I had expectations from Hunters. Between Jordan Peele directing
and Al Pacino as lead, I had huge expectation. I went through that long first episode, telling myself we will get to the good stuff in a minute. Pacino is not even here yet. Then the second ... well may be not yet. By third episode my heart was sinking. I knew this is a miss.
What was my issue? My biggest problem was how the Nazis
are portrayed in this series. There is no a single one of them are what I can
relate to. Now now, before I freak you all out, let me explain what I mean.
Nazi’s came to power in post-world-war I Germany through
elections not a coup. They did not outright win the elections with overwhelming majority
at first. But from 1929 to 1932 slowly but steadily they increased their
footprint in Germanic political landscape. Though they
never achieved the absolute majority, they were the biggest political party and
more than 30% people did vote for them.
I find it hard to believe all the people who voted for
Hitler were skin clawing, kill chess playing, baby tooth ripping psychos. As
the risk of sounding counter intuitive, picturing them as psychos trivializes
what happened.
Can we put all the Nazis into a neatly labeled box of "violent weirdoes"? All the nazi sympathizers can be categorized into six types of super villains? Hitler, Mussolini, Goebbels,
the wolf, Voldemort and Thanos. Well if that was the case, I sure will sleep well tonight. Because you know,
there were only six kinds of them and you can easily recognize them by their weird mustaches, absence of noses or purple heads. My neighbor would not be a Nazi, my friends would
stand up against any regime which would persecute me. Right?
Nazis rose to power, not because more than 30% people wanted
to have a genocide. They came to power because there was an economic turmoil.
And many people; regular people, those neighbors and friends, thought they
can prioritize greater good of the nation over few civil liberties. After
all in the long run everyone will benefit. If the country is prospering, everyone will reap the benefits as well … eventually.
I mean these detention camps,
are they really there? And if they are there, are they really that bad? All
everyone surely know is that some people are sent there, maybe to achieve better hygiene? Who knows? May be it is kind of like a health resort.
Create a villain who did not really have any strong feelings
for or against Jews.
The one that did not want to know about these detention camps and
genocides.
Tell me the story of the antihero who
thought maybe, just maybe the Jews were over reacting. Besides people have their
own lives ...busy lives. They have families, jobs, friends, responsibilities,
engagements.
Tell me about the person, who was just a little uninvolved, unmoved, busy
and apathetic about the whole holocaust thing. Paint a villain, who lives my
life, looks like me, thinks like me, and prioritizes what to do like me. That movie will scare the hell out of
me.
When I am watching something from created by Jordon
Peele I want him to paint it stark. I want to see something of “get out” caliber. I want be truly scared by
his social commentary. Make a dark comic version of it, if you have to. But be true to what
really went wrong. That’s what I missed in “Hunters”, it feels like an
unbelievable fantasy story that happened to a different plant. It does not feel
like the one I am living in. And that’s just dishonest.
