Okay, so this is just your usual formulaic pretty young people in danger in a remote location film right? Wrong. There is one amazing difference in this film that just rocked my whole world momentarily.
I watched this movie and I had this sense that something was different and I couldn't figure out what it was. There were attractive young people, there was danger, there was the slutty chick and the stoner dude, there was the evil crazy villain and there was the bad CGI monster so what was it? It took me days to figure it out, this sense that something was different here.
Then I figured it out while grocery shopping a couple of days later! This was the first mainstream Hollywood Movie in which the capable heroic people who live and help each other and others survive were people of color and the stupid, evil, ineffectual, slutty, drug using people were white.
I'm white and it hit me like a ton of bricks that I had never seen that dynamic before in a main stream film at that time or earlier. It bothers me that I knew something was "off" about the movie and it was that people of color were portrayed as the smart capable people while the whites weren't. Wow. I gained a new respect for the reality of the inherent racism in our society that day.
If you think I am wrong then read a lot of the comments here. People can't figure out why the "HERO" is unconscious for most of the film. People jeez, Eric Stoltz' character is NOT THE HERO. ICE CUBE IS THE HERO, but we are knee-jerk assuming the hero has to be the WHITE guy right? He is unconscious but he is still the hero? No, Jennifer Lopez is the heroine and Ice cube is the hero. The hero doesn't have to be white or the boyfriend, he can be black and just a friend.
I watched this movie and I had this sense that something was different and I couldn't figure out what it was. There were attractive young people, there was danger, there was the slutty chick and the stoner dude, there was the evil crazy villain and there was the bad CGI monster so what was it? It took me days to figure it out, this sense that something was different here.
Then I figured it out while grocery shopping a couple of days later! This was the first mainstream Hollywood Movie in which the capable heroic people who live and help each other and others survive were people of color and the stupid, evil, ineffectual, slutty, drug using people were white.
I'm white and it hit me like a ton of bricks that I had never seen that dynamic before in a main stream film at that time or earlier. It bothers me that I knew something was "off" about the movie and it was that people of color were portrayed as the smart capable people while the whites weren't. Wow. I gained a new respect for the reality of the inherent racism in our society that day.
If you think I am wrong then read a lot of the comments here. People can't figure out why the "HERO" is unconscious for most of the film. People jeez, Eric Stoltz' character is NOT THE HERO. ICE CUBE IS THE HERO, but we are knee-jerk assuming the hero has to be the WHITE guy right? He is unconscious but he is still the hero? No, Jennifer Lopez is the heroine and Ice cube is the hero. The hero doesn't have to be white or the boyfriend, he can be black and just a friend.