan Gosling, among others. The trailer was immediately pulled from screens (it was beginning to be shown more consistently and one has to wonder if it was even included on some reels of The Dark Knight Rises) this weekend and they’re working on re-cutting a new trailer. Also, the film currently has a release date of September 7th. You can bet that will be changed to something more along the lines of November or, more likely, December.
There are also rumors of re-shoots, as some are suspecting that the production company wants to nix the scene altogether and figure out a new way to get the same point across. You can’t argue with that decision at all, except to maybe say that the integrity of Fleischer’s already completed project would be compromised. But when you’re talking about the gravity of the situation, I say to hell with the scene.
Something that I thought of was the possible use of a sound-less shot with a score playing over an edited version of the scene (a la the brilliant rain scene in Road to Perdition). Would the lack of sound of bullets and screams make the scene less insensitive? I don’t know. I’m just thinking aloud.
Give us your thoughts on this. It’s a sensitive issue, of course, so please use tact and common sense in the comments below. Thanks…
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Twitter: callmesirphobos
July 24, 2012 1:08 am
I don’t think the scene is insensitive at all. It’s a scene in a movie that’s already been filmed, marketed, and is about to be released. Whatever happens in the real world shouldn’t change parts of a film. If this scene was made in response to the Colorado shootings, you could call it insensitive.
I can understand pushing the movie back a couple of months and even taking the scene out of some – but not all – of the marketing. TV spots? Sure. Online trailers at places such as Youtube, Apple, etc? That’s too much for me. When it comes to taking the scene out of the movie itself, that’s nothing more than being reactionary without thinking things through. I’m sure the scene has context which makes it acceptable within the bounds of its fiction. It has absolutely nothing to do with the real-life shootings, and it should be treated as such. After 9-11, a bunch of movies digitally removed the WTC. Why? Because they didn’t think. They figured the mere thought of the buildings would be too much for people to handle, I guess, which makes no sense to me. The way to be respectful of tragic events isn’t to forget they happened. It’s to remember them, and in the case of the Colorado shootings, to publicly recognize that while a time of mourning is appropriate, life has to go on. We can’t all live in fear of seeing fictional people shoot other fictional people in a work of make-believe. If we did, we might as well throw out every movie that features people killing other people. Movies with soldiers dying would be “insensitive” to the real tragedy of war, after all. Movies like Ransom would be banned because real children are kidnapped, and we can’t have that being shown on the screen.
The timing of Gangster Squad is unfortunate, but there’s nothing to lay blame on anyone for. The movie should stand as-is.
Twitter: agracru
July 24, 2012 5:19 am
Frankly, I “get” this, but only to the extent that I understand the reasoning at a base level. No matter what Ruben Fleischer intended for us to think during that scene, we’ll all be thinking– consciously or not– of Aurora as it plays out on screen. I realize I am speaking to the future, and that’s a dangerous gamble, but I imagine that it’ll be hard or outright impossible for many to be able to separate the two during and after the screenings they attend. So, yes, I “get” this potential move.
But it’s a bad move, because at the end of the day Gangster Squad and Aurora aren’t tied together by any significant connective tissue. This reminds me of people protesting Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers for invoking memories of 9/11; I, again, “get” that people are hurting after Aurora, physically and spiritually, but that doesn’t mean they can’t behave too sensitively (particularly those who weren’t directly or even indirectly affected by the events, the bystanders who found out through Twitter about Holmes’ shooting spree).
While I suspect many watching an unedited Gangster Squad won’t be able to get Aurora out of their heads, I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing (we connect events in films to real-life events through the great magic of subtext all the time). But more than that, re-editing/cutting/shooting the film just sounds like cowardice.