Last week, I learned that Democratic Presidential nominee and probable psychedelic addict Marianne Williamson tweeted her support for James Cameron and Avatar to win the 2010 Nobel Peace Pri[z]e after she was disappointed with that year’s Academy Awards. Like many of Williamson’s public utterances, this tweet affected me deeply and encouraged me to look inside myself to harness the power of love. But after being unable to find any love within, I instead thought about what other directors deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for their movies. Here are my top five nominees.
5. Akira Kurosawa, Seven Samurai (1954)
The will that established the Nobel Peace Prize says that the Prize shall be awarded “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”
The lasting message conveyed in Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is a forceful advancement of these three goals. First, regarding piece congresses—which literally translates into “less than 538 people doing nothing but talking in a city filled with homeless beggars”—Kurosawa devotes almost the entire Part One of the movie to promoting them. Secondly, the film obviously speaks to the need for reducing standing armies. After all, it only took seven competent people to train a bunch of farmers to beat a horde of marauders. The only takeaway is that would have been a waste for that village to spend all its rice in supporting an army year-round. Thirdly, Kurosawa promotes the fraternity between the nations by making the titular group of Seven Samurai a brotherhood of the seven forms of Asians in Japanese mythology (see picture). In short, Seven Samurai encapsulates everything the Nobel Peace Prize should look for.
4. Jon Favreau, Iron Man (2008)
President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for being a smooth talker who loved bombing Arabs in the Middle East. But it was one year earlier in Iron Man that industrialist Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) first pioneered this method of obtaining world peace. Even though Stark was able to do the same bombings and speeches as Obama with less red tape and more redheads, Stark was never awarded a medal for his efforts—instead he had to take metal for himself and craft his own golden trophy.
These peace-forcing efforts is how director Jon Favreau’s film opens, beginning his masterful metaphor that illustrates both the importance of America’s role as global policeman and the worthy sacrifices needed to achieve this peace on Earth. The artistry of the film and depth of the metaphor becomes more apparent when viewed in connection with subsequent films in the series. For example, Tony Stark’s best friend James Rhodes AKA “War Machine” was originally played by Terrence Howard in Iron Man, but then was replaced by Don Cheadle for Iron Man 2 and on. This is no coincidence. The character representing America (Downey Jr) grows more successful after his close friend the military-industrial complex (“War Machine”) switches from focusing on preventing violence domestically (Howard) to violence overseas in places like Vietnam and Rwanda (Cheadle). What a powerful endorsement of globalism. The film also lays the groundwork for universalism in the critically-acclaimed series The Avengers, which climaxes with the titular team saving the multiverse from a nihilistic Titan bent on appeasing death. If that doesn’t at least earn a nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize, I’m afraid I don’t know what should.
3. Hideaki Anno, Shin Godzilla (2016)
This latest Japanese-produced film in the Godzilla franchise is a rebooted origin story of the famous King of Monsters for the modern day. In Shin Godzilla, Godzilla emerges as a nuclear-powered self-evolving creature that proceeds to wreck Tokyo while the Japanese government and military scramble to coordinate evacuation and self-defense before the United Nations/United States decide to nuke Godzilla and Japan off the face of the Earth. Just how the original 1954 Godzilla movie was a commentary on the nuclear age’s devasting effects on a Japan that suffered two atomic bombs, Shin Godzilla is widely seen as a commentary on the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown.
But the film isn’t a mere screed against nuclear energy for which no film would win the Nobel Prize. Instead, Hideaki Anno (of Neon Genesis Evangelion fame) goes after the largest standing army of all: bureaucrats. These cold-blooded, beady-eyed monsters in gray suits are the real villains of Shin Godzilla, just like how they are the real villains of global peace efforts. Have you ever seen a war run without a horde of bureaucrats managing the supply lines and ensuring that the right comedians get helicoptered into do USO stand-up shows for the troops? Of course not. As far as promoting inner peace, these pencil-pushers have destroyed countless hours of me and my loved one’s personal tranquility with their suffocating paperwork and infuriatingly short hours of operation. Thankfully, Shin Godzilla serves as a definitive warning that bureaucracy threatens to destroy the peace for all of modern civilization.
2. Kevin Reynolds, Waterworld (1995)
From the first night of that Democratic debate, it was made
clear that global
warming is the greatest geopolitical threat that faces the United States. In
popular film, this threat is severely underrepresented. Fortunately, back
before Al Gore’s most inconvenient truth was the fact that Bill Clinton was the
only one who could use the White House to get ahead, Kevin Reynolds was
showing America how the world would look without any ice in the icecaps in Waterworld.
Why would Reynolds do this? Why couldn’t he just keep the ripped-off Mad Max
plot on land where it’s easier to film?
Because his producer, Kevin Costner, wanted to lose money with this film. Filming an entire ocean-based movie is insanely expensive. Costner must have realized this after shooting that scene in Bull Durham where sprinklers cost dozens of expecting baseball fans their hard-earned price of admission. Or perhaps Costner learned this from Field of Dreams upon realizing Iowa has no lakes or oceans. Either way, Waterworld showed Americans that if global warming continues unstopped then 1) we’re going to have to pay a lot more for the same things that were cheaper at regular sea-levels and 2) there will be no more baseball. These dual warnings have helped curbed America’s carbon emissions, which since 1995 has steadily decreased as a percentage share of the world’s carbon emissions. Some libcucks might point to China and India and blame those countries for increased emissions overall, but I’m not a cynic nor a racist so I’ll instead credit Waterworld for having a positive impact on America and the world. The Nobel Peace Prize committee should do the same.
1. Robert Rodriguez, SPY kids (2001)
The greatest tragedies during war are the displacement and death of countless children who are powerless to stop the geopolitical struggles affecting their lives. Even worse yet, some children are forced into these senseless struggles directly as child soldiers and have their innocence stripped from them all in the name of loyalty to some abstract concept. Before 2001, it was thought this only applied to traditional wars. It took a courageous film to show that the same tragedies are present in cold wars—those fought with espionage and scientific research instead of bombs and guns—right underneath our noses.
Robert Rodriguez’s SPY kids is an eye-opening examination of how war has changed and how our failure to achieve world peace has negatively impacted the current generation of children. Remember the selection committee’s criteria: fraternity between nations, reduction of standing armies, and the promotion of peace congresses. SPY kids is a dystopia where the opposite of these three goals have been achieved. First, there is no fraternity between nations because there is literally no countries mentioned in the film. The only hint that we get that there are still countries is when Minion makes robot copies of the children of unnamed prime ministers and president. Second, these robot “spy kids” constitute the most dangerous standing army the planet has ever seen with their knowledge of the greatest espionage agents, metallic bodies, and innocent-looking combat jumpsuits. Third, Congress once again neglects its duty under Article I to make major decisions regarding war, instead allowing the President to send Robert Patrick (FBI agent Jeff Douglas) to make major purchasing decisions on whether to buy Floop’s robots.
The hellscape of a world that is shown in SPY kids reminds us all that the goals of the Nobel Peace Prize are just as relevant todays as they were over 100 years ago (which coincidentally is where James Cameron’s best movie ideas are from). So thank you Robert Rodriguez and special thanks to Marianne Williamson for starting this conversation.