An Analysis of the Jonah Hex Trailer

[radical_jojo]

Well. They've just released a trailer for the Jonah Hex movie. And It. Looks. Terrible. Let's watch...

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...There's obviously a lot that is wrong with this situation. When I first heard that they were making a Jonah Hex movie, I got really excited. He's a character that really appeals to me because he is 1.) ugly, 2.) an unpersonable son of a bitch. And I'd initially heard that it was gonna be, like, Hex fighting zombies. Awesome, right? But all the news I've heard about it, stills, set photos, and promotional art have all served to crush my Hexxy dreams, one by one. It's finally made its penultimate culmination in this trailer...which really seems to serve as such a summary of the film that I don't even need to watch the final thing to know just how it will disappoint.

But working just from the trailer alone, let's break down what's going on with this film. I said that there's a lot wrong with this situation, but I feel that it can be summarized in two points:

• 1. The creators have forgotten that they are making a Western.
• 2. Megan Fox.

But what does this mean? Let us first elaborate on point #1.

The creators have forgotten that they are making a Western.

I see this failing in three areas.

• Character
The character of Jonah Hex is meant to be your archetypal Western dangerous guy. Your classic combination Anti Hero-Drifter-Bounty Hunter. (Heck, here's all his tropes.)

You'll notice, comparing that summary to what we see in the trailer, that the origin story has been changed. This accomplishes two things.

First, it makes the story less likely to be interpreted as having the message "Native American people are bad." In this sense, the change isn't a bad thing, because Native people have really gotten it rough (to put it mildly) and still do, and an attempt made to-if not directly work to overturn crappy stereotypes-at least not actively perpetuate crappy stereotypes is a good thing. This is perhaps especially crucial when we're working with a film where the main character walks around in a Confederate States army uniform...Ya know. That Confederate States that was formed for the sake of continuing an economic system, legal system, and social order that all directly depended on the idea that there's only one ethnic race of people who are real people, and that everyone else are sub-humans who should be utilized as a resource (in a variety of ways) and used to deflect the frustrations of the poor (whites and other races) from their actual causes of socioeconomic grief (that is, being poor and comparatively powerless to the rich white guys in power.)

...However, judging from the way Hollywood normally operates, I don't think that this was on the creators' minds. I think, instead it was...

...The second accomplishment. This story change makes the story and characterization less complex. It's pretty obvious that the only intentions for this film are to give you an adrenaline rush and an erection. The story has been simplified to make Jonah Hex a (basically) good man to whom wrong has been done, and so he has become cynical and must seek revenge. This is a lot different than the original (much more interesting) account of a man who's gone through a lot of complicated, mixed emotions and has emerged with a bitter attitude towards life and an ambivalent and contradictory sense of morality-a character who could challenge our minds a little bit, as we'd have to do some thinking in order to decide what to make of him. It could have been a movie where characters are contradictory, in a human way. They'd have wrong ideas and do wrong things, and the film would be framed accordingly. Where we wouldn't entirely frame our character as being justified in his thoughts and actions.

But that's if we were gonna show his origin story, which I don't think they ought to have done at all. Isn't the appeal of this character type in the mystery? The sense that we're watching just one of his many adventures, leaving us to only imagine what other great stories he's gone through to bring him to this point, to craft him into a dark, cynical badass? The Western loner is a man of mystery; he comes to town, coolly reacts to a situation (finding the wanted man, taking on a corrupt town boss, fighting a monster, or whatever it is) and then leaves, inspiring a sense of awe and wonder in the (more emotional) people he's encountered. He leaves an impact, but is little impacted, himself. The entire time we see the character, he's at a mature, competent point in his own history; no sniveling, just action. I wish the plot for this film was not actually anything to do with Hex, personally, but instead just presented an outside situation that he had to deal with.

But they didn't do that, now, did they? Instead, it's your standard revenge-for-killing-my-family story. Yawn.


• Setting
Explosions, explosions, explosions...This trailer is just full of explosions. When you think of Westerns, don't you think of wide spaces and lonely vistas? The sense of the world going on forever, full of unknown dangers? The settlers coming to a new place, far away from the comforts of the established cities of the East, where they're many days (at least) from help and resources? A place where you feel the constant threat of danger, where folk adapt or grow up to be tough, practical, desperate? This trailer is just so loud and full of stuff going on.


• Style
If that typography isn't identical to that of Transformers II: Revenge of the Fallen, it's at least trying really hard. What is this I don't even...?

I can dig some anachronistic music. This is actually one of those things that will basically make me love you as a filmmaker. However, this only works if your entire movie is, like, hyper-stylized. A little bit surreal. Otherwise, you're just tossing in one odd element to your film, and it will feel odd instead of appearing as a delightfully unexpected flavor.

All right. Let's move on to point #2.

Megan Fox
*Sigh.* Oh, Megan Fox. Her character shall be that of the Soiled Dove, but they'll give her a cynical attitude and make her a weapons-packing gunslinger, so they can:

• have her running around in eternal states of undress,
• put her into more action scenes, and thus, more scenes in general,
• and claim that she's supposed to be a "strong female character".

Oh, kill me with a brick.

Her character will not have a personality. Her character will not have development. Her characterization will substitute "is violent" for "is interesting". She will be a sidekick and lust interest, but she will be presented as some kind of extra-great woman because she has a gun and makes sassy dialog about how sexy she is.

She won't even be a love interest; she'll be a lust interest. Because, make no mistake, the only reason she is in this movie is to add something fuckable. Please forgive the vulgarity, but it seems the only accurate way to describe what is going on. She is there for you to want to fuck-to use for your own ends, and then discard, to truly be an object rather than a person, to serve as heaving-bosomed and pouty-lipped masturbatory material.

And it's so ea-a-a-a-asy to rationalize, to defend, to seek to justify, because they've just outright made her a prostitute. It's "in character". You can just hear the defenses now, can't you?

"But she's got attitude, so that means that she's empowered!"
"If she were wearing more clothes, she couldn't run around in all the action, so she has to wear that for practicality!"
"But she's a lot better off than a lot of a lot of other sex workers!"
"You just don't like sex in movies, you prude!"
"You just don't like sex, you prude!"
"It's just a movie, so you shouldn't let yourself get upset by anything!"
"It's just a movie, so she isn't a real person!"
"If she didn't want me to want to fuck her, she wouldn't be so pretty."
"That's what prostitutes are for."
"That's what women are for."
"Prostitutes aren't real people."
"Women aren't real people."

Megan Fox, sex icon. Commodity. Over one billion served. Andy Warhol. Do you get what I'm saying?

In conclusion, this is gonna be a terrible movie.

I wanna embed a clip from the amazing episode "Showdown" from Batman: The Animated Series here for ya, but it doesn't seem that the YouTubes are gonna comply. You can download it on Amazon for $2, though. Here's a clip from Batman: The Brave and the Bold. I haven't seen the whole episode, but from this, it looks good.

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