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Post by Admiral Lithp on Jan 24, 2010 19:36:21 GMT -5
I'm not entirely fond of the Badass of the Week site, but I'm inclined to agree with them in this situation: Curbstomping Satan=Instant badassity.
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Post by MaybeNever on Jan 31, 2010 18:33:47 GMT -5
I don't know if anybody here actually saw Book of Eli, but since I just did I'll offer a few comments about it. Obviously these may be spoilerish, although I'll try to avoid that.
The premise of the movie is that it's a post-apocalyptic future and you have badass Eli heading west with a Bible. You have a bad guy named something-or-other, who runs some little town that's about what you'd expect from post-apocalypse fiction - lots of amoral thugs with guns, a warlordish "government", and much injustice, mistrust, and catering to vice.
Stylistically, the movie is actually very cool, as there is almost zero color. Everything is super washed-out, but it fits the movie perfectly. Same with the soundtrack. Things work together just perfectly, basically, to make for a fun experience. The action scenes are quick, brutal, and awesome, like the fights in the Bourne movies which leave you just sort of agape because it's all over so fast. So the movie's very worth seeing. Very.
The fundamental message of the movie is simply that the trappings of faith are less important than the behaviors one takes away from it, and that knowledge ought to be used responsibly.
There are some spoilers from here on, although I don't think they give too much away.
Thematically, the story frankly fits with the worldview of the FSTDT crowd extremely well. The bad guy wants the Bible that Eli carries because he intends to use religion explicitly for social control; Eli meanwhile starts out caring more about the words of scripture than the fundamental lesson of Don't Be An Asshole, to the point where he just watches as two people get murdered by thugs even though he could help them, muttering to himself "Keep to the path. This is not your concern." In short, the bad guy is actually not far removed from the fundies we know and love, whereas Eli finds himself liberalizing in his faith through experience.
Eli's quest, bestowed before the curtain rises by an inner voice that is supposedly God's, is to find a place where the Bible will be safe and appreciated for what it is. Following the war that ended the world religious books were burned as people felt it was religion that caused the war, and while we aren't given any details it certainly seems plausible that the end of the world will come at the hands of the ultra-religious. Apparently, thus, Eli's Bible is the only one left. That's something that bugged me, given that the Bible is the most widely printed book in history, but it's worth pointing out that Eli doesn't really know that, just asserts it.
In the end, Eli gets the book to the place where it can be safe and appreciated, which is a library that is gathering books purely for love of knowledge and the utility of the information contained within. One of the final scenes shows the Bible being put on a shelf in its place, next to books on the various world religions.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Jan 31, 2010 20:32:03 GMT -5
That does sound pretty cool, although I was kind of hoping he'd burn it so that the fundamental message could be carried on without the actual material being misused.
In hindsight, I suppose that supports book burning, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but in my defense, neither does the library thing. Why wouldn't the books in there have already been burned?
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Post by MaybeNever on Jan 31, 2010 20:45:55 GMT -5
It's actually a makeshift library, of books that were saved or reproduced. They have a printing press, so they're actually reprinting books. There are actually a couple of neat twists regarding Eli's Bible and the library (although I guess it's not a "twist" with the library, just something I thought was brilliant).
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Post by John E on Jan 31, 2010 21:29:00 GMT -5
Hmm, when I first read a summary of the movie, that it was about protecting the world's last bible, and that it was a Christian™ movie (i.e. made for christians), I quickly decided to avoid it, but your summary (MaybeNever) makes it sound a lot better and less offensive that I thought. Might actually be worth seeing. On NetFlix.
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Post by MaybeNever on Jan 31, 2010 22:57:26 GMT -5
It's obviously not going to be everyone's cup of tea, particularly for anti-theists, but it's one of the few movies I felt was absolutely one hundred percent worth the price of admission.
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Post by deusmalum on Feb 1, 2010 13:21:15 GMT -5
I saw it Saturday. **SPOILERS**Knowing from the trailer that the book everyone was fighting over was probably the bible, I felt the treatment of the book throughout the movie, and the ideas that come from it, was handled fairly. It showed both the capacity for a book to inspire (any book, as at the end of the film the bible ends up on a bookshelf between the torah and the quran) both good and evil (the primary reason Gary Oldman's character wants the book is because he knows that it can be used as a means of exerting control over the ignorant, illiterate masses). I also thought it a nice touch that they make it clear that the original war that sparked this post-apocalyptic world was a holy war, which is precisely why most of the religious works of the previous civilization were destroyed. All in all it was an enjoyable movie for the action scenes, which were very reminiscent of Equilibrium. The twist at the end was also pretty interesting, and they foreshadowed it in a lot of subtle ways earlier in the movie, which makes it look a lot less "pulled out the ass."
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Post by deusmalum on Feb 1, 2010 13:30:07 GMT -5
That does sound pretty cool, although I was kind of hoping he'd burn it so that the fundamental message could be carried on without the actual material being misused. In hindsight, I suppose that supports book burning, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but in my defense, neither does the library thing. Why wouldn't the books in there have already been burned? ** SPOILERS **In a way, this IS kind of what happens. Prior to him reaching the island where the library is kept, the villain actually manages to take the book from him, which it turns out the villain can't read because the book is written in Braille. Eli then dictates the entire bible to the head of the library from memory, who then reprints it using a printing press.
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Post by The_L on Feb 1, 2010 17:21:48 GMT -5
That does sound pretty cool, although I was kind of hoping he'd burn it so that the fundamental message could be carried on without the actual material being misused. In hindsight, I suppose that supports book burning, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but in my defense, neither does the library thing. Why wouldn't the books in there have already been burned? ** SPOILERS **In a way, this IS kind of what happens. Prior to him reaching the island where the library is kept, the villain actually manages to take the book from him, which it turns out the villain can't read because the book is written in braile. Eli then dictates the entire bible to the head of the library from memory, who then reprints it using a printing press. I still don't get how a Braille copy of the entire Bible can be held under your arm. Shouldn't that take up several good-sized shelves? I mean, it's not like they can just punch the little bumps into ultra-thin paper or something.
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Post by deusmalum on Feb 1, 2010 17:23:16 GMT -5
** SPOILERS **In a way, this IS kind of what happens. Prior to him reaching the island where the library is kept, the villain actually manages to take the book from him, which it turns out the villain can't read because the book is written in braile. Eli then dictates the entire bible to the head of the library from memory, who then reprints it using a printing press. I still don't get how a Braille copy of the entire Bible can be held under your arm. Shouldn't that take up several good-sized shelves? I mean, it's not like they can just punch the little bumps into ultra-thin paper or something. Not knowing anything about how much space Braille takes up, I have no clue.
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Post by The_L on Feb 2, 2010 20:50:43 GMT -5
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Post by Thejebusfire on Feb 2, 2010 21:30:28 GMT -5
My mother is going to see it this weekend. I'm going with her. It's a free movie, so why not?
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Post by MaybeNever on Feb 2, 2010 21:31:12 GMT -5
Man, that would make the movie totally different. I think they should have included a real braille Bible. Eli's hauling this massive pack everywhere... awesome.
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