Sometimes in fiction characters do things that are too far removed from how they were built up though, and just looks like lazy writing. It depends how it's done though.
True. A character changing behavior can be either due to 'lazy writing' or due to organic 'character growth'.
In this movie it did not feel like lazy writing to me. It makes perfect sense to me that they'd initially try to fight but eventually lose hope as they see one person after another dragged out of the store by monsters and return home to find the mother also dead and after that just keep driving and driving and driving without seeing the slightest sign of life anywhere.
It's pretty much what happens when people ask for euthanasia: they fight the cancer for the first few years but eventually decide they'd rather die right now than painfully suffocate in the next few weeks. The characters would rather take a bullet to the head than be chewed to pieces as their friends were.
I hated it when startrek did the 'i killed my father just months before life-saving medicine hit the market' story and i sure hope this movie wasn't aiming for that kind of connection. It's hugely disrespectful towards people who struggle with those questions at the end of their life to cut it off at 'you must live at all costs' and dangle a potential miracle in front of them (in reality a patient in that situation will be perfectly aware of new drug-trials and alternative medicine cures doing the rounds: new treatment doesn't just *poof* onto the market one day to the next)
reply
share
CatrionaM
9 years ago
But it was hard to know just how long they were driving. That's why it seemed a bit sudden.
reply
share
andrewpi7
9 years ago
The mist severely limited their vision so of course they were not going to see life when they were driving especially after an attack of that magnitude.
If *all* 4 of these once strong characters conveniently now did *all* lose hope then viewers should have seen some dialog and emotions between them to show that before *all* of them agree to suicide in mere seconds without saying a word. It was displayed as carelessly as if the dad was asking if they wanted some gum.
Euthanasia is a bad analogy as these people were not fighting monsters for years and were not under any physical pain, much less painfully suffocating for weeks. But even if we use that analogy then it is no different than StarTrek's "I killed my father months before life-saving medicine hit the market" scene that you found hugely disrespectful earlier because the Mist movie dangled a potential miracle in front of the dad seconds after he killed his son & the 3 others... so that would make this scene hugely disrepectful if we accept that analogy.
reply
share