How did it happen that virtually every fighter I followâand the UFC brand itselfâwent from apolitical to explicitly authoritarian? Dana Whiteâs personal loyalty to Trump aside, my running theory is that, in training the weakness out of themselves, fighters come to resent weakness in others. Which can easily spiral into all sorts of victim-blaming ideologies, especially when deliberately exploited for those purposes. And conservatism is, at its heart, a way of blaming victims for their plight to deny our own suscepibility to suffering. Couldnât be us, weâre exceptional! Being a fighter, to some extent, is to believe in your own exceptionalism. Which doesnât have to mean being uncharitable towards the poor and downtrodden, theoretically, but in practice so often does.
Partly I was hoping to see how The Carpenter would reconcile these things. How it would turn the guy who famously advised turning the other cheek into a coach who says tapping out is for pussies. The meek may inherit the Earth, but the here and now is for the bold!
And⦠mostly it doesnât try to reconcile them. In The Carpenter, Jesus is just a good-natured, husky tradesman who tells you to talk to the girl and train hard.
Cue the training montage. Which takes the form of Oren and his brother doing tricep pulldowns on a Judean-era Bowflex machine made out of a rope looped over a ceiling beam and tied to a big rock. Eat your heart out, Fred Flintstone. Most of Orenâs fight training (cable machines, rope swings, free weights) looks more like crossfit or a football workout, which is fitting for an MMA movie that actually doesnât seem that interested in MMA. The fight choreography likewise doesnât bring much new to the table, with nary a flying armbar or inverted triangle to be seen, and only a couple half-assed superman punches and slams. Lethal Weapon had more MMA techniques in 1987 (thanks to Rorion Gracie being one of the technical advisers).
Maybe thatâs just what happens when your MMA movie doesnât have any MMA people in it. The Carpenter just doesnât have the kind of brazen stupidity it would need to make it deliciously watchable; it feels more like a school project by some nice Mormon boys. Mormonism seems unique among Christian sects in being able to successfully reconcile Christian fellowship with rugged American individualism, by simply applying the âfree real estateâ model to the cosmos â the hereafter as the new western frontier. That lack of tension shows in The Carpenter. It isnât that tacky, maybe because there just arenât as many contradictions to reconcile. Its funniest moment is when Oren has to train for âthe Jerusalem invitational.â
And perhaps thatâs why the UFC didnât much participate in this one. The organization bent over backwards to accomodate MGMâs Road House remake, letting director Doug Liman film entire scenes at UFC 285, in a film that had a minor role for retired UFC vet Jay Hieron and a major one for current UFC star Conor McGregor (who is currently in court over rape allegations). The Carpenter is a throwback to nü-metal and Affliction shirt MMA, and in being just kind of sweet and mostly apolitical, itâs possible that it just isnât mean enough for todayâs UFC.
