Dr. Strangelove thinks it’s significant that he can walk, but I as the viewer “know” it’s too late for this to make any difference. He’s toast, whether he can walk or not.
I put quotes around “know” because it had never occurred to me prior to this thread that the people in the war room might still have time to execute their 11th hour mineshaft plan. I felt it was obvious that they all died immediately after Dr. Strangelove announces that he could walk. I still think that’s what the ending of the movie means, but I’ll grant that it is open to interpretation.
Huh. I never interpreted the end of the movie to indicate that all the people in the war room were immediately killed. I assumed that, yes, the doomsday device was set off, but there was still (potentially) time for them to get to their mineshafts. The existential danger of nuclear weapons isn’t the actual blasts, but the fallout in the atmosphere. The danger (for most people) is not in being instantly vaporized, but ending up in an inhospitable world.
If all the bombs going off at the end mean that they are instantly vaporized, then I agree that the whole sequence has dramatic irony. But, if so, the movie seems pretty deeply flawed.
After all, everyone in the room knows about the doomsday device, so for all their mineshaft plans to be useless, that would mean that it doesn’t work the way they think it does? It would seem strange to just… spring that on the audience after we’ve been watching them discuss what will happen for the last hour or so.
I’ve read a lot about this movie, and I’ve never seen a suggestion that they die right then. After all they are in the War Room, which is probably buried fairly deep.
Now the mineshaft plan probably won’t work since the general population might not be thrilled at protecting those who got them into this mess, but that would be later. The original pie fight ending also makes them dying less likely, as does the choice of the Vera Lynn song over the explosions.
I seem to recall a movie in which the last remnants of humanity are escaping a doomed earth in a rocket, and the Leader is in a wheelchair but is wheeled away at the last minute by his attendant, who says something about the future being for the young. He then stands up and watches the spaceship blast off.
It took me a while to find the book (OMNI’s Screen Flights / Screen Fantasies, edited by Danny Peary, 1984). The introduction, by Harlan Ellison, mentions in passing that George Pal’s When Worlds Collide (1951) “was no doubt an influence on Stranglelove”, particularly in that the former includes a crippled industrialist named Stanton, played by John Hoyt, who also rises from his wheelchair in a final futile gesture.
Of course, Ellison was at times a serious jerk, so take it with a grain of salt.
A lot of it is ad libbed. Here is the original scene. At 2:55 you see Peter Bull trying very hard not to laugh. I have seen a clip of the original footage where he is not doing a very good job of it. I think that is one of the reasons why there are so many cut aways in the scene.
Me too. It’s a cliche that someone gets excited enough to jump out of their wheelchair (something that should be impossible) and he was excited about slaughtering animals, breeding with multiple women, etc.
The first time I ever saw “Dr. Strangelove” it was on broadcast TV back in the mid 1970s. When the Ambassador took out his watchcam and started taking pictures, I thought he was planting a bomb, since the very next scene is nucular explosions. No pause or rewind back in those days.
John Hoyt also played the ship’s doctor in “Star Trek’s” “The Cage/The Menagerie.” I’ve seen “When Worlds Collide” but, other than the basic plot, the only thing I remember in it is that Mr. Drucker does a turn as a bad guy.:eek:
In the closing scene, he acts like he’s pretty much taken over the government right under the President’s nose, simply by having a plan other than “wait and die”. If anybody survives, he will.
It’s funny to discover that other people have such a different take on this movie than I do. I’ve always thought that the whole point was that once things got rolling then every plan anyone came up with to avoid nucelar disaster was ultimately useless, and that in the end the most powerful men in the world could do nothing more than squabble with each other and dream up crazy schemes that were never going to work.
Got around to re-watching this last night, inspired by this thread. Having seen it again, I’d have to say that no, it isn’t open to interpretation. Wikiquotes includes some quotes from the script that make it clear:
The immediate scenario would thus be as in On the Beach, where people are waiting to die. Of course one might question whether it will be possible to organize such people to take the “quick survey” and “make improvements in dwelling space” before they die.
Having said that, however, I agree that when you watch the movie in real time it isn’t emphasized, and the ending feels rushed, confusing, and unsatisfactory. It isn’t clear, in the final scene in the War Room, whether the players even know that Kong has dropped his bomb. This takes the edge off the absurdity.
Sometimes you need cheesy old-fashioned exposition: “I have just received word that a nuclear weapon has detonated over the Soviet Union. The last plane must have gotten through. Within minutes the Doomsday Device will detonate! Within ten months the surface of the earth will be uninhabitable!”
