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FilmBuff (6728)
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A Fun Franchise
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Who Else Goes to the Movies a Lot?
What Do You Make Of the Ending? [Spoilers]
Seeing This Today - Preparing Myself for Disappointment
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Has Streaming Made Things Better or Worse?
Fun Movie
The Punchline to the Movie?
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I don't see the film at all this way.
The film doesn't put forth the message that prostitution leads to killing. That's never stated, or even implied. It does, however, clearly imply that when someone of low social standing, such as a prostitute, is wronged, she has no societal safety net the way someone who is looked upon more favorably by society does.
Likewise your interpretation of the message about guns is misguided. Where do you see any such statement in the film? There's never any implication whatsoever that if only the police have guns, the police will be corrupt. Little Bill was already corrupt. When he outlaws guns, he's doing so because of all the bounty hunters showing up.
It sounds to me like you are projecting your own beliefs and causes onto the film, and looking for ways the film refutes them.
I can't pretend to know with certainty what Eastwood was trying to convey with the film, but it certainly seems to me that it's along these lines:
When people outside of mainstream society, such as prostitutes, are harmed, they have little recourse for justice. They have to turn to others who live outside the mainstream, like bounty hunters.
Some people are in denial about who they really are. Little Bill believes he's a good guy, but he's a bully. He pushes people around and humiliates them.
Another phony is English Bob. He lives off an unearned reputation. W.W. Beauchamp, the writer, follows him around, hanging on his very word, until he runs into an even bigger phony in Little Bill, whom he immediately gloms onto.
Munny is also in denial, of a different sort. He believes he's left his evil ways behind him, and for the most part he has, but Ned's death sends him back to who he was, and he's still every bit as effective a killer as he ever was. Unlike Bob and Bill, Munny is the real deal. When Beauchamp tries sucking up to him, he wants no part of it.
The only good guy, or at least close to it, is Ned, who reluctantly accompanies Munny, and harms no one, and he dies. Maybe the message is that the good guy doesn’t always win?
I enjoyed the film, and don't recall the ending being bothersome. Granted, I saw it during its theatrical run so it's been some time, but it didn't come off as preachy to me at the time. I'm a fan of Chevy Chase, and think Fletch is one of his best roles, but I walked away thinking Hamm was an even better fit for the character. I doubt with the state of the film industry nowadays we'll get a sequel, but I'd love to see a string of Fletch films starring Hamm.
If your barometer for a masterpiece is the money a film makes, then you have a very different idea of what a masterpiece is than I do.
If that's the frame that has you worried, you can put your fears to rest. Fury Road, and really most films, included unfinished shots like that in trailers. If anything, your takeaway should be the fact that you see a real actress in a real vehicle, pointing a real weapon. In most films we'd see an actress with all of the above CGI'ed in around her.
The Reddit thread you linked seems to be mostly full of replies saying the trailer looks fine. Predictably, the thread here on Moviechat is mostly people arguing about woke.
What do YOU see in the trailer that looks like badly-done CGI?
Of course I've seen them. What in the trailers looks bad to you? I see a whole lot of actual actors on actual sets, in actual vehicles performing actual stunts. I assume that as in Fury Road, some of the backgrounds and peripheral imagery is computer-generated, but everything you see happening on screen actually happened. You can't say that about nearly any other modern action film.
Also, realize that trailers seldom show the finished product. Just as aspects of Fury Road's trailer looked quite different from the film, presumably so too does some of what we see in the Furiosa trailer.
That said, the Furiosa trailer looks great, and I see nothing jarring, or evidence of any CGI, badly done or otherwise. What exactly are you seeing that the rest of us aren't?
Is there any dialogue in the film, or is it mostly the Sasquatch running around grunting?
Fury Road is one of those films that was mostly overlooked when it was in theaters, then later became revered as a masterpiece. I don't know if Furiosa will follow suit in terms of slowly generating a reputation as a great film, but I do expect it to do poorly in theaters. Hardly anyone goes to see movies anymore, and films like Furiosa aren't the ones that do garner an audience.
We'll have to wait and see if it's woke, but the trailers don't suggest that to me. It looks like Furiosa spends her entire life preparing to avenge her mother, which isn't what a "Mary Sue" is at all, and this looks like something along the lines of Alien, or any other action film where the protagonist happens to be female.
If anything is going to draw people to the see the film, I think it's going to be the effects. In an age where everything is done with green screens and CGI, Fury Road, and now Furiosa, are a refreshing reminder of how great a film can look when the stunts are performed by real humans, and practical effects are used in lieu of digital effects.
Doesn't everything nowadays? People stopped going to the movies after 2019, and nearly every film flops or bombs in terms of dollars earned at the box office. The new norm is that 2 or 3 films each year seem to capture the zeitgeist and become an event film that everyone sees, while the rest languish in streaming.
Movies that are well-received, highly rated, and have great word of mouth still end up going unseen in theaters, as people wait to stream it at home. You referenced The Fall Guy, which is a perfect example. Nearly everyone who has seen it seems to have loved it. 87% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, 7.3 rating on IMDB, A- Cinema Score, but less than $50 million at the box office after 10 days in theaters. Pre-2020 that would be a widely discussed anomaly, but in 2024, it's the norm.
You can list all the made-up reasons you want, and yours seem quite nonsensical, but if this film fails to fill theaters, it's not going to be because Chris Hemsworth is in it, or because Furiosa is the lead character, it's going to be because of the drastic change in audience behavior that has taken place post-Covid.
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