
Coming off his awards-nominated turn as dark meat-loving abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens in Lincoln, professional Grumpy Cat Tommy Lee Jones stars as General Douglas MacArthur in Emperor, a film set during the not-depicted-often-enough period in the closing days of WWII, when we had to rush to forgive Japan for all the grimy sh*t they did during the war to pacify their people and turn our attention to fightin’ the commies. That it’s a period piece, but doesn’t involve any British royalty, is just the icing on the cake. It’s directed by Peter Webber (Girl with the Pearl Earring, Hannibal Rising) and co-stars Matthew Fox as General Bonner Fellers. Bonner Fellers! Please, General, don’t fell my boner, I just erected ‘er!
Looks promising. Still, anyone else wish Tommy Lee Jones had climbed down the steps of his plane yelling, “Alright, listen up, people. Our Emperor has been in power for 19 years. Average rickshaw speed over uneven ground barring injuries is 4 miles-per-hour. That gives us a radius of six miles. What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every sushi house, sake house, geisha house, paper house, kimono, keikogi, obi, and obi wan kenobi in that area. Checkpoints go up at fifteen miles. Your theocrat’s name is Emperor Hirohito, and he is a descendant of the Sun God. Go get him. ”



Thank god the screenwriters gave Tommy’s character plenty of exposition otherwise I wouldn’t have understood what was going on, what had happened and why it was so damn important. Something about a war, yeah?
/Stands and salutes Vince
Bravo!
Agreed. I read that entire last bit in Tommy Lee Jones’ ‘Fugitive’ voice and it was awesome.
Well done Vince, Well done.
Great premise, but TLJ is SO wrong for this role. Gregory Peck nailed it in 1977.
“TLJ is SO wrong for this role” is always false.
Hey, I love TLJ. But Mac was an Old South, stick-up-his-ass patrician with a comb over. Not the federal marshall from the Fugitive. This is the kind of casting you can do when there’s barely anybody alive to remember the guy.
‘Old South, stick-up-his-ass patrician”
Yeah, because Tommy Lee Jones can’t pull that off.
Like Admiral Yamamoto, I surrender. Enjoy your miscast film, fanboys.
I@Agent M did you really just call those two commentators “Tommy Lee Jones Fanboys” because i’m pretty sure that is not a thing that has existed, ever. One must be sufficiently grizzled and manly before one is able to cultivate an appreciation of Ol’ Baggie Eyes.
(To use a nickname for Jones which no one will ever use before or since, and for good reason).
Good God, giantcow, it is my personal opinion that TLJ (an ABBREVIATION, for fuck’s sake) is a little too Texas Shitkicker to play this very complex and conflicted character (based on the trailer.) And please dont pretend that there arent TLJ fanboys that think EVERYTHING he does is GOLD.
Are they not?
Well Electric Mist wasn’t all that great. But if the entirety of your basis of judgment for Jones is The Fugitive (or U.S. Marshalls, both good), then you’re not giving him enough credit. He’s done a very good job with complicated characters. The best one that comes to mind is The Missing, but he also did well in Space Cowboys, The Hunted, Lincoln, and let’s not forget a little piece called Volcano, eh?
A movie about a grumpy old pipe smoker and they didn’t cast Kevin Spacey? Mistaaaaake!
Nice burn.
Oh – so that’s where the phrase “leathernecks” comes from.
Is Matthew Fox gonna do some vagina punching in this film?
This has the potential to go seriously wrong. One reason is that MacArthur was a very complicated person who make big decisions, and they went good and bad in big ways. In other words, it’s a lot harder to simplify an account of his life and make a believable film.
It doesn’t look like it’s strictly about him, but they’re selling it on the better recognition of both Jones and MacArthur over Fox and whoever the hell he is. Something tells me you’ll only see Tommy at the beginning and end, but most of it is gonna be some sort of Matthew Fox investigation/Japanese poon-hounding.
Although I did really love that line of “you incinerated two of our cities.” It brings up a point rarely seen in war movies. The protagonists will rip through whole companies of bad guys, but the minute one of them is killed they act like someone just broke the fucking rules. “Those bastards…they weren’t supposed to shoot back!”
How has Tommy Lee Jones never been in a movie/rocked out with Tommy Lee?
More TLJ, less Fox.
This guy hasn’t gotten Troy McClure work in decades and now he’s getting a movie made about him? Bullshit.