geldonyetich said:
I dunno, Bob, I think the premise itself was stupid, too. While idea of the purge may be
interesting, it can't happen without opening up massive, movie-wide plot holes. For example:
- 1. The idea that there would be no ramifications for the purge since the government was not going to punish anyone for it. Oh, I'm pretty sure people would be adequately pissed off to make people pay for what transpired anyway.
2. The idea a government can just condone 12 hours of complete anarchy. No, it's more like people start wheeling out the guillotines and, 12 hours later, you have a new government.
3. The idea you can enforce "level 10" government officials are safe and "class 4" weapons are restricted. With what? The social services that are not there during the purge? They would be far too busy dealing with the chaos in the streets for that to happen.
4. The idea that the economy would improve because of the purge. No, the acts we typically call "crimes" cause economic damage, and not because we arrest people for doing them them.
5. The idea that the rich folk treat the purge as an excuse to make poor people their plaything. No, I'm pretty sure the socially disadvantaged would take this as a marvelous opportunity to arm themselves and claw their way up from the bottom as violently as possible, and they're going to be going where the money is, so it's pretty much a complete reversal.
And so on. I don't know what kind of minds thought that how "the purge" would go, but I'm pretty sure they're mostly trust fund kids. Basically, this "purge" concept was only good for an excuse to have a horror movie, and that's what they ended up with. A home invasion for emotional significance because: money.
This is actually a really old idea, with variations being explored through a range of media. This has involved sword and sorcery novels where the laws in a city are suspended for one night out of a year, half the point of which is to show the people's support of their rulership, to dark future novels where specific districts are simply declared
lawless and where people can do whatever they want all the time. The comic series "Bomb Queen" largely revolves around the premise of a super villain becoming so powerful that she pretty much carves out her own little lawless domain in the middle of the US and nobody can do anything about it. In short the idea of "what would happen if all the laws were suspended" is an old one.
To be honest I suppose it hasn't been analyzed in the mainstream very often, but to be honest to really answer all the questions that could be cool about something like this would amount to writing a series of legal documents and a sociological treatise based off of complete fantasy. Most people wouldn't really want to sit down and hear "If we did this, I think this is what would happen" for two hours or more of their life. As a result most things that deal with premises like this tend to focus on particular stories (like we saw with this movie) or a wide view of events based on an ignorant outsider witnessing them, with the important bits being explained as they become relevant to what the characters are experiencing.
At the end of the day one could assume someone setting something like this up for a nation on the level of the USA would of course have limitations placed on it. Of course explaining those limitations would really slow down a movie. For example one would assume that the needs of military discipline would mean that active duty soldiers would not be allowed to participate in the "festivities", as part of the difference between military and social law. They would probably be forbidden to get involved in anything, and would probably be put on high alert for external threats, and forces like the National Guard would be assigned to defend crucial infrastructure points such as power plants, water, etc... and of course with modern surveillance technology you'd think the government would be keeping an eye on people trying to do too much damage.
One also has to remember that people are by definition social animals, and honestly while it's easy to ask what would happen if some real maniac cut loose and decided to say burn down cities while emergency services were out, most people don't have that much of a killer instinct, and also realize they have to live with whatever is left afterwards. What's more if this kind of thing happens regularly, a lot of the real maniacs are going to be the first ones down when everyone wants them dead, which is kind of the point of the entire idea. To be blunt if someone passed a law like this, I'd imagine it would be really nasty the fist few times, but would stabilize afterwards as the real freaks were killed off, and people were increasingly careful about what they did, said, and who they pissed off, knowing that there was going to be 12 hours they would have to answer for it. I mean if someone wants you dead bad enough they are probably going to get you no matter what you do, and some corporate board of directors is going to be less likely to lay off a hundred thousand people to make a few extra bucks if that means there will be that many people willing to do anything to kill them when the time arrives.
That said, I think the thought provoking thing about the system is that it's presented as having worked, and to be honest if done correctly I could see it working out a lot like the movie presents. In the current political climate though it's difficult to do anything but make a horror movie dealing with a small scale incident out of this, because presenting it as a good thing would alienate the 50% of the population on the leftward side of the spectrum to say the least.
See, in my mind if your going to make a shock movie out of something like "The Purge" and focus on the concept the way to do it would be to set it up so it takes place during the very first purge, the idea being new, and of course a lot of things are going to go wrong as it hasn't been thought through yet. Have the movie follow a bunch of buddies getting all psyched up and armed to deal with a bunch of people they believe are causing problems, showing the world as being full of jerks as they do. When they purge starts follow them walking around in a variation of the old "Falling Down" movie murdering a bunch of people (greedy slum lords, local hoodlums, squatters, thieves, junkies, rude businessmen, etc...)that tend to annoy everyone, including a lot of people we saw being jerks at the beginning. Then when the 12 hours are up, fast forward a bit to show the aftermath, and then ironically how what they did left the world a better place for the survivors. Like say "Falling Down" it would be more thought provoking that way, in terms of right and wrong, and
the big picture. That's really the only way you can explore the idea IMO, because if you decide to follow it from the perspective of those being portrayed as victims, the idea goes on the back burner as your too focused on a bunch of sympathetic people trying to survive than on the idea itself.
That said, the review makes it sound pretty much like I'd have expected, I might catch it on Netflix down the road.
