You name it, and cinema has pretty much tackled it humorously. Death is funny. Violence is funny. Sex is funny. In the late nineties, some even thought masturbating with pastries was funny. Call me what you will, but I think kids dying in movies is kind of funny and sadly it doesn’t happen all that often.
Why is that? Remember in Pet Semetary when that giant truck smashed that little kid flying the kite? Stupendous! Remember that time you saw Battle Royale?
This weekend, after I got done watching Rapid Fire with Brandon Lee (what an awful piece of crap), I turned to Tartan’s Asia Extreme DVD label to catch up on some Asian horror. I first watched Ji-woon Kim’s A Tale of Two Sisters, which was an interesting yet somewhat perplexing tale of two sisters adapting to life with a stepmother.
Then I watched their recently released film, Cello, which was directed by Woo-cheol Lee. Here is a picture for those curious:
*There may be some spoilage from here on out. So if you want to see this film in the near future, skip this until you do so.
Each of these films, while totally different in theme and tone, were similar in that they both had a kid or two getting knocked off in some horrific way. In one of these films, a girl falls off the ledge of a house to meet with certain doom. Who does that? You read about kids falling off buildings and such all the time in the news. So why shouldn’t we see more often on screen?
*End Spoilage.
Another thing I miss in cinema is the random “innocent victim” – people not involved in the story at all but they still die anyway. Think back to Total Recall… remember that scene at the station where Arnold uses just some random dude as a human shield? Poor guy had nothing to do with anything, and he took more bullets than anyone else in that film, bad guys included. Why doesn’t this happen anymore?
Remember Bad Boys II? There is a car chase sequence on a bridge in that movie where some guys start throwing cars off the back of their truck, only so they can hit the road and bounce everywhere and into everything. Oncoming traffic gets smashed to bits. But what happens afterwards, as the main characters discuss the incident amongst themselves at the police station?
“Thank goodness no cops were killed…” Or something of that nature.
No cops? I find it a little hard to believe that no one was killed in that incident. It’s rated R, why couldn’t Michael Bay go the hole nine? That sequence even had a boat fly out of nowhere and still, no one was hurt.
We need to kill more kids and pedestrians in films. Not because I am some evil wicked man or something. Quite the contrary actually. But I do like things to be as real as possible. When I see Will Smith roll up to a car accident, spraying everything in site with his automatic gun, I want to see innocent members of the community fall out of their cars with holes in their faces. Unless he is shooting invisible bullets or something. Because when this doesn’t happen, my brain takes me out of the picture (not like Bad Boys II is some genius piece of cinema or anything) which then takes me out of the excitement. What’s at stake then if no one in Miami will ever be in harms way? Why will I or any other member of the audience be thrilled?
It’s like I am asking it to happen in real life (though I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished the inevitable on some silly little bastards crying out in the middle of a movie in a dark theater). That’s what makes film so much fun. We get to escape reality for a few hours, so why not up the ante? Please, just do us this one favor.
I loved “A Tale of Two Sisters”. Remember in “Bad Boys” when the villain shoots a man he steals the car from? Hah. Poor f****r.
That was one of my biggest grudges with the new Poseidon. Even if they had the balls to kill the boy off-camera, people still would’ve given them s**t. However, as long as the kid’s around, you know he’s going to be alright, which kills any tension or suspense.
It’s simple: either while you’re writing the script or rolling the camera, I’d appreciate it if you just took the brat out, by any means necessary.