DISCLAIMER!!! I have some stupidly ridiculous conspiracy theory about this movie which is based on speculations and rumors that are most likely to be false. So if the thing I'm talking about will sound even remotely plausible, don't take it with a grain of salt, but take salt instead of it. At least salt isn't bullshit. This whole "review" is in fact pretty much just bullshit. That said...
2016's
Steven Spielberg movie
The BFG ( or the Big Friendly Giant ) is about a relationship between a little girl ( played by
Ruby Barnhill ) and a giant old man ( played by Sir
Mark Rylance in his second collaboration with Spielberg ). At some point the movie becomes about a conspiracy to manipulate the Queen of England herself ( played by
Penelope Wilton ) to use her help, so that haters of BFG's relationship with the girl will be defeated with military force. So obviously it begs the question: Is this movie actually about Jeffery Epstein?
Being a fan of Steven Spielberg, you sometimes come across weird speculations about the man. And I'm about to bring one of those speculations. There is a conspiracy theory, which is based on the statements of
Corey Feldman ( an actor who worked on Hollywood movies as a child, including 1985 film
The Goonies which was produced by Spielberg ) that there is a Hollywood based pedophile ring, which he was a victim of. Feldman refuses to name names, stating only that the names would shock a lot of people. So obviously a lot of people started speculating what those names might be. And one rather absurd theory puts Steven Spielberg himself on the top of that list.
It is important to state that Corey Feldman himself addressed the speculations that Spielberg might be related to it somehow, saying quite clearly that Spielberg isn't a person on the list. And that from all the filmmakers in Hollywood Spielberg is probably the nicest guy imaginable. Yet as conspiracy theories go, people suddenly refused to believe that Corey was saying the truth in this regard. Like, the theorists believe that he says the truth regarding the underground Hollywood based pedophile ring, but not that Spielberg has nothing to do with it. This is some rather strange way of using ( or refusing to use ) logic, in my opinion. So as I said in the beginning of the review, this whole "review" is based on some rather obvious bullshit. Still... What if? What if Spielberg was indeed related to the Hollywood pedophile ring. And what if
The BFG is a part of it somehow?
To set the stage, I will need to ( in broad strokes ) recount the plot of the film. Which means I will need to spoil a hefty chunk of it. The film starts with a girl in an orphanage that by mistake sees a giant man roaming around the streets at 3 am, in London. The giant kidnaps the girl immediately, so she will not say nothing about him to anyone. We learn that he already did that once before with a boy ( who wore a red jacket ), but that boy was a victim of other giants who are man-eaters. The girl becomes very friendly with the friendly giant and they form a friendly friendship. Until one day, staying with him becomes too dangerous. So the giant being nice and all, sends her back to her orphanage. There out of desperation the girl jumps out of the window and the giant saves her life. They decide that instead of hiding away from the giant bully man-eating giants, they will come up with a plan to fight against the giant bully man-eating giants. Which involves manipulating ( through dreams ) the Queen of England. Who, using the British military, will mess up the bully giants and therefor save the relationship of the girl and the friendly giant.
The film is obviously trying to draw a certain parallel between the BFG and a filmmaker. The BFG creates dreams. He catches individual dream concepts and then mixes them together with magical magic, to make a dream, which he can then put into a sleeping person. They use that dream magic on the Queen to make her accept them in her palace by the end of the film. In a way, the dream was a sort of catalyst, that moves the people in charge towards change. Towards political and ultimately military intervention in a problem. In a way, for Spielberg it is a reflection of film itself. A film is like a dream. You go into a dark room and experience a story which might try to prove you certain point. A lot of the times films are very politically driven. And are there to give push to a movement. To inspire policy.
In the end of the film, we see the BFG is writing a book. And taking a glimpse at the text visible in the shot, you can see that the book he is writing is about the story of the movie. So what does that say? That probably says that Spielberg and the BFG are representations of the same thing. Both of them are telling you this story. And yet both of them are masters at crafting dreams that change your mind of certain topics. So if the movie meta-textually is about changing people's mind, what is it trying to change people's mind about? What is its argument, so to speak?
Now again, I'm not saying here that Steven Spielberg is a pedophile, nor am I alleging it. I only speculate on the "what if"s of it all. Quite frankly I find the damn theory absurd, apart from that particular case of this specific movie. In which case I could somewhat see what those theorists are theorizing about.
So let's say that
the BFG is a pedophilia propaganda piece. Let's imagine that to be the case for the sake of fun. Let's indulge in the stupidity of that theory. Again, I'm not claiming that it's the case. I'm just indulging in the "what if". Just trying to have fun with a stupid theory. If that is a pedophilia propaganda piece, we need to find similarities between it and a real, known piece of pedophilia propaganda. And I just know the perfect movie to compare it to. And that movie is
Leon: The Professional.
It is absolutely not a secret that
Leon's director
Luc Besson was having a relationship with an underage girl during the production of
Leon. And that girl (
Maïwenn Le Besco ) also alleged that the film is about their relationship. The film
Leon is about a little girl (
Natalie Portman ) who is saved from the massacre of her family by a neighbor ( who is also a hitman ) Leon (
Jean Reno ). They form a relationship, not too dissimilar to the relationship between Sophie and the BFG, just in
Leon the relationship goes a bit further. The final theatrical version of the film, has the girl confessing love to Leon. The extended director's cut has a scene where she is trying to kiss him. And another scene where she is trying to seduce him into sex. And the script, allegedly had a full on sex scene between the two, where, based on some rumors Luc Besson ( who wrote the script ) described the act as "beautiful".
At some point during
Leon the girl ( Matilda ) loads a gun and puts it to her head, because Leon is refusing to love her back. She is about to literally kill herself if he doesn't say that he also loves her. When Sophie ( the girl in the BFG ) jumps out of the window, because she wants the BFG to return, you kind of have a similar moment. In both cases the man is refusing to love the girl. In both cases the girl is suicidal about it. And in both cases the girl is ultimately saved by the man. Think about it: there is a child suicide scene in the children's film
The BFG. And all because he left her alone and walked away. You can kind of see why this sort of scene is in
Leon. But why the fuck is it in
The BFG?
In a way, as with all good fantasy and science fiction movies, that take things to the extreme,
The BFG is literally the extreme. We have a little girl, but not just a man. Not just some 20 something year old dude. No. We get a literal giant that is as old as earth. He even literally kidnaps her. And yet despite that, their relationship seems to be so good, she wants to jump out of the window when she believes it ended.
So okay. Let's say that the relationship between Sophie and BFG is a proxy for a pedo-child relationship. What now? Where does the movie go from there?
In
Leon the main villain Stansfield (
Gary Oldman ) is a literal police officer. The film paints the entire police squad as an evil gang. While making Leon ( a literal hitman ) this loving person. Stansfield is the one who kills Matilda's family in the beginning. He is also the one that kills Leon himself in the end. And because he is a policeman, it means the police is the reason Matilda is bitter. In the end of the film, as you see this poor little girl broken and utterly emotionally destroyed, it was not because of her relationship, it was because of Stansfield, or in other words, because of the police. Basically the film argues that 1) Trauma doesn't come from sex, it comes from the police. 2) Police are evil. While this old guy that loves a little girl isn't.
The BFG isn't that straight. The film has no police in it. It does have the military, but the military in the BFG are the good guys actually. The bad guys are other giants. The film is about separating the friendly giant from the man-eating giants. Both of them are giants, but they aren't the same type of a giant.
When the BFG kidnaps Sophie in the beginning he explains himself that he did it out of fear. She saw him, and that might lead to her telling stories about him. Which might lead to the military showing up, snatching him, and doing experiments on him or something. He did it out of paranoia, not out of malice. He didn't want to kidnap her per se. It was a necessity.
We learn later that the other giants also kidnap children and they do it frequently. Their reason is rather simple. They eat them.
So we have a race of giant people who eat little kids. And then we have a minority in this race, that instead of eating kids, actually likes them and wants to be all friendly with them. We can read this the following way. We have the majority of the pedophiles, they rape kids. And we have the minority of pedophiles that are good and awesome and nice and friendly and loving and stuff.
And then we have this final act, where Sophie and the BFG create a dream for the Queen of England to convince her to not hunt the BFG. But instead to get rid of the bad giants. Which after some fart jokes, she does. As if to say that this movie, is a plea for some similar action. As if the film is saying: let's get rid of the rapists pedophiles quickly, yet, let's embrace and welcome the loving and friendly subgroup, that are so loving and friendly little girls literally want to kill themselves for them.
Now obviously I took this out of my ass, and used a rather stupid conspiracy theory to get this sort of reading of the movie. In all honesty it just seems like Steven Spielberg simply wanted to make a tear squeezing adventure film about discrimination. The bully giants are most likely just that, bullies that discriminate against the one vegan giant, for being vegan. Sophie, or kids in general, is just a very useful tool for filmmakers to inject a movie with a lot of strong emotions effortlessly. Just look at what
Lars Von Trier is doing with kids in his films, and tell me it isn't just a cheap trick. In all honesty, even the suicide scene isn't really a suicide scene, but rather a leap of faith or sorts. She believed the BFG was there and that is why she jumped. She didn't actually want to kill herself.
The funny thing about the BFG is that I don't smell the bullshit. With
Leon the bullshit is sometimes very forced. If anything a much better pedophilia propaganda film was made by Maïwenn Le Besco herself with
Polisse. A movie that is trying to document child-abuse, instead of taking stands on the matter. There she isn't lying. She isn't trying to pretend that Trauma is caused by the police. Yes, she observes a few instances where it is the case. Where the trauma is from the police. But she is brave enough to be completely contradictory. Which is kind of like the real world. We like to assign titles to people. We like to categorize people into groups. And we like to read those people based on the identity of said group. That is how we get umbrella terms. That is how we get discrimination.
If some percentage of some group is known to have a certain trait, that doesn't mean everybody in that group has this trait. Not all blacks are criminals. Not all Jews are rich. Not all Palestinians are terrorists. And not all pedophiles are terrible people. And Maïwenn Le Besco gets exactly this very point across way the hell better than Luc Besson with
Leon. If the BFG is about this sort of thing, it is more like
Polisse in that regard and less like
Leon. It does show the man eating giants. And it does say that the majority of the giants are man eaters. Yet it still says that not all giants are man eaters.
Still I don't think Spielberg had anything to do with this sort of thing. Apart from Weta Digital, that did the effects of the giants ( which Luc Besson used for sexy aliens in
Valerian ) and a general possible acquaintance between the two directors, I don't see any thematic through-line that would suggest that Spielberg chose to do this movie for the pedophilia propaganda aspect of it. As I said, it seems like the kind of film Spielberg just simply would do. It is sentimental and it is about discrimination.
Now, the story of the film and the film's plot comes almost directly from the 1982 book by
Roald Dahl. Maybe Roald Dahl had something to say on the matter? Maybe the whole propaganda thing comes from Roald Dahl. Remember in the end the BFG writes a book about the story. He doesn't make a movie about it. He writes a book. A book that we are supposedly reading when we are reading
The BFG. If we supposed to believe that
The BFG wrote the book, but actually it was written by Roald Dahl, maybe Roald Dahl is a sort of BFG himself? Again, I'm pulling a fucked up theory about some fucked up shit out of my fucked up ass, but consider this for a second. In 1988 Roald Dahl wrote a book that is called "Matilda".
Happy Hacking!!!
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