Fantastic Four 2

Mrs Impala and I just saw Fantastic Four Two. Sorry to damn it with faint praise, but the best I can say for it is that it is not bad. Consider it an hour or so of moderately fun sci-fi comic book entertainment, and nothing more. The SFX for the the Silver Surfer were a huge win, but otherwise nothing really stood out as, um, outstanding.

However, I do wish to make a complaint. There are something like 6,300,000,000 people in the world who are not Americans (by which I mean people from the USA, my apologies to all you other Americans, like the Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians, etc.). Quite a few of us watch movies, and many of us are sick and tired of seeing American movie makers, even in comic book movies, treating the rest of the world as America's backyard.

Case in point: the UK government might have a "special relationship" with the USA, they might be allies, but even the British would feel rather miffed if the American military flew into the centre of London and started a military operation without mentioning it to the authorities. At least put a token British officer in the helicopter with the troops!

And again, what's with the American military base in Siberia? The same Siberia which is part of Russia, which has little friendship for the USA, especially after Bush Co essentially slapped Putin in the face after he put out the hand of friendship. Now, I personally think Putin is a murderous thug living up to his past as a KGB agent, but for good or bad he is President of a proud nation with great natural resources and a lot of nuclear weapons.

I'm not concerned that the Russians will take offence of a silly movie and start a war over it, or anything like that, but it is an example of cultural imperialism and the American arrogance and utter contempt for anything that isn't U-S-A. The movie makers could have been a secret military base in Alaska, or even in the Arctic. But Russia? That's like having a movie about a rock band where the lead guitarist plays the guitar by hitting the strings with drum sticks, and expecting the viewers not to notice. It isn't hard to get these things right, or at least "right enough". But the truly frightening thing is that, more likely than not, 90% of American audiences will not only have not noticed the problem, but wouldn't understand it if it was pointed out to them. When your country is the whole world, why shouldn't you have military bases anywhere you like?