Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Notes -
Last week while discussing Ridley Scott's ham-fisted commentary on the Iraq War in Kingdom of Heaven, @ABigGuy4U mentioned that one of his favorite things about historical epics was how they acted as double period pieces, saying as much about the period they were made in as the period they depict.
That got me thinking, what are some of your favorite unintentional time capsule movies that are more interesting about what they tell us about the time they were made than the time they depict?
The original Shōgun was released in 1980 when Japan's technology was putting it on the international scene. The bubble wouldn't inflate for another six years but it was no longer "just" a former enemy that Americans could crack camera jokes about. It was still very foreign, but had an edge. Still you made sure you put the san after anjin(pilot) when you addressed Richard Chamberlain's character.The perspective was that of a stranger in a strange land.
Meanwhile the remake was right in the midst of woke. The white man was an unrepentant degenerate capitalist and had zero qualities as protagonist other than courage. His moral code is seen as corrupt. The Japanese translator Mariko is now a fighter (a physical, naginata-wielding fighter) and arguably the real main character. Her emotional backstory that now is tied to another woman instead of a foreign Japanese honor culture. Strangeness and the darker sides of Japanese culture were buried (or at least deemphasized) in favor of beautiful setpieces. Catholicism is still denigrated but protestantism gets no reprieve in anyone's mind as it perhaps arguably did in the first.
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