I Watched it So You Don’t Have to!

So over at Sebastian’s place we got talking about the anti-gun propaganda in the Lethal Weapon films.

Overall I find the Lethal Weapon movies to be good action comedies, and the irony of an uber-violent film with poor gun handling, glorification of criminals, glorification of cops doing criminal acts, and making MASSIVE profits, the addition of “Progressive” propaganda makes the films that much funnier to me. Because of that Lethal Weapon 3 is the funniest because of its Brady Campaign pushed script.

Still in the comments mentioned above Brad told me that Donner talks about his hatred of gun control, as well as other “Progressive” political views in the comment track, I decided I’d watch it the next time I was tied down with a sleeping baby.

First up, I love commentary tracks, and if you want to watch an action movie, they’re GREAT when a baby is sleeping on you because most of the sound is muted discussion, and any gunfire and explosions will be highly diminished, and won’t disturb sleeping little girls.

Still this track was HORRENDOUS, and I currently have another 20 mins left of it, which I will NOT finish.

Still if you have a copy of the DVD the time codes are 0:20 and 0:35 where the anti-gun blather is spouted. I’ll paraphrase the gist.

Donner claims to be a former NRA member, but he liked the NRA when it was just about hunting. Good for him. He also states that the NRA is peddling “Armor Piercing Ammunition” and “Semi-Automatic weapons that can be easily converted to fully-automatic”. These of course are bullshit talking points. Also he claims his #1 reason for hating the NRA is because “Police hate the NRA”.

Now at the 0:35 mark in the film he notes that he put some anti-NRA posters in the middle of a critical shot so that they couldn’t be cut by the studio. He THEN mentions that he got a lot of angry letters about that FROM COPS!

Ahhh Irony!

Again, if you want to watch these scenes just skip to the marks I mentioned and then turn them off, as the track is terrible, he mostly prattles about inside baseball of directing, and stunt work, much of witch have nothing to do with what’s on screen during the commentary. These inside baseball comments are interesting when you’re hearing it from a great director. Donner is a GOOD director, but not a GREAT one, so everything he espouses is how to make a popcorn movie, not film.

So there you have it!