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brandywine
Diocesan Ecclesiarch of the Sacred Order of Jabootu
56 Posts |
 Posted - 06/16/2007 : 12:32:58 PM
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Any else hate in monster/alien/horror/disaster movies when a character is eaten/vaporized/whatever and the audience is supposed to be happy because they were Bad Guys standing in the way of Our Heros? I've decided to judge the quality of such reviews on how many deaths, we the audience are supposed to cheer for.
I was rereading the Jaws review, and indeed Spielberg declined from 'Jaws' where the Mayor lives to Jurassic Park where he kills both Neddry and the blood-sucking lawyer (thought Neddry living and that rival company making dinosaurs would have made a more plausible/interesting sequel). |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2007 : 5:33:25 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by brandywine
Any else hate in monster/alien/horror/disaster movies when a character is eaten/vaporized/whatever and the audience is supposed to be happy because they were Bad Guys standing in the way of Our Heros?
Depends on the movie. In a good action thriller like, oh say, Die Hard, it's always a great moment when the villains get theirs. But movies like that tend to be exceptions.
"Meeting you makes me want to be a real noodle cook"
--Tampopo |
Edited by - Sardu on 06/16/2007 5:33:53 PM |
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hbrennan
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Philippines
1455 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2007 : 6:51:08 PM
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The greatest villian death scene ever was when Darth Vader killed the Emperor. Period.
"...yet it hadn't destroyed his brain."
re: Charles "The Butcher" Benton (1956)
http://www.henrybrennan.com/
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zombiewhacker
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1475 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2007 : 8:30:39 PM
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Brandywine, I didn't see either Nedry's deaths nor the lawyer's as "villain" deaths. I genuinely felt sorry for Nedry, despite all the damage he caused, when he met his horrifying end. (After all, Nedry didn't mean for any of the dinos to get loose. He was a thief, not a murderer.) And I was horrified by the lawyer's death, even though the stupids in the audience around me (kids, mostly) cheered wildly.
(We did a thread last year on all time fave villain comeuppances. If anyone wants, I can post the results again - I archived it.)
Really, a good revenge needs a couple of elements. One, a strong, dramatic rooting interest in the hero. You can make the villain the oiliest snake in the universe and it won't matter if we don't care about the hero. Second, it helps if the revenge is clever. Audiences appreciate it when the hero employs a little ingenuity is dispatching the bad guy. (As Sardu mentioned, see Die Hard.) Finally, and this is most important, it always helps when the audience doesn't see the ending coming. When Mel Gibson kills Al Leong after the shock torture sequence in Lethal Weapon, no one in the audience cheered because it was so obvious, even to the biggest simpleton, what was about to happen that the actual moment lacked any real juice. |
Edited by - zombiewhacker on 06/16/2007 8:31:54 PM |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 06/17/2007 : 04:38:35 AM
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Would the death of the commander of the outpost in Starship Troopers be a parody of these kind of scenes? I mean the only survivor of the outpost raided by the bugs in the final section of the film, the only thing he did was to hide instead of fight so he could survive, and he provides some helpful intel on the bugs.
But you can tell the soldiers despise him, and when he is later killed during the siege some soldiers look at him like saying "you got what you deserved". Always found his fate quite sad. |
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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
Posted - 06/18/2007 : 07:22:10 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Neville
Would the death of the commander of the outpost in Starship Troopers be a parody of these kind of scenes? I mean the only survivor of the outpost raided by the bugs in the final section of the film, the only thing he did was to hide instead of fight so he could survive, and he provides some helpful intel on the bugs.
But you can tell the soldiers despise him, and when he is later killed during the siege some soldiers look at him like saying "you got what you deserved". Always found his fate quite sad.
I wouldn't try reading anything sensible into that movie. But, the point is that he was the commander. If the commander is the only one to survive, he better have a good reason for it and not have been hiding. In good armies, frontline officers suffer higher casualty rates than the men they lead. Basically, the man deserted his post and left his soldiers to die. I was perfectly happy to see him as bug food. Still, I hate that movie.
I do agree with you brandywine that it happens in too many films.
In my opinion, one of the great reverses of this is The Cain Mutiny. Jose Ferrer gives a great speech at the end about how the guys you've been rooting for most of the movie are actually culpable in the events and Queeg isn't solely responsible.
- While science has societal benefits, science is not a social virtue. - |
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The Rev. D.D.
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
203 Posts |
Posted - 09/28/2007 : 1:56:31 PM
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I'm not very fond of that convention, and it's way too prevalent...I recall actually being surprised when the "bad guy" in Eight Legged Freaks made it out alive.
To be fair, Nedry got chomped in _Jurassic Park_ the novel as well; although, if I recall, the lawyer actually lived. And wasn't a typical, weaselly type either.
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LOT of catchin' up to do... |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 09/28/2007 : 4:43:29 PM
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I don't think Brandywine meant "bad guys" as in "The Villain" or main antagonist of the movie.
Secondary "almost" bad guys. Like the decidedly European passenger in United 93 who thought the old 1970s "negotiate and wait" tactics were the way to go against al Qaeda terrorists. Numerous police chiefs in countless movies who get in the way of the hero cop. Basically, people who SHOULD be on the hero's side, but aren't, because of varying degress of "Neville Chamberlain-ism", stubborn obtuseness, red tape, or corporate greed.
I acknowledge that I am a creature of politics and on those rare occassions where I get to cheer the death of somebody monumentally stupid, I savor it.
The one instance in a Jurassic Park movie where such a person SHOULD have been killed is in the third movie.
In that movie, the liberal journalist/photographer guy unloads the big game hunter's double rifle.
The hunter discovers this while the T-Rex is devouring or maiming several of the hunter's men.
Human beings.
After a delay, in which more human beings are killed, the hunter must switch to tranquilizer darts as his only available ammunition with which to deal with the T-Rex.
Later on, the journalist smugly confronts the hunter, smiling in his knowledge that he had "taught the hunter a lesson".
If it were me, upon seeing that smug, smiling journalist after he had caused a delay which had cost the lives of my men...I would add another hole to his skull without saying a word.
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Edited by - Citizen Carrier on 09/28/2007 4:48:43 PM |
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GalahadPC
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
380 Posts |
Posted - 09/28/2007 : 6:06:30 PM
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Immediately, the topic makes me think of The Last Samurai. Tom Cruise's character vows to personally kill his jerkwad former commander (I think), and somehow manages to do exactly that in the middle of the great big battle at the end. Besides being totally pointless - their feud not really having much to do with the movie - I thought the whole point of that scene was the futility of the obsolete samurai waging war against an uncaring modern world... there really wasn't anything for the audience to cheer for. That Cruise should get his petty, meaningless, action-hero revenge while the men beside him were giving their lives for antiquated ideals struck me as shallow and undercutting.
Not to mention blatantly telegraphed. It would have been far more interesting, and appropriate for the movie's theme, if Cruise's character were unable to follow through on his threat in the end. |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 09/28/2007 : 6:27:32 PM
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I remember a historian on The History Channel commenting that in real life, the guys wearing the blue uniforms in The Last Samurai were "The Good Guys". They were the ones fighting for what would become pariliamentary government, democracy, and modernity in Japan. The samurai Cruise allied with were fighting to preserve feudalism and a strict, rigid and unmodern caste system.
That modernity in Japan was later hijacked by sadistic militarists doesn't enter into it (in many ways, they would've identified with the samurai in the movie).
Honestly, it just doesn't seem plausible that Hollywood would make a movie where guys dressed in "Yankee Blue" would be the good guys when they could instead side with a bunch of poetry-writing leftovers from a Japanese Deepak Chopra novel, so I won't rage against the inevitable. |
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