Escape to the Movies: Devil

[Asnone]

Damn, now I want to see this movie just for the toast bit.

 

[Frozen Donkey Wheel2]

I have one word:



WOW.

That sounds worse then Daybreakers, a movie I regard as the most unintentionally hilarious films of all time.

 

[kozmo]

that does sound like a bad movie, thanks for the heads up MovieBob

 

[Quesa]

The Shyamalan contribution to this project: "Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.. in an elevator! With the Devil! Boom, check please, I'm out."

 

[gamegod25]

Who takes buttered toast on an elevator? Is Ed (from Ed, Edd, and Eddy) one of the people trapped in the elevator?

 

[Yankeedoodles]

Really? That thing about Yahweh is interesting. As someone from a largely agnostic family I never really got around to reading the Bible. But the gist I got from pop culture lead me to believe that the New Testament God was the nice one and the Old Testament God was the fire and brimstone "burn for your sins" one.

 

[1337mokro]

Yes Yankee your utterly correct.

Old Testament God didn't say that he loved his children. He told them they should lead good lives or else they would burn in Hell. The Old Testament mentions punishment for sinning not rewards for acts of kindness.


Now on about the movie!

How the fuck can you mess this up! It's the Devil! Arguably the best villain in history!

You could have easily made this a movie about how the Devil is executing a master plan to finally overpower God, his former master before God cast him aside after the Devil refused to prostrate himself before mankind.

This could have been a vengeance-justice thriller, exploring the loop holes in the Bible. Instead we got End of Days with buttered toast on an elevator.

After all even the remote suggestion God is a dick would have Americans everywhere marching the streets.

 

[Aptspire]

Come on, Bob...there were like... 10 different movies that came out in the last 2 weeks and you get us... this???
I am disappoint
but, hey, thanks for telling them that itll suck, i guess
(in other cinema news, Incendies was voted Best Picture at the Toronto Film Festival, and is rumored to, maybe, be nominated at the Academy Awards. I'll check it out tommorow or on Sunday )

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

So it's basically Ten Little ****** Boys Indians in a lift?

Though I do love the idea of Satan being Starscream...though it does raise the question of who is Megatron?

Anyway, Bedevilled (Peter Cook/Dudley Moore version - though the Frasier/Hurley isn't TOO bad) shows Satan as he/she should be. A "Tempter". In the same frame as a gestalt of Michael Atkinson, Sarah Palin and Jeremy Kyle.

 

[Chaos-Spider]

HOOOOOOOOLD ON!

If they're trapped in a lift/elevator, where the hell does the toast even come from?

It came from the same place that a Naked woman would hide a mobile phone...Yeah, they weren't going to eat that toast. And don't even ask what the 'butter' actually was.

On a completely different note, it is nice to know that Spider pig actually exists outside the simpsons movie in the form of Peter porker, the spectacular Spider Ham.

 

[jamesworkshop]

The serpent in the beginning of the Bible isn't the devil, though, certainly not in the original Jewish mythology, or the story as it appears in the Christian Bible.
It is a snake.
It being the devil was tacked on later by the Christians, and indeed the role of Devil has changed a lot when the role of the Jewish/Christian God has.

Anyway, I don't see why Devil if he is evil would want to torment evil souls. Wouldn't he want to reward evil behaviour? His role in Christian mythologies is confusing, and the character seems to exist just so that all the bad stuff can be blamed on him.

Anyways, this movie. I don't see how the "who did it" will work, since the killer is Devil. I mean, how it would make a difference if they knew who it was?

Good point but really why does the devil need to play around he could kill them all in the blink of an eye it should be a 3 second movie

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

Ouch

Bob just cut Devil a new one

 

[Deacon Cole]

The devil has never been used well as a fictional character in my experience. Granted i haven't seen every movie nor read every book, etc. so maybe there's a decent story out there. But the few I've seen, his plans never made any goddamned sense, if the devil had a plan.

The prototypical devil story is the Faustian contract. The devil promises riches, power, what-have-you in exchange for your soul. In order to make the story interesting the devil always twists the fulfilled desire in some nasty way. This was most recently used in the film Bedazzled with Brendan Frasier and that hot chick. This is a stupid story because it doesn't make any sense for the devil to twist the desire. He'd get more souls if it was known he was good for his word. Fuck people over and they'll tell others to not shop there. At the end of the day, it's a morality parable instructing people to not give in to temptation.

The worst devil story, or most disappointing, I had ever read was "Man In the Black Suit" by Stephen King. It started off interesting enough with a young boy going fishing and the devil himself comes out of the woods and starts talking to the kid. There was some tension with the kid recognizing the devil but not wanting to let on because he figured the devil would attack if it knew he knew. But then the devil turned into a multi-fanged monster and tried to eat the boy.

How. Fucking. Boring.

So the devil is 8usually turned into some sort of emphatic deceiver or a run-of-the-mill monster. Neither of these things give any real sense of the pure evil the devil represents.

But the worst devil story I've ever seen was John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness. In that, the devil is a bong water monster. What silliness.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Physics and logic dictaes that toast will always land butter side down, so if I drop a piece and it lands butter side up, I am the Devil?

My head hurts, is this the typical logic in a Shamylilian movie? Are his movies Black Holes that cause logic-defying headaches by proxie? Have I been caught in the mindbending trap of the a terrible movie maker?

I wonder how much it costs to Fund an M. Night Shiamalan film....

Apparently, only your Soul.

 

[Lukyo]

I'm glad someone pointed out that Satan is actually not the Ultimate Source Of All Evil in the Bible.

I'm a little disappointed that no one's pointed out that God's "omnipotence" was largely a RetCon on the part of the New Testament authors. If you assume that Yahweh is LESS powerful than most of the other Elohim (and you keep track of when, in the original book, he was referred to as "Yahweh" and when he was referred to as "Elohim," which is the plural for "god"), then He comes out of the Torah looking resourceful and well-intentioned, and the narrative makes sense. If you assume He's omnipotent, then you run into theodicy problems from day one, and he looks like a petty, hypocritical tyrant.

-Sigh- The argument that God is a tyrant is tiresome an ridiculous. Think about it for a minute. If God is a tyrant that means He raise himself over people which implies that He was once equal to people. What sense does that make? God does what ever He wants when ever He wants to and doesn't wait for anyone's opinion when it comes to rule everything that exists, especially since nothing would exist without Him.

In this review however Bob did a good job explaining who the devil really is, while the movie is just another example of humans giving the Devil too much credit, in a very stupid and poorly made presentation of course.

 

[Android2137]

...Toast? ... What? ... Where are the editors? Why don't they catch bad writing like this?

 

[DominicxD]

Hang on, you're saying the toast didn't land butter side down?

Fuck me I need to see that, this movie must have amazing special effects.

 

[Meggiepants]

I'm glad you spoiled that scene. It saves me from having to watch the movie to laugh at it.

Well, if this movie premiered this week there is at least one thing I can be grateful for. The trailers should stop airing endlessly on t.v. Now, I just have to make it through the Wall Street premier and I think I am good.

I'm telling you, if I have to hear about how greed is legal one more time...