3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Heads of State

2025, Ilya Naishuller (Nobody) -- Amazon

Two things kept up rising up in my brain while watching this porridge level digestible action comedy. 

One, which is a topic that often arises, especially during the last decade -- American identity as the "good guys", primarily in their own minds, but also in the collective world pop culture consciousness. This is a difficult fiction to maintain right now, but also makes one wonder whether Hollywood creators might use light entertainment as a way to comment on the political bodies? 

Two, its only a matter of time before an entire Hollywood script is produced by a well-trained generative AI model via some really skillful people entering prompts to produce a movie which is exactly what the Purple Suits are asking for. This movie strikes as a very real possible example of such. Its painfully obviously constructed to push all the right buttons.

My intent in the last few posts was to comment on my predilection for violent action movies, and the irony of them being light fare, even in my brain, and even if you ignore the action-comedy tropes. Instead, I found myself more talking about the construction of these movies, the presentations they chose, within all that gunplay and killing people. But it still fascinates me that this is a thing, in that in the Hollywood presented mindset, a pair of bared breasts holds more power than the senseless slaughter of a dozen people. Maybe it has something to do with the unreality of it all -- we are all going to be exposed (pun intended) to sex, but very few of us will ever experience true, real violent death. I wonder if people who do see it, caution away from violent movies, while the rest of us find escapism in them.

In case you care, yes I will spoil major aspects of this movie, but even the movie expects you to have figured it out long before its "revealed".

This movie, a movie about two arrogant Leaders of the Free World, one being the American President, Will Derringer (John Cena, Freelance), an ex-action movie star now charismatic, if a bit naive politician, and the other is the more sobre, somber Sam Clarke (Idris Elba, The Take), ex-soldier, just trying to do right for his country, his people, knowing it is a challenge for a non-politico type, begins with an exciting but truly horrific setup segment. Coerced to travel together to a NATO event on Air Force One, the plane is attacked and only the two leaders escape. The dozens of staff, attachés and other governmental officials are all killed or die as it crashes. I mean, I know why, as in all such action movies, it is about something terrible happening that our heroes barely escape, to provide a clue as to how bad the Bad Guys are, and to motivate our heroes. But like I did in one of the White House slaughter movies, I felt the weight of the collateral damage. It did not feel light to me.

The rest of the movie is about the argumentative leaders trying to get from Point A to Point B while straining to figure out who betrayed them. Of course, its the Vice President (Carla Gugino, Lisa Frankenstein). Even Derringer quips, "Its always the Vice President." Very little of the action stands out in the movie, but for a small segment in the middle which guest stars Marty Comer (Jack Quaid, Novocaine) as a fan-boy CIA station agent who is surprisingly effective, but dies (not really, suggesting a spin-off). To be honest, what stands out is as surprising to me, but it was the quippy dialogue between the two world leaders as they get to know each other. Derringer is an ex-action movie star and approaches everything in life from the point of view of being adored by his fan base. Its naive and annoying, but he has a point in that it allows him to cross barriers that are sometimes put up by his own people and foreign dignitaries. He actually has a genuinely good heart. Meanwhile, Clarke is a no-nonsense, mostly angry, dismissive, sarcastic bastard (a man after my heart) who dislikes Derringer's use of his fame and rose-coloured glasses approach to leading a country. Sam only wants to do right by all his people, and knows its 99% challenges. There is an honest attempt to say stuff via the banter between these two men, even if its political stance lite. Too bad its fiction, cuz as we well know, neither country has a strong, moral, likeable or capable leader.

Its entirely cookie cutter, entirely constructed in small chunks of everything expected from such a movie with requisite recognizable faces, interesting locales (in the vein of the "travel Europe" trope I have commented on in the past), funny scenes galore combined with an endless supply of mooks to be gunned down. It even plays with the "love interest" trope, as Sam is a single guy hung up on his ex intelligence agency girlfriend (Priyanka Chopra-Jonas, Citadel). 

The script could have been designed by a room full of Purple Suits, or a room full of nerds typing prompts into a laptop. Those that fear AI (and they should) visualize someone saying, "Computer, make me a comedy-action movie" and it spitting out a full-formed script. But those in tech know it will be much more complicated, nuanced and challenging to get an AI, or many AIs combined, to produce a workable script -- machine training, source material fed in, skilled prompt writers, etc. But eventually it will become a very real thing, and yes, jobs will be replaced, with different jobs, far less paid jobs, far less creator oriented jobs. And if we think all movies feel the same now, imagine when they are.