Tropic Thunder means a little more when we can enjoy it, understand its intentions, and keep in mind how it’s perceived.
Sometimes, films just come way harder than they need to, and this seems especially true for R-rated comedies. Tropic Thunder comes, and then it comes again, and it, honestly, probably comes one too many times, but that’s why we remember it. This movie was relentless, took no prisoners of war, and lingers like an old wound that we want to tell stories about, even if it hurts.
The plot doesn’t matter much. It’s the old classic, a play within a play, Shakespeare in the Jungle, as a group of filmmakers attempts to make art based on a lie and one really bad idea to try and shoot the thing for real strands the main actors in a hotbed of danger.
Tropic Thunder is layered, not just in the realms of acting and reality, but in how it attempts to deconstruct the ways some creatives perceive race, disability, and self-importance. The jabs are meant to come at Hollywood’s expense, reaching for deep satire without bordering on derision. Films like Platoon and Apocalypse Now are referenced in the beginning to give examples of the projects that historically did the things it attempts to lambaste.
Asking most people who haven’t seen the movie in a while to recall it usually leads them to remember either: RDJ in blackface, the “Never go full retard” speech, or Tom Cruise in a fat suit dancing to Ludacris. This is a bit sad, as the more progressive parts of the film are overshadowed by these controversial components. Tropic Thunder uses insensitive elements to criticize, but may accidentally come across as condoning as these acts well.
Though RDJ’s character having surgical blackface is often one of the first problems with the film to come up, it’s actually the element that received the least pushback upon its initial release. Obviously, not everyone was happy and there were concerns, but all parties involved in making it knew the ground they were treading on and attempted to handle things as best they could. The movie was
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