Oh. I was going to be right there with you on this...because it didn't read like clickbait to me....BUT...there was no video of her completing the course, or on it at all. I think that's why it's being called clickbait.

It should have said 'the badass 9 year old that completed navy seal obstacle course', because the title as is clearly falsely implies that the video is of her on the course. I'm guessing that you copied the title, but YT titles are often click bait.
What this video was wasn't worth watching, but seeing her compete on the hard core adult course might be.

I agree.

I have felt very strongly since I first saw Kill Bill that it would've been much better with Badass Lucy Liu as the lead instead of Lanky-Awkward-and-Ugly Uma Thurman.

What a BadAss ...
That cat's posture :-o

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I had to watch to see how someone who weighs 23lbs soaking wet could be "badass".

I've been schooled.

I don't think the word "badass" is right.

I think of his poor wife sitting alone without him, terrified in her last minutes. He survived and I guess that's lucky, but I would want to be with my family in something like that. I don't think I could live with myself knowing that they died without me because I wanted to capture something on video.

Apparently he was too much of a badass.

"In an instant the tornado passed right through -- literally -- his house. Schultz rode the debris from the collapsing chimney down...Moments later a neighbor was digging him out of the rubble. Schultz was out and standing within four minutes."

I hope someone writes something like that about me if I make it to 85.

This was basically a suicide attempt [Edit: Leaving for posterity, but later information indicates he was just a badass]. He didn't even move when it was clear that odds were likely that the tornado was absolutely going to hit him. I'm not sure what protective measures his wife took, but this guy at the very least could have moved away from the window and got into a tub or something.

*dark *death *wtf

*promote badass Mike

I saw a humorous "infographic" about the F-35 vs A-10 on Fark (I think) sometime recently.

(link to image, first couple comparisons as text):
F-35 Appearance: Pretty
A-10 Appearance: Pretty Badass
F-35 Price Tag: ~135m
A-10 Price Tag: ~12m
...

"Automatically ok"? Not necessarily. But in cases where it makes sense, at a stretch even "plot sense" for the character to be there; yeah, I think that is OK.

The Last Samurai isn't a documentary. But, the general historical justification for Tom Cruise's character being in Japan is pretty much valid. Meiji was interested in the West -- clothes, technology, weapons, and military. He actually did hire Westerners to train his army, although from what I read it sounds like they were German, French, and Italian rather than American. Still, the movie portrays the general situation/setting with at least *decent* broad-strokes historical accuracy. LOADS of movies deviate from even this degree of historical accuracy *way* more without drawing complaints; particularly if their main purpose is entertainment and not education / documentary.


Your hypothetical reverse movie makes some valid criticisms. Even though it would have been historically possible for a Westerner to be in Japan at the time -- even to be involved with training a Western-style military -- it would be unlikely for such a person to get captured, run into a Shogun that speaks English, become a badass (or at least passable) samurai warrior, and end up playing a major role in politics and significantly influencing Emperor Meiji.

My defense against those criticisms is that, for me at least, the movie is entertaining; which is kinda the point. Your "Union Samurai" movie might be equally entertaining and therefore given an equal pass on historical inaccuracies by me.

The whole characters as a "lens through which the audience can appreciate a culture/history outside their own" issue is (slightly) more weighty to me. I don't think those are often necessary, but I don't feel like my intelligence is being insulted if the movie maker feels that they are in order to sell tickets.

I love the Chinese historical novel "Three Kingdoms". A few years ago, John Wu made the movie "Red Cliff", mostly about one particular battle in the historical period portrayed in that book. For the Chinese audience, Wu made the movie in two parts, summed up about four and a half hours long. For the US / West, he made a version trimmed to just over two hours. Why? Because he (and a team of market researchers, I'm sure) knew that very few Westerners would go to see a 4+ hour long movie, entirely in Mandarin Chinese (with subtitles), about a piece of Chinese history from ~1800 years ago that very few in the West have ever heard of or know anything about.

I think the full 4+ hour long movie is great. In my personal top 10 favorite movies of all time, ahead of most Hollywood stuff. But I also understand that there's no way that movie would appeal to all but a tiny, tiny fraction of Western viewers in that full-on 4+ hour format. But, even though I personally think the cut-down 2 hour "US" version is drastically inferior to the full cut, I am glad that he made it because it gives a suitably accurate introduction to the subject matter to more people in the West (just like the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Dynasty Warriors" videogames do), and makes that tiny, tiny fraction of Western people that know anything about it a little less tiny. While being entertaining along the way.

For other movies, sometimes the best way that a filmmaker can sell a movie to an audience that otherwise might not accept it (at least in large enough numbers to justify the production costs) may be to insert one of these "lens" characters for the audience to identify with. I don't think there is inherently anything wrong with that. It might not work for movies that are taking a more hardline approach to historical / contextual accuracy (ie., if Tom Cruise showed up in "Red Cliff" in circa 200AD China), but outside of those situations, if that is what the studio thinks it will take to sell tickets... Cool.

The Last Samurai is, like @ChaosEngine said, a movie primarily about an outsider learning a new culture (and accepting his own past). He serves as that lens character, but actually the hows and whys of his character arc are the main points of interest in the movie, at least to me.

I'm sure that an awesome, historically accurate movie could be made dealing with young Emperor Meiji, Takamori (who Katsumoto seems to be based on in The Last Samurai), and the influence of modernization on Japanese culture at the time. It could be made with no Western "lens" character, no overt influence by any particular individual Westerner, and be entirely in Japanese. But that movie wouldn't be The Last Samurai, wouldn't be attempting to serve the same purpose as The Last Samurai, and very likely wouldn't sell as many tickets (in the US) as The Last Samurai (starring Tom Cruise!) did. That wouldn't make it a worse movie, just an apple instead of an orange.

It brings me so much pleasure just to hear these names spoken on a popular tv show. His pronunciation though, of Gollum, Sauron and Edain - ugh - and the flame of Anor and the secret fire aren't the same thing. Come on, Stephen.

I demand crystal purity in my Tolkien geekdom. But I would like to hear him tell us about Beren and Luthien, it is a badass story; or, say, just devote the next twenty episodes of his show to reciting the Lay of Leithian in its entirety.