I didn’t see a thread on this, so I decided to start one.
I just saw the new Stepford Wives yesterday (I haven’t seen the original), and either I’m missing something, or the transformation/replacement of the wives doesn’t make sense. It’s like the filmmakers didn’t bother to decide if these were robots or women under the influence of advanced mind control, and just put parts of both in. A few examples (spoilers):
[ul]
[li]The change is described as being one of mind control by implantation some computer chips, and indeed, at the end, we see that the change is quickly undone by the random pressing of buttons on a control panel. :rolleyes:[/li]
[li]The Stepford wife’s head, early on, sparks.[/li][li]One Stepford wife produces dollar bills from her mouth after having an ATM card scanned through her.[/li][li]Among the news stories about the women who have changed, Joanna finds one about the prize terrier that has gone missing. Yet the dog is obviously robotic. Why would you need to steal a prize terrier to make a robot dog?[/li][li]The robotic body on the table that raises up between Joanna and Walter in the Men’s club. Why build a robot body if they’re just going to put some chips in her brain?[/ul][/li]
Anyone have a reasonable explanation for this, or were the writers just incredibly stupid and/or lazy?
Well, this is what a friend and I determined after seeing the movie:
The wives had their brains removed and placed into a robot bosy (with nanochips in the brain to control their actions.) The bodies were then either stored somewhere or disposed of. Meaning that at the end, either all these women are now in cool robot bodies, or they had their brains put back into their normal bodies.
As for the dog, maybe they needed the terrier because it’s a well behaved and smart dog? Remember, they use the brains in the robots, this lady was a neurosurgeon, she knows nothing about robotic AI or computer programming, (though does seem to know a lot of good electronic skills it seems…) So they out the terrier’s brain in the robot dog’s body, as with the women.
There’s also the bit with Bette Midler’s character putting her hand on the range and it’s clearly in the fire, but she’s not burning or in pain. In fact, she doesn’t even notice it happening. I’m inclined to believe they were killed and turned into robots.
There was another thread on this, but it’s dropped off the first page.
What happened was “panic re-shooting.” The film originally ended at the ball, when Chris Walken asks Glenn Close to dance and there’s an overhead shot of all the men waltzing with their robot wives. The end.
Oops! It tested badly!
So they called the cast back (most of the cast–notice you only see the back of the heads of some of the actresses) to shoot a sucky new ending. You can practically hear the record skip–rrrrttt!–where the newly reshot ending starts. The new “happy” ending has to show the Wives as simply lobotomized, so they can be “cured.” But they never bothered to go back and delete the scenes establishing that they were killed and replaced by robots–incredibly lazy filmmaking. I guess they couldn’t get the continuity girl back.
Haven’t seen the movie yet, but why even replace the wives? Yeah, that’s great if you’re married to Nicole Kidman, Faith Hill or one of the other hot wives. Sucks if you’re married to Bette Midler or 50 year old Glenn Close. It’s like putting chrome rims on an old beater Ford. Why not just crank out hot robots?
What I find strange about the redone ending is that it sort of makes sense.
It makes no sense in regard to the sci-fi element of the story. So originally they were being replaced by robots and then later it was more of a borgification process but…
It makes sense with Glenn Close. She is far different from the other wives. She has a job. She is the realator. She is the point person for who moves into Stepford. She keeps watch over the wives and she starts indoctrinating Joanna. So, in a way, it makes sense that she is behind it all. Personally I love the Glenn Close freak out.
I hated how Walter just sort of swatted at the panels though. They should have gotten a good dig at Microsoft and had some version of that annoining paper clip guy pop up on the screen and help him deactivate the mind controll devices. What makes it strange also is what is Walter’s deal? When does he decide to do it and when does he change his mind and why?
Ding! Ding! Ding! Or why not just divorce your wife for a younger, more compliant woman with a hot bod? Call them “trophy wives” if you will.
There’s a lot of room for some really wicked comedy in this theme, by paralleling existing phenomena like trophy wives and the real potential of humanoid robots as sex partners (did anyone say “Real Dolls”?) but from what I’m hearing about the movie, they really missed the boat.