I watched Active Measures (2018) yesterday. It was very fun. A flashy doc with giant claims of collusion not bothering with good evidence. Just a full-on anti-Trump campaign using misinformation and rumors to attack Trump. Of course 2 years later the documentary makers knew 10 times more about the Russia and Trump claims and Agent of Chaos could be made. The story depicts how the Mueller report was a nothingburger. The stories big media spent 2 years on airing just didn't hold up. While in 2018 the Steele dossier was proclaimed expert evidence proving collusion in 2020 it was already seen as a fishy report ordered by Hillary Clinton and the doc cleverly uses this info when telling the very same story. It's quite amazing how all these stories fell apart this fast from 2018 to 2020 and how the 2 docs depict the differences.
So in 2020 anti-Trump people needed a new doc to finally show what happened. And we get this. It's way more factual. Focusing on single interviews. So not many great recordings or news segments shown here. More dry for sure. Many Democrats and centrists are interviewed. Most are quite tolerable. But some of these people are such huge anti-Republicans that they can't quite hide their bias. Secondly, while the doc is fairly neutral with what evidence it uses, which is great, it's quite biased in what it focuses on. The last scenes reveal the bias. A lot of shots of cops in USA pushing anti-Trump protesters while the narrator claims USA is very much like Russia. Alluding to Trump being similar to Putin and US cops being like Russian fascist cops as seen in the comparison videos. He uses White supremacist scenes to show how evil USA is and then uses BLM protesters with ACAB posters to show the good side of USA. These political docs often become obnoxious and shallow this way.
Unfortunately it has a narrow focus. I would have liked a doc that focused on misinformation and Russia. Active Measures (2018) for example showed a few seconds of left-wingers being pro-Putin. This doc didn't even care to do just that. We only get to see White supremacists as the truly bad guys. Which is totally unlike reality where ideologies mix. The interviewees themselves explain this, but the director doesn't get it at all. To him the world is Black and White and he shows it in how he finishes the doc.
It could have had interviews with more neutral people. And then remove all the stupid obnoxious stuff about what America is and isn't and who is good or bad. I get that the makers dislikes Republicans. But it's just not interesting to see this so on the nose in the doc. Besides this I liked it as I still could be critical enough to extract info from it and. You know what political bias you get in all these HBO docs and shows. But because the doc tried to stay neutral at times it does make you assume that it wanted to be neutral all the way, it's does not.
At any rate it's curious how much energy this story lost. After Trump became president and actually created new sanctions against Russia it was quite clear Putin didn't have much of anything on him as the primary goal would be to stop the sanctions. So to me the lack of story is the story here. How progressive media messed it up and created their own fake news. But of course HBO won't make a doc showing all this as they are not centrists. Someone else could make it. Hopefully someone less biased.
HBO, another biased but high quality product. They are so close to greatness with these shows. Maybe they could hire a few centrists or something.
So in 2020 anti-Trump people needed a new doc to finally show what happened. And we get this. It's way more factual. Focusing on single interviews. So not many great recordings or news segments shown here. More dry for sure. Many Democrats and centrists are interviewed. Most are quite tolerable. But some of these people are such huge anti-Republicans that they can't quite hide their bias. Secondly, while the doc is fairly neutral with what evidence it uses, which is great, it's quite biased in what it focuses on. The last scenes reveal the bias. A lot of shots of cops in USA pushing anti-Trump protesters while the narrator claims USA is very much like Russia. Alluding to Trump being similar to Putin and US cops being like Russian fascist cops as seen in the comparison videos. He uses White supremacist scenes to show how evil USA is and then uses BLM protesters with ACAB posters to show the good side of USA. These political docs often become obnoxious and shallow this way.
Unfortunately it has a narrow focus. I would have liked a doc that focused on misinformation and Russia. Active Measures (2018) for example showed a few seconds of left-wingers being pro-Putin. This doc didn't even care to do just that. We only get to see White supremacists as the truly bad guys. Which is totally unlike reality where ideologies mix. The interviewees themselves explain this, but the director doesn't get it at all. To him the world is Black and White and he shows it in how he finishes the doc.
It could have had interviews with more neutral people. And then remove all the stupid obnoxious stuff about what America is and isn't and who is good or bad. I get that the makers dislikes Republicans. But it's just not interesting to see this so on the nose in the doc. Besides this I liked it as I still could be critical enough to extract info from it and. You know what political bias you get in all these HBO docs and shows. But because the doc tried to stay neutral at times it does make you assume that it wanted to be neutral all the way, it's does not.
At any rate it's curious how much energy this story lost. After Trump became president and actually created new sanctions against Russia it was quite clear Putin didn't have much of anything on him as the primary goal would be to stop the sanctions. So to me the lack of story is the story here. How progressive media messed it up and created their own fake news. But of course HBO won't make a doc showing all this as they are not centrists. Someone else could make it. Hopefully someone less biased.
HBO, another biased but high quality product. They are so close to greatness with these shows. Maybe they could hire a few centrists or something.