Escape to the Movies: The Purge

[Lonewolfm16]

I always thought the idea was interesting... but stupid. Most people are good and moral, I sincerely doubt the average person would want to commit murder or rape. And besides the average citizen would likely be stocked up on guns and paranoid enough to use them for anything. So trying to rob someone on this day will go... poorly. Basically it would be a day of paranoia where everyone stays home and holds weapons for twelve hours and then nothing much happens. Though perhaps it would be a good day for anyone committing crimes like smuggling.

 

[Farther than stars]

The most important thing that I took away from this is that I now know what MovieBob's favourite movie is. I agree that this is an interesting premise though. Really, this is what all horror stories need: the ticking time bomb idea, where the necessity of holding off the horror is as tense as the horror itself. But by the sounds of it this film is the perfect antithesis of 'Cabin in the Woods'.

 

[Farther than stars]

Its a sad state of affairs that I can't even fault you for being that pessimistic really. Still, I think you're the only person I've seen this year who isn't hype for Pacific Rim

Is that the one about the giant robots fighting monsters from under the sea? The one that looks like Evangelion, but with a burly, hard-boiled soldier for a protagonist instead of a wanker kid? Yeah, that's what I want to see, a live-action anime in which one set of cliche characters are replaced with a completely different set of cliche characters.

Are you implying that because you don't want to see it, the film as a whole should not exist for other people to enjoy?

 

[saruman31]

At least it has Cersei in it.

 

[Baresark]

This movies premise is... don't even get me started. It's annoying because people seem to actually buy it as an idea that the real world would benefit from or at very least is a good plot idea that could be interesting. But in order for this premise to be anything but a weird twist idea that would have no real world application (and by extension buy into some sort of realism factor), they need to literally dehumanize every single person in the movie. It goes against humanities cooperative and altruistic nature. I'm not saying that no one would participate, but I'm saying that the only people who would are the people who should probably be locked up, institutionalize, or put to death. It also works under the rather broad assumption that we are all naturally murders who need to be kept in check and being let go to do our ill deeds for 12 hours a year will get it out of our system. I also find the statement rather amusing that the rich take advantage of the poor in this scenario.... as the poor usually vastly out number the rich, it would make more sense if the people who literally have nothing hunt down rich people and kill them or at least steal everything they have. But it's spun almost in reverse fashion.

After reading what I wrote... I guess I object to the premise because of it defies the very nature of people... and idiots will look at this and think it's a statement on what people are as if it speaks some sort of truth. The media loves to portray the average person as a horrible deviant with the need of law enforcement to keep us all in check. It shows a rather horrible understanding of people and humanity as a whole by the creators of this movie. I guess I thought it looked like shit because I don't like to watch movies where apes throttle each other for joy, which is what this is... apes throttling each other for joy.

 

[Mangod]

Sooo... the gist of this review is "Watch 'Assault on Precinct 13' instead".

Captcha: tea, earl gray, hot. Why, yes, I'll have some tea.

 

[gjkbgt]

going to disagree about your assertion that the Purge would hurt the poor the most
What i think is more likely is that every year all the poor people would go walk get weapons walk to the rich part of town steal all there stuff take it home.
rich people just buy more stuff poor people now all have big ass plasma screens.

I think the real crime that people will commit will be rape. not just on normal people but on celebrities i mean i bet perverts would annually be queueing around the bock to get a piece of Anna Hathaway or Katy Perry or whoever.
Also pedos would go mad.

So yeah not so fun

 

[Ken_J]

On a more even hand of wasted ideas for this premise. The Wealth family is under attack by the poor people created by that unchecked capitalism and the sub-textually the whole thing is seen as sickly justifiable.

In all honesty making up the wasted ideas is probable more entertaining than the movie itself.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

The premise of this movie sounds creepy as fuck. Too bad they completely wasted it. Though I do love listening to Bob rip a movie to shreds and talk about what it should have done

More hating on Mitt Romney. I don't even like the guy, so why do I feel the need to jump in on people bashing him? I'm just a weirdo like that, I guess.
Anyway, still a good review. I already wasn't going to see this movie, but at least now I know exactly what's wrong with it. Oh and hey, another Robocop fan! Yay!

I think he was just in the lime light too much and we heard a lot his opinions and he just came to represent oblivious wealthy people. I agree with ya. I don't like him but its not personal

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

I wonder if the Purge would have been better as a tv series in which all the episodes focus on the sane day but from the wealth of different premises possible with the idea of one law free day. In such a series I also think it would be good to show the days leading up to the purge, to see how people prepare (besides the obvious) and the days immediately following to see how people move on from this day each year.

Edit - I was thinking about Bob's comment regarding smaller stores and it made me think that in the world of this movie there might be am additional Black Friday style holiday. The less stock a store has on the day of the purge the less it has to defend and the less it stands to lose. So I can imagine stores, especially the smaller ones who can't afford the security would be inclined to offer discounts on their stock the day before the purge so that they can make some money off of the stock that they risk losing and losing money on if it remains in the store for the dreaded day. In my mind the store owners and customers would take to informally calling this day "Binge Day"

Such a rich premise, such a shame to hear that it wasn't mined properly.

I think it can go further than the binge day thing. People contemplating their morality, riots and revolutions going on, the change in sciencedue to the incusion of forbidden research. The purge is the type of change to society that can reveal so much about humanity and it's society but it was instead used as a cheap setup.

what a disappointment. Moviegoers are dumber in the waste of such potential.

Oh I have no doubt that it could go further than binge day.

Now, how many bad sequels do you think they will try to make?

Hopefully not many because I want people from Cronenburg to Miike to work on the horrifying part of the purge: the scientific research that could be done behind doors would allow for some good body horror and Miike is excellent with brutal fights and murders.

 

[vid87]

Admittedly the "class warfare" outcome should've been more obvious to me, but, while I was legitimately interested in how this would play out, I was still trying to reconcile the paradox I felt was in the premise: "Let's devise a way to make everyone less interested in killing people. How? By letting everyone kill people!"

Agreed that the "banned research" angle would've been great, if nothing else than to act as a Chekhov's Gun that turns the climax into a Godzilla rampage.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

The overall idea of The Purge sounds absolutely terrifying. Too bad they mishandled it.

 

[Nuxxy]

Way too many people commenting on the validity of the premise. It's a premise! A set up, a stated, an assumed. Whether or not a government like that would ever exist is irrelevant to the exposition. And that's what Bob is complaining about. The premise isn't something that comes around too often. There are a myriad of interesting and complex insights about human nature that could be delved into with the premise, and of them all, they chose "what happens when a suburban family is attacked by deranged killers?" The ridiculous thing is that it practically ignores the premise completely. The same story could be told word for word about a security paranoid father and his family without a government sanctioned "Purge".

At the least you would want something that focuses on the moral quandary of the ethics involved: the government says "anything goes", but how do individuals react to that freedom within the framework of their internal moral code? Is the 'law' that governs us internal or external? Especially if you want to examine rich vs. poor. Have a poor black man and a rich white man get trapped together to provide a juxtaposition. Does the rich man's higher education lead him to be more humane, is he used to always getting what he wants? Does the poor man's knowing what it's like to suffer prompt him to defend someone else, or has it calloused his empathy? Heck, The Avengers did it better with a few lines of dialog and it was an action movie with the premise being alien invasion.

It's things like this that make me want to try my hand at writing a novel. If they can go through the arduous process of bringing a movie like this to screen...

 

[Jacco]

Everyone says that this is such a good premise for a movie and whatever but it's just not. It's asinine and stupid and reeks of being an adult version of the Hunger Games. That the movie turns out as bad as Bob says is not surprising to me at all, nor should it be to anyone else.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

While I'm going to assume that the answer is "no" I'm gonna go ahead and ask anyway because it's been bugging the hell out of me since I first saw the previews for The Purge.

Is there anything close to a rational reason given as to why someone would pay, what is clearly a prohibitively large sum of money for a security system that is really only useful for an annual 12 hours when it would probably be significantly cheaper to...I dunno...use a small fraction of that money to take a day trip to Canada?

 

[RJ Dalton]

Its a sad state of affairs that I can't even fault you for being that pessimistic really. Still, I think you're the only person I've seen this year who isn't hype for Pacific Rim

Is that the one about the giant robots fighting monsters from under the sea? The one that looks like Evangelion, but with a burly, hard-boiled soldier for a protagonist instead of a wanker kid? Yeah, that's what I want to see, a live-action anime in which one set of cliche characters are replaced with a completely different set of cliche characters.

Are you implying that because you don't want to see it, the film as a whole should not exist for other people to enjoy?

After careful consideration, I have decided that, no, this is not what I'm implying. Nothing, in fact, is being *implied* at all. What is being *expressed* is well-earned cynicism about the film industry and its output. It's all quite out in the open, you'll notice.

 

[KeikakuKat]

The premise of this movie sounds creepy as fuck. Too bad they completely wasted it. Though I do love listening to Bob rip a movie to shreds and talk about what it should have done

More hating on Mitt Romney. I don't even like the guy, so why do I feel the need to jump in on people bashing him? I'm just a weirdo like that, I guess.
Anyway, still a good review. I already wasn't going to see this movie, but at least now I know exactly what's wrong with it. Oh and hey, another Robocop fan! Yay!

I think he was just in the lime light too much and we heard a lot his opinions and he just came to represent oblivious wealthy people. I agree with ya. I don't like him but its not personal

Thanks for being so polite. I was totally expecting to get flamed.

 

[Imperator-Zor]

You guys are talking of "wasted potential".

Seriously.

WHAT POTENTIAL WAS THERE TO WASTE?!

Lets be clear, The entirety of the movie is based around a really fucking STUPID idea. It ignores everything from history to sociology to economics. Leaving aside the people who would get killed or wounded in this situation due to violence (no easy task), it would end in billions of dollars of property damage. Manufacturing equipment, power lines, sewage treatment, infrastructure, vehicles, hospitals, schools. Tools used for economic activity and to support human life and comfort, which need to be replaced. As for money, you know what many people who had the money to do so would do to the US if "The Purge" was put into practice? LEAVE. They would buy tickets to Canada, Australia, the UK, the EU, Israel, South Africa, Japan and get citizenship there and take their money with them. Businesses would do the same as well as well. You know why you see "made in china" on so many things nowadays? Well partially it has to do with the Chinese workforce being willing to settle for lower wages. But many places in Africa often has even lower standards of living than China does. Now why don't big multinationals send as much work to Africa as they do to China? Many reasons, among them being education and infrastructure, but also big on that list is the fact that China is fairly stable and orderly and not wracked with constant fighting. If you own a factory, among the things you don't want to have happen is having it trashed by a bunch of machine gun wielding idiots having a fight. I also would not want to have to pay for the heavily armed rent-a-cops. If the purge happened and I owned a factory, I would pack it up and move it to a place were their was still rule of law. The purge would, in no uncertain terms, leave America bankrupt, impoverished and ravaged by violence and no amount of half assed "it's in our nature to be violent so we have to let it out" nonsense will make up for it.

Human civilization did not create laws for yuks. We have them and decided to (at least nominally and when we fail to do so, it is just that, a failure on the end of the executing individuals, not the principle, and negatively effects people) enforce them uniformly because they are useful tools to have. Honestly, you could make a better case that mandating that everyone wears must wear a T-shirt with a picture of a badger on it with violators being thrown in prison on it would decrease crime rate and improve the economy than saying the purge is a good idea.

Now some of you guys are going to say "willing suspension of disbelief", but no that does not stand up. I can buy that a ship could fly Faster than Light. There might be some secret of quantum physics out their that allows us to get around the Einsteinian speed limit in some manner or other. Radio 200 years ago would have sounded like magic as well. It's best if you don't talk about how your space opera's hyperspace works on a highly technical level about it's mechanical operation because they are in the end talking out of their ass. And despite that, it is usually used to serve the purpose of allowing humanity to operate on an interstellar level and is not an active insult to the intelligence of anyone who thinks logically about it for ten seconds.

Zor