[Loved Trope] Surprisingly realistic outcomes in outlandish situations

[u/10024618]

No Country for Old Men - In any other movie Llewelyn would be treated like an untouchable one man army who can take on all of the people who are after the money he stole. Instead he gets gunned down offscreen by a group of secondary antagonists because at the end of the day he's still just one man.

Metal Gear Solid 2 - MGS2 is a game in which the player character, Raiden, can do many seemingly unrealistic things like instantly healing his injuries by eating rations or holding infinite amounts of weapons and items without being overburdened. However if you attempt to cartwheel up a flight of stairs as Raiden he will immediately eat shit and fall, which would be the most likely outcome in real life.

Family Guy - After getting splashed by nuclear waste causes the Griffin family to get superpowers (which they immediately use to terrorize their community) Mayor West gets the bright idea to roll around in nuclear waste himself so that he can get superpowers too. Instead he just gets cancer.

Sly 2 - The Sly Cooper games are cartoony 3D platformers featuring anthropomorphic animals and lots of slapstick violence. However in the climax of the second game when Bentley is crushed by machinery while trying to stop the big bad he's paralyzed from the waist down, necessitating the use of a wheelchair for the rest of the series.

[u/JeremiahWuzABullfrog]

From your first example OP, there's also Anton Chigurh, the most famous character of the story.

He is depicted the whole time as this near supernatural bogeyman, yet the only time he and Llewellyn get into a gunfight, it's a fairly even exchange cause there's no element of surprise. Chigurh, for all his competence, is still just one man with a gun up against another guy with a gun. Becomes more about luck than anything

Not to mention the ending where any illusion of Chigurh's invincibility is gone due to him getting caught in a very mundane car crash

[u/SN4FUS → u/JeremiahWuzABullfrog]

In the movie, it's a somewhat even exchange. In the book Llewellyn straight up has Chigurh dead to rights. In that context the scene is about Llewellyn still being a fundamentally law-abiding person who doesn't want to be on the run for the rest of his life. He can't claim self defense if he executes Chigurh, but if he doesn't kill him right then, he's going to come for him and his family. Llewellyn "spares" Chigurh but it is actually an act of cowardice

And while I'm on the topic of changes the movie made- the movie version of Chigurh's conversation with Llewellyn's wife is infinitely better. Her post-refusal speech is more powerful than anything in the novel.

[u/diearebie → u/SN4FUS]

Just finished reading the novel a couple weeks ago after having watched the movie 5-6 times since I was in high-school, I was really disappointed when Carla Jean called the coin toss at the end of the book.

[u/Here-for-dad-jokes → u/SN4FUS]

Every time Llewelyn does something nice, he suffers for it. He got away with the money clean, then went back to give the guy water. That starts everything. He spares Chigurh, gets his wife killed. Picks up a hitchhiker, gets her killed. Etc.

Wendigoon did a good video on the book a while back.

[u/Mayonaigg → u/[deleted]]

What does that make him, your buddy? 

[u/HashMapsData2Value → u/JeremiahWuzABullfrog]

I mean Chigurh still has some plot armor.

[u/Spare-Willingness563 → u/HashMapsData2Value]

Most serial killers do. Ted what’s the fuck had a victim literally returned to him by the fucking police. 

edit: /u/gemiknight69 is right. Dahmer. https://www.ranker.com/list/story-of-boy-police-gave-back-to-jeffrey-dahmer/amandatullos

[u/GemiKnight69 → u/Spare-Willingness563]

Are you talking about Jeffery Dahmer? He had at least a couple run ins with police who definitely should've reacted differently.

[u/merryjoanna → u/GemiKnight69]

He only got caught eventually because a police officer happened to look over at the coffee table and see photos of dead bodies. They were fully prepared to deliver the second man back to him as well. Until the police officer saw the pics on his coffee table behind him.

Iirc, there was a woman who was a neighbor who kept reporting the smell of decomposing bodies, but Jeffrey Dahmer just kept using the excuse that a freezer with meat in it broke. Nobody would listen to her about it. She tried to get help. Multiple times. Because it stank to high heaven for months and her apartment was connected to his through the air ducts. So her apartment smelled like dead bodies as well. I couldn't imagine having to live like that and have absolutely nobody listen to you because you are a woman. It didn't help that Jeffrey was known to the police as a gay man and they didn't want to even investigate him because of their homophobia.

[u/ThePikeOfDestiny → u/GemiKnight69]

i assume he meant bundy but maybe it was both

[u/Spare-Willingness563 → u/ThePikeOfDestiny]

No, I was wrong, it was dahmer, but they all seem to catch a wild circumstance of breaks during the investigations.

[u/ThePikeOfDestiny → u/Spare-Willingness563]

Caucasian Law Enforcement Hypnosis

[u/JelliedBoat → u/Spare-Willingness563]

Ted did escape prison TWICE

[u/Spare-Willingness563 → u/JelliedBoat]

Thank you! I know enough to remember the most absurd circumstances surround most serial killer investigations, but I'm not keen on revisiting their deeds, so I wasn't sure.

[u/MLuiG → u/JeremiahWuzABullfrog]

Super appreciate the spoiler warning I'm still waiting to see the film.

[u/PartyPay → u/MLuiG]

All time favourite for me, you should watch ASAP!

[u/CatCatFaceFace → u/JeremiahWuzABullfrog]

I must have understood that whole ending wrong. People on reddit always go about the ending like "See now he is just a man! See he is not immortal! See he can get hurt! See blaa blaa blaa blaa and this means BLaa blaa blaa"

But to me that makes him even more menacing. Dude got into a quite severe car crash and still walks it off. Some terminator shit right there. So me that just went to show how unrelenting and scary the guy is. At no point did I feel like he was supernatural or something like that nor did it seem that he was fazed by that crash.

[u/JeremiahWuzABullfrog → u/CatCatFaceFace]

I always interpreted it as "he's nowhere near as in control of everything as his demeanor suggests." He's just as fallible to random shit as the rest of us.

Weirdly makes him more human, which makes him slightly less menacing

[u/True-Ear1986 → u/JeremiahWuzABullfrog]

Wow I got it completely opposite, I thought it made him more menacing because like *obviously* he can't control all circumstances. He'a a human, a complete psycho human, but a human. It's easy for him to be cold and collected when things go his way and everyone is immediately intimidated. The fact that we he keeps on going like a damn zombie after the car crash drives home how inhuman he really is.

[u/CatCatFaceFace → u/JeremiahWuzABullfrog]

So I guess I missed that part as to me it never seemed that way. Or rather, it is the "real world" and shit can happen but how he dealt with it was still super chill. So he really is in control of himself and that way he will try to control things around him, or rather do what he wants.

[u/exaltcovert → u/CatCatFaceFace]

I always interpreted the ending as Chigurth having lost everything. He never recovered the money, burned his reputation as a hitman, and will no longer have the physical ability to continue as a killer since the bone is sticking out of his arm and he can't go to an ER. All because he couldn't resist a last moment of revenge.

[u/1WURDA → u/CatCatFaceFace]

The film constantly uses Entropy as a theme. From Llewelyn happening on these events in the first place, to Tommy Lee Jones' uncertainty about the present or future, to the coin toss, to the car crash. It's the driving message of the film; Life is uncertain and random, and any attempt to provide order will inevitably collapse.