Comments on: Permission to Kill

By: John

John — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 17:41:21 +0000

The best anti-cliche kill begins with those immortal words: ‘Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.’

By: Sarah

Sarah — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:19:51 +0000

More examples of cliche-killing from Firefly:
In “War Stories,” when Mal is fighting with Niska’s thug, and Zoe says, “This is something the Captain has to do for himself.” Mal replies, “No! No it’s not!”

By: bigtuna

bigtuna — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 21:30:43 +0000

Another example from Firefly, at the end of the train job, where Mal offers the henchmen a chance to go home, and the guy says he’ll hunt him down and kill him, and then Mal says “darn” and kicks him into the engine.

By: Justin

Justin — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:31:52 +0000

Well, I *did* use that picture for a reason…

Thanks for the comments!

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:34:51 +0000

This phenomenon is actually a pet peeve of my girlfriend. It’s amusing to see this beautiful, soft spoken, peace loving girl (who has criticized me for being too mean and snarky to people) literally yelling at the screen, “Don’t let him Go?! Just KILL HIM!!!”. Liss, you hit it on the head mentioning Firefly, tho I was specifically thinking of the scene in “The Train Job” when Niska’s thug gets casually kicked through the ships engine. I laughed for days. In point of fact, I’m still chuckling about it. hehehehe. =)

I’m with Lissa. Great post, fearless leader.

By: Lissa

Lissa — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:20:08 +0000

One of my favorite moments in the Firefly pilot is when Mal comes on board with the Reavers in hot pursuit and just shoots the Fed, no muss, no fuss. It’s an awesome moment, precisely because it defies this. For that matter, so is when Han shoots Greedo first.

Good rant

By: Sitting Duck

Sitting Duck — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:21:42 +0000

All very true. However, I think some of the blame should go to the writers as well. Admittedly it’s easier and more fun to blame everything wrong with movies and TV shows on faceless studio suits. But it’s my belief that’s writers are perfectly capable of employing such trite cliches without any prompting.

By: Drew

Drew — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:48:56 +0000

That’s one of the things I like about James Bond- if you’ve killed innocent people or tried to kill him, he will take you out. No hesitation, just one between your eyes. There’s that scene in Dr. No where it LOOKS like he stupidly gives an assassin a chance to regain his gun and shoot him… but the gun is empty, which Bond knew because he counted the shots. So he just coolly says, “That’s a Smith & Wesson, and you’ve had your six” and then calmly plugs the guy. Now THAT’S cold.

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:18:55 +0000

This brings to mind the end of “Darkman” as a counterexample. Hero has bad guy dangling off a 40-story building. Villain says something like “face it – you’re a good guy. You couldn’t live with yourself if you just killed me.” Hero drops him, says “I’ve learned to live with a lot of things.”

By: dex

dex — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:48:23 +0000

Too true. The old fallacy “More is always better.” This trope is about packing as many “moral points” in a couple of seconds as possible. Hypocrisy on multiple levels.

Luckily, at this point in a movie, the adrenalin dulls my pain somewhat, so I guess there are worse tropes.

But to end on a positive note, let’s list great examples where this trope is avoided. I’ll be the fanboy and say: Serenity.

By: Rudigger

Rudigger — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:05:12 +0000

The part in Serenity where the Operative says he’s unarmed and Mal says “Good!” and shoots him. Good stuff, although he should have put one in his head.
The Magnum PI episode “Did you see the Sunrise” where he askes the KGB guy if he saw said sunrise, and when the KGB guy says he did, shoots him. Also good stuff.