Sunday!
I’ve been meditating on for a while on the whole “revenge thriller” genre. Thinking about some of the oldest revenge stories, we’ve got Gilgamesh (kind of), The Iliad (kind of), Osiris and Isis (kind of), and the basic setup is effectively simple: show us an everyman/everywoman, show a small portion of this person’s life… as a parent, as a spouse maybe. You don’t need to go too deep into this, you can just show them being pleasant and establish how much they love someone in their charge. Then, you take this person in their charge, and kill them. (Okay, you don’t *HAVE* to kill them. There are plenty of awful things that can be done. It’s a nice day though and so we’ll try to keep it to somewhere around “killing” for the sake of this series of random thoughts.)
Built around these old conventions, however, are some interesting little pieces that tie each story to their particular era and can make each one a little time capsule. Death Wish is probably the perfect Revenge Flick example from the 70’s. Such a perfect example, actually, that trying to remember a similar movie from the 80’s gave me trouble and when I started googling for help, the best example of a revenge flick was The Princess Bride, of all things. (Seriously. We didn’t have a more Death Wish than Death Wish movie until the 90’s when we got The Crow which is, itself, a lovely little 90’s time capsule.)
The oughts gave us Man on Fire, Taken, and The Brave One and we’re a little too close to the oughts, if you ask me, to see the little time capsule pieces in those films but, I’m certain, we’ll be able to look back at them and see the various things looming over the story that viewers in the theater when it was released would have ignored the same way that fish are able to ignore water.
Which brings me to 2010’s Edge of Darkness. It’s a Mel Gibson film in which he plays an everyman (police officer variant) who is a fairly decent enough father whose daughter gets murdered in, like, the first five minutes of the movie. It’s like the director was getting all antsy and just said that nobody comes to these for the setup, just for the denouement, so let’s GET TO THE DENOUEMENT ALREADY!!!! After the first five minutes, the denouement takes a little too much time to get rolling (seriously, we could have spent that time with everybody being nice to each other!) but culminates in a lovely little Hamletian finish where the only guy not dead is the person whose job it is to tell everyone that the film is over, go home.
But “More Death Wish than Death Wish” it ain’t. So if you’re hoping for that, you can look forward to the Bruce Willis remake of Death Wish that is currently in the works. I imagine that twitter will play a role.
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
(Featured Image is “Edison’s Telephonoscope” by George du Maurier from Punch Almanack for 1879)
The Revenge plot is a standard one in action and martial arts movies. Like a gazillion of them have a generic revenge plot. It really has never gone out of style and has been common since at least the 70’s before DW. Every other action/martial arts movie in the 80’s and 90’s was a revenge movie. I’m not referring to big budget movies but those are always the smaller percentage of movies produced.Report
It feels different, though. There’s an element of fantasy (and perhaps even fun?) to Bloodsport that isn’t there for, say, Death Wish.
Best of the Best (perhaps the greatest revenge martial arts movie ever made) does not inspire a moral discussion the way that Death Wish does. Death Wish has a lot more fodder for asking something like “what if that happened to me? What would I do?” that those martial arts movies just don’t make you ask.Report
I had been avoiding the Marvel stuff on Netflix because I wasn’t all that impressed with Agents of Shield and Agent Carter but being out of town last week and discovering I could use my Firestick in the hotel room…I tried Jessica Jones and loved it. Finished it up this morning and now I guess I need to watch Daredevil.Report
I find Daredevil somewhat morally appalling but really, really awesome for the whole “just turn your brain off” thing (though you might find yourself tempted to fast forward if Kingpin ain’t in the scene during season one and if Punisher ain’t in the scene during season two).
Warning: they really, really, really, really like their body horror. Eat well outside of your Daredevil watching time.Report
1. If you feel the need to watch a Mel Gibson revenge movie, I say the better bet is Payback. I love the heck out of that movie.
2. I have just started watching The Night Manager. It is freaking awesome.
3. I have had not time for reading lately, but hoping to change that this week. I have James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time cued up and ready to go.
4. In the following week I hope to catch up on some guilty viewing pleasures, including more Night Manager, the new season of GOT, the last-ever episodes of Banshee, a John Oliver or two, the final season of Person of Interest, and tonight’s premiere of Preacher.Report
Wait, what’s this about the final season of Person of Interest?!?!? (Googles)
Holy crap. It’s out already. I thought it was going to be a summer replacement show.
Maribou and I need to catch up on this.Report
Yes, you guys do! I was a little worried that the delay and the final season would mean a drop off in writing and direction, but so far it’s a really strong season.
I am very grateful to the two of you for introducing that show to me.Report
1) Eeeeeeeeeeeee new Person of Interest.
2) it’s been such a week that i can’t even remember most of what i read and watched. I know I watched some of Chelsea Handler’s new talk show on Netflix. So far I am decidedly ambivalent. Oh, and I loved Bill Peet’s autobiography without ANY ambivalence – highly recommended if you have fond memories of his books OR you find illustrators interesting OR you find the early days of Disney interesting. (Or some combo of all three I suppose.) But just a minor heads up that even though it looks like a kid’s book and is as easy to read as a kid’s book, there’s some pretty grown-up stuff in there. Don’t give it to a kid without reading it first yourself.
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