LBTM: Lone Gunmen

I've already discussed acting more than I intended to, but we should note here that Janaya Stephens has two Big Dramatic Scenes in this slice of the movie. The first is with CamCam, the second is with Brad Johnson. The difference is instructive. Scripts matter, but who you're working with matters just as much.

Chloe and CamCam head back to the airport -- a trip that seems particularly uneventful and un-post-Event-ful, particularly in light of CamCam's dire warning ("It's madness out there").

Director Vic Sarin goes back to the well one more time to show us that the loyally mournful abandoned dog on the sidewalk across the street is still there. It's hard to complain that such touches of bathos are overdone here when scenes like that were so utterly absent from the book. Sarin displays more pity for that dog than LaHaye and Jenkins had for any human in their story.

The shot of the dog is a reminder, though, not just that this poor animal still sits neglected, but that its human companion's clothes sit neglected too. Those clothes are evidence. That dog is guarding what ought to be regarded as an active crime scene. Those clothes, quite recently, were wrapped around a human body and that human has disappeared -- possibly abducted, possibly murdered. Law enforcement, or at the very least the person's insurance company, has an interest in determining what exactly happened to them. The fact that this incident is not an isolated case makes this crime scene more, not less, important.

So those clothes shouldn't still be lying there. By this point they ought to have been tagged and bagged and shipped off to some (still fully staffed) lab for analysis.

Ken Ritz is holding court in an airplane hangar, auctioning off his services to the highest bidder. Working actor Neil Crone (the poor man's Richard Karn) plays him with bouyant bonhomie, but he's not quite able to backslap his way past the awful dialogue he's been given.

Here, as in the book, Ritz bears the burden of being the only curious person on the planet in the aftermath of the Event. It falls to him to run through the theories and possible explanations for what has occurred. And here, as in the book, his summary of all of this is dreadfully inadequate.

Both the novel and the movie treat the space alien theory as silly and easily dismissed. This is strange, since it's not actually far off from what they say actually happened. According to L&J themselves, the Event was, in fact, a mass-abduction by an extra-terrestrial power. Their brand of religion is so extravagantly otherworldly that they're not really in a position to mock UFO obsessives.

Ritz's litany of theories is shorter here than in the book, but in both cases it suffers from sounding too, well, theoretical. "My theory's no wackier than some of the stuff floating around out there," he says. But this concern with "wackiness" is out of place in a post-Event world. Wacky is the new reality. The world is upside-down, mystifying, inexplicable and unthinkable. Nothing at this point could strike anyone as too wacky. Any viable theory, actually, would seem to need a wackiness commensurate with the wackiness of actual events. If I were in charge, post-Event, I'd be summoning Chris Carter and the editors of the Fortean Times and the Weekly World News to serve on my blue-ribbon investigation.

We kicked around quite a few alternative theories when we discussed this passage in the novel -- wormhole, timeshift, Langoliers, hostile aliens, friendly aliens, Star Trek V demigod aliens, spontaneous human combustion, spontaneous human reduction ("Honey, I shrunk all the kids"), Hiro Nakamura, Dormammu, LHC mishap, MSG/HFCS mishap, etc. -- and we don't need to rehash all of that, but there's one other theory that, while inadequate, would likely be popular in the world portrayed in this movie: Blame the Jews.

In the real world, this theory is a shamefully popular perennial favorite. And it has the advantage of being popular despite never actually making any sense. Here in the movie, we've already heard refernces to the "global food supply" and to a secret Jewish formula, and that would seem like more than enough to convince those prone to believing such things that Rosenzweig's magic fertilizer was somehow responsible for the disappearances. The idea wouldn't withstand a moment's scrutiny -- many who ate the Israeli wheat didn't disappear, and many who disappeared didn't eat it -- but the popularity of anti-Semitic scapegoating conspiracy theories has never been constrained by the requirements of logic, fact or reason.

I'd explore this idea further but, frankly, trying to follow the recursive loops of anti-Semitic ideologies bound up in Tim LaHaye's brand of premillennial dispensationalism makes my head hurt. (In the Last Days, the enemies of God will be destroyed for trying to destroy Israel, after which God will destroy Israel. Mix in the combination of LaHaye's John Birch Society fantasies and his blanket support for any policy described as "pro-Israel" and you've got enough raw material here for someone's doctoral dissertation -- in theology or in psychology or both.)

Amidst his theorizing, Ritz offers a garbled recitation of Matthew 24:40-41 -- "Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left." Like LaHaye & Jenkins, he fails to notice that this is a good description of the human condition throughout the entire history of this mortal race.

As in the novel, Ritz is the first person in the movie to mention that every young child on earth has disappeared, but only some adults, and he is the first to speculate about what that might mean. He is the first to question whether or not the disappeared are "gone for good" and to wonder aloud whether more disappearances might follow. In both the movie and the book, in other words, Ken Ritz is the one person who asks what everyone ought to be asking, constantly and obsessively, until they find some answers. He is the only person in either version of this story who doesn't seem to have read the back-cover synopsis.

Crone's take on Ken Ritz also makes me realize something else that's missing in both book and movie. The Event would be devastatingly traumatic on a global scale, but despite that -- or maybe because of it -- there would be dozens of tasteless, heartless Event jokes circulating before the first 24 hours had passed. And Ritz is just the kind of guy who would be telling them.

The scene ends with CamCam thoughtfully pondering that, "Maybe the common factor isn't in those who were taken, maybe it's in those who were left behind," after which, sadly, he avoids walking into the propeller.

We cut to Chloe, sniffling quietly, sitting in an empty classroom. Two cheers for Sarin and the scriptwriters here. This scene wasn't in the book but it adds a great deal, making both Chloe and Rayford more human and more sympathetic.

Chloe spends most of her time in the book in her bedroom in some kind of suspended animation. Here though she does what L&J never imagined anyone in their novel would do: She goes out looking for her missing mother and brother. Her search is fruitless and maybe even pointless, but she needed to do something. "I couldn't just sit there," she says, which rings true. In the novel, by contrast, this is exactly what everyone does -- just sit there -- unless and until they convert to RTC-ism.

This scene also shows us Rayford's need to keep in contact with the one member of his family still with him. That's good to see -- a far more human reaction than what we saw in the book, in which Chloe somehow made her way back from Palo Alto on her own without Rayford lifting a finger. The setting -- the desolate school building -- is another nice reminder of the extent and impact of the Event.

The filmmakers might have made more of this scene, but it's such a welcome correction and addition to the novel that it would be churlish to say much more here than kudos for including it.

We see the New York City skyline as the redundant caption "New York" clicks onto the screen. The classroom scene that just ended closed with Rayford finding a drawing of him that Raymie had done. He snatches it off the bulletin board and looks at it with grief and sorrow and the pangs of loss. One feels something like the same thing now looking at that ca. 2000 skyline.

CamCam has arrived safely in New York, thus sparing us several chapters of travel logistics from the novel. CamCam knocks on the door of Dirk Burton's apartment, which has clearly, in movie shorthand, been Ransacked by someone Looking for Something.

Everything about this is wrong.

First of all, what is CamCam doing here at Dirk's apartment? Either he has decided, as a reporter, to completely ignore the Event as insufficiently newsworthy -- and he has thus lied to Chloe when he promised her he would find "answers" in New York -- or else he has made the unsupported leap that the Event must be connected to the things Dirk babbled to him about earlier in the film. If the latter, then CamCam must here be working on the theory that the Event is tied up with Dirk's conspiracy theories involving Israeli missile defense, international bankers and Rosenzweig's formula. It seems, in other words, that CamCam's initial theory in response to the Event really is to Blame the Jews.

I also don't believe that Dirk Burton would live here. It's way too windowed, uncluttered and airy a place with far too few locks on the door. I can't picture Frohike or Byers or Langly living anywhere like this. It's also huge -- nearly the size of the Steele's suburban home. How does a guy like Dirk, a man with no discernible source of income, afford a Manhattan mansion?

CamCam finds Dirk lying dead upstairs from no apparent cause. This is, as we discussed at this point in the novel, inexcusably shoddy work by the grand conspiracy. Two billion people have just disappeared with hundreds of thousands more killed in the aftermath. Yet instead of taking advantage of this chaos to dispose of Burton in a way that wouldn't draw suspicion, they leave his body in a ransacked apartment (bodies, being rare at this point, are screamingly conspicuous) and may as well have left a note saying, "This man was killed because he Knew Too Much. Sincerely, The Conspiracy."

CamCam grabs Dirk's secret wrist-watch decoder ring and then suddenly we see that he is being watched through the windows by a black-clad assassin armed with the standard-issue conspirator's high-tech nightvision-scope rifle.

CamCam sits down at Dirk's computer and ... no, wrong, uh-uh. There is no way that Dirk Burton, professional paranoiac, would have his desk set up like this -- his back to the window, his computer screen in full view of black-clad men with telescopic sights on adjoining rooftops.

Just as Buck begins to examine the e-mail Dirk sent to Alan Tompkins (Scotland Yard, Special Anti-Global Conspiracy Flying Squad), the gunman shoots out the computer's monitor and, for good measure, a flower vase. The gunman then grins a satisfied smile, confident that Buck has been prevented from learning Dirk's dark secrets.

Unless, that is, he can somehow manage to find a replacement monitor for Dirk's hard drive.

It was dark in New York City, but it's light out again as we cut back to the Chicago suburbs. Does this mean another day has passed in our story? Possibly. Possibly not.

Rayford Steele sits in his car outside of New Hope Village Church. Except this is not what New Hope Village Church should look like. The architecture is all wrong. This is an older downtown church, not an exurban evangelical place of worship. NHVC should look like a corporate office park with a stylized steeple -- and it should be surrounded by acres of parking lot, not abutting a busy street full of pedestrians.

The inside is all wrong too. It looks like a church -- not at all like the kind of auditorium constructed according to the principles laid out by church-growth specialists and mega-church consultants for creating a family friendly and seeker-friendly worship space. The front wall is a stained-glass arch, for goodness sake -- where are you supposed to project the PowerPoint slides with the words for the worship choruses?

We'll get back to New Hope Village Church and the final minute of this section of the movie on Friday because Clarence Gilyard Jr. deserves not to be an afterthought here. Gilyard -- aka, Jimmy from Walker, Texas Ranger -- shows us Bruce Barnes' remorse here in a way the book never did. For just a moment, he made me forget I was watching a Very Bad movie based on an Even Worse book.

Comments

[Caroline]

Yay! Obsessively refreshing Slacktavist every ten minutes paid off!

[Michèle my bell-flower]

The inside is all wrong too. It looks like a church -- not at all like the kind of auditorium constructed according to the principles laid out by church-growth specialists and mega-church consultants for creating a family friendly and seeker-friendly worship space. The front wall is a stained-glass arch, for goodness sake -- where are you supposed to project the PowerPoint slides with the words for the worship choruses?

LOL! I was thinking the same thing!!

[Catherine]

I love how CamCam doesn't call the cops when he sees Dirk's body, messes around with everything, leaving his fingerprints in the process.

[VandanaShiva]

"The scene ends with CamCam thoughtfully pondering that, "Maybe the common factor isn't in those who were taken, maybe it's in those who were left behind," after which, sadly, he avoids walking into the propeller.

[...]

I couldn't just sit there," she says, which rings true. In the novel, by contrast, this is exactly what everyone does -- just sit there -- unless and until they convert to RTC-ism."

This is one of the most repugnant aspects of L&J's theology and I think one of the best hallmarks of dangerous ideological movements: the reduction of all outsiders to a faceless sea of sameness and the binding of individuality and inclusion within the circle.

In this instance, it showcases everything that's wrong with their theology - the ignorance, the lack of curiosity, the total absense of empathy - and we get treated to much more if it later in the story (the world's willingness to obey Carpathia's weird religion is particularly striking).

[Catherine]

I wonder if the assassins trying to kill Buck had lost relatives to the Event.

[aunursa]

The shooter wasn't trying to kill Buck. If he had, he would have aimed his first shot at Buck's head instead of at the computer. He was obviously there to scare Buck. Dirk Burton, Alan Tompkins ... they might as well be wearing red Star Trek uniforms, since they're expendable. Buck, however, is a main character, so no assassin will be shooting to kill him unless he's significantly far enough away so as to miss.

[hapax]

God of mercy, the utter Wrongness of the architecture in this clip. You forgot to mention that Raymie was in elementary school -- I doubt very much his school would have lockers like those lining the halls. And any classroom that would have "I want to be a pilot like my Dad" pictures hung on the walls -- well, let's just say that Chloe isn't likely to have fit behind any of the desks.

As for the following scene -- I've lived in New York City, and that not only wasn't Paranoid Dirk's home, that wasn't *anybody's* home -- certainly not in Manhattan (of the skyline) and probably none of the other boroughs. Everything was wrong -- the lighting, the windows, the placement of the stairs... But CamCam's actions were perfectly intelligible. He was simply acting the part of Intrepid Investigative Reporter from another movie (not a *better* movie, mind you, just a different one, of the Daring Lone Hero Against The Shadowy Conspiracy Thriller type), several pages of whose shooting script were inexplicably stapled into the LB package.

And finally, I too kept wondering when the New Hope congregation was established as Lutheran.

[Leum]

The most unrealistic part of this, to me, was CamCam's reaction to Dirk's death: absolutely nothing. No fear, no sorrow, no sense of terror, only a desire to get the information out of Dirk. He isn't of value to CamCam as a person, only as a databank.

Now, if this were portrayed as CamCam's pre-salvation mindset, it might have some value (albeit at the expense of forgetting everything about human nature), but LaHaye and Jenkins, as Fred noted ages ago, don't give their self-inserts flaws ever, and probably don't even realize why having no reaction to the first death in the series (by their definition) is wrong.

[hapax]

The scene ends with CamCam thoughtfully pondering that, "Maybe the common factor isn't in those who were taken, maybe it's in those who were left behind,"

[lolcat] O HAI I SEE WHAT U DID THAR [/lolcat]

after which, sadly, he avoids walking into the propeller.

Perfect one-line review of the entire film.

[Geds]

such touches of bathos are overdone here

Is bathos what we get when they try to drown us in overly melodramatic emotion?

Also, third-ing (or fourth-ing?) the church. That was the very first thing I thought of when I saw it. Which is funny, since the appearance of an RTC church should be the one place we'd expect the Left Behind people to get right. They know nothing of the world at large, fine. But they should know what the church they lock themselves inside of to avoid the evil, sinful masses looks like.

[damnedyankee]

I have a friend's father who wanted to get a new computer, but was rightly terrified of anyone getting his information from the old one when he got rid of it. So he pulled every card from the motherboard, including the RAM, disconnected the processor, and generally did things to the insides of a computer that nobody at his level of awareness of the ways of hardware should even think about doing. Satisfied, he handed the case over to my friend who, knowing that I would want such a thing, offered it to me.

After taking out my Swiss army knife's philips head attachment, removing the hard drive and handing it to my friend, I gladly accepted.

[damnedyankee]

We kicked around quite a few alternative theories when we discussed this passage in the novel -- wormhole, timeshift, Langoliers, hostile aliens, friendly aliens, Star Trek V demigod aliens, spontaneous human combustion, spontaneous human reduction ("Honey, I shrunk all the kids"), Hiro Nakamura, Dormammu, LHC mishap, MSG/HFCS mishap, etc. -- and we don't need to rehash all of that, but there's one other theory that, while inadequate, would likely be popular in the world portrayed in this movie: Blame the Jews.

Maybe Galactus was feeling a little picky that day?

[Reynard]

Just as Buck begins to examine the e-mail Dirk sent to Alan Tompkins (Scotland Yard, Special Anti-Global Conspiracy Flying Squad), the gunman shoots out the computer's monitor(...)

Because *everyone* knows that the only way to destroy a computer is to destroy it's monitor... <⁄sarcasm>

[Jon]

Maybe Galactus was feeling a little picky that day?

Speaking of Galactus, the other day I was watching some show about Jesus on the National Geographic Channel, and they were talking about how the early Christian artists used existing templates for their representations of Jesus. Thus you had Jesus looking rather like Dionysius, for example. They went on to talk about how representations changed over time, making him look more and more Western.
I thought, "Hmm...maybe Jesus is like Galactus; his appearance changes depending on the perspective of the person viewing him. Like how Skrulls see Galactus as looking like a Skrull."
Then I thought about Jesus fighting the Fantastic Four. I didn't stop laughing for a long time.

[Karen]

"Blame the Jews" would be the perfect solution. (We can now add, at least in the West, "Blame the Gays" and "Blame the Feminists," which makes me sorry Andrea Dworkin died, seeing as how she could be the Emmanuel Goldstein for post-Event world.)

Anyway, lots of parts of the world have very few RTC's, like China, the Middle East and India. In those places, the overwhelming majority of the disappeared would be children. These places also happen to be largely poor and governed by some very bad people who would be looking for someone to blame and blame quickly. The Jews would be the perfect solution. The fact that Jews really can't be RTC's, and as a consequence would have suffered just like everyone else in the region would conveniently escape notice. This would have made a very interesting thriller in the hands for a good writer and movie maker.

[Karen]

And finally, in a real thriller, the assassin would shoot BUCK, not the bleeding monitor.

[papa zita]

What makes me shudder is that there really is a poor man's Richard Karn.

[mcc]

I've already discussed acting more than I intended to...

Fred: Actually, I've been enjoying those parts of the last few posts so much I'm rather wishing you'd do it more.

The shooter wasn't trying to kill Buck... He was obviously there to scare Buck. Dirk Burton, Alan Tompkins ... they might as well be wearing red Star Trek uniforms, since they're expendable. Buck, however, is a main character, so no assassin will be shooting to kill him

Actually... when you put it like that, it occurs to me the addition of this weird little sniper scene (there was no scene in the book where Buck actually came face to face with the conspiracy, was there? the movie conspiracy seems marginally more competent) seems to hint at a possible, Right-Behind-grade explanation for a number of the mysteries in the book. Why on earth does the conspiracy cheerfully kill several people, then seemingly go out of their way (surely it's far easier to shoot a man than to shoot a laptop over his shoulder) to avoid killing Buck?

Well, here's one possibility: They need him. They intend to use him later.

And if you adopt this conclusion, then a couple other large mysteries in the book suddenly fix themselves:

Why was the killing of Dirk so bizarrely, overtly conspicuous and poorly hidden?

Why on earth, when Buck goes running to Carpathia, does Carpathia not only call the conspiracy off his back but actually bring him in to work for him even though in doing so he clearly must be brushing aside various doubts that would inevitably arise whenever Carpathia stumbles across the various poorly-concealed evidences that Buck is working for the Tribulation Force?

The answer is simple: The conspirators, seeing Buck has wandered into their orbit, are taking advantage of the opportunity and trying to induct Buck, well-known GNN correspondent, into the conspiracy; his globally recognizable face, working for them, will further their aims in installing Carpathia into power. So: Knowing Buck is coming to see Dirk in New York, they kill him, set out the little tableaux of the wrecked office, then blow up a laptop three inches in front of Buck's face. Not only the shot at the laptop but Dirk's killing in the first place was intended solely and specifically to scare Buck; the instant Buck leaves Dirk's place the whole place will be wiped clean and possibly burned to the ground in a way that makes it look like an Event-related gas accident. The entire scene is just theatre set up in hopes that Buck, now impressed with the awareness that the conspiracy could kill him at any moment, will go running to Carpathia or some other Conspiracy member begging for mercy. They will then lay off their theatrical pressure, and knowing now that they own him "offer" to let him further the rise of the antichrist as a member of Carpathia's compromised press corps, an offer Buck will not be able to refuse.

And... it works. This is exactly what Buck does.

[Dylan]

On the church: yeah, the look of the church strikes me as very traditional and almost-but-not-quite high church... which, as we all know, is A Very Bad Thing in some types of RTCism.

Sadly, it made me realize that I always pictured New Hope Village Church as the Southern Baptist church that I attended in high school. They weren't a big church when I started going there, and the sanctuary wasn't the stereotypical megachurch style although it also wasn't as high church what's shown here. (However, they did really, really, really want to be a megachurch around the time I left, to the point they were trying to start a massive building project.)

(I do realize I'm horribly misusing the term "high church" here, but it's the only way I can think to explain the feel offhand. I'm sure there's better architectural/liturgical terms for it.)

Like LaHaye & Jenkins, he fails to notice that this is a good description of the human condition throughout the entire history of this mortal race.

I'm curious about the interpretation of this verse that Fred's implying. I've always heard it in the context of the Rapture, but obviously that context makes a lot of theological assumptions. Does it necessarily have to be eschatalogical?

Anyway, it doesn't seem like the first place a non-RTC would go when referencing about the Rapture. They'd probably go to the pop-culture understandings first, rather than break out Bible verses. (Sort of like the scene in Ghostbusters when they're talking about the dead rising from their graves.)

[Not Really Here]

Ya know, when I saw the church, the appearance of your basic suburban megachurch didn't even cross my mind, even though I've watched enough TV Preachin' that I know what they look like (office building on the outside, auditorium on the inside).

My first thought was, are RTC's allowed to have churches that pretty?

I've been to a few Fund'ist Protestant churches of the non-mega variety in my day. No stained glass (well, the glass at New Hope wasn't actually stained, but it sure was darn pretty), crosses are frequently absent, and the interior seems almost deliberately drab, even sterile. Fund'ist Protestants seem to regard the physical world with contempt, never mind the fact that when God finished creating it he pronounced it "very good", and it shows in their church architecture and decoration, or lack thereof.

[lsn]

"Blame the Jews" would at least be understandable given that the last act of Divine Intervention that everyone witnessed via television involved saving Israel. I mean, wouldn't you be assuming Israel had developed some kind of powerful super-weapon after watching the various land and air forces being destroyed? (And seriously, I can't be the only cynic here who thought "I wonder if all the debris landed "harmlessly" on Palestinian villages." Or was that incident supposed to be after that part of the Middle East had united in joyous harmony?)

What's to say the weapon didn't go slightly wrongly off and take out all the world's children?

Having said that I think it would depend on where in the world you were as to who you blamed. I agree that most of the Middle East would go straight to the Jews as the source, but I think parts of (for example) Indonesia would be blaming the Chinese (predominantly Christian), the Hindus, the government, Western governments and anyone else they could think of. India would probably blame the Muslims, the Christians, the Jews, the Hindus, the Sikhs, Western governments, their government, aliens etc etc depending on which parts you're talking about.

Basically I could see there being a lot of rioting going on.

[lsn]

How does a guy like Dirk, a man with no discernible source of income, afford a Manhattan mansion?

Well drugs or gun trade springs immediately to mind...

[Abelardus]

Is bathos what we get when they try to drown us in overly melodramatic emotion?

I believe bathos is an attempt at pathos which becomes a source of humor rather than a source of pity. Anybody else want to second that? Other than that, however, I think melodrama can cause bathos.

[Salamanda]

I can't imagine ever liking Ken Ritz in real life, but God love him, he starts off by making fun of both CamCam's career and his hairdo. I can't help but like him for that.

There is no way that Dirk Burton, professional paranoiac, would have his desk set up like this -- his back to the window, his computer screen in full view of black-clad men with telescopic sights on adjoining rooftops.

If for no other reason than the huge frickin' glare from the window behind him would render him incapable of seeing his screen during the day. Or maybe that's just one of my own pet peeves talking.

You forgot to mention that Raymie was in elementary school -- I doubt very much his school would have lockers like those lining the halls.

To be fair, Bill Watterson made that mistake, too. Calvin was six, but I seem to recall him hiding in his locker to change into Stupendous Man.

[aunursa]

Karen: We can now add, at least in the West, "Blame the Gays" and "Blame the Feminists,"

As opposed to, say, in the Middle East and the Far East -- where women and gays are accepted as equals and enjoy freedom from physical threat and discrimination?

/sarc

[mcc]

Wikipedia:

Bathos is from the Greek βάθος, meaning depth. As used in English it originally referred to a particular type of bad poetry, but it is now used more broadly to cover any ridiculous artwork or performance. More strictly speaking, bathos is unintended humor caused by an incongruous combination of high and low...

the term was introduced by Alexander Pope in his essay Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry (1727)... Pope's work is a parody in prose of Longinus' Peri Hupsous (On the Sublime)... [I imagine this means "Peri Bathous" is correctly translated as "On the Depths"?] Whereas Boileau had offered a detailed discussion of all the ways in which poetry could ascend or be "awe-inspiring," Pope offers a lengthy schematic of the ways in which authors might "sink" in poetry... Although Pope's manual of bad verse offers numerous methods for writing poorly, of all these ways to "sink," the method that is most remembered now is the act of combining very serious matters with very trivial ones.

[Not Really Here]

Oh, and bathos is a literary term. The cinematic term would be narm.

At long last, I've found an excuse to link to TV Tropes. Calloo, callay!!!

[Abelardus]

Thanks, mcc.

Oh, and did anyone else notice Dirk's pet mouse? Poor thing.

[DragonessEclectic]

I believe that's actually an old Catholic church they shot the scene in. Check the view of the church at 7:51 or so... I believe those "placards" along the wall between the windows are Stations of the Cross, a feature peculiar to Catholic churches, as far as I know. Unfortunately, they don't show us the entrance area of the church, so I couldn't look for another peculiarly Catholic architectural feature: the Confessional booth.

[Jake]

For just a moment, he made me forget I was watching a Very Bad movie based on an Even Worse book.

Really? For serious? I thought this was the worst part in the worst clip so far. Just awful. He hams and awkwardly bangs his fist, showing no real emotion, remorse least of all. His talking to himself/God phrasing is self-conscious and weird, more like a man pretending to be talking to himself when he knows he has an audience. Absolutely nothing about that scene worked for me. It was like the crowning jewel on the foundation laid by the Dirk's apartment scene.

[JayH]

We see the New York City skyline as the redundant caption "New York" clicks onto the screen.

I bet there's a large chunk of the intended audience of this film who don't know the NTC skyline by sight.

[borealys]

You forgot to mention that Raymie was in elementary school -- I doubt very much his school would have lockers like those lining the halls. And any classroom that would have "I want to be a pilot like my Dad" pictures hung on the walls -- well, let's just say that Chloe isn't likely to have fit behind any of the desks.

Depends on the age range of the school, which can vary from place to place. My elementary school had lockers like those in three out of four hallways. The school was a 1-8, and we had full-size lockers starting in grade four.

What jumped out at me as absurd was the "I want to be a pilot like my Dad" picture. I get that we're supposed to get all choked up by this shoving in Rayford's face of just how much his son idolized him, and how terribly, terribly unworthy he was, blahdy blahdy blah, but ... well, how old exactly is Raymie supposed to be? Because I don't recall ever doing pictures like that beyond the first grade.

[JayH previewed and everything!]

Er, crap. NYC.

[Combat Queer]

Why would Buck have $25,000 in cash on his person?

[Jake]

Oh and about the architecture of the church, I don't know what it's like in Chicago, but in Montreal a lot of old Catholic and Anglican churches with dwindling congregations rent out their worship spaces (don't know what they're called, the room with the pews and the altar and stuff) to RTC-type and other congregations for the income. The signs outside read "St. George's service Sun 9-11, Word of God service Sun 12-3."

[Combat Queer]

Dylan, in the Episcopal Church, instead of "high church" we say "smells and bells."

I wonder if we would enjoy it as much as we do without all the port.

[JayH is poisoning pigeons in the park]

Isn writes: I agree that most of the Middle East would go straight to the Jews as the source, but I think parts of (for example) Indonesia would be blaming the Chinese (predominantly Christian), the Hindus, the government, Western governments and anyone else they could think of. India would probably blame the Muslims, the Christians, the Jews, the Hindus, the Sikhs, Western governments, their government, aliens etc etc depending on which parts you're talking about.

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Moslems
Aaaaand everybody hates the Jews!

[hapax]

Why would Buck have $25,000 in cash on his person?

I was going with the assumption that he was going stiff Laughin' Boy Kenny as soon as the rest of the bidders went away.

Sort of like leaving poor Hattie with the cabfare in the book.

[Brad]

How does a guy like Dirk, a man with no discernible source of income, afford a Manhattan mansion?

Monica sublets it from her grandmother.

[Geds]

Oh, and bathos is a literary term.

Damn. And here I thought it was a typo...

Why would Buck have $25,000 in cash on his person?

Also, what dumbass offers four grand to get a flight from Chicago to Des Moines, Iowa? I drove from Chicago to Kansas City and back in September. You know where I stopped for gas each way? Des Moines. It's like three hundred miles straight down I-80 and if you're driving a 2004 Chevy Cavalier that's in decent shape you might be able to get 35 miles to the gallon (which I did. Best gas mileage I've ever gotten on a single tank). Even at four bucks a gallon that's, like, $33.

[Karen]

aunursa, I didn't specify it in my comment, which was silly, but I was thinking that in the Middle East or Indonesia the bloody-minded would simply lump gays and feminists into a broad category of "Western" which in their minds would be another word for "The Jews."

And good point about how the Israel Has A Superweapon would play after the Event. The Jews have the key to food and a superweapon that destroys planes, bombs, and missiles. Naturally the next step is to make all the world's children disappear. Sadly, many people would not see that as the obvious non-sequitur it is.

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Moslems
Aaaaand everybody hates the Jews!

And, now I have Tom Lehrer stuck in my head. Oh the White folks hate the Black folks, and the Black folks hate the White folks, to hate all but the right folks is an old established rule!

[KnightHawk]

"The scene ends with CamCam thoughtfully pondering that, "Maybe the common factor isn't in those who were taken, maybe it's in those who were left behind," after which, sadly, he avoids walking into the propeller."

Okay, I haven't had time to read the comments yet, but I have to say that I made the mistake of taking a drink of my soda before reading that line. There is now soda on my screen. Thanks Fred ^_^

Love. Peace. Metallica.

[Robb]

That church is Anglican - Can'tadian Anglican or I'm a large rodent. The flamingly high-church-esque-but-definitely-NOT-cathedral archetechture, the hymn numbers/readings (that's what I'd bet the numbers on the wall are), the semi-ornate pews, etc. What's weird to me is that they didn't have a supervising producer with a more specific vision of what a church should look like. Someone on the production team said to a location manager and/or camera person: "Go find a church, a pretty one, that's got good natural light". I haven't spent too much time in Southern Ontario (where most of the movie was shot), but I happen to know for a fact there are a great number of mini-mega-church structures around there. And given the popularity and subject material of these books, it's even odder that not one of them found out what was going on & jumped at the chance to say "Film in our church for free publicity!"

What happened was likely that someone on the production crew thought "This place looks/feels/smells like church", and enough people at the time of the shoot agreed (or were ignorant of church differentiation to not disagree). That it's the wrong kind of church for RTCs is a clear indication that there were a number of at least vaguely Christian-esque folk on the movie, just none of L&J or CamCam's sort.

*****

The shooter wasn't trying to kill Buck.

Yes, but. . . WHY?!?!? There isn't even a shred of explanation on that point anywhere in the movie. Yes, we know he's a main character & can't die until Jesus kills him personally the Second Third Coming, but there's no attempt to explain this within the narrative of the film. It's TERRIBLE! IT'S HORRIBLE! IT MAKES NO SENSE! IT'S THE WORST...

*takes several deep breaths*

I know that there's several titanic failures of logic and continuity, and I shouldn't expect to have anything reconcile, but I can't help looking for explanations when I evaluate how a story flows, in book or film. This movie, despite being an order of magnitude better than the book in that respect, is still jarringly awful.

[keri]

What gets me about the shooting scene isn't the layout or anything, but the music. I clicked forward on the navbarthingum to about 6:55 and oh my goodness the soundtrack was straight out of a Looney Tunes adventure. I haven't been watching the clips straight through because I have no patience, but is this something I've been missing all along? It's hilarious!

Also, count me in with dylan in picturing NHVC as, well, not a megachurch or a fancy church. More like this, maybe - an intentionally nostalgia style building on the outside, with paneled wall partitions and flickering flourescent lights and browning linoleum on the inside.

I'm maybe influenced by the "Village" part of the name as well as a few similar type churches I've been to for the weddings and christenings of family members out in the boonies.

[thebewilderness]

I think the church was made to look the way People who go to mega churches think that non churchgoers think that churches look.
One of the strangest things about both the book and the movie is the constant message that yes, yes, these people, L&J, weird actor guy, the saved, think the unsaved behave exactly like this, yes they do.

[Sylocat]

Wouldn't Peter Petrelli be a more viable suspect than Hiro?

Culture aside (I just wish I wasn't the only person on Earth who still liked Heroes, but moving on), the entire movie doesn't contain as many Wall Bangers as every single chapter of the book, but why didn't they just pull the standard "The hero drops a pencil and leans down to pick it up just as the sniper fires at his head" cliché? It would have made loads more sense.

Ah well...

@keri: What gets me about the shooting scene isn't the layout or anything, but the music. I clicked forward on the navbarthingum to about 6:55 and oh my goodness the soundtrack was straight out of a Looney Tunes adventure. I haven't been watching the clips straight through because I have no patience, but is this something I've been missing all along? It's hilarious!

Whoa. While watching that scene, Looney Tunes was EXACTLY what I was thinking of.

[jamoche]

Anyone else notice the gunman's little smile as CamCam duck and covers? Yeah, he did exactly what he'd set out to do.

[Reynard]

Posted by Jake: (...)in Montreal a lot of old Catholic and Anglican churches with dwindling congregations rent out their worship spaces (don't know what they're called, the room with the pews and the altar and stuff)

"Sanctuary!!! Sanctuary!!!"<⁄Quasimodo>

[Cactus Wren]

... well, how old exactly is Raymie supposed to be? Because I don't recall ever doing pictures like that beyond the first grade.

I was wondering that myself. In the book he’s clearly established as being at least twelve years old (there’s a scene where Rayford recalls making out with another woman at a Christmas party twelve years earlier, while Irene stays home, “uncomfortably past her ninth month”). In the film, he looks somewhere between ten and twelve ... but he sleeps with stuffed animals. Multiple stuffed animals.