Of course, in Star Wars that does go all the way back to the original trilogy, with hands flying every which way.
“I’ll bite your legs off!”
- The Black Knight
Lucas’ films do have a way of involving a lopped-off limb in almost every film. (See the link posted by Terminus above. Great link.) But his first flick was hardly a limb-fest. I don’t count C3PO’s reattached piece. That leaves us with the bar fight.
Now compare with Sith – limbs flying everywhere – Dooku and Grievous land Vader lose multiple limbs. Windu and others. None of the earlier films compare with this.
I’m not sure about that. Darth Vader is a…what was it? “seven-foot magical cyborg”, Episode 3 is about him becoming that. So, he has to lose the limbs.
I don’t know why it’s all happening now, as opposed to 10 years ago, except the technology being there to show it
But he’d already lost body parts by then. We didn’t get to see it until now.
Heck, in Little Big Man Mr. Merriwether, Martin Balsam’s character, gradually loses parts throughout – a hand, a leg, an eye. We just don’t get to see it.
If they remade LBM today would we be treated to the gradual on-camera whittling away of Mr. Merriwether?
Why? They all get repaired, too.
As ahs alredy been pointed out, the arm-chopping in Star Wars goes all the way back to the original, when Obi-Wan whacks the arm off that guy with the walrus teeth. Luke loses his hand in Empire, and Vader loses his in Jedi. Phantom Menace is the only one where no biological characters lose an arm, although Darth Maul does get bi-sected. If there is, indeed, a trend here, I think the Star Wars franchise should be exempted from it, as hackin’ off limbs has been part of the series since '77. There was a lot more in the last movie, but the original trilogy only had two guys running around with laser swords at any one time, which dramatically cut down (hee hee) on opportunities for losing limbs. The new trilogy has armies of guys with lightsabers, so its only natural that the number of cropped limbs increase.
On other fronts, Braveheart (1995) had Mel Gibson drawn and quartered, and the battle scenes featured quite a few de-limbings. Big Lebowski (1998) featured a severed toe. Saving Private Ryan (1998) had the wounded soldier on the beach in Normandy wandering around, carrying his severed arm, and that was possibly the least disturbing dismemberment in the film. In Master and Commander (2003) one of the young ensigns gets his arm surgically removed after it gets gangrenous. Lt. Dan got his legs blown off in Forrest Gump (1994). Julie Taymor’s Titus (1999) had Lavinia get both her arms hacked off and her tongue cut out, and that was just because it was faithful to a five-hundred year old play. Once Were Warriors (1994) featured a castration with a broken beer bottle, which is a whole heck of a lot more unpleasant than most of the other things I’ve listed here. There’s the aforementioned Black Knight scene from Moty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). As a sort of reverse of this whole thing, Mila Jovovich’s character in The Fifth Element (1997) was grown from a severed hand. I seem to recall a few amputations being performed in the surgery tent at the beginning of Dances with Wolves (1990). Michael Ironside got both arms chopped off in an elevator in Total Recall (1990). Aragorn chopped off the arm of the orc who killed Boromir in Fellowship of the Rings (2001), and I’m pretty sure all the movies in the trilogy featured someone or something losing a limb at one point or another. Conan the Barbarian (1982) had a couple decapitations, which is sort of like having all of your limbs chopped off at once. For that matter, Ice Pirates (1984) had a decapitation that did not adversely affect the character’s ability to participate in the rest of the movie. Does the sledgehammer scene in Misery (1990) count?
Looks like, if there is a trend here, it’s been going on for at least ten to fifteen years now. Sin City and Kill Bill are nothing new.
Nope. Go to any of the films I list and count the loppedf-off parts. Now go to yours and do the same. Don’t cheat.
There’s a Big just in the histogram lately with severed parts per film. Genuine trend.
Nope. Go to any of the films I list and count the loppedf-off parts. Now go to yours and do the same. Don’t cheat.
There’s a Big jump in the histogram lately with severed parts per film. Genuine trend.
I don’t think two films constitutes a trend. In 1998, there were two computer animated films staring an ant. That wasn’t the sign of a trend of ant-themed movies, it was just a coincidence. Or plagiarism, if you’re not feeling charitable.
And I’m not counting Sith, sorry. That’s been going on in the Star Wars films for thirty years, even if it got stepped up for the last one.
And without doing a frame-by-frame comparison, I’d say Saving Private Ryan, Braveheart, and Fellowship of the Rings compete with Sin City and Kill Bill for dismemberment and general manglings.
must resist. . . can’t
You want a toe, Dude?!?! I can get you a toe!!!
sorry
Goes back further than that. The same plot device was used in The Penalty in 1920, when Lon Chaney’s character had his legs needlessly amputated by a foolish doctor and the more experienced doctor said nothing and actively covered up the mistake. The rest of the movie is his going more and more insane in his plot for revenge against the two of them.
When I was a kid living in Japan back in '76, I remember seeing a TV show about a blind Samurai (the name escapes me). In one of the episodes, he’s sword-fighting with a gang of ruffians and one of them swings and misses, thereby leaving his exposed arm splayed out on a table. In a flash, the blind Samurai deftly hacked the guys arm and the table in two. It was extremely realistic looking, too early for CGI, and way too smooth to be stop action. I don’t know how it was done, but I can still see the whole sequence in my mind to this day; the table falling away, the arm rolling off the table, the surprised look on the guys face. Obviously it shocked the hell out of me back then.
While I’m thinking about it, I’m pretty sure that on that same TV show, another assassin would crack two walnuts in his hand prior to performing his style of dealing death. He’d get very close to his target, then plunge his hand into his or her chest, and squeeze his victims heart. Upon which time the screen would cut to an x-ray view of a beating heart, a hand grasping the heart, squeezing, and exiting. Cut back to the regular scene with the assassin pulling his hand away (I don’t recall it being bloody) and his victim falling dead. Again, shocked the hell out of me. The cracking of walnuts was a way for the assassin to strengthen his fingers to prepare for “the plunge”.
The blind swordsman would probably be Zatoichi. There’s a whole series of films on his exploits, the latest of which is the eponymous Zatoichi. It’s got a whole slew of severed limbs and spurting arteries itself.
She was going to open a second hand store. Speaking of which, there’s Evil Dead, in which Ash chops his own hand off - and then traps it under a rubbish bin weighted down with a copy of A Farewell To Arms. Groovy.
Not hacked off perhaps, but in T2 he kneecapped about 100 cops with large-calibre bullets. Doubtful anyone was walking home anytime soon.
I thought she let them all take their limbs except for the lawyer babe, but it’s been a long time since I watched it.
Another pre-SW limb-severing is Jaws, which has one severed leg and multiple severances from Cassie.
There also seem to be a number of films where there’s a sort of I’ve been sliced into pieces, but you can’t tell it yet moment; there was one based on a video game (resident evil, was it?) where people are sliced into neat little chunks by lasers, but they stand there motionless for a few seconds, before falling apart. There was quite a similar bit in quite a similar movie (something about a haunted hospital) where someone gets sliced in half vertically (ear to ear, shoulder to shoulder) and just stands there for a bit, then one half falls over.
… and the comment by Han Solo about how wookies “tear your arms off” if they get upset.
BTW, has no one gone back to Captain Hook? I think he’s the earliest hand-cut-off that I can recall.
And there was a movie in the late 50s called THE VIKINGS where Tony Curtis gets his hand cut off by Kirk Douglas (or perhaps the reverse.) Dismemberment wasn’t so easy to show in a movie back in those days, so it was a very dramatic event.
Nope – I just watched it, so it’s clear in my mind. She let them all go except the lawyer babe, but said that they had to leave the severed limbs. That was so weird it stuck in my mind. That has to be from one of the Asian films Tarentino is paying homage to – I can’t see Thurman, for instance, in or out of charcter, coming up with that one on her own.
(“Second hand store” – snicker. Wish I’d come up with that one.)
Some o’you folks seem to think that because you’ve come up with examples of other films where limbs get hacked off you’ve disproven my point. But I never said people never lost limbs. I’m saying the current limb and head) count per film has suddenly soared. Yeah, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Boxing Helena (which no one’s mentioned) give us a measly four. Now go watch Kill Bill I or Sith again.
Kill Bill vol. 1 is an aberration. It’s being deliberately over the top and is referencing ultra-violent samurai films from the 60s and 70s anyway.
There has been an interesting run of movies featuring disembodied eyeballs, however. Off the top of my head, Pirates of the Carribean, Minority Report, and Kill Bill vol 2.
A rival anchorman got both arms cut off (in separate incidents) in Anchorman: The Legend of Run Burgundy. Excellent movie.