MovieChat Forums > Chronicle (2012) Discussion > There were no superpowers...Andrew made ...

There were no superpowers...Andrew made it up


Think about it. Andrew creates his own surreal world in which he has superpowers, because his mother is dying, he is bullied in school and his father is beating him. And who doesn't want to have superpowers when you're in such a situation like that? In the end, he commits suicide by jumping off the hospital. Let me explain.

He films ALL of it, all of the crazy stuff he does, yet when his father sees it, the only things he says is something like 'they are not your friends'. What the hell? You've supposedly seen your son flying in the sky, and that's all you say? The only reason: he doesn't fly, he doesn't have superpowers. He lives in his own world, filming cheerleaders, but dreaming about superpowers.

The whole film is his big dream. A dream from a lonely, angry and disturbed kid, who eventually wants everybody to die or leave him alone. Why doesn't anyone notice anything if a car magically moves? Because it doesn't, it's just Andrew's imagination. The car crash? The death of Steve? Just Andrew's megalomaniac mind thinking HE did it, that's how disturbed this kid is. The talent show? His ultimate dream to become popular, but in reality, he is propably the one who is filming the stage.

At the end of the movie, he sees his mother die. He goes insane, gets beaten up by the kids in his street and then desperately tries to rob a gas station but gets shot instead. In the hospital, when his father blames him for his mother's death, he just snaps. In his own world, he is the almighty superhero, better than anyone, finally beating his father up. However, in reality, he flees up the building, standing at the edge of the building, waiting to jump.

Matt tries to talk Andrew out of it. In the movie, you see this when they're floating in the air in front of the Space Needle. In reality, they're on the roof, where Matt tries to save Andrew from commiting suicide. Did you notice, when he talks to Andrew in that part of the, he says the exact thing you would say to somebody who's standing on the edge of a building? When Andrew says something like: 'why did you catch him' or 'I am stronger than this', Matt replies with 'Listen, focus!' and even 'this is not a game'. He's trying to get Andrew out of his own world, trying to get his attention, trying to get him focussed. Finally Matt says: 'we can fly away, be famliy, and, more importantly, 'this isn't who you are'. Which is right, since Matt hasn't got any superpowers.

He then jumps with the words 'I'm an apex predator'. The top of the foodchain has no predators of it own, except theirselves. And even in his flight, he images himself destroying the city and its people. He last words are 'leave me alone', and finally, in death, he is.

The actual end of the movie even makes sense now: Matt is going to be a better person, the person he never was for Andrew. He's apologising for letting Andrew go, but it was for the better. The reference to 'what happened down there'?. Maybe the world Matt lived in, or something that happened in their childhood that made Andrew such a disturbed person.

The superpowers were Andrew's Tyler Durden, but the shot really killed Andrew and not the superpowers. Makes all sense now.

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This is a very interesting and well thought out interpretation of the film; I particularly like the comparison to Fight Club. I am a firm believer in plurality, so I think your interpretation is just as correct as mine, which is a more literal understanding of the film. In regard to his father finding the camera I believe it's possible he didn't understand what he was seeing, maybe he saw what they were doing and believed it to be special affects added later, or maybe he only saw the school and party scenes, and Andrew doesn't film ALL of it, the end is filmed by Casey as they're in her car and watching Matt fly up to save Andrew's father and some of it is caught by security cameras which I think are used to provide the objective POV and they catch him robbing the store with his powers and knocking the gun out of the store owners hands in the parking lot.

Overall I really like your interpretation, it makes me want to watch it again and look fore more clues :)

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It all falls apart at the end of the movie.

First I like what someone said about the reveal. There has to be the reveal. otherwise your Tyler Durden theory is just fetching far/striving to be different I don't know.

Second, why would Matt go all the way up to the hospital just to let him go?
If it was all imaginary then Matt would have tried to save him even after he jumped right? If that's the case why at the end of the movie did Matt say "I hope you know I did what I had to"? I think that is what should tell you that he did infact kill him. Cause if it was imaginary why would he apologize for letting Andrew die? If it's what Andrew wanted.

Nice try, but sadly, it's a FAIL.

*Matt said he's going to find out what happened to them in the cave. If it was simply the ground caving in, what's there to find out? Think about it.

FAIL.

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I think it's genius. Yeah, that's not what literally happened in the movie, but OP's interpretation is a possibility, if you were thinking about it realistically.

As OP pointed out, Matt tried to talk him out of jumping (in his scenario). Why would Matt go up just to let him go in the end? Matt loves Andrew. If someone you loved were about to jump off a building, would you be like "*beep* it, I'm not even going to try to talk them out of jumping." And how would he even save him after he jumped? In the imaginary scenario, he can't fly...

I love the way the writers made the script so ambiguous that people can interpret the film in different ways than just what's on screen. It makes the film that much deeper.

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The entire movie is not through the eyes of Andrew. It's all unedited video tape recordings. Not only when Andrew is carrying it, but when others are carrying the camera or it's free falling or through other people's cameras too. So, did he edit in all the stuff he does on tape? Or are we looking through his mind as he watches the tapes (including other people's cameras that he never touches or sees)? I think if the writer / director was going to make the entire movie questionable like that, he would have just gone with the standard filming style instead of "through the eyes of the camera".

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[deleted]

So I guess when his dad said he saw the tape, Andrew "make-believed" he had him up against the wall and threw him too huh? The movie was great the way it was without picking it apart.

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I appreciate the thought you put into a possible interpretation of the movie. Always more interesting to hear than complaints about the mechanics of a fictional universe as if it has to adhere to reality's laws.

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[deleted]

I could've believed it if Matt didn't fly to the himalayas. Maybe if they only showed him hiking in the snow... but even then they never hinted at him having the skills to climb a mountain solo.

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Nice idea but there's way too many POV shots that make it actually happening. Movie was OK but the ending was quite strong.

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Ok, but we have to distinguish what we SAW (and what we can deduce) of what we WANNA see. The analysis is amazing, but doesn't make any sense, it surpasses completely the story at the screen. it's just creative. There's no support in the movie to think about.

OBS: forgive my terrible english.

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nah, the OP got it wrong. You see, what REALLY happened is Andrew was abducted by aliens during the first 4 and a half seconds of the film, and the rest of it is his probing dream.

Also, Harry Potter wasn't really going to MAGIC school. Actually, he was simply going to (wait for it) real school! There's also a side plot in there somewhere about how he's actually a prostitute with a lovely singing voice, but I don't have time to get into that here.

Your mind is now blown.

Seriously, this "creative" analysis of the film is actually lazy and not anywhere near as imaginative as the guy coming up with it thinks it is. In fact, this interpretation of the movie makes 90% of what you see on film utterly meaningless.

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"Seriously, this 'creative' analysis of the film is actually lazy and not anywhere near as imaginative as the guy coming up with it thinks it is. In fact, this interpretation of the movie makes 90% of what you see on film utterly meaningless."

This ^^^. It really bothers me how much people try and turn a film into whatever the hell they want it to be in their own head. Not everything is an Alice in Wonderland imagination land metaphor. There's nothing wrong with analyzing a film to this extent but when there's literally NOTHING within the film that indicates that this is what's going on, there's no reason to explain away a very simple storyline as something it's not.

This movie was not "what if an introvert explained away everything in his life with an imaginary story." Sucker Punch and Fight Club are THAT movie. THIS movie was "what would happen if super heroes were real in the context of our current modern reality." As in...what are some REAL motivational factors that could actual turn someone into a super villain if they had the capability to actually become one.

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You've hit the nail on the head (maybe others have too, but I haven't read every single post; I stopped after yours).

The OP's theory fails completely when, after Andrew has died, Matt has the power to fly to the Himalayas.

I'm not knocking his opinion, mainly because there was a powerful sub-plot about Andrew's stressful home and school life but to me it was a straight-forward film and should be given the respect it deserves for depicting a very gritty storyline in the midst of a sci-fi drama.

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