Confused
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — The Manchurian Candidate
mstrongilos — 13 years ago(July 02, 2012 05:00 AM)
This may be a contradiction in terms, but I did enjoy the movie although I did not understand it well, the ending that is.
Could someone clarify what happened in the end please?
Did Eleanor Shaw trigger Marco to shoot (and kill) her own son?
Why did she tell her son what was going to happen and to stand at a specific place?
Was Raymond Shaw supposed to die or only to play dead so that he would be taken away to recover in secrecy? If so, why bother to run for the elections?
If he was to die, then for what purpose? And by his own mother who loved him?
The FBI planted their agent on Marco because they found an implant on Al Melvins dead body. Why did they not scan or x-ray Marco?
How come they drilled Raymond Shaws scull to fiddle with the implant, but when they removed the drill bit, there was no blood? Only some white dust came out and the drill bit was fairly clean, like drilling on a brick wall.
Also, the original platoon was sent away to partol and then come back. At what point were they abducted? And no one noticed they had gone missing? Apparently they had been taken to a remote isolated island, fully equipped however for the job. The island had to be somewhere close to the war theatre. Assuming there is such an island in the persian gulf, how did they manage to tranport, unload, instal etc all the personnel and equipment required for the job unoticed by the armed forces who had dominant supremacy over the skies at the time?
And how did Marco manage to find it again later at the end of the movie?
Thanks
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hels-dunleavy — 13 years ago(October 31, 2012 01:48 PM)
- Yes; when Shaw passed the phone to Marco and she used the name trigger he is then ready to be given instructions.
- In that scene her son is also ready for instructions, which is what she's explaining to her; she's explaining the plan, which is that he will stand some distance away from the President, lowering the risk of him being hit when Marco shoots the new pres.
- Ray wasn't supposed to get so close to the new President; him not stopping at his mark and instead intentionally congratulating new pres was the first indicator that he had somehow 'deprogrammed'. That's why the filmmakers pointedly include shots and dialogue about him not standing on his mark, his mother looking slightly flustered and confused, but no one is explicit because they're in front of the big audience. His mother's plan was for the new pres to get shot with Ray definitely a couple of meters away, the Pres would die and instead Ray would become President. Then Ray would be controlled throughout his presidency, as is discussed throughout the movie. Regarding Ray getting him and his mother shot - Ray wanted to do this. He signals Marco with his eyes to, ya know, 'do it'. Whether Marco did so because Ray had somehow deprogrammed him to allow a slither of choice or whether Ray had reprogrammed him to shoot them against his will is unclear.
And irrelevant imo, as the number of other questions you ask should indicate: this is a subpar remake. The filmmakers changed some stuff [here it is neurological changes, tracking devices and chips under the skin instead of straight up hypnosis along with others story changes]. Then in other ways it hasn't been updated to compensate the different american culture from the 60s. It was easy to write in the 60s that a bunch of soldiers disappeared for days without it being mildly implausible, whereas now technology makes that seem a bit strange. It could be written away with extra conspiracy stuff about corruption hiding any evidence of what happened, but the film isn't even all that advanced regarding corporate, media and political power and corruption. Including the idea that corporations would need to go to so much trouble just to get someone in the White House that will do what they want. The original was timely, prescient and clever, whereas this film bottles the chance to say something similar about the current political climate.
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