And wow there was a lot of bad acting going around.
However, that isn’t my point for this thread.
At the end, the Villain (yes, that’s his name - subtle, right?) is all throwing down the weapons and challenging Stallone to mano a mano for the final showdown and all that jazz.
What the fuck is with the whole not shooting the evil bad guy when he is literally asking for it?
The ONLY exception to this rule I can think of from the good guy side is Indy with the evil scimitar guy.
Why can’t the good guys just shoot the bad guy when they have an obvious advantage? I just don’t get it.
(and yes, I know the real reason is for some bad muscles/sweat/bloody face pron, but really - it just seems unnecessary.)
It’s just that whole “honorable fight” is SUCH an obvious trope, and I continually wonder if my being :rolleyes: by it makes me some type of sociopath or something.
And yes, I did enjoy the movie quite a lot. I won’t say it was a GOOD movie, but I liked it. I do think that the first one was better tho. More explosions, and I think better guns on the good-guy side. This one seemed a little slower-paced, but that may also be the difference between watching in theatres and watching it at home.
Indy and the evil scimitar guy is, of course, classic. In the same vein, we have The Fifth Element, where Bruce Willis “negotiates” with the aliens by shooting them in the head.
ETA: Oh, and Mal Reynolds kicking the dude into the engine.
I will accept those examples, as long as we’re understanding that none of those characters are what we’d consider “Good” in alignment, whereas I’m pretty damn certain that Stallone’s guy is intended to be chaotic good.
Good people don’t kick badguys into engines, regardless of how much they deserve it. I’m merely wondering WHY.
Good guys fight fair, even when the bad guys don’t. The only excuse for taking out the bad guy unfairly is a hostage situation, and even then the guy is armed. Part of the good guy mystique is that how you win is as important as winning - sportsmanship, fair play, etc.
There are anti-heroes, but typically by the end of the trilogy they’ve seen the error of their ways (usually thru the love of a good woman) and clean up their act.
And speaking from experience (long ago), some guys you just want to pound into the ground for the catharsis of it. I’ve got an entire playlist dedicated to the concept, starting with Black-Eyed Peas’ Karma and ending with Sick Puppies You’re Going Down. Bad guys are usually bullies and bullies avoid direct confrontation until there’s no other option - they can’t clean the slate with an “okay, I won’t do it anymore.”
[QUOTE=Terry Pratchett]
“Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat.
They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.
So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.”
[/QUOTE]
Of course, Vimes (who is a good man) always plays fair and legal, even with Carcer Dun.
For what it’s worth, consider Liam Neeson’s weird outing as a superhero in DARKMAN: he’s dangling the helpless villain off the side of a building, and of course gets hit with the usual if-you-kill-me-you’ll-be-just-like-me line.
“I’m learning to live with a lot of things,” says our hero, as the bad guy plummets to his death.
*[Mal is struggling with a guy who spent several hours torturing him; Jayne aims a gun at the torturer] Zoë: Jayne. This is something the captain has to do for himself. Mal: No. No, it’s not! Zoë: Oh!
[Jayne, Zoë and Wash shoot] *
