The thing is Avatar, I see nothing wrong with enjoying movies that represent a moral code I don't advocate in real life. The fact of the matter is that liberal ideology usually makes for bad/boring entertainment. There's a reason most of the best action directors in history (John Mctiernan for instance) are conservatives. Similarly, James Cameron movies start getting progressively worse the more he tries to inject liberal ideology into them (though admittedly, this was mostly a one-data-point jump from True Lies/Titanic to Avatar, but with the stuff he's talked about for Avatar 2/3, I don't see things getting better).

For movies that I think are incredibly entertaining, but also morally acceptable, I say look no further than the works of Quentin Tarantino.

I think Inglourious Basterds both humanizes Nazi's as real people far more than Saving Private Ryan, and at the same time is a brilliant meta-critique on why we enjoy violent action propaganda in the first place.

Reservoir Dogs is taking what would be a typical "entertaining" gangster story, and showing what horrible violence those types of stories typically gloss over, how terrifying just a gunshot wound is.

Kill Bill is taking a typical revenge story and grounding the characters in a level of reality inside the revenge universe, to where the story ends up feeling tragic rather than triumphant at the end.

I find a bloody R-rated revenge flick as thrilling as the next dude. All I'm doing is pointing out how weird it is that us liberals get off on this (ostensibly right-wing fantasy) stuff.
It'd be just as weird as finding out that evangelical conservative Christians get their entertainment out of watching Soviet propaganda movies about the evils of the church, after which they'd shrug their shoulders when someone pointed out the irreconciliability between their beliefs and their entertainment, with 'It's just a fictional movie. I wouldn't want to actually live in the USSR'.

Last edited by avatar (2012-10-12 18:34:23)

I still don't see the difference. A trained man with a loaded .45 versus an unarmed man whose hands are cuffed. Same dynamic to me. The unarmed, handcuffed man is just as helpless as any kid.

It's the innocence that makes it an immoral act, not the respective strengths of the participants.

Last edited by avatar (2012-10-12 23:30:18)

So based on this logic, killing an 8 year old is worse than killing a 9 year old, because the 8 year old has more life to lead?

What's "bizarre" about a morality code that says 'killing innocent humans is wrong'?

Agreed. But there isn't a legal system in the world that has as its calculus differing punishments based on how much life is left for the victim. Otherwise you'd have weird scenarios where killing a terminally ill child (who has one year to live) would receive less of a sentence than killing a 70 year old with 10 years left to live. It doesn't work like that.

Nor does it work like Eddie's suggestion - how capable the victim was in defending themselves, so that killing a frail old lady is worse than killing a boxer.

We're close to Philosophy of Law 101 territory - is it the crime itself that's punished, or the consequences of the crime? If a man rapes two women in equally brutal circumstances, and one woman goes on to kill herself due to the shame, and the other goes on to write a bestselling memoir of the encounter and becomes a rich talk-show darling, then should the sentences be equal?

Anyone got a solution to the (fat man) trolley-car problem?

'Cuz it's super creepy to go to get your silver and see that it's gold instead.

It's a movie, that's an awesome device.

My objection isn't with the 2nd Magic Bean as a principle, it's that to me it seems totally pointless for telling this particular story. The moral argument of whether it's ok to kill someone who will do bad in the future does not require giving the kid super-powers. You could make the exact same movie and take out the TK stuff with some minor tweaks here and there. It's a clear case of putting something in that he thought looked cool when it doesn't really serve the story he's telling, just clutters it.

I hadn't thought about it that way....that's interesting.

I guess my question would be why does he have to be a threat NOW? Isn't it a more interesting dilemma if he seems just like a normal, innocent kid right now, but will grow up to be terrible later? I guess you'd more easily side with younger Joe if that was the case, but I'd say a better way to balance it would be to SHOW some of the terrible things this kid's done in the future. Right now the movie makes him dangerous in the present but tells you almost nothing about what he's done in the future, I think it would work better if he was innocent in the present but we saw some of the terrible things he's doing later.

This will be a fun one to re-watch with adjusted expectations.

I was on Old Joe's side the whole time in regards to killing tiny Hitler.

If a future version of me tells me we should bomb Japan, my response is simple "Yes." By all means sir, let's drop that fucker, twice! I don't mean to suggest that you're indecisive, Mr Dorkman. Not at all. Just, uh... complicated. 'course, that's the way DiF wants you. Me, they want simple. . Maybe I'm not normal, but I do carry a note to myself in my wallet. It's there JUST IN CASE I'm ever displaced in time and need to prove to another me that I'm us. Only I know what it says and I've had the note since 1987.

Actually, no, I'm quite decisive. People should not be punished for something they haven't done yet, period.

If you come across Hitler when he's six years old, and the only action you can think to take is to murder him in cold blood, that to me is a frighteningly simple-minded solution. I didn't think LOOPER was a towering piece of intellectual art by any means, but it at least understood that.

Exactly - that'd be a very right-wing conservative position.... just kill 'em. All problems can be solved with a big gun.
If you can go back in time to change the future, then you already have the opportunity to rehabilitate. You're already changing the future by interacting with the kid and hopefully steering him in new directions. As the great liberal sage Sarah Conner said " There's no fate but what we make for ourselves."

I have absolutely no problems with the TK plot and a 'second magic bean'. It was there from the start that some people were special and thought they'd become superheroes. Cid grew up to be a supervillain though and was the one Old Joe told young Joe about in the diner (he took over the crime mobs single-handed) so when El Kid Cid went all Carrie, It didn't take me out of the movie. Besides, I always thought a second magic bean was only really a problem if it came out of nowhere.

I agree 100% on the Old Joe is a bad/desperate guy thing, once he killed that child that was it for him regarding audience sympathy but that was the point. The ending gave us hope that Cid would grow up loved and good so Old Joe's actions regarding child slaughter were pointless but done so out of desperation. Like Eddie said, it was right that we saw Cid s a threat now, it makes the scene of Old Joe killing a child more powerful because we know he is wrong and that Cid is the real future villain.