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SeekingBlood  1yr ago (text post)   2417 thread views

I feel that people often praise movies that call out or subvert expectations of their genre solely because they do that, even if execution of the subversion itself is not good.

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How good would the first few seasons of Game of Thrones have been if Tywin Lannister abruptly died of a disease in the beginning of Season 3, or if Jon Snow were killed by unnamed wildlings after he travels with the Night's Watch beyond the wall, as realistically someone in his position would be?

It's funny you say this, because Game of Thrones arguably got famous for an "anticlimactic" death or even a set of them

I remember a fan being absolutely offended at the death of Ned. Yet it was broadly considered bold and became famous. Why?

Because it was set up by the story. Ned's death is simultaneously unpredictable but also predictable and it's consequences were similarly so. It fit with the themes Martin was writing.

Similarly, No Country for Old Men is about many things, but it emphasizes the limits of the Sheriff's power to change life's brutality and the hubris of Llewellyn. This is emphasized multiple times, even directly at the audience via parables with helpful summations. The ending is also an "anticlimax" where Chigurh gets hit and walks off but it highlights that even Chigurh isn't really separate from vagaries of the world despite his rules (which he believes protect him), again tied to debates in the film.

Now, I get why that might not work for you but that similarity to GoT's Season 1 (maintaining thematic consistency) is why the movie was so well-received in spit of its "anticlimax".

Another factor is that No Country for Old Men is a movie, which means that it has a much more compressed time frame. We knew Moss for two hours, Ned for 10, Jon Snow for ~75. Different expectations.

tl;dr: My defense is that Game of Thrones and No Country for Old Men are admired for similar reasons, therefore GoT isn't a good counterexample.

When I read A Game of Thrones back in 2004 (while I was supposed to be paying attention in Grade 9 English), I was absolutely floored by Ned's death. All the fantasy books I had ever read drilled into me, consciously or not, expectations about how the story would go. The hero always survives, good ultimately triumphs, things come around in the end. There's a sort of nervous, excited energy you get when you realize a story isn't going to go the way you thought, and all of a sudden instead there are a million possibilities. I can remember vividly some of the times this has happened to me and Ned's death was one of them.

From a writing perspective it's also a very well constructed twist: it's set up in the book itself of course, but I'm referring more to the way it toys with the reader. The reader is used to seeing the protagonist escape seemingly impossible situations, and the book gives you various different reasons why it would make sense within the logic of the characters and the story for Ned to survive (not to mention the reader's knowledge that this is book 1 of a series). And then he doesn't.

His death also felt much less random than Llewelyn's death; whereas Llewelyn was killed by unknown cartel gangsters off-screen, Ned Stark's death was ordered by one of the most significant characters of that season.

Llewelyn's death wasn't "random": he was hiding from drug dealers, we were explicitly told that he would have extra dealers other than Chigurh on his tail (something Chigurh was foreshadowed as being angry about) and Moss is...just some guy. If anything, his death is the most predictable thing that happened. It was just anticlimactic.

This was also the point of the story of the cattle and the man with the prod: even in the best of times you can lose. Moss wasn't in his best times.

because his arc was not leading towards something that never ended up happening.

What exactly did it seem like Moss' arc was leading to? Cause I don't feel like the movie ever gives you any reason to think happiness or some grand achievement is on the cards. Moss' theft of the money is soon discovered and he has a psychopathic criminal on his tail, combined with his bosses who want to throw more resources at it (and are only stopped by said murderous criminal...for now).

Meanwhile, the Sheriff's perspective is basically one of fatalism and an inability to reckon with the evils of the day. At one point he seems to have been facing Chigurh (probably his imagination) and can't seem to bring himself to do anything. He's no savior for Moss.

Llewelyn isn't really just some guy.

Llewelyn has some kill but makes multiple mistakes - the most obvious being going back to offer water to the dying man and not checking the money early on - and shows what, quite frankly, is hubris. His dismissive attitude towards Wells, who is the only one who knows something about his nemesis, is telling.

He has some skill but he was clearly way over his head.

I felt like it was random because he was killed by the Mexican gangsters who were not really pivotal at any point of the show.

The Mexican gangsters actually came close to Llewelyn in the hotel. They were killed by Chigurh, close enough for Llewelyn to hear. Given how they were multiple men with automatics, I doubt it would have ended well for Moss.

Just as it didn't later. He was always screwed, and him being hunted by other people instead of just Chigurh had already been foreshadowed.

With Llewelyn telling Anton on the phone that he would find him, and his previous showdown with Anton, I definitely felt like the film was leading towards a battle between the two.

Fair enough, I can see that. IIRC my personal feelings I thought we were supposed to see Moss as hubristic and feel bad for the unenviable position he was in and had no choice but to try to fight his way out.

If Chigurh/the cartel had offered him the opportunity to drop the money and walk and Llewelyn didn't, I don't think anyone would see it as anything other than a dumb decision.

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