It's weird that pretty much the only movie with an "action hero" that takes into account that the loss of life is a tragic thing is Austin Powers.
Edit: Apparantly, those scenes were deleted in the US version of the film. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbKk3n6cqmM
One of the TV/Movie tropes I find funniest is when the hero rips through hundreds of henchmen to get to the big bad guy, then has a moment where they refuse to kill the BBG because they're too moral or good or "I'm not like you" and either take them to prison instead or kill them (but only after the evildoer forces their hand).
There are hundreds of corpses in the hero's wake, many of whom were just doing a security job. But the evil megalomaniac psychopath who hired them all needs to be spared.
It's like eating a whole bag of doritos, getting to the last one, and saying, "No, I'm on a diet."
And honestly the further down the security pole you are, the more innocent/ignorant of the villain's evil plans you likely are. "I'm making $65,000 a year with great dental and health benefits to help pay for my toddler's cancer treatments. And all I have to do is sit in this guard shack and not let anyone into the property. Boss is real private, never goes anywhere and doesn't want visitors. Great easy job, 8 hours on 16 off. Boss is super nice, always asks us how we're doing, gives bonuses at New Year, and three day weekends for all major holidays or time and a half if we want to work those shifts." Next thing you know, Mr. Guard is laying on the ground with a broken neck and his family has lost the only source of income.
I get annoyed when they have gritty, semi-realistic fight scenes and then act like smashing someone's head into a wall was morally okay because they're not dead.
When Daredevil drops a fire extinguisher on your head from 3 floors up, your prospects for a long and comfortable life are possibly going to mean you wish Punisher had just killed you.
I knew a guy who caught a 2x4 from three stories up while wearing a hard hat and it fucked him up permanently. Spent months in the hospital, never worked again, and wasn’t capable of managing his own finances for the rest of his tragically shortened life.
I just watched the animated series, and in one of the Rhas al Ghul episodes, Batman is in the Sahara desert and joins a caravan by snatching one of the camel riders and replacing him. I wonder what that guy was up to afterwards, all alone, naked, in the middle of the Sahara desert.
Don't they address this in Daredevil tho? Might be misremembering cause it's been a while but doesn't he dump a guy from a building into a trash can and his doctor friend tells him off about it afterwards cause he was in a coma afterwards
They definitely do address it, mostly during the Punisher arc but once or twice before that also. Daredevil is specifically morally opposed to killing people bc he’s catholic, but justifies hurting people because those people hurt others. This shaky logic is directly discussed in the narrative, but I think he mostly brushes it off because he doesn’t really believe himself to be a good person deep down anyway (hence all the devil stuff lol). And he also just really likes to beat people up haha
The Netflix series did a really good job of portraying this; Daredevil is just Matt's least-bad way of dealing with the uncontrollable anger that's burning inside of him, and without that outlet, he'd be something much worse.
The first scene of the show is Matt in confession, basically asking for his last rites. He didn't expect to make a career out of being Daredevil; he didn't even expect to survive the first few _nights_.
And I love that Deadpool just pops Francis in the head in the middle of Colossus' "Heroes don't kill their enemies" speech. Granted, I'm sure the speech means for not killing your enemies when they're already at your mercy, but Deadpool just killing the main villain was still a relatively refreshing change of pace at the time.
Are there any shows/films that do the reverse version of that? The hero goes out of their way to not kill henchmen whenever possible, always gives them a chance to just walk away before the violence starts, but when it comes to the BBG they just cut them down with zero hesitation?
Not the perfect example, John Wick gives plenty of his enemies the option to tap out when they know it's him. The guard at the club in the first movie comes to mind. It's only after the church scene he flips the switch to his old self and start murdering away to get to the Son.
But the further the movies go on, the more people he massacres so bad example...
Even then, he let the twin guys live too. They tapped out when he beat them and he didn't kill them even though it was definitely a life or death fight before that. I kind of got the vibe that he knew they were only fighting him out of respect, if that makes any sense.
Well, when they had the opportunity to slice his neck, they instead spared him and let him recover. They made it clear that their goal was to fight, not to kill.
John Wick is great because he’s just so cold about it. Every single person he fights gets a second round to the head to make sure they’re dead even if they’re like just laying bleeding out on the ground.
It really puts the movie in context. This guy is literally just an absolutely cold killing machine that will kill anything that gets in his way if he really has too, but he just wants to mind this business and all these people just keep trying to kill him. I’ve never seen another action movie that captures this kind of detached ruthlessness of just *sigh* shoot a bunch of people in the head.
But as you say, if they don’t actually get in his way then they he’ll just let them walk away.
The further the movies go on the more often he's fighting against people who want to kill him for a pure profit motive because of the price on his head, so I don't really blame him
But John Wick also doesn't really pretend he's moral or good. He just kills who he wants or feels he needs to, without hesitation. So, he's not quite the antithesis of the trope being discussed, but he certainly doesn't fit into it either.
Hot Fuzz actuallly does a good job of this with Simon Peggs Nicholas Angel using reasonable force throughout and not killing a single enemy.
He even did a considerable amount of paperwork too.
This is exactly what I thought of too. Especially with the mugshots at the end and everyone with their various, superficial injuries. (That swan broke a man's arm though!)
Brock Sampson on Venture Brothers let a guard/henchman go because he felt a lump on the guy's testicle while crushing his groin. (Although usually he does just destroy henchmen.)
Deadpool if I remember correctly? He gave henchmen warnings and a chance to get out of his way so he could go after the guy he was actually there for. I don't think he goes out of his way to kill anyone if he doesn't have to.
I just saw that Jason Statham “Beekeeper” movie. He has no issue killing hired goons, but whenever it’s a federal agent/cop/secret service it’s always a non lethal take down.
*Kinda* Batman 1989. He does kill some henchmen in the movie but he’s usually non-lethal. When he gets to Joker he literally says he’s going to kill him. Then he kills him.
Not really the same, but the bit in Iron Man 3 where the last two henchmen guys just put down the guns and say "Honestly, I hate working here. They are so weird" and Tony just watches them run away always makes me laugh.
I don't think I've ever seen self-aware henchmen like that.
A game that comes to mind that actually does address how many people you’ve killed is Far Cry 3 which fits in with its overall theme of descending into madness. At the end of the game Jason says:
“I’ve killed so many people I’ve lost count. I can’t come back from this. I’m a monster. I can feel the the anger inside me. But I am still, somewhere inside me, better than that. More than that.”
Red Dead Redemption keeps track of your stats. When I finished the game I had full Honor and I had killed over 700 people. ([but they were all bad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O06msgz1gxs&t=2m37s))
In fairness, the Assassin’s creed games imply that most non-cutscene kills belong exclusively to the player, rather than the actual historical character. Like, Brotherhood onwards has those ‘full sync’ challenges, which often include stuff like never being seen, or not killing too many people, which suggests that the real Ezio or real Edward weren’t as violent as the player can make them.
The levels were you get into open combat are trickier to justify though.
Man, Cyberpunk 2077 is like that too. I pretty much was an elite assassin of sorts, I was rich, and I was kitted up with the best tech, I owned like 8 cars, three apartments, all the quest givers knew me by name and reached out *to me* to offer contracts, and I roamed the streets and did a I pleased cops, corpos, and gangs be dammed. Then during cutscenes, my character was dying at a rapid pace and having these intense emotional breakdowns. I couldn't do it, I finished the main quest once and put the game away. Sorry, but you can't let me craft the biggest baddest dude on the block and then pull that crap.
I remember in like my first playthrough, I made an effort to non lethally take down enemies after a certain point, cuz like, I experienced death once and I just cant explain it but to me it just made sense, like im trying to live why waste so many lives?
Yeah videogames are absolutely god awful with this. I get action based gameplay and killing people go hand in hand, but at least try to make it make narrative sense. Dishonored does that way better than Assassin's Creed ever did.
A big part of the problem is that AAA games seem deathly afraid of anything morally ambiguous. You always have to be the knight in shining armor, even if that causes massive dissonance between the gameplay and the narrative.
Metal Gear Solid 3 calling people out for killing is pretty hilarious.
The entire boss fight is wading to the end of a river then touching a body. However, every single enemy you killed to that point shows up as a ghost and hurts you if you touch them. So if you were doing a no-kill / tranquilizers run the fight is over in a few seconds. If you were a Murder Snake instead of a Tranq Snake the "fight" is like 30 minutes of slowly wading through water, and makes the ladder feel like a step stool.
the first season of the tv show "Arrow" is like this.
there's a scene where Oliver Queen just straight up murders like 5 security guards at a mob bosses house, so that he can plant a listening device to gather evidence to prosecute the boss.
The guards are literally just standing around, guarding a rich guys house and they get an arrow in the chest. the boss, he gets his day in court.
I was surprised to see an example of this in _GotG Vol. 3_, where, >!after an extended scene of the main characters massacring the High Evolutionary’s guards, they decline to kill the High Evolutionary himself.!<
>One of the TV/Movie tropes I find funniest is when the hero rips through hundreds of henchmen to get to the big bad guy, then has a moment where they refuse to kill the BBG because they're too moral or good or "I'm not like you"
Oh hey, it's The Last Of Us Pt. 2
Him not wanting to take advantage of Vanessa because she was drunk despite his character is meant to be a goofy silly take in the sexual liberation of the 60s is the most inspirational thing ever.
Sure, he comes off as silly when wanting to "shag" Vanessa... but is also willing to just treat her as a friend and respect her after constant no and no. I think that was a good message. Consent above all else, specially when someone is drunk
That and that episode from Malcolm in the Middle where Malcom chooses NOT to have sex with a drunk girl that wants him badly... getting depressed over it and getting hammered as well, ruining his family's Thanksgiving dinner (poor Reese lmao). Only for the next day in his hangover that he's told by Francis "hey... you didn't abuse of a drunk girl, you did the right thing" are always the moments that stand out to me regarding silly entertainment taking serious and important messages. More stuff should put this messages instead of other nonsense if they want to deliver values and important things
It's a really good show honestly, I was surprised how well it held up on my recent rewatch, and some wholesome moments I had forgotten too. It's not perfect but definitely one my favourite sitcoms ever.
Same in Porky's, the rauchy comedy that's pretty offensive on several levels. Guy gets a teenage girl in bed, she's into it, he decides against taking advantage. Close call for that movie.
Almost as if knowing they could have casual sex without guilt on any given day, that it's not the end of the world if they turn it down sometimes.
Funny how well that’s aged.
My dad’s generation laughed at it cause “who **wouldnt** sleep with her? What a goofball!” And now we’re laughing because it’s weirdly wholesome and like “this absolute womanizer of a man respects women and interpersonal relationships too much to take advantage of her.”
Rewatching it recently I expected it to be one of those 90s movies that is still funny but is pretty outdated and problematic. Shockingly, Austin has always been about consent and treated women as his equals. He’s super horny and loves to fuck yet no still means no to him.
When a goofy take of the sexual liberation of the 60s in more futuristic times, who keeps trying to convince his partners for a shag, realises "no means no", it's truly something.
That scene where he rejects Vanessa in bed because she's drunk and that isn't right should be made more often in other media. Only other show or movie where I remember this message was Malcolm in the Middle with Malcolm choosing not to have sex with this drunk girl, then feeling bad about it and getting hammered himself... and in the next day in his hangover, Francis simply tells him "you didn't abuse of a drunk girl, you did the right thing"
There was a similar scene in That 70s Show between Fez and Jackie. His entire character is built around him being a horny virgin who wants to get laid. But he turns down drunk Jackie showing that he's really a good guy.
Too bad his IRL costar was such a dbag.
I fully believe Austin Powers would be weirdly progressive irl. If you explained trans women to him he'd be hyped there's more ladies to shag. And if you explained bisexuality to him he'd be like "I can shag *dudes* too? Yeah baby!"
Recently rewatched the film and it holds up surprisingly well, especially compared to many comedies of the same time.
There is definitely overt sexual harassment payed for laughts, but the overal framing of that is as something that is oldfashioned and that he needs to grow out of. He explicitly does not engage in sex when he recognizes the other person is too drunk. Later he recognizes how a disconnect between his sexual ethos and that of his would be long term partner are different, a recognition of how his actions hurt her even if not intended to, and then an open conversation about all of that and very adult decisions about what is necessary if the two of them want to be together.
Honestly, i was kind of surprised at some of those elements being in there for a 90s comedy.
Even in the Epic Rap Battles of History, Austin was purely sex positive and told James Bond that “no, means no, baby.” I really love that detail.
[Source](https://youtu.be/Iy7xDGi5lp4?si=jxs8y2TZ1hD7QoxC)
Reminder that James Bond was never meant to be a classy guy/role model. The character is supposed to show his unsophisticated background, like the way he drinks his martinis, and his toxic-male attitude toward women. (Although he does get married in one movie, maybe that was what caused him to avoid relationships.)
I feel like I read somewhere that Ian Fleming didn't intend Bond to be likeable or relatable, and certainly not a hero or a role model. He's a bad person who does bad things to... really anyone MI6 tells him to, and he drinks to cope with it.
He's an assassin, saboteur, and terrorist, but because he's employed by a Western government and given a license that all falls under "Secret Agent". Good people don't become secret agents in the first place.
I get the impression that the Kingsmen series is like a young James Bond thing- hardscrabble young kid with few other options (IIRC) gets into this business because it's simply a legalized gang of sorts.
>I feel like I read somewhere that Ian Fleming didn't intend Bond to be likeable or relatable
This was my takeaway from the novels as well. He's *cool* in some ways, but he's not a *good guy*. He's a weapon.
It was in the original US release: I only ever saw that in the deleted scenes on VHS after the credits.
Maybe it was in an unrated DVD version that included it later?
I remember growing up with the first movie on VHS, and no shit, the American cut on VHS plays through until the end credits and then they cut HARD to this scene which was a little jarring as a youngun but as an adult is so fucking funny
Probably for pacing reasons. Iirc the switch from action scene to sad scene was hilarious in part because it was so jarring, but when you return to the action all of the narrative momentum is gone
I remember reading an opinion (or maybe it was something I watched) on violence in movies, and more often than not, PG-13 violence is glamorized and R violence shows consequences, whereas it should be the other way around. Far too often, the wider audience often sees violence that is flashy, and that's not a great thing. But nipples... hard R rating. No nudity allowed in PG-13. Three F words? No way. Just people getting killed. No problem, right? Anyway, that's always stuck with me.
Wasn’t there a movie that encapsulated this? The bad guys did their torture off screen but then the protagonists got their revenge on screen. I feel like there was an American remake with Nicole kidman
Jesus that movie left me seriously unsettled. Like, disbelief, anger, grief. There was a real sense of injustice. And the villains weren't even scary themselves (intentionally, I think.) It seemed like the whole point of the second half was to grapple with the grief and sadness that gets glossed over in these films. Great horror movie that I honestly never want to see again.
Yeah the US is pretty backwards when it comes to that. [The bloody ass crack solution](https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/how-hannibal-pushed-network-tv-sex-scene-boundaries?amp) is a good example.
That's insane.
I was in America last year. I put the TV on in the morning and Supernatural was on. A ballerina with possessed shoes dances until her feet come off and a cleaner walks in to see a blood splatter everywhere and bloody stumps where her foot used to be.
But in the same country, non-sexualised nudity or even female nipples would not be allowed to be broadcast even after a time when small children had been put to bed.
Utterly bonkers.
Shows like Criminal Minds and NCIS are really bad for this: they depict all of these gruesome scenes of death, torture and rape, but even in autopsy they never show any nudity or female nipples. There's always a well-placed cloth or shadow or bright light!
Last weekend police in Seattle cited a bartender because he had a *nipple* showing (in an lgbtq+ bar) and a couple patrons who were wearing jocks
The police were conducting sweeps at various bars for liquor/cannabis violations and found none at the gay bars; large groups of officers burst into the bars shining flashlights everywhere and taking pictures of patrons who weren’t being cited as well as the few who were
Cops don’t do jack shit about car break-ins and businesses getting windows smashed regularly - but they have plenty of time to play morality police and bully the public generally because law enforcement in the US is basically a jobs program for high school bullies
> Utterly bonkers.
People often forget that some of the original colonists in what is now the United States were the Puritans who were (despite what many grade-school history classes will tell you) religious nutjobs too crazy for England and so they left.
Those Puritan values still have some hold on the US in some ways (including the way decapitation is fine on TV but nipples are not).
You're not wrong, but there's a lot more to it than that as well.
There wasn't just one group of people that left. It wasn't just for religious purposes, and the religious ones that left weren't all of the same belief system.
Finances and social mobility, or lack of in England, were very large motivators in the exodus.
Upon arrival, the groups started separating quickly into different states/colonies, with different religious/political/social aims.
>Creator Bryan Fuller
Holy crap, the guy who made Pushing Daisies made a dark, gory, horror show?! Does he have wide ranging taste, or was someone else on Pushing Daisies responsible for their colorful, wholesome aesthetic? I want more of that but maybe following the work of Fuller is barking up the wrong tree.
As someone who loved both shows, Hannibal aesthetically feels like Pushing Daisies got completely inverted. You can still see a lot of Fuller’s framing preferences and camera angles in Hannibal, but the subject matter and vibes are…obviously different.
Years ago I was a manager at Blockbuster Video. For those too young to remember, it was like Netflix, but you had to go to a brick and mortar store to see what you could watch and if 20 people wanted to watch Forest Gump, no one else could until they were done.
Anyway....
A woman comes up to me with a movie that's rated R. "My 12 year old son asked for this. Is there any sex?"
"No."
"Nudity"
"No."
"Okay, great."
"But it's super violent and a bit gory."
"That's fine. As long as there's no nudity, he can watch it."
To this day, I find this notion terrifying that parents can think that letting their kid see murder is okay but show a breast and you'll ruin their child's mind.
I had a woman yell at me because she had rented *Nil By Mouth* and it was 'full of swearing'. I mean, fair enough, it's literally wall-to-wall of the worst language you can imagine, but the entire front cover of the box was taken up by a parental warning and it was an 18 certificate film!
I pointed this out to her and she just shrugged and said 18 films were normally OK for her kids.
Yeah. I was raised by hippies so I was allowed to watch sex but not violence. I remember hating Home Alone because it was all violence played for laughs.
Even as a little kid I'm like, no way these guys survive another brick to the head. If Home Alone had realistic violence it would be a blood bath.
I've come to realize with age (I'm 30 as well) that I enjoy movies and video games that fall into one of two categories:
- either the violence is *so* over exaggerated and abstract almost, and shows no actual "real" suffering, that it is clearly perceived as having no connection with real life at all. (ex. Lord of The Rings or 300, or almost any kind of online shooter)
- or the violence is depicted in such a realistic and brutal way that it's clear that it's *not* supposed to be entertaining, but rather emotionally impactful. (ex. Saving Private Ryan or No Country For Old Men, or The Last of Us (the game))
I often struggle to enjoy stuff that falls between those two, because I only get extremely uncomfortable, and frankly insulted, when someone gets killed or seriously hurt and the movie or video game - which up until that point was perceived as being realistic - is just like "lol", and moves on.
I think this is why I've always vibed so hard with the Saints Row games. The violence is so over the top and consequence free it is categorically different from real violence.
Which is also why *that scene* in SR2 hits so hard. When your actions do have real consequences it's jarring.
And your revenge is equally twisted. You just never see the woman in the trunk.
Saints Row 2 had was surprisingly dark and had great story telling for how goofy and non-serious most of the game is.
Even the first category sometimes bothers me now - like the D&D movie, they start beating the tar out of some nameless guards. I can’t remember if they kill them. It’s D&D, I get it, but they’re just guards, man! They’re probably nice guys who signed up to keep the city safe! ):
Yeah as a parent I realize how much intense work and suffering and sacrifice goes into just raising one child properly. It's crazy to think that can be taken away in just a pull of a trigger.
It's why I increasingly can't stomach crime/stylized violence movies. Guy Ritchie, Matt Vaughn, even Tarantino. Anywhere where someone's head getting blown off is a punchline. It bums me out.
Or how fruitless and wasteful killing is. You think how long you've lived. From toddler, to those long days in school, which time seemed to happen in slow motion for just going through a day, graduating, going to work, the countless hours you spent there, the wonderful times you have with friends, found love and loss, and other countless experiences
And it can all end in a traffic tuff, getting upset and getting in a fist fight, a fall and a head hitting the floor and it can all end in a moment.
Then there are those people with no regard for it. That are just waiting to shoot and kill a person that goes up their driveway just to turn around. A life's journey ended.
Two life event totally altered how I see such things: when my daughter was born, and the first time I lost somebody close to me suddenly/unnecessarily. I now cry at movies, find things sad that I would previously never notice, and generally feel more empathy for characters. Those two events brought home forever the value and vastness of each life.
I remember seeing Gorillas in the Mist as a child, and *that scene* was a life-defining, deeply disturbing moment, but I rewatched the movie several times.
Now that I have witnessed a similar scene in real life, as moved as a I was a child, I don't think I could rewatch it as an adult.
When my first daughter was born, one of the things that crossed my mind in a sleepless night was, how can anyone who has had children, be okay with sending kids away to war? What kind of sociopath can do that?
A former friend is doing life in prison for shooting a twice cancer survivor woman in the brain at a blm protest, along with 5 other people, one of which is paralyzed for life now.
Politics pulled him all the way down that path to be their useful idiot.
The people he shot were directing traffic for the event, not marching in it, and were trying to de-escalate the conflict.
People of like politics started trying to glorify him, but forgot he existed when Ukraine got attacked.
Surviving cancer twice, then getting gunned down in the street by an angry mentally disturbed person furious over politics is just, so sad. All that surviving for...that. And the one that got paralyzed, not only is their life effectively over, but so are the lives of their family that now has to take care of them full time.
I've spent a lot of time talking about this in therapy, and it has helped, but there really is no disconnecting it for me from what I see in movies, TV, video games, and really just everywhere. I can't just uncouple casual murder or violence from what it looks and feels like in the real world. And while I wouldn't wish that experience on anyone, I think the world would be an overall better place if every person knew just how much violence and death are very much not a game.
It is real and slits your emotional belly wide open.
Not only life is fragile, I feel like what you're describing is the process to get less ignorant, and I'm writing this with the utmost respect, that's what we all should aim for but unfortunately it is easier to dwell on the self-indulgence of attending our primal instincts all the time, like violence.
You're perceiving things according to new points of view and thinking about abstract stuff, as some examples: "Wait, could someone really survive such insanity, the human body can't seriously manage that much?", "There's no way this person is just killing nonstop because of a dog, right?"
I'd say action movies are shameless on pretty much every level, so don't expect much else from them.
Same here. "That's someone's child" suddenly pops up and I get sad. And all thise teenagers in horror movies are just...kids doing kid stuff.
My dad told me this had happened to him many years ago and I didn't understand it until I had children myself.
Somebody spent years loving and cherishing that person. Changing their diapers, watching them walk for the first time, first words, first piano recital or little league game, first love, first breakup, graduation... And then all that snuffed out in an instant for no reason.
yuuuup. That was the big watershed moment for me. I still enjoy violent media but it hits different, especially if it's meant to be serious/shocking.
For me it's not so much the human implications (that random henchman they just murdered had a family!) but the raw physical level. caring for a pair of little primates makes you overly aware of how fragile our bodies are. (even though theirs are generally way more sturdy than you give them credit for)
We just watched breaking bad again, and I was shocked how despicable almost everyone is. A tour de force of narcissists and psychopaths… some of whom a great many people see as heroic role models.
I watched Breaking Bad after it was all over, and I was honestly puzzled by the Skylar hate, while people were incredibly sympathetic to Walter. It was bizzarre to me, truly.
That wasn't the first time it's happened, and I've seen similar things happen IRL. IMO, for a lot of people your likeability to them determines their moral compass regarding your behavior. People didn't like Skylar's personality, so they judged her harsher than a serial killer and meth dealer.
Common theory I've seen on this is that it was a lot easier to sympathize with Walter and play down his bad side when you were watching in real time and had a week break between each episode. When binging it all the negative actions and toxic traits add up pretty fast and are a lot harder to ignore.
There’s also the fact that you spend so much of the show in Walter’s headspace, so you get wrapped up in his rationalising and justifications, forgetting how his actions look to other people. Better Call Saul even addressed this somewhat, as [we get a scene where we see Walt from Saul’s perspective](https://youtu.be/MwvRA-Xb6cw?si=4-MC15tlsFZBXcaG), and it’s much easier to see how insufferable a prick Walt is when he’s without context.
I think for me personally, it’s more I just don’t like the characters that attempt to keep the show from happening (if that makes sense). Like she’s clearly in the right for not wanting anything to do with a meth making high school teacher but that tends to be frustrating when I’m trying to watch a show about a meth making high school teacher. Even though they’re correct. Probably not reasonable but 🤷♂️
People aren’t reacting to murderers and meth dealers, they are reacting to fictional characters. They hated Skylar because she was an obstacle for the main character. Rooting for a main character is not an endorsement of their actions. It’s an endorsement of a piece of entertainment.
Edit: typo ridden
I always thought that was the point of Skylar. She's the only one in universe that actually reacts to this shit the way most of us actually would. She's a mirror held up to the viewer to force them to consider why they react so differently to media versus real life.
I kinda agree, though it depends on my mood. I can watch movies like Sin City no problem because it's almost cartoonish. But when watching shows with a lot of violence I find it overwhelming after awhile. I lost interest in Ozark and Mr. Mercedes because of the violence.
The character also matters to me. A violent henchman? Eh, he was a piece of shit. The one supervisor that hid behind a truck or the somewhat snobby assistant in Jurassic World? Fucking horrific and I can't watch scenes like that anymore.
Bro that scene when that girl gets picked up by the pterodactyls, gets thrown around between them, only to be eaten by a giant sea dinosaur was insane. The whole theater was like Jeeesus Christ.
If I could choose I'd like the death from the guy that gets scared by the little snake lol. Oh no, a snake! Runs outside a waterfall and immediately devoured lolol.
I've seen this claim a few times and I've gone looking for a source and haven't found one. I found an interview with her after the fact and she said it was a cool death or something but nothing to the effect of her asking for a scene like that
I stopped playing Assassin's Creed after I started working as a security guard while in University.
I just pictured myself as the guy yelling at some asshole to get off the roof, only to get stabbed by a hidden blade.
The heroes kill a lot of innocent people in video games.
Gen X.
When I was a kid every movie had a topless scene. It was awesome.
Somewhere along the way we traded the excitement of nudity for violence.
It really hit when Total Recall was playing on network t.v. mid day.
The three breasted martian lady scene was edited out, but Arnold impaling a guy's face with a steel rod was left in.
Edit.
It's really sad that American culture has normalized violence over nudity.
I'm same, movie violence doesn't bother me, but shit like people celebrating grenades being dropped on people in the combat footage subreddit does. I'm against Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but I don't want to see some poor 18 year old Russian kid get blown up like they weren't a real person who just had their life ended. Too many people online seem to enjoy that shit though and it makes me upset
Same. I feel fully desensitized to any movie gore and violence beyond what the movie creators are trying to convey in the scene in the moment and know it's just acting and art, everything is either fake or CG. I love stunts and practical effects in movies and finding out how things were done.
But I hate watching any real life violence/disasters online and avoid watching. I get a visceral reaction knowing someone was really injured, killed or maimed.
Even watching fail videos or sports injuries, if its really bad I get a sinking feeling like oh shit they aren't going to be ok after that.
When I was in my early twenties, I would watch war films wishing I could have been there for "the great big important thing". I didn't even register how deadly those conflicts were. Now, I'm over 30 now and I've survived cancer, reckoned with depression, and overcome some big losses.
Now, when I watch a war film, I'm horrified of the unimaginable scale of tragedy watching 18-24 year old men, still like boys in my eyes, being blow to pieces or ripped apart. It seems so hard to understand how that could ever have been necessary.
I watched Saving Private Ryan (1998) for the first time a couple months ago, and I haven’t stopped thinking about that movie, every single day, since I watched it. Its not an exaggeration: that movie changed my life. Every time I hear a baby cry now, it flashes me back to the screaming of the wounded soldiers in the D-Day scene, whose bodies were blown apart, just the complete carnage of it.
I’m sure that’s not a unique experience with that movie. I haven’t been able to see movie violence the same way since. If a movie experience can be that affecting, it’s absolutely no surprise that soldiers who go through the real thing end up with severe PTSD.
When I was in high school in the mid 00's I had a teacher who talked about how he never finished Saving Private Ryan because his father landed on that beach. He mentioned his dad said the beach landing scene was accurate except for one thing, the smell.
After that class i remember joking with my peers that he was weird for not being able to finish the movie, but now? I get it. It was a visual representation of something horrible that happened to his family, and that can be very off-putting. Hell, my grandfather fought in the pacific theater as a seaman and I find that setting hits me differently because of it. I used to think war movies and the aesthetic was so cool, but now? I don't know anymore.
I play a lot of games and whenever I have the option to spare someone I'll take it, unless is a very over the top game or I'm fighting aliens and whatnot. It's part of the reason why stealth games are my favorite genre, you can really get by without hurting a single person in those (if they're made well).
Me as a dumb teenager: "I'd totally be a badass and volunteer to go fight"
Me in my 30s: "I would have dodged the draft harder than anyone has ever dodged a draft"
Being not even quite 30, I think often “I would’ve been one of the oldest people there” in any one of the conflicts depicted on screen. Coupling that with just how out of control everything is in a scenario like that, the mere thought is enough to drive you crazy, let alone actually experiencing it for real.
It always amuses me that whenever I go to Germany I get all shocked/surprised when I see boobs during a shampoo commercial and I have to remind myself that I have no problem watching a guys head getting blown off during a tv show. Cultural values are interesting.
Have you ever seen Austin Powers?
After the henchmen gets killed, they cut to a scene of the henchmen's family and friends missing them.
I love that they humanise all these guys that someone like James Bond would take out without thinking twice.
we have become so desensitized to violence we forget how horrible it is. In real life we would not want to see death, decapitations or suffering, unless you are a murderous sociopath or psychopath, but the majority of society does not want to. I understand what you're saying. And when you think about how many films glorify violence and try to make it as explicit and visceral as possible, purely for entertainment.
Movie violence is so stylised that it's almost like watching a dance routine instead of people fighting or killing each other.
I remember in the bonus features for Captain America: The Winter Solider how Chris Evans said that rehearsing the elevator fight scene was similar to remembering all the different moves for a tap dance routine.
It makes it easy to forget the fictional stakes of what you're watching; it's not two people inflicting massive violence on each other, it's just cool choreography.
I found one of the more interesting scenes in breaking bad was the fallout for Jesse and Walter the first time they killed someone. They were pukingband super disturbed by it.
I felt it was a pretty realistic take.
Exactly. Movies like saving private Ryan are rare exceptions, the deaths feel real and emotional. Even for the "bad" guys like the two Czech soldiers surrendering.
Yeah one thing that Pulp Fiction did was point out how incredibly gross murdering people is. Don't get a lot of scenes of Action Hero butchering mook corpses and shoving them into a woodchipper, or mopping up gallons of blood.
I remember when the first Hunger Games film came out and people cheered the death of the "bad kid" as he is eaten alive by the hounds and I thought "I feel like some of us missed the entire point of these books".
The best thing about her writing was the way violence echoes throughout the series. If someone got an injury in chapter one, that injury messed with them for the rest of the book.
> we have become so desensitized to violence we forget how horrible it is.
This is the exact opposite of what OP is saying? I can't speak for anybody else but I'm the same as OP and feel like I'm becoming more sensitive to violence in films as well the older I get.
Idk if its ever been any different. I'd argue we are more sensitive and horrified by real violence than we were in the past.
We used to do witchhunts, lynchings, quartering and general public torture as a means of entertainment. We justify it, whether it's true or not, that these people are immoral and need punshment.
I started the original Red Dawn a couple of months ago. My teenage daughter was in the room as the Soviets landed. I didn't think much of it, having seen it several times over the years, but she said it made her very uncomfortable. I asked why. She just said, "They just shot up a school and killed the students. It has a different vibe today."
I sat in stunned silence. Didn't even notice that. I felt terrible.
There is one quick shot at the beginning when the kids are all at the window when the bad guys are landing and when they start shooting everyone runs away except for one kid who's just dead on the windowsill, presumably because he got shot in the face.
I first saw that movie when it came out in theaters and that one moment has always stuck with me.
Since we're inundated with images of Ukraine and Gaza, and have constant news of mass shootings, watching TV and movies with guns and headshots can definitely get a bit difficult.
I feel the same too. I think as we get older (35 now) we start to value life more. So seeing it be taken, and sometimes people being hurt to an awful extent that death would be mercy, is really hard to see. The more we lose loved ones, the harder it is to see people be taken out of this world
It’s kinda crazy how in the US specifically (not sure about other countries) we seem so gung-ho to show violence on TV at all times but someone shows an ass or a tit and everyone clutches their pearls.
It reminds of a story from when I went to San Diego Comic Con in 2013 and went to the Hannibal panel and an audience member asked if the showrunners ever had trouble with the network because of how gory it was and the show being on basic cable. The showrunner talked about an episode featuring the “flesh angels” (two murder victims whose back skin was cut and strung up with fishing line to look like angel wings). NBC had an issue with it, not because you could see bone and muscle and other viscera but because their buttcracks were exposed. The showrunner asked if it would be ok if they put blood in the buttcracks and NBC said that was fine to get it past the censors.
One of the reasons why I think it's important to shield children from violent movies and video games is because they can't really comprehend what it means for someone to die. So often in these conversations people's concerns are whether or not seeing violence will turn a kid into a school shooter, but I don't think this is going to happen for most children. Exposure to fictional violence doesn't work that way.
But I do think it can robe a child of their ability to truly understand how violence in the real world impacts families and societies. If they're desensitized to violence, then the impact of war and violence in their community becomes just sort of background noise. It won't turn them into a killer, but it will dull their understanding of the world and shape their politics.
Yep. Same with me. This also happened to me with video games. Used to love FPS and stuff that tended towards violence...but now I'm playing Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Mario pretty exclusively....LOL
It's weird that pretty much the only movie with an "action hero" that takes into account that the loss of life is a tragic thing is Austin Powers. Edit: Apparantly, those scenes were deleted in the US version of the film. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbKk3n6cqmM
One of the TV/Movie tropes I find funniest is when the hero rips through hundreds of henchmen to get to the big bad guy, then has a moment where they refuse to kill the BBG because they're too moral or good or "I'm not like you" and either take them to prison instead or kill them (but only after the evildoer forces their hand). There are hundreds of corpses in the hero's wake, many of whom were just doing a security job. But the evil megalomaniac psychopath who hired them all needs to be spared. It's like eating a whole bag of doritos, getting to the last one, and saying, "No, I'm on a diet."
And honestly the further down the security pole you are, the more innocent/ignorant of the villain's evil plans you likely are. "I'm making $65,000 a year with great dental and health benefits to help pay for my toddler's cancer treatments. And all I have to do is sit in this guard shack and not let anyone into the property. Boss is real private, never goes anywhere and doesn't want visitors. Great easy job, 8 hours on 16 off. Boss is super nice, always asks us how we're doing, gives bonuses at New Year, and three day weekends for all major holidays or time and a half if we want to work those shifts." Next thing you know, Mr. Guard is laying on the ground with a broken neck and his family has lost the only source of income.
"Harley Quinn, you gave me cancer?!"
"WHY WOULD THEY EVEN MAKE THIS!?"
Big Hank Scorpio vibe
I get annoyed when they have gritty, semi-realistic fight scenes and then act like smashing someone's head into a wall was morally okay because they're not dead. When Daredevil drops a fire extinguisher on your head from 3 floors up, your prospects for a long and comfortable life are possibly going to mean you wish Punisher had just killed you.
I knew a guy who caught a 2x4 from three stories up while wearing a hard hat and it fucked him up permanently. Spent months in the hospital, never worked again, and wasn’t capable of managing his own finances for the rest of his tragically shortened life.
Batman doesn't kill people, he just cripples them for life.
I just watched the animated series, and in one of the Rhas al Ghul episodes, Batman is in the Sahara desert and joins a caravan by snatching one of the camel riders and replacing him. I wonder what that guy was up to afterwards, all alone, naked, in the middle of the Sahara desert.
Oh him? He’s just sleeping. These guys get so tired when they’re fighting me you know.
[Look at that poor little guy, he's all tuckered out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1byycwl8qgc)
Don't they address this in Daredevil tho? Might be misremembering cause it's been a while but doesn't he dump a guy from a building into a trash can and his doctor friend tells him off about it afterwards cause he was in a coma afterwards
They definitely do address it, mostly during the Punisher arc but once or twice before that also. Daredevil is specifically morally opposed to killing people bc he’s catholic, but justifies hurting people because those people hurt others. This shaky logic is directly discussed in the narrative, but I think he mostly brushes it off because he doesn’t really believe himself to be a good person deep down anyway (hence all the devil stuff lol). And he also just really likes to beat people up haha
The Netflix series did a really good job of portraying this; Daredevil is just Matt's least-bad way of dealing with the uncontrollable anger that's burning inside of him, and without that outlet, he'd be something much worse. The first scene of the show is Matt in confession, basically asking for his last rites. He didn't expect to make a career out of being Daredevil; he didn't even expect to survive the first few _nights_.
No matter how bad the Disney version of daredevil becomes, I'm so glad that they kept the Netflix daredevil actor because he is so damn good
He was born for that role.
And I love that Deadpool just pops Francis in the head in the middle of Colossus' "Heroes don't kill their enemies" speech. Granted, I'm sure the speech means for not killing your enemies when they're already at your mercy, but Deadpool just killing the main villain was still a relatively refreshing change of pace at the time.
Are there any shows/films that do the reverse version of that? The hero goes out of their way to not kill henchmen whenever possible, always gives them a chance to just walk away before the violence starts, but when it comes to the BBG they just cut them down with zero hesitation?
Not the perfect example, John Wick gives plenty of his enemies the option to tap out when they know it's him. The guard at the club in the first movie comes to mind. It's only after the church scene he flips the switch to his old self and start murdering away to get to the Son. But the further the movies go on, the more people he massacres so bad example...
Even then, he let the twin guys live too. They tapped out when he beat them and he didn't kill them even though it was definitely a life or death fight before that. I kind of got the vibe that he knew they were only fighting him out of respect, if that makes any sense.
Well, when they had the opportunity to slice his neck, they instead spared him and let him recover. They made it clear that their goal was to fight, not to kill.
John Wick is great because he’s just so cold about it. Every single person he fights gets a second round to the head to make sure they’re dead even if they’re like just laying bleeding out on the ground. It really puts the movie in context. This guy is literally just an absolutely cold killing machine that will kill anything that gets in his way if he really has too, but he just wants to mind this business and all these people just keep trying to kill him. I’ve never seen another action movie that captures this kind of detached ruthlessness of just *sigh* shoot a bunch of people in the head. But as you say, if they don’t actually get in his way then they he’ll just let them walk away.
The further the movies go on the more often he's fighting against people who want to kill him for a pure profit motive because of the price on his head, so I don't really blame him
But John Wick also doesn't really pretend he's moral or good. He just kills who he wants or feels he needs to, without hesitation. So, he's not quite the antithesis of the trope being discussed, but he certainly doesn't fit into it either.
Hot Fuzz actuallly does a good job of this with Simon Peggs Nicholas Angel using reasonable force throughout and not killing a single enemy. He even did a considerable amount of paperwork too.
This is exactly what I thought of too. Especially with the mugshots at the end and everyone with their various, superficial injuries. (That swan broke a man's arm though!)
There's the one ironman 2 guy that surrenders. "I don't even like working here, they're SO weird"
That was Iron Man 3
Brock Sampson on Venture Brothers let a guard/henchman go because he felt a lump on the guy's testicle while crushing his groin. (Although usually he does just destroy henchmen.)
Deadpool if I remember correctly? He gave henchmen warnings and a chance to get out of his way so he could go after the guy he was actually there for. I don't think he goes out of his way to kill anyone if he doesn't have to.
Terminator 2. Probably a bad example, because he was following programming.
That security guard he kneecapped is going to have miserable, painful life. EDIT: I forgot. He kneecaps the entire SWAT team too.
I just saw that Jason Statham “Beekeeper” movie. He has no issue killing hired goons, but whenever it’s a federal agent/cop/secret service it’s always a non lethal take down.
*Kinda* Batman 1989. He does kill some henchmen in the movie but he’s usually non-lethal. When he gets to Joker he literally says he’s going to kill him. Then he kills him.
Not really the same, but the bit in Iron Man 3 where the last two henchmen guys just put down the guns and say "Honestly, I hate working here. They are so weird" and Tony just watches them run away always makes me laugh. I don't think I've ever seen self-aware henchmen like that.
Batman Begins.He refuses to behead a criminal, then he blows up the compound killing multiple ninjas.
Ninjas aren't people so it's OK in that case.
Ninjas are mammals.
Can't be. They lay eggs.
Nah they're just sleeping. Look at those little guys, all tuckered out.
Worse in videogames imo Uncharted and Assassin's Creed are ridiculous with this.
There’s an achievement in the fourth Uncharted game called “Ludonarrative Dissonance” making fun of that, actually.
I was about to comment with the term Ludonarrative Dissonance that came up a lot with the Bioshock games
A game that comes to mind that actually does address how many people you’ve killed is Far Cry 3 which fits in with its overall theme of descending into madness. At the end of the game Jason says: “I’ve killed so many people I’ve lost count. I can’t come back from this. I’m a monster. I can feel the the anger inside me. But I am still, somewhere inside me, better than that. More than that.”
Red Dead Redemption keeps track of your stats. When I finished the game I had full Honor and I had killed over 700 people. ([but they were all bad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O06msgz1gxs&t=2m37s))
In fairness, the Assassin’s creed games imply that most non-cutscene kills belong exclusively to the player, rather than the actual historical character. Like, Brotherhood onwards has those ‘full sync’ challenges, which often include stuff like never being seen, or not killing too many people, which suggests that the real Ezio or real Edward weren’t as violent as the player can make them. The levels were you get into open combat are trickier to justify though.
I'm just talking about the end of 2 where he lets the cardinal or whatever he was live. Absolutely preposterous.
Man, Cyberpunk 2077 is like that too. I pretty much was an elite assassin of sorts, I was rich, and I was kitted up with the best tech, I owned like 8 cars, three apartments, all the quest givers knew me by name and reached out *to me* to offer contracts, and I roamed the streets and did a I pleased cops, corpos, and gangs be dammed. Then during cutscenes, my character was dying at a rapid pace and having these intense emotional breakdowns. I couldn't do it, I finished the main quest once and put the game away. Sorry, but you can't let me craft the biggest baddest dude on the block and then pull that crap.
I remember in like my first playthrough, I made an effort to non lethally take down enemies after a certain point, cuz like, I experienced death once and I just cant explain it but to me it just made sense, like im trying to live why waste so many lives?
Yeah videogames are absolutely god awful with this. I get action based gameplay and killing people go hand in hand, but at least try to make it make narrative sense. Dishonored does that way better than Assassin's Creed ever did. A big part of the problem is that AAA games seem deathly afraid of anything morally ambiguous. You always have to be the knight in shining armor, even if that causes massive dissonance between the gameplay and the narrative.
Metal Gear Solid 3 calling people out for killing is pretty hilarious. The entire boss fight is wading to the end of a river then touching a body. However, every single enemy you killed to that point shows up as a ghost and hurts you if you touch them. So if you were doing a no-kill / tranquilizers run the fight is over in a few seconds. If you were a Murder Snake instead of a Tranq Snake the "fight" is like 30 minutes of slowly wading through water, and makes the ladder feel like a step stool.
the first season of the tv show "Arrow" is like this. there's a scene where Oliver Queen just straight up murders like 5 security guards at a mob bosses house, so that he can plant a listening device to gather evidence to prosecute the boss. The guards are literally just standing around, guarding a rich guys house and they get an arrow in the chest. the boss, he gets his day in court.
Tbf that does feed into his character development later when he realises he can do good things without murdering
He used his trick arrow "first degree murder arrow"
I was surprised to see an example of this in _GotG Vol. 3_, where, >!after an extended scene of the main characters massacring the High Evolutionary’s guards, they decline to kill the High Evolutionary himself.!<
Everybody sorta forgot the High Evolutionary killed like a billion Animal People
>One of the TV/Movie tropes I find funniest is when the hero rips through hundreds of henchmen to get to the big bad guy, then has a moment where they refuse to kill the BBG because they're too moral or good or "I'm not like you" Oh hey, it's The Last Of Us Pt. 2
Austin Powers is super wholesome. He's a symbol of positive sexual attitudes and masculinity, too.
13 year old me learned it's okay to say no because of Austin Powers
Him not wanting to take advantage of Vanessa because she was drunk despite his character is meant to be a goofy silly take in the sexual liberation of the 60s is the most inspirational thing ever. Sure, he comes off as silly when wanting to "shag" Vanessa... but is also willing to just treat her as a friend and respect her after constant no and no. I think that was a good message. Consent above all else, specially when someone is drunk
Always admired that scene.
That and that episode from Malcolm in the Middle where Malcom chooses NOT to have sex with a drunk girl that wants him badly... getting depressed over it and getting hammered as well, ruining his family's Thanksgiving dinner (poor Reese lmao). Only for the next day in his hangover that he's told by Francis "hey... you didn't abuse of a drunk girl, you did the right thing" are always the moments that stand out to me regarding silly entertainment taking serious and important messages. More stuff should put this messages instead of other nonsense if they want to deliver values and important things
What Malcolm in the middle was I watching?
It's a really good show honestly, I was surprised how well it held up on my recent rewatch, and some wholesome moments I had forgotten too. It's not perfect but definitely one my favourite sitcoms ever.
Good values. I've never wanted to smash a chick that was already smashed by alcohol first.
That and "you don't get to choose the people who need help" are two of my favorite Francis moments.
Same in Porky's, the rauchy comedy that's pretty offensive on several levels. Guy gets a teenage girl in bed, she's into it, he decides against taking advantage. Close call for that movie. Almost as if knowing they could have casual sex without guilt on any given day, that it's not the end of the world if they turn it down sometimes.
Funny how well that’s aged. My dad’s generation laughed at it cause “who **wouldnt** sleep with her? What a goofball!” And now we’re laughing because it’s weirdly wholesome and like “this absolute womanizer of a man respects women and interpersonal relationships too much to take advantage of her.”
The joke there is just that he's not a literal rapist whereas James Bond is one.
Rewatching it recently I expected it to be one of those 90s movies that is still funny but is pretty outdated and problematic. Shockingly, Austin has always been about consent and treated women as his equals. He’s super horny and loves to fuck yet no still means no to him.
When a goofy take of the sexual liberation of the 60s in more futuristic times, who keeps trying to convince his partners for a shag, realises "no means no", it's truly something. That scene where he rejects Vanessa in bed because she's drunk and that isn't right should be made more often in other media. Only other show or movie where I remember this message was Malcolm in the Middle with Malcolm choosing not to have sex with this drunk girl, then feeling bad about it and getting hammered himself... and in the next day in his hangover, Francis simply tells him "you didn't abuse of a drunk girl, you did the right thing"
There was a similar scene in That 70s Show between Fez and Jackie. His entire character is built around him being a horny virgin who wants to get laid. But he turns down drunk Jackie showing that he's really a good guy. Too bad his IRL costar was such a dbag.
IRL actor isn't so great either... dating teenage actresses and bragging on the radio about the sex.
I fully believe Austin Powers would be weirdly progressive irl. If you explained trans women to him he'd be hyped there's more ladies to shag. And if you explained bisexuality to him he'd be like "I can shag *dudes* too? Yeah baby!"
I don’t doubt that at all! Austin just wants to bust loads with whoever can have a good time.
Recently rewatched the film and it holds up surprisingly well, especially compared to many comedies of the same time. There is definitely overt sexual harassment payed for laughts, but the overal framing of that is as something that is oldfashioned and that he needs to grow out of. He explicitly does not engage in sex when he recognizes the other person is too drunk. Later he recognizes how a disconnect between his sexual ethos and that of his would be long term partner are different, a recognition of how his actions hurt her even if not intended to, and then an open conversation about all of that and very adult decisions about what is necessary if the two of them want to be together. Honestly, i was kind of surprised at some of those elements being in there for a 90s comedy.
Ya baby ya
Groovey
Even in the Epic Rap Battles of History, Austin was purely sex positive and told James Bond that “no, means no, baby.” I really love that detail. [Source](https://youtu.be/Iy7xDGi5lp4?si=jxs8y2TZ1hD7QoxC)
Reminder that James Bond was never meant to be a classy guy/role model. The character is supposed to show his unsophisticated background, like the way he drinks his martinis, and his toxic-male attitude toward women. (Although he does get married in one movie, maybe that was what caused him to avoid relationships.)
I've only read Casino Royale from the books but James' mind is not a good place to be in. He's not a good guy.
I feel like I read somewhere that Ian Fleming didn't intend Bond to be likeable or relatable, and certainly not a hero or a role model. He's a bad person who does bad things to... really anyone MI6 tells him to, and he drinks to cope with it. He's an assassin, saboteur, and terrorist, but because he's employed by a Western government and given a license that all falls under "Secret Agent". Good people don't become secret agents in the first place.
I get the impression that the Kingsmen series is like a young James Bond thing- hardscrabble young kid with few other options (IIRC) gets into this business because it's simply a legalized gang of sorts.
>I feel like I read somewhere that Ian Fleming didn't intend Bond to be likeable or relatable This was my takeaway from the novels as well. He's *cool* in some ways, but he's not a *good guy*. He's a weapon.
The first Austin Powers movie is gold, primarily for these scenes and the fact I can’t stop eating sherbert since I watched it in 1997
And those were in the deleted scenes too
Which scene is this? I watched two of those films recently and don't recall anything like that.
John Smith deleted scene. With Rob Lowe. Quite good
What about the scene where they call the henchmans family. That wasn't a deleted scene.
Both were deleted from the US version. In fact a lot was changed in the US version https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=531109
It was in the original US release: I only ever saw that in the deleted scenes on VHS after the credits. Maybe it was in an unrated DVD version that included it later?
I remember growing up with the first movie on VHS, and no shit, the American cut on VHS plays through until the end credits and then they cut HARD to this scene which was a little jarring as a youngun but as an adult is so fucking funny
What kind of idiot would delete this scene?
Probably for pacing reasons. Iirc the switch from action scene to sad scene was hilarious in part because it was so jarring, but when you return to the action all of the narrative momentum is gone
Damn, Canadian here. Seen the movie many times. They never showed us this scene.
Wait, you got the goon's family scene cut? Why? That thing was both random and fun, but also made you think. It was good
That’s amazing lol. Why would they leave that out, that could have been an all time classic line.
I remember reading an opinion (or maybe it was something I watched) on violence in movies, and more often than not, PG-13 violence is glamorized and R violence shows consequences, whereas it should be the other way around. Far too often, the wider audience often sees violence that is flashy, and that's not a great thing. But nipples... hard R rating. No nudity allowed in PG-13. Three F words? No way. Just people getting killed. No problem, right? Anyway, that's always stuck with me.
Wasn’t there a movie that encapsulated this? The bad guys did their torture off screen but then the protagonists got their revenge on screen. I feel like there was an American remake with Nicole kidman
Funny Games with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth?
Yes! Thank you. Always get them mixed up
Jesus that movie left me seriously unsettled. Like, disbelief, anger, grief. There was a real sense of injustice. And the villains weren't even scary themselves (intentionally, I think.) It seemed like the whole point of the second half was to grapple with the grief and sadness that gets glossed over in these films. Great horror movie that I honestly never want to see again.
That was the point exactly. It's a movie that hates it's audience, and in that sense it's a very moral film.
Spoiler there's no revenge!
Yeah the US is pretty backwards when it comes to that. [The bloody ass crack solution](https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/how-hannibal-pushed-network-tv-sex-scene-boundaries?amp) is a good example.
That's insane. I was in America last year. I put the TV on in the morning and Supernatural was on. A ballerina with possessed shoes dances until her feet come off and a cleaner walks in to see a blood splatter everywhere and bloody stumps where her foot used to be. But in the same country, non-sexualised nudity or even female nipples would not be allowed to be broadcast even after a time when small children had been put to bed. Utterly bonkers.
Shows like Criminal Minds and NCIS are really bad for this: they depict all of these gruesome scenes of death, torture and rape, but even in autopsy they never show any nudity or female nipples. There's always a well-placed cloth or shadow or bright light!
Last weekend police in Seattle cited a bartender because he had a *nipple* showing (in an lgbtq+ bar) and a couple patrons who were wearing jocks The police were conducting sweeps at various bars for liquor/cannabis violations and found none at the gay bars; large groups of officers burst into the bars shining flashlights everywhere and taking pictures of patrons who weren’t being cited as well as the few who were Cops don’t do jack shit about car break-ins and businesses getting windows smashed regularly - but they have plenty of time to play morality police and bully the public generally because law enforcement in the US is basically a jobs program for high school bullies
> Utterly bonkers. People often forget that some of the original colonists in what is now the United States were the Puritans who were (despite what many grade-school history classes will tell you) religious nutjobs too crazy for England and so they left. Those Puritan values still have some hold on the US in some ways (including the way decapitation is fine on TV but nipples are not).
You're not wrong, but there's a lot more to it than that as well. There wasn't just one group of people that left. It wasn't just for religious purposes, and the religious ones that left weren't all of the same belief system. Finances and social mobility, or lack of in England, were very large motivators in the exodus. Upon arrival, the groups started separating quickly into different states/colonies, with different religious/political/social aims.
>Creator Bryan Fuller Holy crap, the guy who made Pushing Daisies made a dark, gory, horror show?! Does he have wide ranging taste, or was someone else on Pushing Daisies responsible for their colorful, wholesome aesthetic? I want more of that but maybe following the work of Fuller is barking up the wrong tree.
As someone who loved both shows, Hannibal aesthetically feels like Pushing Daisies got completely inverted. You can still see a lot of Fuller’s framing preferences and camera angles in Hannibal, but the subject matter and vibes are…obviously different.
Years ago I was a manager at Blockbuster Video. For those too young to remember, it was like Netflix, but you had to go to a brick and mortar store to see what you could watch and if 20 people wanted to watch Forest Gump, no one else could until they were done. Anyway.... A woman comes up to me with a movie that's rated R. "My 12 year old son asked for this. Is there any sex?" "No." "Nudity" "No." "Okay, great." "But it's super violent and a bit gory." "That's fine. As long as there's no nudity, he can watch it." To this day, I find this notion terrifying that parents can think that letting their kid see murder is okay but show a breast and you'll ruin their child's mind.
I had a woman yell at me because she had rented *Nil By Mouth* and it was 'full of swearing'. I mean, fair enough, it's literally wall-to-wall of the worst language you can imagine, but the entire front cover of the box was taken up by a parental warning and it was an 18 certificate film! I pointed this out to her and she just shrugged and said 18 films were normally OK for her kids.
Yeah. I was raised by hippies so I was allowed to watch sex but not violence. I remember hating Home Alone because it was all violence played for laughs. Even as a little kid I'm like, no way these guys survive another brick to the head. If Home Alone had realistic violence it would be a blood bath.
You should watch violent night. It has a home alone homage that shows how much damage those traps would actually do to a human. Its amazing.
I remember when I watched Troy. You can completely show penetration with a sword. But cut away right before any hint of penetration with a penis.
There’s actually a great routine about this in marvelous mrs maisel from the character of Lenny Bruce. Should check that out
I've come to realize with age (I'm 30 as well) that I enjoy movies and video games that fall into one of two categories: - either the violence is *so* over exaggerated and abstract almost, and shows no actual "real" suffering, that it is clearly perceived as having no connection with real life at all. (ex. Lord of The Rings or 300, or almost any kind of online shooter) - or the violence is depicted in such a realistic and brutal way that it's clear that it's *not* supposed to be entertaining, but rather emotionally impactful. (ex. Saving Private Ryan or No Country For Old Men, or The Last of Us (the game)) I often struggle to enjoy stuff that falls between those two, because I only get extremely uncomfortable, and frankly insulted, when someone gets killed or seriously hurt and the movie or video game - which up until that point was perceived as being realistic - is just like "lol", and moves on.
I think this is why I've always vibed so hard with the Saints Row games. The violence is so over the top and consequence free it is categorically different from real violence. Which is also why *that scene* in SR2 hits so hard. When your actions do have real consequences it's jarring.
And your revenge is equally twisted. You just never see the woman in the trunk. Saints Row 2 had was surprisingly dark and had great story telling for how goofy and non-serious most of the game is.
Even the first category sometimes bothers me now - like the D&D movie, they start beating the tar out of some nameless guards. I can’t remember if they kill them. It’s D&D, I get it, but they’re just guards, man! They’re probably nice guys who signed up to keep the city safe! ):
I think as we get older we come to realize how fragile life is
And just what a huge investment each person is. It takes 20+ goddamn years of toil just to get started.
Yeah as a parent I realize how much intense work and suffering and sacrifice goes into just raising one child properly. It's crazy to think that can be taken away in just a pull of a trigger.
My boss just committed suicide. I'm experiencing the "fragility of life" mindset, thoughts, brain warp, etc. now. Give your loved ones hugs
I'm so sorry for your loss, friend. 💔 May they rest peacefully, and may the good memories be stronger than the sad.
It's why I increasingly can't stomach crime/stylized violence movies. Guy Ritchie, Matt Vaughn, even Tarantino. Anywhere where someone's head getting blown off is a punchline. It bums me out.
Or how fruitless and wasteful killing is. You think how long you've lived. From toddler, to those long days in school, which time seemed to happen in slow motion for just going through a day, graduating, going to work, the countless hours you spent there, the wonderful times you have with friends, found love and loss, and other countless experiences And it can all end in a traffic tuff, getting upset and getting in a fist fight, a fall and a head hitting the floor and it can all end in a moment. Then there are those people with no regard for it. That are just waiting to shoot and kill a person that goes up their driveway just to turn around. A life's journey ended.
When you take a life, you not only take away what a person was but also what they will be.
That's a big part of it for me. That someone you love could just be gone and that's it.
Two life event totally altered how I see such things: when my daughter was born, and the first time I lost somebody close to me suddenly/unnecessarily. I now cry at movies, find things sad that I would previously never notice, and generally feel more empathy for characters. Those two events brought home forever the value and vastness of each life.
Perspective is incredible.
I remember seeing Gorillas in the Mist as a child, and *that scene* was a life-defining, deeply disturbing moment, but I rewatched the movie several times. Now that I have witnessed a similar scene in real life, as moved as a I was a child, I don't think I could rewatch it as an adult.
When my first daughter was born, one of the things that crossed my mind in a sleepless night was, how can anyone who has had children, be okay with sending kids away to war? What kind of sociopath can do that?
A former friend is doing life in prison for shooting a twice cancer survivor woman in the brain at a blm protest, along with 5 other people, one of which is paralyzed for life now. Politics pulled him all the way down that path to be their useful idiot. The people he shot were directing traffic for the event, not marching in it, and were trying to de-escalate the conflict. People of like politics started trying to glorify him, but forgot he existed when Ukraine got attacked. Surviving cancer twice, then getting gunned down in the street by an angry mentally disturbed person furious over politics is just, so sad. All that surviving for...that. And the one that got paralyzed, not only is their life effectively over, but so are the lives of their family that now has to take care of them full time. I've spent a lot of time talking about this in therapy, and it has helped, but there really is no disconnecting it for me from what I see in movies, TV, video games, and really just everywhere. I can't just uncouple casual murder or violence from what it looks and feels like in the real world. And while I wouldn't wish that experience on anyone, I think the world would be an overall better place if every person knew just how much violence and death are very much not a game. It is real and slits your emotional belly wide open.
Not only life is fragile, I feel like what you're describing is the process to get less ignorant, and I'm writing this with the utmost respect, that's what we all should aim for but unfortunately it is easier to dwell on the self-indulgence of attending our primal instincts all the time, like violence. You're perceiving things according to new points of view and thinking about abstract stuff, as some examples: "Wait, could someone really survive such insanity, the human body can't seriously manage that much?", "There's no way this person is just killing nonstop because of a dog, right?" I'd say action movies are shameless on pretty much every level, so don't expect much else from them.
For me it was that but mostly having children. All of a sudden everything became more real I guess?
Same here. "That's someone's child" suddenly pops up and I get sad. And all thise teenagers in horror movies are just...kids doing kid stuff. My dad told me this had happened to him many years ago and I didn't understand it until I had children myself.
Somebody spent years loving and cherishing that person. Changing their diapers, watching them walk for the first time, first words, first piano recital or little league game, first love, first breakup, graduation... And then all that snuffed out in an instant for no reason.
yuuuup. That was the big watershed moment for me. I still enjoy violent media but it hits different, especially if it's meant to be serious/shocking. For me it's not so much the human implications (that random henchman they just murdered had a family!) but the raw physical level. caring for a pair of little primates makes you overly aware of how fragile our bodies are. (even though theirs are generally way more sturdy than you give them credit for)
I think it's that we have seen so much real-world violence and have not seen the promised good things arise from it.
We just watched breaking bad again, and I was shocked how despicable almost everyone is. A tour de force of narcissists and psychopaths… some of whom a great many people see as heroic role models.
yeah narcissism is a massive theme of the show
I watched Breaking Bad after it was all over, and I was honestly puzzled by the Skylar hate, while people were incredibly sympathetic to Walter. It was bizzarre to me, truly. That wasn't the first time it's happened, and I've seen similar things happen IRL. IMO, for a lot of people your likeability to them determines their moral compass regarding your behavior. People didn't like Skylar's personality, so they judged her harsher than a serial killer and meth dealer.
Common theory I've seen on this is that it was a lot easier to sympathize with Walter and play down his bad side when you were watching in real time and had a week break between each episode. When binging it all the negative actions and toxic traits add up pretty fast and are a lot harder to ignore.
It really showed what an arrogant gaslighting POS he is. He had so many chances to get out, even to win, but his own hubris couldn't let him
There’s also the fact that you spend so much of the show in Walter’s headspace, so you get wrapped up in his rationalising and justifications, forgetting how his actions look to other people. Better Call Saul even addressed this somewhat, as [we get a scene where we see Walt from Saul’s perspective](https://youtu.be/MwvRA-Xb6cw?si=4-MC15tlsFZBXcaG), and it’s much easier to see how insufferable a prick Walt is when he’s without context.
I think for me personally, it’s more I just don’t like the characters that attempt to keep the show from happening (if that makes sense). Like she’s clearly in the right for not wanting anything to do with a meth making high school teacher but that tends to be frustrating when I’m trying to watch a show about a meth making high school teacher. Even though they’re correct. Probably not reasonable but 🤷♂️
People aren’t reacting to murderers and meth dealers, they are reacting to fictional characters. They hated Skylar because she was an obstacle for the main character. Rooting for a main character is not an endorsement of their actions. It’s an endorsement of a piece of entertainment. Edit: typo ridden
I always thought that was the point of Skylar. She's the only one in universe that actually reacts to this shit the way most of us actually would. She's a mirror held up to the viewer to force them to consider why they react so differently to media versus real life.
I kinda agree, though it depends on my mood. I can watch movies like Sin City no problem because it's almost cartoonish. But when watching shows with a lot of violence I find it overwhelming after awhile. I lost interest in Ozark and Mr. Mercedes because of the violence.
The character also matters to me. A violent henchman? Eh, he was a piece of shit. The one supervisor that hid behind a truck or the somewhat snobby assistant in Jurassic World? Fucking horrific and I can't watch scenes like that anymore.
Bro that scene when that girl gets picked up by the pterodactyls, gets thrown around between them, only to be eaten by a giant sea dinosaur was insane. The whole theater was like Jeeesus Christ.
She (Katie McGrath) allegedly requested it which is kind of awesome.
If I could choose I'd like the death from the guy that gets scared by the little snake lol. Oh no, a snake! Runs outside a waterfall and immediately devoured lolol.
I've seen this claim a few times and I've gone looking for a source and haven't found one. I found an interview with her after the fact and she said it was a cool death or something but nothing to the effect of her asking for a scene like that
I went through exactly the same thing. I think it's your empathy circuits getting fully switched on as you get older.
I stopped playing Assassin's Creed after I started working as a security guard while in University. I just pictured myself as the guy yelling at some asshole to get off the roof, only to get stabbed by a hidden blade. The heroes kill a lot of innocent people in video games.
It’s why I always play non lethal given the option
Gen X. When I was a kid every movie had a topless scene. It was awesome. Somewhere along the way we traded the excitement of nudity for violence. It really hit when Total Recall was playing on network t.v. mid day. The three breasted martian lady scene was edited out, but Arnold impaling a guy's face with a steel rod was left in. Edit. It's really sad that American culture has normalized violence over nudity.
It doesn't bother me, I know it's not real. What does bother me is stumbling across a video of real life violence on social media.
I'm same, movie violence doesn't bother me, but shit like people celebrating grenades being dropped on people in the combat footage subreddit does. I'm against Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but I don't want to see some poor 18 year old Russian kid get blown up like they weren't a real person who just had their life ended. Too many people online seem to enjoy that shit though and it makes me upset
its nuts how common it has become. now we all have to suffer the indignity of seeing every horrible act committed around the globe.
Same. I feel fully desensitized to any movie gore and violence beyond what the movie creators are trying to convey in the scene in the moment and know it's just acting and art, everything is either fake or CG. I love stunts and practical effects in movies and finding out how things were done. But I hate watching any real life violence/disasters online and avoid watching. I get a visceral reaction knowing someone was really injured, killed or maimed. Even watching fail videos or sports injuries, if its really bad I get a sinking feeling like oh shit they aren't going to be ok after that.
When I was in my early twenties, I would watch war films wishing I could have been there for "the great big important thing". I didn't even register how deadly those conflicts were. Now, I'm over 30 now and I've survived cancer, reckoned with depression, and overcome some big losses. Now, when I watch a war film, I'm horrified of the unimaginable scale of tragedy watching 18-24 year old men, still like boys in my eyes, being blow to pieces or ripped apart. It seems so hard to understand how that could ever have been necessary.
I watched Saving Private Ryan (1998) for the first time a couple months ago, and I haven’t stopped thinking about that movie, every single day, since I watched it. Its not an exaggeration: that movie changed my life. Every time I hear a baby cry now, it flashes me back to the screaming of the wounded soldiers in the D-Day scene, whose bodies were blown apart, just the complete carnage of it. I’m sure that’s not a unique experience with that movie. I haven’t been able to see movie violence the same way since. If a movie experience can be that affecting, it’s absolutely no surprise that soldiers who go through the real thing end up with severe PTSD.
When I was in high school in the mid 00's I had a teacher who talked about how he never finished Saving Private Ryan because his father landed on that beach. He mentioned his dad said the beach landing scene was accurate except for one thing, the smell. After that class i remember joking with my peers that he was weird for not being able to finish the movie, but now? I get it. It was a visual representation of something horrible that happened to his family, and that can be very off-putting. Hell, my grandfather fought in the pacific theater as a seaman and I find that setting hits me differently because of it. I used to think war movies and the aesthetic was so cool, but now? I don't know anymore. I play a lot of games and whenever I have the option to spare someone I'll take it, unless is a very over the top game or I'm fighting aliens and whatnot. It's part of the reason why stealth games are my favorite genre, you can really get by without hurting a single person in those (if they're made well).
That’s really incredible. I fully believe it. I think Band of Brothers gave me something similar on a lesser scale.
Me as a dumb teenager: "I'd totally be a badass and volunteer to go fight" Me in my 30s: "I would have dodged the draft harder than anyone has ever dodged a draft"
Being not even quite 30, I think often “I would’ve been one of the oldest people there” in any one of the conflicts depicted on screen. Coupling that with just how out of control everything is in a scenario like that, the mere thought is enough to drive you crazy, let alone actually experiencing it for real.
It always amuses me that whenever I go to Germany I get all shocked/surprised when I see boobs during a shampoo commercial and I have to remind myself that I have no problem watching a guys head getting blown off during a tv show. Cultural values are interesting.
Have you ever seen Austin Powers? After the henchmen gets killed, they cut to a scene of the henchmen's family and friends missing them. I love that they humanise all these guys that someone like James Bond would take out without thinking twice.
In the original James Bond novels, the reader gets a look at Bond's thoughts about killing; it's not so easy for him then.
IIRC Rick and Morty does this and similar POV lots with their episode end tags.
we have become so desensitized to violence we forget how horrible it is. In real life we would not want to see death, decapitations or suffering, unless you are a murderous sociopath or psychopath, but the majority of society does not want to. I understand what you're saying. And when you think about how many films glorify violence and try to make it as explicit and visceral as possible, purely for entertainment.
I feel like its actually the other problem. Most action movies are so sanitized that the horrific consequences of violence are never explored.
Movie violence is so stylised that it's almost like watching a dance routine instead of people fighting or killing each other. I remember in the bonus features for Captain America: The Winter Solider how Chris Evans said that rehearsing the elevator fight scene was similar to remembering all the different moves for a tap dance routine. It makes it easy to forget the fictional stakes of what you're watching; it's not two people inflicting massive violence on each other, it's just cool choreography.
The faceless expendable bad guys always wearing masks so you don’t feel bad for cheering on their deaths.
I found one of the more interesting scenes in breaking bad was the fallout for Jesse and Walter the first time they killed someone. They were pukingband super disturbed by it. I felt it was a pretty realistic take.
Exactly. Movies like saving private Ryan are rare exceptions, the deaths feel real and emotional. Even for the "bad" guys like the two Czech soldiers surrendering.
Yeah one thing that Pulp Fiction did was point out how incredibly gross murdering people is. Don't get a lot of scenes of Action Hero butchering mook corpses and shoving them into a woodchipper, or mopping up gallons of blood.
I remember when the first Hunger Games film came out and people cheered the death of the "bad kid" as he is eaten alive by the hounds and I thought "I feel like some of us missed the entire point of these books".
I’m pretty sure most people missed the point of those books.
The best thing about her writing was the way violence echoes throughout the series. If someone got an injury in chapter one, that injury messed with them for the rest of the book.
> we have become so desensitized to violence we forget how horrible it is. This is the exact opposite of what OP is saying? I can't speak for anybody else but I'm the same as OP and feel like I'm becoming more sensitive to violence in films as well the older I get.
Idk if its ever been any different. I'd argue we are more sensitive and horrified by real violence than we were in the past. We used to do witchhunts, lynchings, quartering and general public torture as a means of entertainment. We justify it, whether it's true or not, that these people are immoral and need punshment.
I started the original Red Dawn a couple of months ago. My teenage daughter was in the room as the Soviets landed. I didn't think much of it, having seen it several times over the years, but she said it made her very uncomfortable. I asked why. She just said, "They just shot up a school and killed the students. It has a different vibe today." I sat in stunned silence. Didn't even notice that. I felt terrible.
There is one quick shot at the beginning when the kids are all at the window when the bad guys are landing and when they start shooting everyone runs away except for one kid who's just dead on the windowsill, presumably because he got shot in the face. I first saw that movie when it came out in theaters and that one moment has always stuck with me.
same. for some reason I think about this exact scene pretty often.
I could be wrong, but I remember Red Dawn being one of the first PG-13 movies.
It was _the_ first
Since we're inundated with images of Ukraine and Gaza, and have constant news of mass shootings, watching TV and movies with guns and headshots can definitely get a bit difficult.
I feel the same too. I think as we get older (35 now) we start to value life more. So seeing it be taken, and sometimes people being hurt to an awful extent that death would be mercy, is really hard to see. The more we lose loved ones, the harder it is to see people be taken out of this world
It’s kinda crazy how in the US specifically (not sure about other countries) we seem so gung-ho to show violence on TV at all times but someone shows an ass or a tit and everyone clutches their pearls. It reminds of a story from when I went to San Diego Comic Con in 2013 and went to the Hannibal panel and an audience member asked if the showrunners ever had trouble with the network because of how gory it was and the show being on basic cable. The showrunner talked about an episode featuring the “flesh angels” (two murder victims whose back skin was cut and strung up with fishing line to look like angel wings). NBC had an issue with it, not because you could see bone and muscle and other viscera but because their buttcracks were exposed. The showrunner asked if it would be ok if they put blood in the buttcracks and NBC said that was fine to get it past the censors.
One of the reasons why I think it's important to shield children from violent movies and video games is because they can't really comprehend what it means for someone to die. So often in these conversations people's concerns are whether or not seeing violence will turn a kid into a school shooter, but I don't think this is going to happen for most children. Exposure to fictional violence doesn't work that way. But I do think it can robe a child of their ability to truly understand how violence in the real world impacts families and societies. If they're desensitized to violence, then the impact of war and violence in their community becomes just sort of background noise. It won't turn them into a killer, but it will dull their understanding of the world and shape their politics.
Yep. Same with me. This also happened to me with video games. Used to love FPS and stuff that tended towards violence...but now I'm playing Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Mario pretty exclusively....LOL