Clint Eastwood’s latest film opens debate online

Jan 20, 2015 08:06 GMT  ·  By
“American Sniper” has very solid debut in US theaters, sparks plenty of debates online
   “American Sniper” has very solid debut in US theaters, sparks plenty of debates online

Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial effort, “American Sniper,” with Bradley Cooper playing the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, was the biggest surprise of the extended Martin Luther King weekend in US theaters, opening like a summer superhero movie to over $100 million (€86.4 million).

It also caused serious waves online, where those saying that it glorifies the life of a killer, a coward and a liar came under attack from those who consider Kyle a national hero. Filmmaker Michael Moore and actor / director / comedian Seth Rogen fell in the former category.

Michael Moore calls snipers “cowards”

Michael Moore is fairly unpopular in his home country, mostly because of his previous documentaries and his well-mediated stance against US military action abroad.

So when he tweeted that his father had taught him, after the death of his uncle at the hands of a sniper, that all snipers were cowards, everyone assumed he was talking about Chris Kyle and the film “American Sniper,” saying that we shouldn’t be seeing it because it was not worthy of our time and money.

Moore tried to explain his initial tweets later, but to no avail: by that time, the media had already run stories about how he’d “blasted” the film, which prompted him to take to Facebook for a bit more room to explain himself. You will find his post in full below.

“American Sniper” is a good film and Chris Kyle might have been the hero most Americans think he is, but Moore still believes that the way a sniper operates isn’t fair. Because they will not think twice before shooting someone in the back, he can’t think of them in any other way than how he was taught to: they are cowards.

Useless to say, except for the fact that this message made it clear that he had nothing against “American Sniper” as a film, Moore’s explanation only helped to get spirits even more heated. As it happens, he has a thick skin and a sense of humor: his last tweet is actually a thank-you to all those who wrote to him to let him know the kind of horrible things they would want to do to him, on MLK Day no less.

Seth Rogen sees Nazi propaganda movie parallelisms

Seth Rogen has no filter when he tweets, so don’t expect him to post only politically-correct messages, worded in such a way as to offend no one. He probably didn’t even see the film when he posted the following tweet, just as conversation about “American Sniper” was picking up online after its surprise performance at the box office:

“American Sniper kind of reminds me of the movie that’s showing in the third act of Inglorious Basterds.”

The movie in question is a Nazi propaganda film called “Stolz der Nation” (“Nation’s Pride”), showing a German soldier killing over 200 Allied soldiers from a clock tower. You will find it embedded below, after the 2-minute mark.

So it seemed like Rogen was comparing Kyle, an American soldier, to the German killing machine in the faux film, saying that US troops abroad are just as evil as the Nazi. Angry responses to this didn’t fail to appear, forcing Rogen to clarify his initial comment.

He wasn’t saying that US soldiers are today’s Nazi troops, he was merely comparing the technique used by Clint Eastwood in “American Sniper” to the one Quentin Tarantino used in the making of this faux propaganda film.

Anyone who understood differently was only looking for something controversial to talk about on what was a very slow news day, he added.