::shrug:: An entire form of comedy is built around it.
I just rewatched that scene, and he certainly does care about it. He says very clearly that he doesn’t want anyone to even open his safety deposit box and that it’s contents are of a great value to him. But if it comes down to him being exposed or the evidence being destroyed, then he wants it destroyed.
ETA: He never actually says to destroy it. Jodie Foster’s character says either the box stays closed or it “disappears.”
I believe this would be an excellent solution to most problems, actually.
I was a shift manager at a pizza place and we once had a driver call in and quit in the middle of his shift. Later when he brought back the bag and car topper he explained he had been invited in for a threesome with a couple of chicks and it was worth quitting his job over it. He might have been making that up but it was an amusing enough story that no one questioned him about it.
What’s contrived about it?
But that’s kinda my point. Leave out the part about “then he wants it destroyed” and, okay, he certainly does care about the contents, so of course I’d believe the sentimental fool kept that evidence for all these decades; he’s so foolish and sentimental that he still wants it back now!
Maybe we’re almost at the point where his head would override his heart; maybe it’s a long way off; maybe there is no such point; I wouldn’t know, and wouldn’t need to know; I’d simply go with it. I’d likewise be fine with the story of a man who destroyed evidence back when: maybe he was just barely sensible enough to do it, maybe he’s capable of making that easy call in harder circumstances; maybe he always goes for the practical solution? I wouldn’t know, and wouldn’t need to know.
But for this story, we need a sensible guy who coolly implements “then he wants it destroyed” reasoning – right after decade after decade after decade after decade after decade after decade of sentimental folly. He needs to be smack dab in the goldilocks zone.
I both saw it and didn’t.
[“Honey, can you check on the cat? It’s in a box, and it looked half-dead to me.”]
My fanwank of Gilligan’s Island and indeed all of the “wacky hijinks” comedies of the 1960s is that they take place in the same universe as My Favorite Martian, Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, where the constant use of magic has weakened the fabric of reality. Essentially there are a lot of half-dissipated spells floating around that occasionally latch on to random targets.
I think I read this short story many, many years ago in a sci-fi anthology. If I am not mistaken, it was called “The Cold Equations”. Some girl snuck aboard a supply ship to try to visit her brother(?), but her added mass required that she be ditched.
Like I said, I might be wrong about this, but it sure sounds like the same story.
I’m rewatching Mission:Impossible (the TV series and not the movies). So much of it depends on people doing exactly what Jim Phelps think they will do.
Spoiler alert: the latest one was to convince a young King Greg Brady that the guy he thinks is his protector is actually trying to kill him. They have the King run away when Spock errr… Paris yells to Run! and he gets knocked out (although the way the story was going, it would have been more realistic if Paris had caught a bullet with the back of his head). So Chamo (the protector[?]) is chasing them through a warehouse and the King breaks free and runs to Chamo. Chamo shoots the King! Oh wait, Barney had put up bulletproof glass and the King is saved and knows Chamo wants him dead. It a good thing Jim knew
a) Chamo would pick that aisle to wait for the King
b) Chamo wanted to kill the King immediately and not kidnap him and do it somewhere else
c) The exact range that Chamo wanted to shoot the King at. Another 2 feet and the King would have ran full-speed into the the bulletproof glass.
Which might be why Mad Magazine parodied it as “Mission: Ridiculous”.
I came in here to mention Seven. Raymond Chandler called this kind of fiction “having God go to sleep on your lap”. Everything in the plot depends on everything going exactly right for the villain, and having the hero do stuff no one in his right mind would do.
Roger Ebert mentions something related in his review of one of the Rambo movies. Rambo is hiding in a forest. The Evil Sheriff’s Deputy is looking for him. TESD stops to rest under a tree - Rambo drops onto him from above and kills him.
Of all the trees in the forest, how did Rambo know the ESD was going to stop under that tree?
I know, nitpicking a movie like Rambo for realism is kind of missing the point, but still…
I have never figured out why some of these contrivances drop me out of the story with a clank, and some pass unremarked. It doesn’t bother me that there just happens to be a lactating female ape when Tarzan’s parents are killed, but it does bother me that Mrs. Howell on Gilligan’s Island has a wide variety of outfits, even though she was only supposed to be on a three hour tour.
Regards,
Shodan
I think we must have seen two radically different version of the film. Can you give examples? Far from anticipating the hero’s every move, the villain’s lair is discovered much earlier than he expected, and he’s forced to improvise his last three “sins”.
Down With Love, but it was aware of its contrivance.
“All I had to do was write a bestseller and get every woman in the world to treat Ewan MacGregor as a pariah so that I could lure him in for myself and get my revenge.”
The actual explanation was much more long-winded.
I know, what didn’t I think of that!?! All I had to do was write a bestseller! :smack:
It’s like I was watching part of a Greys Anatomy and the alternate “little Grey” was in there and somebody asked her "why don’t you go to medical school, you’re smart".
jesszusfuckingcristonapogostick.