20 2000s Movies That Could Never Be Made Today

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have spent decades satirising American culture from an insider’s perspective via South Park, but it wasn’t until Team America: World Police in the mid-noughties that they fully captured how the world sees their country.

Using puppets and miniatures, Team America portrays the titular international counterterrorist organisation as they travel the globe, indiscriminately dropping into other countries and dispensing US justice – annihilating scores of innocents and entire cities in the process. After a botched mission in Paris, Broadway actor Gary Johnston is brought onto the team to help infiltrate a terrorist cell, and they wind up uncovering a world domination plot by none other than North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il.

Trey Parker voices Kim, the team is pursued by the Film Actors Guild (F.A.G.), the terrorists speak in “durka durka”s, and Matt Damon is portrayed as mentally handicapped; racism, sexism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia – you name it, this film has it. The gags are exploitative and crass, and the puppetry second-rate. Yet, these are precisely the elements that make the movie good. Team America was written to cast a spotlight on the United States’ all-action, world-police mentality, and all the deep and unresolved social, racial, and sexual issues that are part of the national psyche.

The film couldn’t and wouldn’t be made today, for ALL the reasons. And yet now more than ever is when America needs to take a long, hard look at itself.