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The First Purge is an unflattering mirror for the United States of today.
- Thread starter plagiarize
- Start date
I think it has more in common with '80s movies that were directly commenting on the culture, like They Live.
Walking out of the theater after the first movie, I never ever dreamed it'd become a series that wound up being this good and poignant
What the fuck is up with the Purge series? With the first couple of movies, the buzz I heard was that it's B tier entertainment garbage, but slowly but surely, people are saying it's one of the best horror franchises out right now.
Those were in the same vein. Every decade has their cultural reflections in cinema
It is b-tier horror action but it's b-tier horror action with a timely blunt message and some striking imagery
The second is still the best and the most Carpenter-esque
They are b-tier but as you can go on the messages about the social state of America become more blunt and scathing.
I don't care even if the films politics agree with mine in its criticism of right wing propaganda and the like.
I despise this series simply on how garbage the premise is. People keep insisting that they're bad because they don't take advantage of an interesting premise.
That's the fucking problem. The premise is completely awful and asinine.
I despise this series simply on how garbage the premise is. People keep insisting that they're bad because they don't take advantage of an interesting premise.
That's the fucking problem. The premise is completely awful and asinine.
Yeah, but there's a distinct difference between an abstract representation of social anxiety, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers in the '50s or Independence Day/Armageddon in the '90s, and movies that are directly commenting on the culture or prevailing ideology. The First Purge falls into the latter category.
Actually, a purge movie in the handicam cloverfield style would be amazing
Apparently they're going to be doing a 10 episode limited series of the Purge so maybe they'll do that kind of idea.
Yeah, I mostly hated the first Purge film because I couldn't even focus on the core story due to how idiotic the premise was, yet no character seemed to be questioning how idiotic the premise was. The sequels have at least become this thing where some characters in the world will acknowledge the true motive for the purge, but it's arguably still an over the top setup to begin with. And I still don't recall a single character calling out how stupid the concept is of releasing your anger in one evening. And it's pitched with a straight face over and over again.
With there being so many insidious ways to impact POC and the poor - through discriminatory housing prices, less consideration for job opportunities, lack of funding for education, rules that disproportionately affect them, etc - the idea of a purge is still a bit hard to swallow. I'm sure there are people out there who would fully support the idea of one, though.
I don't watch the Purge movies, but color me interested if another movie gets made that takes place after Election Year.
Reading up on the ending of that, that new president ends the Purge and violent uprisings start all over the country. Is the next one gonna be The Purge: Civil War?
The 1 and 3rd are ok fun. I think the 2nd one is legit fantastic though. I haven't seen the newest.
The next one will definitely have a Trump-like president that gains support because he talks about how great America was during the Purge years compared to these bad times and wins an unlikely victory (through the use of social engineering and deepfake news) that allows for him to reinstate the Purge.
The Purge movies are about as deep and meaningful as Idiocracy. I guess dropping pretense is fine but at the end of the day it's a movie to watch people get gutted, that's basically it.
Nonsense, the first is good, it just doesn't do a Deep dive into the concept
I love it... maybe it stepped on some toes and that's why it's getting poor reviews.It's no coincidence that this was the original announcement poster:
None of these movies have an ounce of subtlety, but I enjoy them anyway. It would be really interesting to see the premise in a high-budget, top director film though. Like how would Del Toro or Villaneuve do it?
I can't comment on the last two but the first two are almost... too low-budget to be gory. There's plenty of blood but it's not anywhere close to a Saw film or whatever.
Not really. I mean, yeah there's violence, but it's really not gore heavy. A lot of the kills comes as stabbings/shootings and the blood is usually CG.
Thanks, blood isn't really a problem for me. It's more anything (guts,tendons) being pulled outside the body or heads being smashed. Lol
Even then it's not necessarily a deal breaker if not done all the time. Strange enough, I enjoy zombie movies if the survivors are reasonably good at surviving so I'm not sure what my Fire hang up actually is.
OP
OP
I don't think the purge could really happen. I think it's allegory for the politics of today where lots of policies seem aimed at disenfranchising anyone who isn't a white American and espescially those who are Black or Latino.
I don't need it to be plausible to enjoy it. I originally looked at it more in a 'imagine if this could be real' way. Now it's more of an over the top.version of the now its even easier to buy into I think.
Handing this one over to a black director was a really smart move.
I don't need it to be plausible to enjoy it. I originally looked at it more in a 'imagine if this could be real' way. Now it's more of an over the top.version of the now its even easier to buy into I think.
Handing this one over to a black director was a really smart move.
That could be interesting. Especially if said president ends up "upgrading" the Purge. Like, make it last a week instead of a night, and allow for more dangerous weapons.
Honestly though I hope they do something crazier with the next movie. Like have the Purge supporters stage a coup or something.
I hated him too. But they payoff with him at the end was great.
Never saw the appeal of these movies. The very concept is fucked up. Basically just a day of mass raping of women and children and murder.
Like, wtf. How is that entertainment?
Like, wtf. How is that entertainment?
The most recent one is the only one worth seeing.
1.) These movies are very stupid. VERY stupid.
2.) When they do get introspective they have mildly interesting things to say about the role of the rich in today's society and how they literally try to escape it by setting the poor on each other under the guise of many many different banners.
3.) These movies are VERY stupid.
Having not seen the other movies, I'd say the entertainment comes in that the Purge itself is framed in the films as an evil system of subjugation against the country's most vulnerable. At least in The First Purge, you derive joy from seeing the heroes of the film resist such a system.
The Purge as a concept is pretty fucking dumb even besides the obvious reasons. An arsonist could set dozens of fires that there would be no one to counter for a long period of time and would have huge chunks of even major cities burnt to the ground.
Yup. Under the concept of the purge, a small militia could destroy cornerstones of industry and the country would just be like, "LOL ::Shrug::" It literally makes no sense when you stop thinking of the rich as murder perverts for longer than 4 seconds, which is what all 4 movies do. "The rich wanna murder you, they wanna MURDER YOU! AND THEY GET OFF ON IT! THEY'RE FURIOUSLY MASTURBATING WHILE YOU DIE!" It's really really really dumb.
I thought that too. The premise is screwed up, and really dumb when you really put any thought into it, but it's really a film series that follows a country that has fallen and this is the aftermath; almost post-apocalyptic in a way. It's not a hopeless story for the sake of people being off where you have a Jason or Micheal Myers type of sick central character that people are "rooting" for to up the kill count for the sake of it. It's about the survivors who fight against the oppression, often the poor and minorities. The movies hit you in the face with people fighting for justice against evil times and to be honest, that's good. With how today is, sometimes not going subtle with a premise is sometimes needed.
You do have the hero characters and the resistance fighting against this awful day. Part 1 was a simple home invasion movie, but part 2 is where it really let's loose with the message....best I can say it's like an action survivor movie akin to "Escape from New York" with its own Snake Plisken/Punisher hero character who ends up saving people through the hellish night and gives many folks their much needed just dessert for their depravity; Frank Grillo plays a complete badass. The government is a complete force of sick cultist really, it's an excuse for culling the "less desirable", who uses the favor and ideology treating it like a religious event for many.
If I knew that was what The Purge 2 was going to be like, I would have watched it sooner! The trailers make it look pretty grim, but watching the actual films establish itself with more action, good people are fighting, that's what got me into the series.
I mean, it's clearly meant to be speculative rather than a "this could happen" premise designed with realism in mind
Like Get Out did its social satire much better but it's still a movie where evil white people implant their consciousnesses into other bodies through mad scientist-style brain transplants.
Premises like this aren't designed to be closely examined as realistic concepts that could actually happen. They reflect truth and societal fears and concerns through warped mirrors. The notion that the premise of the Purge is bad because it's too crazy to be realistic and could never happen like it does in the movies comes across as kind of a short-sighted indictment of genre fiction.
Much like how the consciousness-transferring brain transplants of Get Out are ridiculously over-the-top metaphor, taken to its fictional extremes, for very real concerns, the Purge's premise is "the rich and powerful's disdain for the poor and minorities, systematic oppression, the way America blends religion and politics and patriotism is really fucked up" taken to the extreme.
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Perhaps I should try them then. I always kind of interpreted it in the realistic and brutal way something like that would really be. Would be a modern day version of what the Japanese did to the Chinese during WW2.
