Recently I watched an episode of a teevee show where a military operative is gathering intel in Yemen. He is targeted by a terrorist and his wife and young daughter die in the attack. Fueled by rage, he spends the next decade desperately hunting the terrorist down. Finally, he's about to exact his revenge when his plan goes awry and he's captured. In a terrorist... prison thingy, he discusses the difference between what he's doing (in order to get revenge for his family) and what the terrorist is doing (fighting for God's will). Of course, the terrorist quotes the Quran and is corrected by our hero. Finally, he's freed by an ally, and desperate to exact his revenge he concocts a suicide mission that involves stabbing his target to death in an airport (an act that will definitely get him killed by airport security).
His plan is foiled at the last minute, and I assume the ironic notes in his path for vengeance were intentional. I mean, entering a foreign country in order to kill a citizen, being waterboarded, and then attempting a suicide mission? No, that has to be a move to deliberately reverse the characters arc, and get us sympathizing with someone who is, for every single intent and purpose, a terrorist.
I should clarify that. He's going to stab someone to death on a plane, and clearly his goal isn't "terror", but revenge. However! Imagine if the situation were reversed. An Arab's family is collateral damage. He spends years tracking down the American officer who ordered the attack, and when he's just about to take his revenge, he's foiled and waterboarded. He escapes and returns to his mission, eager to do whatever it takes, even die, to get revenge. He goes onto a plane, and he murders someone. Honestly, I find it hard to believe that they could make him a sympathetic character in the States. After thinking about that, I found myself thinking about every scenario where terrorists are used as stock villains.
The scene in Iron Man where terrorists kidnap Tony Stark and force him to build a bomb for them, bearing in mind that Tony develops weapons. Now imagine he's a wealthy Saudi blasting his way out of an American prison. The irony is that I couldn't even bring myself to give him ties to a terrorist organization (to match Tony's role as an arms dealer), because even as I was thinking it I realized he wouldn't be sympathetic. He almost couldn't be.
It would be interesting, though, to see how it played out. I think it's understandable that we don't necessarily appreciate the goals and motives of people with outlooks so alien from our own (especially when we are personally singled out for victimization). Still, though, I'm reasonably confident that transplanting goals that American moviegoers have identified as profoundly sympathetic (the grieving father exacting revenge) into a non-American and then using Americans as the Big Bad would not be well-met. Especially if the avenging character exacted the same merciless, pitiless tactics that are so favored by our imaginary elite agents.
