Part of the late 30’s period of Hollywood where audiences are beginning to realize that the movies they’re being fed are the same remakes, rehashes, sequels, etc.. before them. Hollywood is getting stale and artificial and fake after so many years making that escapism transition and finally it being mainstream audiences are realizing it’s not real and it’s artificially created emotion.
This is movie embodies the worst of that rehashed, reused, fake, artificial escapist Hollywood. It's also patently racist and a bulwark of the “Fuck Yeah, America” or “England” era of history when the tide swings too much to the right. In this period, WW2 is about to break out so the culture is obviously going to be slightly nationalistic and racist but this movie is quite obviously jingoistic in nature.
This movie sucks because of how fucking racist it is and it is the bullet in that waving gun that the medium of film is and it launched into the brain of a bunch of people watching it making natives seem like stupid savages that need to be killed and conquered by Westerners.
That’s just Wrong.
This is worse than Triumph of the Will because the Nazi’s lost, this is an ideology that would win the day after WW2 and evolve over time into films like Indiana Jones and then later TV shows like 24 that continue to pump out this white man's burden narrative. I mean the depiction of the savage Indian cult is highly reminiscent of the cult in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. There's absolutely a parallel between the two in terms of how this White Man Savior narrative permeated culture through film up until today.
I mean this film was based off Rudyard Kipling's poem, so it's inherently racist just in terms of it's source material author's beliefs.
We suck.