Escape to the Movies: The Purge: Anarchy - Original Idea Done Better

Vivi22

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youji itami said:
A film is only a failure if it doesn't make money that's why films that make money even if critically savaged still get sequels.
A critical flop or failure is a thing. Saying it isn't doesn't change that.
 

JustCallMeJonny

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I'm excited. Purge 2 is pretty much exactly what I wanted Purge 1 to be. Albeit with a little tweaking.

For example, the multiple 'main character' thing is something I really wanted. I would have like have one character/group of "good guys" who are just regular people who have gotten caught in the Purge and are just trying to survive. The other character/group being crazed gun slinging murderers who just want to kill as many people as they can. I imagined their story-lines overlapping at times and the "bad guys" becoming sort of obsessed with killing the other main characters. Going as far as murdering other Purge participants for interfering in their hunt. It all playing out as a messed up game of cat & mouse.
 

Darth_Payn

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Waitwaitwaitwaitwait: Bob LIKES this one? This one's political message is so bang-you-over-the-head obvious, it's insulting to the audience's intelligence. I thought Bob hated that about the last one. I did like calling Frank "Crossbones from CA: Winter Soldier" Grillo's character The Punisher.
InsanityRequiem said:
During your list of what people would more realistically do during a "Purge" type situation, all that came into my mind was being a nuclear terrorist. Create, distribute, and detonate nuclear explosives across a section of the country. Would create a definite dichotomy in how people would react. "Support the Purge? You support thermonuclear terrorism." "Enforce laws during the Purge? It's no longer the Purge." And add in all the international hate from it, the "New Founding Fathers of America" would be in big shit because of it. :D Of course it wouldn't happen.

But yeah, the annoyingly huge marketing showed me that P:A was definitely going to be better than the original. But still... Practically a commercial for P:A every minute. Was annoying.
A couple of nights ago, my brother & I were watching TV, and there were 3 ads for Purge:Anarchy in the same commercial break. I was like, "Jaysus! We get it! That still won't let me forget that the last one was made of arse!" There comes a point in movie advertising where the more they plug it, the less inclined you are to see it. It becomes "See our movie! See our movie! See our mo-" [BANG!]

RA92 said:
TheMemoman said:
I liked Snowpiercer, but I don't get all the love for it. It was predictable, cheesy, cartoonish and it really had no subtlety whatsoever. Look at Tilda Swinton's character in Snowpiercer for subtlety.

It's a cool idea, but other than the feeding kart, the New Year indicator and the school kart, it's pretty much a by the numbers sci-fi B-movie.

I love Snowpiercer because it had a quite a lot of black humour and surrealism mixed into it. Most movies these days tend to play their post-apocalyptic worlds straight, grim and gritty, and I really miss the absurdist worlds portrayed in, say, Terry Gilliam's Brazil or Total Recall.
I regret to say I never heard of Snowpiercer before now. I, too, miss absurd cartoonish versions of future dystopias. This one mixed absurd with gritty in a way that makes the resulting flavor taste worse than either of its ingredients.
 

ewhac

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Really enjoyed the laundry list of crimes at the beginning of the review and -- Lord forgive me -- I laughed out loud at the image used for, "consensual incest."
 

Abyss

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The Purge seems to be a simplified variation of A Clockwork Orange. The similarities are there: a dystopia where gangs with unique costumes/masks being free to roam free and cause chaos by night. A Clockwork Orange (both the book and the film)is a much better satire than The Purge. I'm surprised that Bob didn't see the similarities.
 

LobsterFeng

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But wouldn't people be way too afraid to do anything on that laundry list of crime due to the fact that they can be killed and no one can do anything about it if they step outside?

Also I want to see a dark comedy movie about the janitors and street cleaners that have to do their job the day after the purge.
 

Simonism451

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Abyss said:
The Purge seems to be a simplified variation of A Clockwork Orange. The similarities are there: a dystopia where gangs with unique costumes/masks being free to roam free and cause chaos by night. A Clockwork Orange (both the book and the film)is a much better satire than The Purge. I'm surprised that Bob didn't see the similarities.
Not really, the similarities are either very superficial (evil people dressing up in weird clothes) or so incredibly broad they will apply to quite a lot of movies (breakdown of society). The stuff they are satirizing seems to be mostly different.
 

Steve the Pocket

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I could see them justifying the lack of other crimes by claiming that practically everybody has someone they'd secretly like to kill if they had the means and knew they would get away with it, and anyone who doesn't is too scared for their own life to leave their barricaded homes even if they had free reign to do whatever they pleased. A bit cynical, maybe, but who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
 

tdylan

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LobsterFeng said:
I want to see a dark comedy movie about the janitors and street cleaners that have to do their job the day after the purge.
This concerns me as well, and I wonder if it's touched on in the movie:

To paraphrase Tyler Durden:

"the people you're after are the people you depend on. We take out your trash, we cook your meals...we guard you while you sleep."

If the true point of the Purge is to eliminate all of the poor people from society while the rich prosper, what happens if the rich are successful and they've killed off all of the poor people ie the ones that service their cars, work in their factories, make their clothes, and farm their food? It can be argued that the rich need the poor a lot more than the poor need the rich.
 

Django03

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The plan is to cement the stranglehold of the rich?

That's a terrible plan, if the purge existed you wouldn't be able to move outside for all the looters busy stealing from those rich people.
 

Seracen

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Huh, I wasn't originally planning on seeing the film, but the actor who plays "the Punisher" is a new darkhorse favorite of mine recently (he did well in Cap 2 and Warrior).

I had a decent enough time with Snowpiercer...even if I pretty much called everything before it happened. Dunno that I have any desire to watch it again, however. As such, saying this Anarchy film isn't as good as that doesn't instill a great deal of hope.

It'll be interesting to see how it goes.
 

WarHamster40K

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It's good to hear that this movie is working more with the premise of the original. However, a chunk of the laundry list Bob mentioned in the beginning could be explained by a combination of precedence and time. The first Purge had people who weren't sure if it was "really a thing", so they stuck to petty crimes like blatant littering, recreational drug consumption, mass streaking, and other things for the lulz. When the reports of murders/rapes/embezzlements come in and no one gets punished, the next Purge "gets real". Homes gets better security, people get self-defense/firearms training, and the "poseur" Purgers don't want to risk coming across Purging enthusiasts who're trying to fit their crime wishlist in a 12-hour window ("Graffiti? Seriously? Ugh, amateurs." *chainsaw*). With a few more Purges under their belt, people start taking pride in their "civic duty".

On that note, I like the idea of having different Purge films have different themes. Since the movies are relatively inexpensive and can more easily recoup their investments, it could expand into a multimedia franchise. Have a revenge arc for a YouTube series, political thriller for a podcast, quirky post-Purge cleanup crew as a dark comedy, and save the movies for the gritter/complicated setpiece moments (bank heist, suburban riot, gang warfare). Then again, it'd risk being oversaturated, so it'd be a balancing act.
 

Darknacht

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tdylan said:
If the true point of the Purge is to eliminate all of the poor people from society while the rich prosper, what happens if the rich are successful and they've killed off all of the poor people ie the ones that service their cars, work in their factories, make their clothes, and farm their food? It can be argued that the rich need the poor a lot more than the poor need the rich.
The point is not to wipe out all of the poor people, its mostly to eliminate the undesirables in society like homeless people and people on government support. Its also about keeping the poor occupied with something other than overturning the upper class, while letting the upper class do what ever they want for a day.
 

WarHamster40K

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LobsterFeng said:
But wouldn't people be way too afraid to do anything on that laundry list of crime due to the fact that they can be killed and no one can do anything about it if they step outside?

Also I want to see a dark comedy movie about the janitors and street cleaners that have to do their job the day after the purge.
Curse you and your word economy. Said most of what I wanted to say in half the lines. I bow my head in shame. ;_;

Still, I'd tune in for a cross between "The Purge" and "Men At Work". Heck, it could serve as a storytelling device for an anthology of smaller/quirkier crimes. "Hey Henderson, check it out! This guy still has a shuriken in his head. Remember when that was a thing?" "Ha! That's nothing. You shoulda heard about the schmuck I had last year back on 5th and Main..."
 

Uriel_Hayabusa

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tdylan said:
I think one of the issues is that "the movie we got" was executed in such a way that we didn't need the "Purge" premise. They could have been a family at a remote cabin in the woods, and it would have amounted to nothing more than another check mark on the "yep! Home invasion movie" list. The movie we got gives us a premise like the purge, and then barely does so much as mention sociological/political questions that an event such as the purge raises.
Because the sociological/political questions of the premise weren't relevant to the story that the first movie was trying to tell. In the context of the movie, the purpose of "The Purge" (as in: the event) was to provide an explanation for why the main character didn't just call the cops. No more, no less.

Not every movie needs to (purport to) be insightful, besides: "Rich people are a bunch of meanies!" ain't exactly my idea of biting sociopolitical commentary.
 

DTWolfwood

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The only thing i hated with a passion about The Purge was those dumb as fuck kids. Seriously, everything they did during the movie was trying to get themselves and their parents killed for no god damn reason. Just thinking about it makes me all kinds of angry.
 

TheMemoman

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RA92 said:
I love Snowpiercer because it had a quite a lot of black humour and surrealism mixed into it. Most movies these days tend to play their post-apocalyptic worlds straight, grim and gritty, and I really miss the absurdist worlds portrayed in, say, Terry Gilliam's Brazil or Total Recall.
I love Brazil! Total Recall is also quite fun a setting. You do make a valid point that they did go for a more fun, animated setting of a future. Maybe Snowpiercer is a case of me having my expectations set too high. Because it does look a bit cheap in parts, not purely because of cheap VFX, but because some aspects feel constrained in scope and execution. Maybe I'm being too harsh on the little movie that could.

In that sense it reminded me of Underworld and even Equilibrium, where auteurs have a very stylized vision and narrative, and the challenge to pull it off with very limited resources.
 

tdylan

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Uriel_Hayabusa said:
tdylan said:
I think one of the issues is that "the movie we got" was executed in such a way that we didn't need the "Purge" premise. They could have been a family at a remote cabin in the woods, and it would have amounted to nothing more than another check mark on the "yep! Home invasion movie" list. The movie we got gives us a premise like the purge, and then barely does so much as mention sociological/political questions that an event such as the purge raises.
Because the sociological/political questions of the premise weren't relevant to the story that the first movie was trying to tell. In the context of the movie, the purpose of "The Purge" (as in: the event) was to provide an explanation for why the main character didn't just call the cops. No more, no less.

Not every movie needs to (purport to) be insightful, besides: "Rich people are a bunch of meanies!" ain't exactly my idea of biting sociopolitical commentary.
Then you don't need the "intrigue" of an event like "The Purge" to set that up. Have "rich home in the mountains that doesn't get cell service, and the home invaders cut the phone line." Done. You don't need some hackneyed excuse of "nationwide killing spree" for what amounts to "this is why they don't call the cops." That's like using dynamite to kill an ant. There are plenty of other ways to go about "we're breaking into your home to kill you, and no cops are showing up."

If you go to the trouble of framing the events around the night of the purge, make the purge more than an elaborate "you're on your own because there are no cops" plot contrivance.