Ben Stiller says that “Tropic Thunder” was in response to the actors who took themselves so seriously in war films
It’s been 17 years old, almost until the day, since the release of Tonnerre Tropic. With an incredible appearance of Tom Cruise, Robert Downey Jr. in Blackface, Jack Black, Danny McBride and Ben Stiller, the film covers what is happening when a group of actors playing soldiers must become real soldiers.
It’s a film that would probably be not be done today For a certain number of reasons, the least of which is not the role of Downey Jr. with a script by Justin Theroux, Stiller and Etan Cohen, the film obtained 82% on Rotten Tomatoes and made nearly $ 200 million worldwide.
At the time of Tonnerre TropicThe release of War Films was a penny a dozen in Hollywood. The United States was in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and there was an American audience thirsty for hungry blood with serious combat films after September 11. Tonnerre Tropic was produced at the time of this period, but Stiller was inspired by a previous period of war films. The genesis of Tonnerre Tropic was in response to the era of films like Sun Empire made after the Vietnam War.
In a recent interview with Josh Horowitz on the Sad happy confus Podcast, Stiller said he had the idea for Tonnerre Tropic Because at the time when he wrote it, many actors took themselves very seriously because they wanted to play war heroes on the screen.
“It was the era of Section And Hamburger hill,, And each actor my age at the time auditioned for all these films and left in the training camps to make the actor’s training camp for the film where they act as soldiers for two weeks, “said Stiller.” This guy named Dale Dye would train them, then they would go to the film. “”
Stiller’s original idea for Tonnerre Tropic It was for actors who come back from these camps and not be taken seriously by real veterans for their difficulties. “I thought it would be funny to make a film about the actors who really take themselves seriously,” said Stiller. “At the beginning, I wanted to do it for actors who went and made the training camp and made a film and returned and felt like no one cared – as the veterans of Vietnam.”
It looks like an incredibly hilarious premise for a film – but perhaps not the winning premise for a comedy. “It was a funny idea, but in reality, I said to myself:” Oh, it’s not really funny “”, admitted Stiller. “But I wanted to make fun of the way the actors take themselves seriously in these situations. This is how the idea of the film has evolved.”
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