Burning the whole church was accidental, he tried to put out the fire but ended up fanning the flames. since that's your only example of stupid decision making i'm not sure what your point is.
I guess I don't understand what your confusion is or how you're clarifying anything here but let me try again:
The leverage that the "game" relied on to make Elliot make the leap from small potatoes stuff to truly deplorable acts was the threat of jail time from the prior acts. The leverage being the promise of legal exoneration.
However, if the participant (who we are explicitly told is selected based on their moral pre-disposition) refuses to cross the line into conduct that carries with it a serious threat of jail time, than the game never progresses very far.
It's easy enough to step on a kid's foot to make the kid cry and then play it off as an accident while feeling pretty comfortable that even in the worst case scenario you won't go to jail. A responsible person could also conceivably convince oneself that burning a small church display item in a discrete but fire controlled way and then tricking a homeless guy out of his clothes won't result in life-ruining legal repercussions (assuming they even get caught).
However, I don't see Elliot ever agreeing to carry that corpse into a diner unless he already felt like he was in pretty deep because of the arson, which was purely a blunder on his part and not something the puppeteers could count on in advance.
Ergo, the flaw in the story is that the game wouldn't ever progress far unless the participants are so sloppy and careless that they inadvertently dig themselves a hole that they feel like they can only climb out of by chasing the promise of legal exoneration.
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casavant-scott
10 years ago
what you're missing is that the game is dynamic and evolves over the course of challenges. because that fire happened, they used the leverage it gave them.
the sophisticated surveillance surely allows the game makers to modify the challenges at any point to achieve the desired effect in any given situation at any point in time.
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ProfessorPiehole
10 years ago
Are you suggesting the game makers might swoop in and exercise external influence so as to manipulate the situation to have more serious legal consequences for the player than would occur if the player was left to his or her own devices? Essentially, framing the player?
We never see that happen, and I consider that a charitable way of looking at it.
The fact remains that the game purports to give the player the option of saying no and walking away at any time.
Therefore, as depicted, the game has a chicken and the egg problem with the fact that they need the player to engage in a truly awful act to overcome their moral stand on a forward moving basis, but how do you erode the moral stand in the first place to achieve that first truly awful act that reels them in?
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therefdotcom
10 years ago
no. at a certain point, when the deeds the player does aren't even that horrible yet, the game turns into blackmail. meaning that he faces legal consequences if he stops. at one point it leads into the choice of doing ever so horrible deeds or go to jail forever. which is actually yet another flaw in the films logic, because the player does not do evil things out of his own free will or out of lust for the cash, at a point it is pure survival instinct, which is a PRIMAL instinct and therefore does not fall into the category of evil.
according to the films logic the game-makers do indeed intervene. hell, at the beginning it is shown that the jfk assassination was even part of the game.
anyway, the film is enjoyable, except for the ending, but it needs a hell load of suspended disbelief.
or to put it another way: it is entertaining, but taking a closer look, the film defies ANY logic.
"laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone." - Dae-su Oh
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fakeslashdash6
10 years ago
You actually missed the important part, that is when the bald guy was telling Ron Pearlman that even though the masters give the option of leaving the game - it's not really an option.
Meaning they will force you back in one way or another.
At one point in the movie, they tell him his brother's insurance has been declined. That is something they tell him clearly to keep the pressure on him.
Heck, in the middle of the movie, the police show him the stuff the player #2 (his brother) did and think he is responsible. In other words, the masters set him for everything both of them did so that he will be motivated to end the game and get his name back.
So yes, it's implied that if he doesn't play along, they'll make things more difficult until he does.
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ProfessorPiehole
10 years ago
Again, I just want to reiterate that while the game makers certainly exercise a lot of influence in other ways, we are never shown that the game makers will intervene in a way that causes the manner in which the contestant chooses to complete a task to result in unintended collateral damage or other consequences that the player didn't intend or foresee, so as to generate their black mail leverage moving forward.
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dogma867
10 years ago
ah I understand your original post now, sorry for misunderstanding. yeah you raise a good point, not really sure.
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gabby_bm
10 years ago
Though I agree with your premise, i do think there were some ways they manipulated the game to achieve an either/or result from the contestant. I'm looking at the corpse in the diner and he had to have a cup of coffee in front of him at 4pm. Did the game-masters know that these four cops come into the diner at the same time every day? There's not a whole lot of ways such a scenario could play out, is there?
**WARNING: MY POSTS MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS**
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ProfessorPiehole
10 years ago
Though I agree with your premise, i do think there were some ways they manipulated the game to achieve an either/or result from the contestant. I'm looking at the corpse in the diner and he had to have a cup of coffee in front of him at 4pm. Did the game-masters know that these four cops come into the diner at the same time every day? There's not a whole lot of ways such a scenario could play out, is there?
I'll buy that the game makers knew in advance that those cops would show up and therefore at least made the challenge more hazardous in the sense that they failed to fully disclose the obstacles.
However, this example doesn't fully reconcile the catch-22 I've explained, because the fact of the matter is that even without cops showing up there would be plenty of witnesses, and dragging a corpse to a public place is a risky enough proposition that I don't think you get the player to take that plunge unless they already feel in over their head due to the repercussions of prior challenges.
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gabby_bm
10 years ago
I think that's why they put time limits on the actions. if one has to perform these acts in haste, there's not a whole lot of planning going into how to get it done while protecting one's self. So yeah, i would definitely agree there's a reliance on these acts' sloppy execution. But I wouldn't place the blame on the participant for being sloppy, as there's just not a whole lot of time to think things through.
**WARNING: MY POSTS MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS**
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lil_b_597
9 years ago
Gotta agree, but I'd say the only exception would be in Challenge 12.
Obviously, at that point it's too far into it to matter, but it would've been brilliant to see something like that happen with an early challenge. Even something as simple as having his brother's 'new psychologist' that works for the syndicate witness him performing challenge 3 and saying that they may have to reevaluate the scenario. All it would take after that is another phone call explaining they can get rid of any evidence and he'd do anything to stop his brother going to Bayview
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