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Ismailov's Replies
Taggert and the two agents visited Orin Sr in order to carry out an arrest warrant, whereupon he responded by attempting to murder Taggert, then shooting one of the agents before trying again to murder Taggert.
So even if his son's testimony was thrown out, his behavior at the casino in front of numerous witnesses would presumably be enough to put him in prison for a while (especially if the agent died.)
I recall thinking that the movie's pacing was a bit slow at times, and I didn't care for the parts involving the aliens or the CGI pets (although I'm sure they're relevant to the books this movie is based off of), but otherwise I'd agree that it has amusing moments and quotable lines.
I still don't agree, since it has to be shown that a substantial number of school shooters were "numbed" by increasingly violent movies and video games, let alone a majority of them. One could just as easily (if not more easily) argue that people have been "numbed" by learning about or seeing things like the Vietnam War, news reports of violent crime, the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11, the Iraq War, etc.
By 1975 there were plenty of violent films such as Bonnie & Clyde, Night of the Living Dead, Death Wish, Dirty Harry, etc., yet spree shootings weren't as big an issue. By 1989 violent films were in even greater abundance and could be far gorier, but again spree shooting wasn't as big an issue. You'd have to demonstrate that violent films in the 90s reached such a point where it became "that much easier for someone to be okay with going on a shooting spree." I don't think that's possible.
I'm not an expert on the lives of school shooters, but I do not recall any source claiming Cho and Lanza had an interest in violent video games or movies. If I'm wrong, there ought to be evidence to the contrary (and as I said, if a study were done of school shooters in general, I wouldn't be surprised if most didn't really care for violent media.)
By contrast, Doom was indisputably an important part of the lives of Harris & Klebold. One example of this is from Harris' diary:
<blockquote>I have a goal to destroy as much as possible so I must not be sidetracked by my feelings of sympathy, mercy, or any of that, so I will force myself to believe that everyone is just another monster from Doom like FH or FS or demons, so It's either me or them. I have to turn off my feelings.</blockquote>
They also expressed interest in Duke Nukem 3D, Natural Born Killers, etc.
I don't agree that violent media "is likely a significant contributing factor" for individuals deciding to go on spree shootings. Leaving aside whether it was actually a contributing factor in the case of Harris & Klebold, I think your claim is only possible if we assume every school shooter was basically identical in interests and motives to Harris & Klebold, which doesn't seem to be the case.
To be fair, while Harris & Klebold were clearly very interested in violent movies and video games, I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't apply to most school shooters. It didn't seem to apply to Seung-Hui Cho and Adam Lanza, for example.
IMO this film has gotten "better" with age. When it first came out Seagal was still taken plenty seriously as an action movie star whose career was just getting started, so that someone watching this could understandably be disappointed.
Nowadays, when he's been in far worse films and is near-universally regarded as a joke, no one watching On Deadly Ground will expect a masterpiece. They can instead derive enjoyment from Seagal's ego, the over-the-top villainy of the antagonists, silly "white savior protects mother earth by blowing up an oil rig" plot, and good ol' violence meted out against any mortal foolish enough to challenge Seagal's character.
Yeah, Michael Jackson was one of those performers whose fame pretty much remained sky high despite none of his later albums reaching the iconic stature of "Thriller" or "Bad." If he had died this year instead of 2009, I'd imagine the media response (interrupting current music shows, etc.) wouldn't have been much less than it was back then unless something like "Leaving Neverland" still gets made and is effective.
If I had to guess, Seagal would have argued he violently dispatches other characters in the film before they were able to violently dispatch him. From what I recall, Tobolowsky's character was pointing a gun at him and threatening to shoot if Seagal didn't kill him.
Then again, in the final fight Seagal gets a broken nose from a character who is otherwise clearly losing in hand-to-hand combat, whereupon Seagal declares "if that's the best you got, I'm just gonna have to kill you" as he proceeds to impale him on a spiked fence. There's also a scene where he shoots an unarmed and non-physically-threatening man in the foot and hand to force information from him.
There's definitely subpar special effects (for example, Travis Dane is very briefly copy and pasted into a scene as shown at 0:21 in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UigTHxygL18), but I figure that if I'm watching a Steven Seagal movie it'd be ridiculous to treat it like Blade Runner. I'm expecting a silly action film set in an alternate reality where aikido is the deadliest martial art known to the universe.
Imagining for a moment that I'm a Hollywood scriptwriter forced to write a sequel against my will, how about this:
Decades have passed and technology has allowed the effects of Quaid's lobotomy and "schizoid embolism" to be fixed (after all, decades earlier humans earlier knew enough about the brain to implant memories.) Since his wife has presumably remarried and he isn't fit to work in construction, he is retired and lives off of money from a settlement against Rekall for the damages done to himself and others. Quaid then decides he's finally going take take a vacation on Mars.
While there he sees how utterly horrible life is for most of its inhabitants (since at the start of the first movie he seemed inclined to believe Cohaagen's press) and resolves to help them defeat Cohaagen for real this time.
Now, would this be a GOOD story? Almost certainly not; it wouldn't even really have anything to do with the "total recall" part of the title aside from what happened in the prior film. But there you have it, how Hollywood could create an unnecessary remake that still has Arnie in it (which would presumably be "ideal" from the vantage point of getting people to watch it.)
While perhaps calling it a satire isn't quite right, if Quaid's body is still at the Rekall company and everything that's happening is merely implanted in his head, it makes sense that he was given a stereotypical "badass action hero" plot, which is what Quaid signed up for.
Of course, if one interprets the movie as Quaid really experiencing what's going on, then this doesn't apply.
To be fair, I do think he cared about On Deadly Ground (which was practically a vanity project) and Fire Down Below (which is the most "serious" of all his films.) Not coincidentally he gets to portray himself as a great environmentalist hero speaking truth to power in both.
But yeah he's long been on autopilot. He has to know his direct-to-video <i>oeuvre</i> exists for him to cash a check rather than resuscitate his career.
[quote]Near the end of the movie I remembered something someone once told me, and that's that in his movies Seagal NEVER gets hit.[/quote]Yeah, his character in Hard to Kill enters a coma after being repeatedly shot, but wakes up years later and makes a full and remarkably quick recovery. When it comes to hand-to-hand combat the character is, of course, essentially untouchable.
I've seen all of his films up to 2003's The Foreigner, and can recall no greater damage inflicted in the course of physical fighting than a broken nose in the final fight of The Glimmer Man, and that was after telling the bad guy to "take your best shot."
I think it's a situation where his "badass" reputation is founded on being great at aikido and on showing off aikido techniques in his films. So aside from his own ego, he probably felt he can't have his characters get beaten up as it would undermine the aura of aikido as a god-tier martial art and consequently undermine his reputation.
If I had to guess, there was no task left to assign Zhora, so Roy suggested she simply blend into wider society for now.
Leon was created to move cargo around, and is a lot more believable as someone hired to handle waste disposal at the Tyrell Corporation.
Sebastian might get suspicious if a more conventionally attractive woman like Zhora showed interest in him.
Roy and Leon could have taken Zhora along in visiting the genetic designers, but Roy probably figured three persons draw more attention walking around the city than two.
Yeah, Varney was one of those actors who felt he was getting typecast. Playing the lead in a non-Ernest film was a big deal to him.
He seemed to die just as he was starting to get taken seriously as a versatile actor.
Yeah, Lazenby's opening was all about establishing him as the new Bond, complete with the line "this never happened to the other fellow." Then Lazenby dropped out, followed by Connery returning only to do the same. So a "business as usual" approach made sense with Moore.
I'd assume B-List. He's been in quite a few big-budget films, but he usually plays a side character rather than a starring role.
urbandictionary is a site where random people on the Internet write down "definitions" of words and terms.
As I said, Lenin is often attributed as the author of the term, but he did not use it. Neither did Stalin.
Yeah I mentioned Jack Black because he popped in my head as someone who has had an active online presence, so it'd make sense if he browsed IMDB's boards back in the day. I wouldn't be surprised if lots of people involved in "the industry" did so.
But MovieChat lacks the sort of activity and name recognition that IMDB had/has (which obviously isn't really MovieChat's fault), so I'd imagine that if someone like Black or Sirtis wanted to look up what people are saying, MovieChat is less likely to be the first place they'd look.
MovieChat is a lot less active than IMDB's message boards used to be.
For a random example, I have no idea if Jack Black ever looked at his IMDB board, but the last time someone posted on his MovieChat board was in a troll thread eight months ago and nothing for two years prior, so there's no reason for him to go "oh hey, I wonder what everyone's saying over at MovieChat!" (if he even knows this place exists)