Overall weekend totals plunge 60% from last year as the absence of a "Dune: Part Two"-level hit is felt
  • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.socialEnglish
    2·
    19 hours ago

    Same end goal.

    Just an FYI: the book also describes the fate of a colony world called Galt that gets genocided and consumed by a hyper-capitalist’s clone army. The logic is simple. He wants more clones, and the best source of more biomatter fit for making clones is human bodies. He’s also been told all his life that he’s a superior life form, so what use is anyone “lesser?” It doesn’t matter that the Galtists consider themselves “rugged individualists”, they are less thans and therefore useless beyond making his numbers go up.

    The book and setting is not shy about criticizing capitalism’s commodification of human life and disregard for suffering. It’s the entire point of how Expendables are treated, lol.

    I don’t doubt that a movie had less time to make some of the themes more obvious, but they’d have had to completely remove the concept for it not to be clear.

    • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      17 hours ago

      the book also describes the fate of a colony world called Galt that gets genocided and consumed by a hyper-capitalist’s clone army

      If this was the explanation given for why “multiples” became taboo, I think they must have replaced that with the explanation that someone used it as a way to have an alibi to get away with smaller scale serial killing.

      commodification of human life and disregard for suffering

      This definitely comes through as the central theme of the movie, the idea of objectification in its various forms, how it’s internalized or goes unnoticed. And there is a connection to capitalism; the central problems of the movie are caused by sadistic villains who are in charge because they are absurdly rich. But that aspect of it seemed like less of a critique and more of a tropey backdrop and plot device (ie. the loan shark who’s too rich to care about being paid back and just wants a pretense to make snuff films). To me for something to be primarily described as a critique of capitalism, it would have to spend more time actually considering capitalism and how it works, and this movie isn’t really about that imo.