MovieChat Forums > The Manchurian Candidate (2004) Discussion > Who did you sympathize most with?

Who did you sympathize most with?


Marco or Shaw? Personally, I sympathized most with Shaw because he has been treated like a pawn his entire life by everybody that was close to him.

A bear and a half naked man in a bedroom... scary...

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[deleted]

Marco

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I sympathize equally with everyone who was thrust into that disgusting situation. Especially the members of the unit that were killed in cold blood while under hypnosis.

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Mainly Shaw.

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I'd say Shaw. Just because at least Marco was working to fix the whole situation while Shaw was still deluded...

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“My God! It’s full of stars!”

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SPOILER

Are you certain Shaw was still deluded at the end?

At the school where Shaw cast his ballot, we heard him tell Marco that he, too, was dreaming. Marco confirmed that Shaw had killed someone while they were held captive. And there was a cut to the scene outside their classroom while the two were conferring. That, I have always presumed, was when they planned their revolt against Manchurian's machinations.

Shaw did not step onto his mark (the star on the stage floor they kept cutting to). Instead, he convinced his mother, Eleanor, to join him on the stage, hugged her, checked up near the roof where Marco was hiding, and then turned to line up the shot so Marco could take the two of them out with the same shot.

This would align the 2004 story with the 1962 version, where Shaw takes out both his McCarthyesque vice presidential nominee father and his mother, then shoots himself.

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I couldn't like Marco. He was constantly whining, ranting and doing other rash things.

I liked Shaw better. He had a decent character despite it all.

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I sympathized with Marco and Shaw, they were both put through something terrible. But in the classroom scene where they talk and Shaw starts crying when he says he can't remember killing Jocelyn and her dad, I just felt awful for him! His sociopathic mother never really cared about him, he was nothing but a pawn in her sick, crazy mind games- screw the psychological trauma he'd be put through, just as long as she gets to rule the world!

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I sympathized with Marco and Shaw, they were both put through something terrible. But in the classroom scene where they talk and Shaw starts crying when he says he can't remember killing Jocelyn and her dad, I just felt awful for him! His sociopathic mother never really cared about him, he was nothing but a pawn in her sick, crazy mind games- screw the psychological trauma he'd be put through, just as long as she gets to rule the world!


^^This. I felt really bad for both Marco & Shaw, they went through a lot of messed up stuff. I think at the end, Shaw knew what truly needed to be done.

"I am the ultimate badass, you do not wanna `*beep*` wit me!"- Hudson in Aliens.

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