The other day as my cousin and I browsed the shelves of Blockbuster, we were in search of a good scary movie. Picking up every movie that had a scary name or a creepy picture, we finally stumbled across a seemingly perfect movie. It was called "Shuttle". A quick synopsis: Two girls coming home from a weekend in Mexico find themselves stranded at the airport with no ride home. A shuttle pulls up next to them saying he will give them a ride for a cheap price. There is only one other passenger on the shuttle, and the driver says there can only be a maximum of three passengers on his shuttle. Sketchy? You betcha. But they get on anyway. A lot happens in between, but when the movie comes to an end, one of the girls has been killed, and the other is packed into a box and being shipped off to East Asia to become a sex slave. Needless to say, this is not the ending I had imagined.
There is one scene in particular that really got to me: It's down to one girl and it's the final fight scene between her and her kidnapper. She steals his gun and shoots him. And this is after she has already knifed him and crashed the shuttle in an attempt to kill him. You'd think he'd be dead after all this. But no. He is still alive, and ends up winning. I thought this movie was going to be about women empowerment. The girls get kidnapped and they fight like hell and end up beating the bad guy. I didn't expect her to fight to the end and then not win. But more importantly, what is the director trying to say about women? That no matter how hard they try, they will never beat men? I mean this girl was fierce. She managed to do everything possible in order to save her and her friend, but it couldn't ultimately save her. And I'm not saying that the woman always has to win. But to me, this movie in particular was about man vs. woman. And with the ending that it had, it gave me the message that men will always be superior to woman, which is completely false.
Here is an excerpt from the full summary of the movie from imdb.com. It's of the scene described above.
"He finds Mel, who threatens to cut herself with a shard of glass, and she stabs him in the arm with it. He attempts to disarm her, but she stabs it into his thigh before hitting him in the face with the light fittings. She finds the gun and shoots him, before attempting to escape in the bus. The Driver arrives and attacks her again, and they grapple before he forces her into a crate with the supplies she bought earlier."
This is just absolutely ridiculous. She stabs him and shoots hims, but he still gets what he wants. I can't change the ending of the movie, but I can voice my opinion and that's what I hoped to achieve here. I know that the underdog doesn't always win in real life, but I thought this ending was just disgraceful and rude and hopefully other women will be able to see this too.
This is just absolutely ridiculous. She stabs him and shoots hims, but he still gets what he wants. I can't change the ending of the movie, but I can voice my opinion and that's what I hoped to achieve here. I know that the underdog doesn't always win in real life, but I thought this ending was just disgraceful and rude and hopefully other women will be able to see this too.
Honestly, this just looks like a crappy movie that doesn't deserve analysis. I think that if a director/writer tried to convey male superiority over women in a movie, he would receive reputation-shattering critique. However, I do agree with the idea you're proposing. In nearly every thriller the villain is a psychotic male and (often but certainly not always) the protagonist is a vulnerable female (usually incredibly hot and at some point half-naked). This theme probably does stem from the sexist misconception that men are superior to women. But really, any movie that is released in South Korea before the US and never hit theaters was probably just made to earn a few bucks and doesn't have a hidden message.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Andy, that the movie probably wasn't intended to have a worldly meaning such as the conflict between men and women. However, you do expose a side of hollywood, in that producers are more inclined to make money than be realistic or have a deeper meaning. The fact is, people will have more sympathy for an attractive half-naked girl who is being chased by a disheveled psychomaniac man than a guy being chased by a girl, because of the prejudices and preconceptions of males vs. females in society, even if those prejudices are unfair. Hollywood just caters to our opinions, which are reflected into movies such as this one.
ReplyDeleteZoe, I see your point, but I don't think the director wanted to intentionally weaken the archetype of women. Perhaps he anticipated that the movie watcher would expect that the girls would beat him up and go free, maybe he wanted to refute that statement just to be unexpected. There are countless movies/shows where we see women empowered and more than capable of taking care of themselves: Heroes, Million Dollar Baby, Live Free Die Hard. In fact, I think that the film empowered women by showing the movie watcher that the girls literally fought to the death instead of giving up.
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