Editorials > Three Common Cinematic Misunderstandings That Bug the Hell Out of Me

Park Chanwook’s Vengeance Trilogy is not Pro-Vengeance

This misunderstanding seems to generally come from those who have not yet seen the trilogy, and have heard its individual installments wrongly referred to as “action-packed” or worse, “Tarantino-esque.”

Yet it would also be wrong to assume that all of the people who watch Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance or Lady Vengeance or specifically Oldboy genuinely understand just how anti-vengeance these stories really are – it should go without saying that Cho Seung-Hui may represent the most infamous case of someone not having a fucking clue as to what Oldboy meant.

The whole point behind each film is that vengeance, in any of its forms, solves nothing. In Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, the audience is told this as we are forced to watch two characters whom we deeply care about attempt to kill each other over misunderstandings and misplaced senses of “honor.” In Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, the audience is shown that revenge, no matter how seemingly-justified or democratized it may be, does not absolve one of their own crimes. In Oldboy, the audience is goddamn specifically told that no man has the right to take vengeance upon others, because every man is guilty of something (in the protagonist’s case, he simply talked too much).

While it’s totally understandable that your average moviegoer might hear the words “vengeance trilogy” and mentally link said trilogy to something along the lines of Kill Bill, but for people who have actually seen the films to so blatantly misunderstand them is nothing short of infuriating. Cho Seung-Hui seemed to think that Oh Dae-Su, the protagonist of Oldboy, was completely justified in wreaking violence on dozens with a claw hammer – not unlike moronic, wannabe “gangstas” who idolize Scarface, I have to wonder if Seung-Hui bothered to stand around for the end of the film. Not only does Oh Dae-Su uncover a horrible secret about himself, but he finds out that, in essence, he is the one having vengeance enacted upon him, and not the other way around. It may be somewhat SPOILERISH to say so, but if you can sympathize with a guy who willingly chooses to have sex with a woman long after finding out she is, in fact, his daughter, then you have some serious problems.

Though at this point, that obviously goes without saying.

The big rolling stone in Raiders of the Lost Ark isn’t released to crush Indy

I’ve seen Raiders of the Lost Ark with a half-dozen different groups of people, give or take. While these audiences differ in many key respects (age, gender, cinema knowledge), they all share one common thread: within each group, there is always at least one wiseass who, when the boulder chases Indy at the beginning of the film, asks aloud, “Why does he run in front of it? Why not just wait for it to go past?”

Well, because the boulder isn’t supposed to crush Indy, that’s why. The entire point of the boulder is to block the entrance to the cave: while it might incidentally result in the death of any hapless adventurer with slow feet, its main purpose is to roll out and cover the large, boulder-shaped entrance to the cave. Assuming the idol is gone, the engineers thought, the best possible course of action would be to seal off the cave permanently so no other adventurers might be able to pick up where the previous one left off (once fired, the poison, wall-mounted blowdart guns wouldn’t reload themselves, thus making the traps progressively easier to pass through).

I fully realize that my irritation at this question is nitpicky at best and pathetic at worst, but I’ve heard it too many goddamn times (often from adults, mind you) to just let it go unanswered.

Evil Dead II is not a remake of The Evil Dead

I can’t necessarily blame anyone who assumes that Evil Dead II is a remake of The Evil Dead, and nothing more – to know the truth requires further research about the filmmakers, and it’s just plain unfair to ask that everyone on the planet read Bruce Campbell’s autobiography, If Chins Could Kill (though the world would certainly be a better place if everyone did so).

Some fright fans tend to think that EDII is a remake of ED thanks to the fact that both films share identical scenes, shots, and characters, but slightly reworked – not so much as to be outright odd, but enough so that definite continuity errors arise.

In both films, for instance,

Ash decapitates his girlfriend

And then gets attacked by the Evil.

Yet, many consider II to be a remake of its predecessor due mostly to the fact that in The Evil Dead, Ash goes to the cabin with his four friends

And in the beginning of Evil Dead II, he only goes with Linda.

The reasons for the discrepancy are simple: when Sam Raimi wanted to include a recap of the previous film at the beginning of the second (not unlike the Evil Dead II summary found at the beginning of Army of Darkness), he couldn’t get the rights to re-use footage from The Evil Dead. Barred from using the footage from his last film, Raimi had to find an alternate method of summarizing the previous film – in this case, “lying” about how Ash got to the cabin.

For the purposes of time, budget, and simplicity, Raimi cuts to the chase and says that Ash only arrived with Linda – as Linda shows up later in the film and she remains the only quasi-living character from the first movie, she obviously had to be mentioned.

Once Ash and Linda get to the cabin, the first section of Evil Dead II runs at a breakneck pace: within 15 minutes, Linda gets possessed and decapitated, and Ash gets hit by the evil. The length of this “recap” made many misinterpret its purpose, but the opening fifteen minutes simply don’t make sense if taken out of the context of a recap. For instance, in the first film, Ash decapitates Linda after having seen all of the awful things the Deadites are capable of, and learning that the only way to kill them is through dismemberment. If one is to take Ash’s sudden decision to decapitate Linda in the opening scenes of the sequel literally, then Ash is either extremely lucky, or sort of an asshole. Why would a guy decapitate the woman he loves just for lunging forward at him? Punch, maybe. Poke in the stomach, sure. But decapitate? Nah, that’s the sort of decision that only comes about when a character knows there is no other alternative. Additionally, the presence of Ash's other friends is the only explanation for why the actual Necronomicon is not present in the cabin when Annie and her buddies arrive a few hours after Ash gets deadified. Ash destroyed the Necronomicon to kill all the Deadites (save Linda and Henrietta) in the first film – ergo, it ain't in the second. 

Basically, the end of the first film syncs up with the “true” beginning of the second once Ash is hit by the evil and (temporarily) turns into a Deadite. If all three Evil Dead films were edited into one ubermovie, the first fifteen minutes would be cut from Evil Dead II – Ash getting hit by the evil in the final moments of The Evil Dead would immediately segue into his transformation in Evil Dead II. The scene where Ash revisits the broken bridge would also be left on the cutting-room floor.