MovieChat Forums > Cannibal Holocaust (1985) Discussion > Who were the "good guys" and "bad guys" ...

Who were the "good guys" and "bad guys" in this film in your opinion?


The cannibals/tribe and the TV crew, but the TV crew were incredibly hypocritical and brutal and the cannibals also had their bad moments, but would you say that, even though you did feel sorry for some of the victims on both sides (including cannibals who violated and killed their own), as well as ANIMALS (and that "real animal killing" controversy), there were no real heroes and villains in this movie and that it portrayed both the "civilized city" and the "cannibalistic jungle tribe" in an almost equally flawed and negative light?

What do you think, thanks.

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I think you've nailed it. There really are no good and bad/heroes and villains, just people.

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Human nature in all their flawed anti-glory, and even the victims in the form of the TV crew turned out to be less sympathetic than those in "The Blair Witch Project" (1999).

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Also, while the film does indeed acknowledge that the crew were vile, horrible and wrong for what they did to cannibals in that village, it doesn't outright demonize them to the point of saying "Those bastards deserved it" and that the "cannibals were right", and I sort of get the feeling that, although the film doesn't reveal outright this matter but even afterwards, we are somehow supposed to also feel shocked and bad for what happened to them but maybe this was like a, to quote Denzel Washington's character from "Training Day" (2001) movie, matter that goes on the order of "Let the animals wipe each other out", although yeah he agreed, it was actually Ethan Hawke's character who said it first, questioned it.

But yeah, the film crew were mostly unsympathetic but even the cannibals were not completely innocent either. Maybe we are supposed to feel sorry for the "animals" that got killed in the movie?

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The cannibals were in some ways barbaric savages. Look at how they dealt with that poor woman by violently killing her, putting her own the pole.

But this film is supposed to challenge our world view. It is easy to look at the cannibals and assume use in the 'civilized world' are better, and a step above.

But look at the camera crew. We see during the course of the film that their 'hard-hitting factual' documentaries are set-up, and they are prepared to go as far as killing the cannibals to make the footage look real and make the jungle society look like they were acting in ways which they wouldn't have been unless provoked. They're shown as having no empathy for death, even finding it funny when they found the woman dead on the pole. When not surrounded by polite society, the camera crew are prepared to rape, without remorse. Amongst many other atrocities. At least the cannibals stayed within the rules/laws of their society, as evil and wrong as those rules are. The camera crew were prepared to break the laws, no matter who it armed, without a hint of remorse.

There's no good and bad in this film, it's more meant to show that just because the majority of people are from what is considered civilized society, it doesn't mean that they're better than these supposedly lawless savages.

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They were both evil. The semi-remake Green Inferno was satisfying since the sadistic cannibals end up getting gunned down by mercenaries.

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I would agree that there were no real heroes or villains in the film.

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Personally, I think the rescue crew was the best out of everyone (mainly the anthropology professor, who seemed to be the only non-native with any empathy).

The native tribe (who weren't necessarily cannibals, if I recall correctly; I think it was said that they only do it occasionally as a special ritual) were the good guys, in that they were brutally victimized by the camera crew savages and only retaliated as anyone understandably would.
But I'm not condoning the raping they did at the beginning. However, clearly their culture is different, and apparently it's a normal thing for them to bury babies and club the mom to death, so it's hard to really judge the morality of all of that stuff from such a different perspective.

Lastly, I think the original camera crew were the only savages in that rainforest. They brutally raped, tortured, and murdered the native people just for pure enjoyment. They saw them as subhuman, and they took sadistic pleasure in burning men, women, and children alive just for kicks.
Well, for monetary profit as well as kicks, because they were going to edit the film to make it look like the other tribe had done these things and these guys are just the beloved camera crew drawing attention to the horrors for the benefit of mankind.

The camera crew were absolute monsters, and I only wish that they'd been put through worse.

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