I read it as:
The movie can’t already have a sequel or remake, a TV series, video game, book, comic book, etc.
I blame not enough coffee
I love this idea.
I’d prefer a story where Truman has become a recluse (after taking Christos and his company for all they’re worth) but everyone else wants to be the next Truman. Everyone livestreams every element of their daily lives, desperate for attention and external validation. The world has become a noisy, chaotic and superficial place. How will it end?
What am I saying? That’s a completely implausible world that could never happen…
Kyser Sose, the super (and possibly supernatural) criminal mastermind from The Usual Suspects deserves another screen appearance. He had a reputation for both extreme violence and the ability to vanish when anyone got too close to his doings, such that his very existence was questioned - but the criminal underworld knew him, and feared him. Made Fu Manchu look like a piker.
PS It’s Keyser, not Kyser Sose. And Fu Mancu is racist. I’m sorry I cited him, even though fictional.
Dr. Fu Manchu, if done right, would not necessarily be racist. If you take away the yellow face and the stereotypical “Chinese accent” and rework the “Yellow Menace” aspect of the character, you would be left with a criminal mastermind with his fingers in everything, who just happens to be Asian.
And make sure he doesn’t have a shoestring moustache. Fu Manchu in literary form did NOT have a “Fu Manchu”.
I’ve always interpreted it that Keyser Sose doesn’t exist. I don’t mean, every criminal fears Sose, but has never seen him. I mean, the character who may or may not have been named Verbal Kint made everything up on the spot. He’s the mastermind, but not the super criminal/supernatural being he described to the police. No one is out there fearing Sose, because they’ve never even heard the name.
I would go as far as saying nothing he described leading up to the deaths even happened.
The Turk in the hospital certainly seemed to fear Keyzsr Sose
Everything Verbal Kint tells the Feds is all bullshit (so, most of the stuff in the movie never happened, as it were). All we know are things like that the hospitalized guy recognizes the name (or pretends he does), and conveniently feeds a description of Verbal to the FBI. Ultimately, not much concrete to go on (I must agree with Ebert on that).
I thought the hospitalized Turk screams “something Turkish Keyser Sose!!!” which catches FBI Guy’s attention. The only things we can be sure of in that movie are the scenes in the Police Station and the hospital.
For all we know, Verbal may have just said to the guys, “there’s $91 mill in this deal at a boat. Help me kill everyone on the boat and we’ll split the dough.” He and “Kobayashi” are the only one’s who know for sure.
The Hungarian-speaking Turk (whoever he really is) tells the FBI that he saw “Keyser Sose” kill everybody [yet how would he have recognized him? Or was it some other guy who supposedly identified him? Or maybe it’s more bullshit…]: https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/117329/what-does-the-hungarian-burn-victim-shout-at-jack-baer
It’s been a long time since I saw The Usual Suspects, and I admit I was never sure how much of what Verbal told the investigator at the end was a smokescreen. Obviously enough to get him to walk free, lose his limp, and climb into a limo waiting for him down the block. Two questions: was there really a Keyser Sose, was he the actual Devil, and was he in fact Verbal Kint? Okay, that’s three questions.
I am firmly in the camp of there’s nothing supernatural going on despite Verbal’s often-quoted line “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” So it’s possible he’s really a flesh-and-blood Keyser Sose who has managed to stay off the radar of international law enforcement but is notorious among criminal lowlifes. Which may not seem realistic, but there’s plenty of models for this type in crime fiction. Like, why does nobody in the public know about Professor Moriarty, who even though he avoids conviction surely would have made the Times? You just have to accept these things or there’s no story.
So let’s assume the guy in the hospital really did see Keyser Sose, who announced himself before torching the place. That’s enough to hang a sequel, or a prequel, on, no?
To answer the question was Verbal really Keyser Sose himself? Not necessarily. He might have been in Sose’s employ, or maybe he, being a petty criminal, knew Sose by reputation and just used the name as part of his deception after gathering that the witness in the hospital had pointed a finger at him. This would mean we don’t have to worry about the disgraced Kevin Spacey returning as the character, if that’s a consideration.
I keep getting the name wrong! It’s Keyser Söze.
Verbal didn’t want the name Keyser Soze to come up. When Dave Kuhlyan comes in and asks, “Who’s Keyser Soze?” Verbal/Keyser actually gets upset. And THAT is when we hear the story about Soze. That would suggest that Soze is real, although anything told about him is apocryphal.