# Lopped-Off Limbs in Popular Cinema
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [August 30, 2005, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266 "2005-08-30T15:32:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/1 "2005-08-30T15:32:46Z")
Over ther past few months I’ve seen **Sin City** , **Revenge of the Sith** , and both of the **Kill Bill** films. Never in my life have I seen such a collection of chopped-off extremities. And it’s all in big-budget mainstream cinema, too. Not in the usual anything-for-a-thrill, cheap effects bottom-of-the-barreel stuff. Heck, Sith is perceived as a sort of family film (and, inasmuch as all those light sabre wounds seem to be self-cauterizing and free of arterial spray, it _is_ the tamest of the lot). Nevertheless, you can rightly call all of these separated arms, legs, and heads (not to mention random transfixions and slicing) to be a _bona fide_ trend.
Howcum? Have we reached a point where this is acceptable, or have we reached a point where lesser thrills no longer thrill, and this is now _required_? I think in all of **Spartacus** there’s only one lopped-off hand.
…
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### Author:  [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/2 "2005-08-30T15:53:15Z")
It’s a matter of technology. Once, you had to work with prosthetics and animatronics and hands hidden up sleeves… and it still looked fake. Now all you have to do is wear a blue glove and voila! - the computer geeks do the rest.
Once Hollywood can do something, it does it over and over again.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/3 "2005-08-30T15:56:29Z")
Yeah, but that’s not it in the case of **Kill Bill** – according to the IMDB, Quentin Tarentino _refused_ to use CGI or any high-tech solutions, insisting that they stick to fake blood-filled condoms and cutaway dummies in order to keep the look of the Asian fight films he’s paying homage to.
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### Author:  [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/4 "2005-08-30T16:13:24Z")
I blame George Lucas: [http://www.runleiarun.com/choppedoffhands/start.html](http://www.runleiarun.com/choppedoffhands/start.html)
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### Author:  [@Papermache\_Prince](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Papermache_Prince)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/5 "2005-08-30T16:17:27Z")
Admittedly, **Sparticus** may have showed only one hand chopped off, but they showed more crucifixions than any three “Greatest Story Ever Told” movies.
Another recent dismemberment [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=320323):
**How many arms/hands have been cut off in the Star Wars series (Obvious Spoiler Alert)**
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### Author:  [@Jpeg\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jpeg_Jones)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/6 "2005-08-30T16:18:41Z")
It’s just a flesh wound.
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### Author:  [@well\_he\_s\_back](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/well_he_s_back)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/7 "2005-08-30T16:26:33Z")
Personally, I find the fixation on lopping off limbs to be really creepy, sick and disgusting. That said, if you’re making a horror or gross out film, that’s fine. If you’re making a film that’s supposed to be telling any other kind of story I think it’s way out of place. (and I’m not saying this just because I don’t like the “Star Wars” prequels & their chop-offs).
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### Author:  [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/8 "2005-08-30T16:55:56Z")
> [@Jpeg Jones](#):
>
> It’s just a flesh wound.
That’s what I wanted to post! :mad: 😃
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### Author:  [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/9 "2005-08-30T17:32:45Z")
How graphic do we wanna get? If not very graphic, we can go back quite a ways in film history. _Kings Row_ (1940), one of Ronald Reagan’s better star vehicles, featured Reagan getting both legs needlessly amputated by a vengeful doctor. And, of course, coming through a happy man. This was the source of RR’s famous quote: “_Where’s the rest of me?_”
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/10 "2005-08-30T17:36:14Z")
> [@](#):
>
> How graphic do we wanna get? If not very graphic, we can go back quite a ways in film history. Kings Row (1940), one of Ronald Reagan’s better star vehicles, featured Reagan getting both legs needlessly amputated by a vengeful doctor. And, of course, coming through a happy man. This was the source of RR’s famous quote: “Where’s the rest of me?”
It ain’t the age or how graphic. It’s _how damned many of them_. We only lost the one limb in that film. There was one hand in **The Vikings**. Buit Kill Bill I and Sith have a virtual harvest of fallen limbs.
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### Author:  [@JohnBckWLD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnBckWLD)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/11 "2005-08-30T17:47:32Z")
> [@well he's back](#):
>
> Personally, I find the fixation on lopping off limbs to be really creepy, sick and disgusting…
I have a hunch you either didn’t see (or didn’t enjoy) Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
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### Author:  [@Hey\_It\_s\_That\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hey_It_s_That_Guy)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/12 "2005-08-30T17:55:57Z")
> [@well he's back](#):
>
> Personally, I find the fixation on lopping off limbs to be really creepy, sick and disgusting. That said, if you’re making a horror or gross out film, that’s fine. If you’re making a film that’s supposed to be telling any other kind of story I think it’s way out of place. (and I’m not saying this just because I don’t like the “Star Wars” prequels & their chop-offs).
Well Sin City and Kill Bill are not supposed to be horror films, but the loss of limbs are both important, showing you the relentlessness of the protagonists in their quests for vengeance. In both films, it is the good guys cutting body parts off the bad guys, and both films are effective enough to get us to cheer them on, however uncomfortably.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/13 "2005-08-30T18:09:12Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Well Sin City and Kill Bill are not supposed to be horror films, but the loss of limbs are both important, showing you the relentlessness of the protagonists in their quests for vengeance. In both films, it is the good guys cutting body parts off the bad guys, and both films are effective enough to get us to cheer them on, however uncomfortably.
We’ve never had relentless protagonists before? This bounty of limbs is something new. The Terminator was as relentless as they come, but I don’t recall hacked-off limbs in any of those flicks plenty of impalemts, though, and other mayhem.)
Another thing – in Bill II, The Bride announces to The devastated 88 after she plows through them “All your limbs belong to me!” Really? What did she want with them? Have an Arms Sale?
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### Author:  [@Hey\_It\_s\_That\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hey_It_s_That_Guy)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/14 "2005-08-30T18:13:39Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> We’ve never had relentless protagonists before? This bounty of limbs is something new. The Terminator was as relentless as they come, but I don’t recall hacked-off limbs in any of those flicks plenty of impalemts, though, and other mayhem.)
Kill Bill (particularly Volume 1) was paying direct homage to a genre of Japanese films from the '60s called _chanbara_, usually samurai epics with plenty of swordfighting, lost limbs, and gushing, spurting geysers of Technicolor blood. Some of the better-known _chanbara_ (which only experienced a resurgence in popularity after Kill Bill’s success) include _Shogun Assassin_ (itself being two older chanbara films edited together) and _Lady Snowblood_, which provided the inspiration for the Bride’s final duel with O-Ren Ishii.
As for Sin City, it was a direct adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novels, and Marv’s story in particular, “The Hard Goodbye,” was published in 1990 or '91. The movie was derived page for page, panel for panel, shot for shot from the comics, so that wasn’t exactly original mayhem either.
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### Author:  [@SlyFrog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlyFrog)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/15 "2005-08-30T18:33:42Z")
Is it simply more realistic? I mean, when people are fighting with blades made of plasma or light, or with the sharpest blades ever forged in the world, shouldn’t it be natural that limbs will come off?
How hard is it to slice an arm off with a good katana? It would seem to be a natural thing to attempt if you wanted to kill someone.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/16 "2005-08-30T18:33:54Z")
Yeah, but they’re all showing up in the cinemas _now_. Regardless of when the Chinese flicks came out (and, as I’ve stated on this Board before, I think the spouting-arterial-blood scenes all go back to a Kurasawa film – Yojimbo, I think – in which he did it as a commentary on all those people who complained about the lack of blood in his flicks) and Miller’s graphic came out, you didn’t see this many hacked-off limbs in mainstream Western cinema until now. The wind has shifted someplace.
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### Author:  [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/17 "2005-08-30T18:51:48Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> Heck, Sith is perceived as a sort of family film (and, inasmuch as all those light sabre wounds seem to be self-cauterizing and free of arterial spray, it _is_ the tamest of the lot).
Nitpick: actually, it was the only SW film to get a PG-13 rating, as opposed to PG and Lucas specifically said that ROTS was NOT a film for young children, that it wasn’t as family friendly as the others.
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### Author:  [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/18 "2005-08-30T19:08:16Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> We’ve never had relentless protagonists before? This bounty of limbs is something new. The Terminator was as relentless as they come, but I don’t recall hacked-off limbs in any of those flicks plenty of impalemts, though, and other mayhem.)
Quaa?
spoilers ahead for both Terminator and Aliens:
The Terminator himself lost both of his legs, one arm half his torso and the entirety of his outer skin during the course of the movie. I’d say that counts for both relentless pursuit and a major loss of limbs.
Which reminds me of the ending of Aliens where the android is literally ripped in half right on screen and comes back to save the day.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/19 "2005-08-30T19:36:20Z")
Androids and Robots losing parts I can take – in principle they can be repaired. Despite the gee-whiz technology of Star Wars, though, cutting off people’s limbs is a whole 'nother ball game.
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### Author:  [@MacTech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacTech)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/20 "2005-08-30T19:40:05Z")
I’m _INVINCIBLE!_
the Black Knight _Always_ triumphs!, have at you!
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