Fast Food Nation The Movie

[ilikegir33]

Have u heard? Richard Linklater made a fictional thriller based on the book Fast Food Nation. It has an executive of fictional fast food chain Mickey's (Greg Kinnear) learning from his boss that there's "**** in the meat" of their hamburger "The Big One". So the executive must learn the truth, and he meets a girl at a Mickey's named Amber (Ashley Johnson) who learns from a group of eco activists (Avril Lavigne is one) that eating meat is wrong. Meanwhile, some immigrants looking for a better life (Wilmer Valderrama, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ana Claudia Talancón, Juan Carlos Serrán) have to go to a meatpacking plant to get money. This film is so empowering and emotional. However, there are a lot of f-bombs dropped, two brief sex scenes in a truck (one indicating nudity, the other an uncomfortable "doggy style" one), and
[spoiler="two disturbing violent scenes in the later half of the film"]a guy loses his leg in a meat grinder, and the film's disturbing ending has cows getting slaughtered. Both scenes are bloody and graphic.[/spoiler]

They rated it R for these reasons, but FFN is a very powerful film. It'll make you not wanna eat at McDonalds for a few days. It came out in November, and it's on DVD now. Special features include the three Flash animated "Meatrix" films and the "Backwards Hamburger" flash film as well as a photo gallery and a "Manufacturing Fast Food Nation" featurette.

[Stephen]

I really have a strong hate for films like this. I think I will stop at McDonalds on my way to work and eat an extra burger.

[Nate]

I don't eat at McDonald's because I think their food sucks anyway. Burger King FTW.

[Stephen]

Breakfast burritos are still amazing. Regardless of what you think of the burgers though.

[mitsuki lover]

So what is so bad about showing cows getting butchered?I mean where do the stupid city people think the meat comes from?
As far as it goes anyone else remember the Buffy episode where she starts working at the fast food place and the monster is eating people left and right?
As far as it goes it would be very odd if someone lost a leg to the meat grinder in real life as too many safety features and regs that they have to follow and you would have to be very stupid to put a leg in there to begin with while it was on.

[Shao Feng-Li]

Reminds me of that "Super Size Me." We need a movie to tell us that fast food isn't so healthy if you eat it for a month strait?

[Stephen]

So what is so bad about showing cows getting butchered?I mean where do the stupid city people think the meat comes from?
As far as it goes anyone else remember the Buffy episode where she starts working at the fast food place and the monster is eating people left and right?
As far as it goes it would be very odd if someone lost a leg to the meat grinder in real life as too many safety features and regs that they have to follow and you would have to be very stupid to put a leg in there to begin with while it was on.

Quoted for truth.

[Nate]

Yeah, besides, I'm not big on any movie that tries to frame eating meat as a moral issue. I love my steaks, I love my chicken, I love my burgers, and no one's going to convince me it's wrong in any way.

[ilikegir33]

So what is so bad about showing cows getting butchered?I mean where do the stupid city people think the meat comes from?
As far as it goes anyone else remember the Buffy episode where she starts working at the fast food place and the monster is eating people left and right?
As far as it goes it would be very odd if someone lost a leg to the meat grinder in real life as too many safety features and regs that they have to follow and you would have to be very stupid to put a leg in there to begin with while it was on.

ML is so right here. But [spoiler="details of the meat grinder scene"] One of the immigrant workers was cleaning the meat grinder and somebody accidentally turned it on. Then you see his leg get crushed (blood) and then Valderrama's character Raul gets the worker out of the grinder (Blood flowing and leg visibly lost) but then Raul falls over getting a concussion (not graphic).[/spoiler]

I didn't like the climax either. Who wants to know where their meat comes from?
However, the movie is no Super Size Me. The real moral here is "Eat if you want, but do so at your own risk" more so than "Become vegetarian" or "Don't eat meat".

[Radical Dreamer]

It has an executive of fictional fast food chain Mickey's (Greg Kinnear) learning from his boss that there's "**** in the meat" of their hamburger "The Big One". So the executive must learn the truth, and he meets a girl at a Mickey's named Amber (Ashley Johnson) who learns from a group of eco activists (Avril Lavigne is one) that eating meat is wrong.

...However, there are a lot of f-bombs dropped, two brief sex scenes in a truck (one indicating nudity, the other an uncomfortable "doggy style" one), and
[spoiler="two disturbing violent scenes in the later half of the film"]a guy loses his leg in a meat grinder, and the film's disturbing ending has cows getting slaughtered. Both scenes are bloody and graphic.[/spoiler]

First of all, I have a very, very hard time taking a movie with a "plot" like that seriously. XD Secondly, anti-meat propaganda of any kind is just ridiculous to me. I mean, honestly. If they really wanted to get any kind of comprehensive point across, they'd start by not having the "feces in the meat" plot. For the first half of the post, I figured this movie was some kind of joke, but am I to understand that it's actually trying to get people to stop eating meat? XDD

Wow.

[Bobtheduck]

I don't like steaks, they're hard to chew (even fillet mignon), but I like Hamburger... I love chicken, and have slaughtered my own chickens a few times. I've never slaughtered anything bigger than a chicken, so I'd imagine the copious amounts of blood would be the next hindrance, after feeling a warm, dead chicken... Still, what I see when people become vegetarians after watching a slaughter is people who anthropomorphise animals (I blame Disney, personally), wrongly attributing human personalities to animals. Fact is, in the wild, a bull would easily kill any human and not think twice about it. All sorts of animals are carnivorous, and even the ones who aren't are definately violent. They kill OTHER animals, they kill their OWN kind (contrary to what our favorite children's author Roald Dahl seemed to think) and not always to eat them. Sometimes they just fight over territory, or kill over a mistake. Why we, as humans, should extend a courtesy so much greater than they extend to anything is beyond me, and I haven't heard a satisfactory explanation. All they have is "Well, we're smarter." Yeah. We are. So, I don't see us being smarter is a reason why we can't eat animals.

Then there's the matter of "health" I hear vegetarianism attributed to. Fact is, certain nutrients, among them protein and iron, are much more difficult to attain without eating meat. We have it very lucky here in the states (if you are American reading this), as we have access to a wide variety of plants, but that is not the case everywhere. Vegetarianism isn't as healthy as many claim, and veganism is definitely not healthy for most people. Really, we already don't get many of the sugars we need to rebuild our cells, but if you get rid of Honey, that's another sugar we'll never get. Certain amino acids and other nutrients are completely lost from your diet, that's why, in general, vegetarians seem to all have a similar look to them. It's not "health" they're radiating, but a common set of missing nutrients.

Humans are designed to be omnivorous. We have teeth made for chewing, teeth made for tearing, teeth made for puncturing... We have three types of teeth for a reason. We should be getting a variety of food. Now, I personally don't get the kind of food I most likely need, Also, not everyone will have a serious problem living a vegetarian lifestyle, as different people have different physical needs. However, to reduce this to "killing animals is wrong" is something entirely fictitious and dangerous for people who have nutritional needs they can't easily fill with plants.

About fast food, I think people have had the general idea for a long time it's not really good for you. That's been preached in PSAs for as long as I can remember. This scare tactic stuff trying to gross people out of eating fast food, particularly when it's fictional is more than annoying. Also, I think poor Wilmer Valderama should be tired of being typecast as the immigrant. He was the butt of about half the jokes on '70s show, and it carries on with him today... Geez...

[ilikegir33]

First of all, I have a very, very hard time taking a movie with a "plot" like that seriously. XD Secondly, anti-meat propaganda of any kind is just ridiculous to me. I mean, honestly. If they really wanted to get any kind of comprehensive point across, they'd start by not having the "feces in the meat" plot. For the first half of the post, I figured this movie was some kind of joke, but am I to understand that it's actually trying to get people to stop eating meat? XDD

Wow.

No. Like I said in my 2nd post on this thread it's "Eat at your own risk".

Also, I think poor Wilmer Valderama should be tired of being typecast as the immigrant. He was the butt of about half the jokes on '70s show, and it carries on with him today... Geez...

Me too. I think he is probably miffed at always being the immigrant. BTW, do you know who Catalina Sordino Moreno is? I think she was in Maria, Full Of Grace.

[Radical Dreamer]

No. Like I said in my 2nd post on this thread it's "Eat at your own risk".

So the executive must learn the truth, and he meets a girl at a Mickey's named Amber (Ashley Johnson) who learns from a group of eco activists (Avril Lavigne is one) that eating meat is wrong.

It sounds to me like the real "moral" here is that eating meat is bad, but they're probably trying to sound as relativistic as possible. Still, after reading that plot summary, I'm not hearing "Eat meat/fast food at your own risk." I'm hearing, "Killing cows is bad and if you eat meat, you should feel guilty."

But maybe that's just me. XD

[Technomancer]

Have u heard? Richard Linklater made a fictional thriller based on the book Fast Food Nation. It has an executive of fictional fast food chain Mickey's (Greg Kinnear) learning from his boss that there's "**** in the meat" of their hamburger "The Big One". So the executive must learn the truth, and he meets a girl at a Mickey's named Amber (Ashley Johnson) who learns from a group of eco activists (Avril Lavigne is one) that eating meat is wrong.

That's a shame, and I think it detracts from the point of the original book which was to examine the fast food industry and what is done to support it. The author certainly does not go after eating meat, but he does cast a harsh eye on what the fast food companies do to their suppliers and what they in turn have to do in order to still turn a profit.

[Fish and Chips]

$27 for a guilt trip film to remind me that eating meat is inadvisable, but apparantly sex scenes are perfectly acceptable.

Right. Think I'll pass.

[Shao Feng-Li]

(Avril Lavigne is one)

Now I'm really not watching it XD

[mitsuki lover]

Most of the real problems with the fast food industry have to do with nutrition content of the product they sell.A lot of the myths about worms in Big Macs,etc. have been floating around as long as I can remember.
Interesting I rewatched a show on History Channel yesterday about the cereal industry and the first vegeterians according to it were conservative evangelicals.

[Tenshi no Ai]

We have it very lucky here in the states (if you are American reading this), as we have access to a wide variety of plants, but that is not the case everywhere.

Mou, and once again Canada is forgotten v_v...

[Warrior4Christ]

I'm confused - is this movie anti-meat, or anti-fast food? Because it is very narrow-sighted to think that meat exists only in "fast food".

[ilikegir33]

Mostly anti fast-food. However I read the book and the movie does kinda detract from Schlosser's point. (But Schlosser DID help make the movie? Nandeyanen?!?!?!)