"IsaacKuo" <mechdan@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:f2b973d2-4ca5-40e5-aeb2-f05b06e67827@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Mar 31, 3:18 pm, "Franklin Hummel" <hum...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> "IsaacKuo" <mech...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>>
news:d217239e-9c2c-44f6-86d3-5ebf2360e39c@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> .
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> spoilers for The Mist movie
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>> On Mar 29, 2:37 pm, "Franklin Hummel" <hum...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>> wrote:
>> >> But then, to have an ending that gives no reason why it is
>> >> going
>> >> away? Was the Army suppose to be doing it? That seems silly, as
>> >> nothing was shown about how this was happening.
>> >
>> >I was guessing that it had something to do with the flame
>> >throwers or something, and the effect was temporary.
>
>> Especially after you corrected me on which direction they
>> were going (see below), I don't think this was temporary. That
>> implies they were coming *from* the Arrowhead Project and it seems
>> very likely then they managed to shut-down wherever was there the
>> Mist was entering from.
>
>> If you look at the flame-thrower, you will see it is being
>> used on a "spider"-webbed tree. Also, at the long shot at the
>> end,
>> which looks quite aways back from where they came from, it is
>> clear
>> of Mist for a long, long way.
>
>> Given this, I would say the source of the Mist had been
>> stopped by the military and it was now falling apart.
>
> That's what it looks like, I agree, but then it doesn't make any
> sense for the lead vehicles to be travelling ahead of the "front",
> and it makes even less sense for them to be evacuating the
> people away from the clear area into the mist...
Well, actually it does if the Mist is falling apart. I mean, with
the earthquake, there were clearly problems with electricity and,
though it isn't shown in the movie, water. (This was in the novella;
the people in the store were using the bottled water in the store.)
> ...oh.
>
> I just realized a bizarre possibility. Mist wouldn't clear away
> like that unless it was being pushed away by something else.
> So, what if the Arrowhead project doorway to the mist world
> were closed, but the doorway were redirected to an even nastier
> world? This even more horrific dimension is now spilling into
> the world, pushing away the mist (possibly including airborne
> toxins and/or disease, based on the equipment of the
> soldiers).
As I said, I really wanted an *End-of-the-World* store, but at the
same time, the doorway might have been redirected to a dimension of
large butterflies and daisys.
> Okay, okay, let's put aside that idle speculation. It does make
> for an interesting excuse for evacuating the civilians away from
> the town, though.
Well, see above. No power, no water, buildings weakened by
earthquakes, and maybe lots of dead bodies around, but I'll say this
for the Mist monsters -- they didn't waste food!
>> In fact, given the truly horrible irony of the ending, not
>> having only the Mist disappear BUT there is also the strong
>> implication that David and the others had STAYED at the grocery
>> market, they would have survived. This makes the ending even
>> crueler.
>
> Right. Ultimately, the only reason for so many deaths was
> the fact that the people stuck in the supermarket literally
> couldn't live with each other--not even for a couple days.
Well, there were actually more sucides in the book by the
non-civilians. The one woman shown in the film who killed herself
(which I saw on re-watching, and with the help of a deleted scene)
did so because she almost got the young boy killed while taking care
of him.
In basic Lovecraftian fashion, in "The Mist" novella people were
killing themselves because themselves out of horror and hopeless and
a lot of them went insane -- just into deep shock. Jim (I think it
was) was shown to be mental broken and turned into a religious
fanatic, but how many of the others were. A good number of people
turn to religion in fear.
>> No, I have to say, there were monsters right at the edge
>> of
>> the Mist. This would actually make sense for creatures to do,
>> since
>> they would likely quickly realize that food (people, etc.) were
>> coming into the Mist at the very edges of it, they would be
>> hanging
>> out there to get the fresh meals.
>
> This assumes, of course, that the monsters can't see through
> glass. This seems to be consistent with what we see in the
> movie. My guess while watching the movie was that the
> monsters see thermal wavelengths or something like that--they
> can see through the mist that obscures visible wavelengths in
> their world, but can't see through glass.
Well, that seems somewhat reasonable within the movie, but it does
seems really strange they could not *see* through glass.
Also, in the novella while it isn't stated as definet, the Mist
creatures use *smell* to locate their prey. That is why they bypass
the people in the supermarket and once they get in the car.
If they were using infer-red vision, that women going hope to her
kids *still* would have been prime meat for them.
>> The mercy killings were, for me, a reasonable, logical,
>> and
>> emotionally-hard ending. The rest of it was just to make it
>> purposely *cruel*. I think in addition to taking away the
>> Lovecraftian End-of-the-World ending, the other events seemed to
>> be
>> nasty just to be *nasty*.
>
> I don't know exactly how I feel about the ending, but I did see it
> coming a mile away. Bear in mind, I did not know how the novella
> ended. I just thought of what could be the worst possible irony.
> Because up until that point, the general pattern was that
> everything
> the "good guys" do that makes logical sense backfires and turns
> into a death laden disaster.
> I thought it impossibly "happy" for the survivors to be rescued,
> and so my mind thought of what would be the worst way for it
> to backfire.
Interesting. I knew from reading carefully to avoid total spoilers,
the ending involved the military and that it was a very down ending.
However, I still did NOT expect anything quite the nasty. And I have
*major* depression!
> Ultimately, I thought it was interesting to shockingly transform
> a global horror into a particularly personal horror. What's worse,
> a horror that involves the death and suffering of everybody, or
> one that only one man can suffer?
Well, for me personally, I think the global horror is worse -- and I
think that reducing it down to focus on the personal horror of one
man also kind of lessened the overall horror the film. As I said, I
really didn't think the ending was so much "horror" -- as nasty. It
was the writer/director piling too much on so he could rub it into
the viewers' faces.
I guess, for me, a too way-over-the-top ending, done to be cruel and
not too logical given all the other events in the film. The military
appearing *just then* was too much a gimmick. It truly felt fake to
me.
-- Franklin Hummel in Boston, Massachusetts
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