I see a niche for a new column: The Vulcan Film Critic.
So, if you’re waiting to kill someone,
someone you’ve know for less than two minutes,
and you tell him you’re going to kill him…
you hand him your sword, leaving yourself unarmed?
That doesn’t bypass logic?
And two of the most calculating people in the world face off over poison, the physically weak one armed with a dagger and who know what else (more poison perhaps?) and a kindergarten level distract is offered and accepted.
As I said, it works in the movie. But to say it doesn’t bypass logic is bizarre.
And if I may return your unprovoked snark Ms. Bean, you seem to have trouble with both the subtle and the obvious.
Killing an unarmed man would have been considered Bad Form. Duels had rules, and gentlemen were expected to abide by them. I’ve read accounts of duelists who discharged their pistols in the air. Sometimes they got shot. Sometimes the opponent fired into the air as well, so both men kept their honour (which was important at the time, and was often the reason there was a duel in the first place). It’s not logical, but that’s how gentlemen behaved at the time.
That was The Point. Vizzini was not one of ‘the most calculating people in the world’. He was a simpleton. Through scheming against other simpletons, or just through sheer luck, he gained a Reputation when his childish, half-baked schemes came off – and he believed it himself.
Reasonable, but I’m not buying.
“I’ve known too many Spaniards.”
“Men in masks are not to be trusted.”
If Inigo had any familiarity with the MIB it might fly, but at that point the MIB was a masked sea brigand trying to kidnap the Princess. The two hit it off pretty well for 90 seconds and maybe by the end of Inigo’s story it would have been semi-believable, but it was very near the beginning… before even telling the MIB about his father’s betrayal and death.
Wesley might have had reason to trust Inigo who helped him up the cliff to kill him faster, but Inigo had no reason to trust the MIB at that time. (…and I just noticed that the thread has gone from discussing the film MIB to the character the MIB)
I love that it doesn’t make sense, but works anyway.
Same thing for the duel at the wine table. To turn your back on an armed Sicilian when death is on the line is ridiculous, but it works within the context of the fairy-tale.
And don’t forget that Westley “accepted” the childish distraction because he had no reason not to; unbeknownst to Vizzini, Westley didn’t care which flagon he drank from, and so he had no real need to be on his guard and keep track of which drink supposedly didn’t have the poison. He probably knew Vizzini was faking him with the distraction anyway and was just toying with him by turning around. Didn’t matter to him, since he knew he had the resistance to iocane.
I assume that if death were really on the line, Westley–the smartest guy in the film–would have been much less sanguine.
The rule of logic in comedies isn’t that of real life; it only has to be internally consistent depending on how the world works within the film. In a fantasy like The Princess Bride, brilliant swordfighters and duelists hold to honor. There are numerous instances of this in the movie: Inigo and Fezzig are both displeased when Vizzini cuts the rope on Westley and orders Fezzig to hide and bash Westley with a big rock. Later, the six-fingered man flauts the rules of honor in duelling by pulling a knife on Inigo. Meanwhile, Westley, the hero, doesn’t kill Humperdink but ties him to a chair. We all buy it (well, most of us do) because we hold to the convention that duellists are Honorable and heroes doubly so. Westley is especially genre-savvy, and he knows what to expect from everyone. Inigo less so, but he holds to a code and follows it. The villains, typically, do not hold to a code; and they are the ones defeated.
Though Baal may disagree with whether MiB depicts a logically consistent universe, I think it does. In the conventions of this type of comedy focusing on a tough-talking NY cop versus elite military men, we all pretty much expect the NYPD guy to display street smarts and skills that his opponents don’t share; that includes noticing that the little white girl is carrying quantum physics books in the ghetto and thus likely to be starting some shit.
Also, it’s funny.
I’m a little surprised nobody’s mentioned the book.
I remember reading it, many moons ago. It seems to make a point to be decidedly less ambiguous about the testing situations. In the shootout scene, Smith’s character hesitantly squeezes off a single round, only to find when he pulls the trigger again (for a “double-tap,” I think the book even mentions) he realizes that the weapon only contains one round.
There’s also an explicit line (although I’m not sure from whom) commenting that he was the only tryout to get the test correct.
I’ve got the book around here somewhere but I remember it was something about “your military mopes cooked a (something )leaf eater with a head cold and a hook-headed kitten that wanted to lick their faces”
J also had seen Tiffany with a knife and he mentioned her eyes were weird and she had a strange posture.
(Working from memory)
No, Vizzini was the real deal. The whole bit about “Obviously I cannot choose the wine in front of you” was not his reasoning process. Rather, he was watching his opponent’s reactions, and seeing how nervous he was when he said the poison was in one glass or the other. Then it was just a matter of figuring out whether the Man in Black was bluffing in his reactions or not (or more precisely, whether it was an even-order bluff or an odd-order bluff), and Vizzini was a master at that. If he had actually been playing the game he thought he was playing, he would have won.
Interconnected Series of Tubes said:
The book may state that, but it is at odds with the movie, and many of us have only seen the movie. In the movie, the other guys are shooting mutiple times each all over the place. Why would they have full guns but Edwards only have one bullet? Furthermore, in the movie it is clearly and deliberately one shot, no “double tap”.
Green Bean said:
They might have been existing chairs, but it took a talented set designer to select them to satisfy the role of a chair that does not offer a place to write, while seeming it might. See, he couldn’t even turn over and use the seat as a table, because it is cushioned.
Bosstone said:
I know he found the right baddie, I was just expressing hesitation over the question of shooting someone not in the actual act of causing trouble. But you are right, the expression of Zed is “I’ll be, he saw right through that.”
In MiB II, Patrick Warburton starts out as Will Smiths partner and he was a former marine, so I guess the Captain America types were under consideration, just not the best options.
“It was illogical for Tony Stark to disclose his secret identity to the world, moments after being cautioned not to do so, as…”
“It was illogical for Romeo and Juliet to commit suicide, as…”
“It was illogical for Mr. Darcy to defy his aunt and propose to Miss Bennet, as…”
I foresee a short print run.