Terminator Is Out There

Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I don't mean desensitised to real violence, more that my expectation for action films is a body count running into double figures at bare minimum.
 
Murphy

Murphy

cat malogen
Corpsey said:
I don't mean desensitised to real violence, more that my expectation for action films is a body count running into double figures at bare minimum.
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The 80’s were that stage where body count went in a funny direction. Eg previous spaghetti westerns had tons of deaths, but that generic gunshot sample sound catalogue and the theatricality of falling out of windows onto straw bedding made their action sequences seem less real. The films maintained a sense of tension though. You don’t find that tension in films like Terminator. You know the endings miles ahead.

There’s more ambiguity in a spaghetti western and plenty of other creative works, even though we know Clint will never die. If Clint checks out irl over the next few days I fully apologise.

First Blood is a threshold film in this regard, America still trying to exorcise Vietnam from its collective consciousness, see Red Legs from the Outlaw Josey Wales in this scene too

 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
It's presumably all coeval. Dopamine hits coming thicker and faster. I seem to remember Reynolds arguing that rave music was part of a continuum with arcades, ultraviolet movies, extreme sports etc.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Corpsey said:
It's presumably all coeval. Dopamine hits coming thicker and faster. I seem to remember Reynolds arguing that rave music was part of a continuum with arcades, ultraviolet movies, extreme sports etc.
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Definitely a logic of escalation/desensitisation there
 
version

version

Well-known member
The fourth one, just called Rambo, is absolutely insane. He rips a man's throat out with his bare hands and fires a mounted machine gun through the two guys sat in the front of the jeep. Apparently he was originally gonna rip the gun off and just walk around with it, but the studio thought it was too silly, even though Stallone could actually carry it irl.

 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
WashYourHands said:
The 80’s were that stage where body count went in a funny direction. Eg previous spaghetti westerns had tons of deaths, but that generic gunshot sample sound catalogue and the theatricality of falling out of windows onto straw bedding made their action sequences seem less real. The films maintained a sense of tension though. You don’t find that tension in films like Terminator. You know the endings miles ahead.

There’s more ambiguity in a spaghetti western and plenty of other creative works, even though we know Clint will never die. If Clint checks out irl over the next few days I fully apologise.

First Blood is a threshold film in this regard, America still trying to exorcise Vietnam from its collective consciousness, see Red Legs from the Outlaw Josey Wales in this scene too

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Isn't he a ghost in High Plains Drifter? Also something you'd never see now in that he rapes a woman and we're supposed to just go "Oh well, she was a bitch anyway, got her punishment".
 
version

version

Well-known member
IdleRich said:
Isn't he a ghost in High Plains Drifter? Also something you'd never see now in that he rapes a woman and we're supposed to just go "Oh well, she was a bitch anyway, got her punishment".
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Yeah, that scene's strange. She tries to shoot him later, iirc, and he just goes under the water in the bath and it doesn't do anything. I think Pale Rider has a similar plot re: the ghost thing too, but I haven't seen that one.
 
version

version

Well-known member
Just watch the fourth one then, Luke. He's a snake handler in Thailand and he just chops and shoots his way through Burmese guerillas with a machete, a bow and arrow and that massive machine gun.

giphy.gif
 
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