Movie Poster Prophecy?

7/6/2021

I don't know why, but I get the sense that this movie poster for a terrible 1986 Chuck Norris film offers many potential symbolic clues about what might be coming down the pipe as far as the birdemic goes.

Delta Force.

The Siege. The Ordeal. The Rescue.

Indeed.

Full disclosure: I don't really believe in movie poster prophecies, but hey . . .

6 Comments

Hari Seldon

7/8/2021 01:50:05

Hollywood is littered with images and themes that disturbingly prefigure the events of the past 18 months. I was particularly struck by I Am Legend, the 2007 Will Smith blockbuster in which a genetically engineered measles virus that is designed to cure cancer ends up wiping out 90% of humanity and transforming most of the rest into zombies.

The movie's imagery is uncomfortably reminiscent of the birdemic, including recurring images of deserted Manhattan streets, as well as a scene in which soldiers wearing N95 masks use a handheld device to scan people's eyes for signs of infection. Also, the protagonist's desperate quest for a "cure" (a vaccine?) for the virus leads him to perform experiments on kidnapped zombie subjects in his basement lab. One suspects that the function of this type of entertainment is to condition the public to accept massive engineered crises, suspension of rights and dehumanizing treatment by the powers that be.

Amusingly, searching for ["I Am Legend" vaccine] on Google brings up FOUR "fact check" pages in a row clarifying that no, the agent that killed everyone in the film was *not a vaccine*, but an engineered virus. Reuters, USA Today, the Poynter Institute, Health Feedback and Google want to make absolutely sure that there are no misconceptions about this very important piece of movie trivia. Hmm...

Francis Berger

7/8/2021 22:27:06

@ Hari - Yes, I do believe Hollywood films have sometimes been employed to foreshadow world developments and events, but as you know, my use of Delta Force here is clearly not an example of that.

On the topic of I Am Legend, I read the Richard Matheson novel years before the seeing the Will Smith movie. In the novel, the protagonist - who barricades himself in his L.A. home every night to protect himself from marauding vampires - discovers the cause of the disease - that turned people into undead vampires - to be a strain of bacteria. I don't remember the details of what this discovery led to him to (it's been 20 years since I read the novel), but I do remember that the film is essentially an updated version of the novel's theme and plot.

Hari Seldon

7/10/2021 04:20:07

Thanks. I have not read the novel (or seen the other movies based on it), but now I am intrigued.

Whitney

7/9/2021 00:15:56

I read the book also and there were two groups of infected. The vampires that rose from the dead and were cognitively impaired and partially insane and the living infected that were cognitively okay though psychologically changed and able to deal with their infection with medication. These were the two tribes, the living were smarter than the dead so they were able to wipe out the vampires, which was considered an essential hurdle before they built their new society. It ends with them killing Richard Neville because as the last uninfected human he is essentially a different species and a freak of nature and an object of horror so he has to die also. I think it was established that he was immune to the bacteria so they couldn't just infect him and let him become part of their society.

It has some parallels. I think the GMO people that have taken the vaccine could easily be whipped into a frenzy of hate for the organic people.

Jon

7/9/2021 17:04:53

These movies used to be considered lowbrow and cheesy by critics or those in the know. But nowadays they are quite enjoyable compared to the alternative, extremely ideological crap that studios are producing/trying to push down our throats.

Hari Seldon

7/10/2021 04:16:16

This is true of a great many movies (and TV shows), I think. Not only is the older stuff less ideological, it's also just of higher quality. There has been a profound decline in workmanship and aesthetic standards in the last couple of decades, such that "mediocre" or "lowbrow" entertainment from the past is now surprisingly enjoyable. Meanwhile, both the lowbrow and the "serious" stuff that is produced today is essentially unwatchable, I find.

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