I was watching Jurassic Park 3 today and I was reminded that all 3 of those movies had the black guy die. Horribly. It can only happen so many times before you start to think something’s up. It happened all over, action films, horror, thrillers. The worst is when the black guy goes to get himself killed and then none of the other characters even comments on it after he disappears.
The word “representation” gets a lot of flack, but when I was growing up it was really demoralizing to watch film after film where the black dude was either a clown or was horribly killed a few minutes into the movie. Unless it was a hood movie anyway, but there’s an obvious problem there.
Anyway, this isn’t one of my more thoughtful rants, but just something I actually do like about modern film.
I liked the trope, because it was a reflection of the racism inherent in American society. It was there for everyone to see. Getting rid of the trope didn’t get rid of the racism. But now Hollywood libs can pat themselves on the back, just how Congress democrats took a knee in African garb while doing nothing about the laws that disproportionately target Black people or about the racist police force.
Holy shit whenever I think about that I wonder if I’m hallucinating and then remember Pelosi in African garb. I had to wrap my mind around the idea that they acted like they weren’t doing that to be racist.
immortalized as an emoji even.“liberalism” is the perfect emoji name.
Someone should do a horror movie where the black guy keeps finding himself in the position of Guy About to Die, only to accidentally end up fine each time and survive the movie. He trips on a loose floorboard just in time to inadvertently dodge the crossbow bolt, he decides to go use the restroom right as the killer is passing by, his phone gets a text at just the right time and he doesn’t notice the eyeless ghost in the mirror that kills you for looking at it. Give me a black Arthur Dent
Hell yeah 2 new movie recs
In a more figurative sense, isn’t that essentially what happens to Daniel Kaluuya’s character in Get Out?
He was not having the shenanigans going on in that mansion.
Nope also subverted the trope, although I don’t want to spoil anything about that movie because it’s best if you go in completely blind.
Us does the same thing actually. Big fan of Peele.
That’s almost exactly the entire plot of The Blackening
That movie is called ‘deep blue sea’
What? Yk I’ven’t thought of the trope at all until I remember that first scene in Jurassic Park.
Racism is a helluva drug for these connards…
“Shoot her! SHOOT HER!”
https://youtu.be/qz5JmgLQEzs?t=195
(Timestamped)
I had the safari hunter guy’s lines burned into my brain as a kid for some reason. I do enjoy that they always kill the evil hunter guys
Muldoon wasn’t evil. He was the warden, tasked with park safety. He wasn’t super fond of the dinosaurs because they were ludicrously dangerous, especially the raptors. Honestly, he was a pretty good guy, trying to find Hammond’s grandkids, and dying covering Ellie while she ran for safety.
Yeah, but, like, did you consider it from the dino’s point of view?
Because I did
But on a serious side, most of the people working at Jurassic Park (in the first one anyway) were mostly just neutral people on a good/bad scale I suppose. Except Hammond. Even Nedry (sp?) was just exploiting his exploitative boss (underpaying him).
I don’t know how much of a point was trying to be made, but there’s definitely an underlying theme of capitalism forcing what could be a questionably ethical scientific project (bringing back extinct animals) into fast-tracked, hyper-capitalist, “just pay experts to come and rubber stamp this shit immediately so we can make money” disaster.
It is even more explicit that Hammond is a bastard in the books and the second book opens with some heavy anticapitalist messaging.
Also Muldoon lives in the books.
I read the first Jurassic Park book and a bunch of other Crichton books when I was like 13/14. Over 20 years ago. I enjoyed Andromeda Strain. All that shit has oozed out of my brain though and only the movies remain
I remember the first book being fairly anti-capitalist too, iirc it focused a lot on 90s silicon valley corporate culture being absolute scheming parasites, profit above all, especially lives.
Oh yeah. Hammond in the first film was only slightly better than in the book, from my understanding. Exploitative, rushing things, wanting quick and easy solutions, and thought he could fix shit just by throwing money at it.
wow… i have seen the movie so many times and yet I don’t recall that scene at all. It’s like I just saw it for the first time… that’s so bizarre
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I was just watching JP3 and feeling bad for Nash (and Cooper), because they die badly and are later part of a poop joke.
Still love the movies overall, but yeah, that trope is certainly… well, a trope. It really is everywhere. Only include 1 or 2 black characters in a cast, then kill them off. Fucking wild the shit media did in my childhood that I can only notice now.
Having two guys get eaten by dinosaurs and then making it a joke because of poop is really fucked up actually
And it’s not like either of their deaths were particularly clean or quick. Cooper’s actor did a really good job with his last line. Felt like genuine terror. And Nash? Poor bastard had way too much time to suffer.
But hey, funny poop joke pulling out their bones and being stinky.
2000s were fucking wild.
I really like Night of the Living Dead for avoiding this trope.
And it us heartbreaking at the end where he gets mistaken for a zombie and is shot… or maybe they knew he wasn’t and did it anyway.
You mean “Dawn of the Dead” (1978), cuz the Black-American protagonist dies (at the end of the film you mentioned),
but “Dawn of the Dead” (1978) avoids that horrid trope
My reading of the trope isn’t about the character dying per se, but that they’re thrown away for sake of the plot or other characters’ development. They’re flat and disposable.
Whereas in Night, he outlives the other characters, is central to the plot and thesis of the movie, and his death at the end is meaningful in and of itself (both to the story at face value and symbolic interpretations of the film). But I really like Dawn too.
Huh, ogey
Canadian Bacon is a really dumb movie that I absolutely love. This exact trope comes up in it, and it never fails to get a chuckle from me. I like to think that the movie was at least partially responsible for ending it.
I’m glad it died down, I mean Get Out is one of the best original horror movies of the last decades. And also for some reason Samuel L. Jackson didn’t even need to be in a horror movie to get absolutely destroyed by either shark, force lightning, explosion, mass gunfire, King fucking Kong’s fist etc.
As far as Jurassic Park goes though, no one had it as bad as Eddie in The Lost World, Zara(babysitter) in Jurassic World and everyone who got caught by a Velociraptor.
Fargo S5 was disappointing.
Samuel L Jackson gets the works in Deep Blue Sea in a funny way.
Deep Blue Sea is a movie I can’t watch anymore because I found out how badly it got butchered by test audiences.
Oh? I must look into that. My partner likes the movie for some reason.
