In Case You Were Wondering, Our Heroine Does Not Support World-Dominating Secret Terror Organizations

As a general rule, Our Heroine does not wade into the comboxes on political blogs. Political comboxes are like rough-n-ready frontier towns at the turn of the century: there is no law, and only the strong survive. And Our Heroine, while blessed with some heroic qualities (like perseverence in the face of a baking disaster), is not strong.

However, Ace of Spades had a review up of Quantum of Solace, and I wanted to see what the consensus was, because I liked it, (though with reservations) so I dived into the comments. And I can't wait to share one of my most favorite comments evah.

First: my reservations. Really, one reservation. The movie was too strong on realpolitik. I mean, I know that Haiti is mostly an impoverished hellhole, and I know that good governments sometimes get in bed with bad dudes to keep even worse dudes from making trouble, and I even know that spies can suffer from moral lassitude. But when I want a healthy dose of real-world spy drama, I'll read Graham Greene or something.

This is a Bond movie, people. Bond does not do Haiti (or Bolivia) to thwart petty tyrants and bring water to the sweaties and grubbies. No. Bond does Paris, Biarritz, Prague, etc. He plays high-stakes Baccarat against the agents of world-dominating secret terror organizations that want to nuke the moon, for pete's sake (I don't know why they want to nuke the moon. They just do. Ok? Deal with it!)

So, basically, I thought Bond was too constrained by "reality" in this film, but not in a good way.

The comments at Ace's were hilarious overall. And there was a debate about how corporations were portrayed. I didn't share in the opprobrium for QoS on this count, because the only corporation in it was really a world-dominating secret terror organization masquerading as a corporation -- and I didn't get the idea that you were being told that these are interchangeable entities.

However, I have been sensitive to this anti-corporatism in other movies where I didn't think it belonged like Iron Man (most recently).

So, since I've been getting kind of tired of this exact same trend, this totally frantic-sounding comment from someone named Cautiously Pessimistic made me horse-laugh. (and horse-laughing is not something to which I readily admit.)

Does anyone know of a movie where the eeevil corporation turns out to be an intentional force for good? I'm getting increasingly tired of every freakin' corporation being evil personified that wants children to die in the streets because their blood turns into gold or something. If anything, having a good corporation in a movie would be a plot twist without the twist, because everyone will be waiting for the CEO to take of his mask and say, "FOOLED YOU! I'M THE ANTICHRIST!", and be totally taken by surprise when it doesn't happen.

I would like to write this movie now, just to make him happy.