Strong Stomach?

[BinnZ]

Beware. This isn't fun to watch, in fact it is hard to stay with it all 10 minutes.
I don't know why I share this, maybe because I was so shocked and I have to discuss this with some sane people...

[Art Blade]

I muted the vid after two minutes of brain-melting music. The rest looked actually funny, it was so over the top. Mostly the tank scenes, like when the guy in the turret cleanly got blown off. Also that one-armed guy who was looking around a bit aimlessly until he found his missing ripped-off part of his arm, grabbed it with the remaining hand and walked off. An American and a Japanese soldier screaming at each other at the top of their lungs, at arm's length distance, and literally get blown away by some casually thrown grenade. It started to get weird when in all that what reminded a lot of Iwo Jima (WWII Pacific Theatre, the US trying to kill the dug-in Japanese soldiers on a volcano island with black beaches, it was a massacre) suddenly German tanks popped up and then it looked like Omaha Beach. By then I thought wow, looks like the best WWII video game I can imagine albeit it looked silly at times. After the end, I checked the YT vid description and yeah, a (very nice) fan edit of three films.

It never really touched me, it looked too much like Hollywood or Game Industry.

[fragger]

That's because it is, it's a compilation of scenes from Saving Private Ryan, Fury and Hacksaw Ridge. Whoever made the video stuck together all of the most graphic scenes from those three films. Hacksaw Ridge is actually an excellent movie (the one with the Japanese in it) and while it certainly is graphic in the combat scenes, those actually make up a relatively small part of the movie. It's more about the journey of the principal character, a young American named Desmond Doss who joined the army in WW2 but stubbornly refused to carry a weapon. Deeply pacifistic and devoutly religious, he enlisted solely to become a medic and faced many personal hurdles and stiff official opposition to do so. But he did in the end, distinguishing himself in the Pacific and receiving the Medal of Honor - without ever firing a shot. Based on a true story.

I couldn't stand the music either.

[Art Blade]

I couldn't stand the music either

[PZ]

It is interesting how people can ruin a perfectly good video with stupid music. That loud head baning music becomes the center of sensory input which does nothing more than distract.

[Dweller_Benthos]

The tank scenes are from the Brad Pitt movie called "Fury", you can see him in the scene where he forces the one soldier to shoot the German prisoner.

Not my kind of music, but I can understand some people like it. But taking all the gruesome scenes from several movies out of context kind of diminishes the idea behind why they were so gruesome.

[fragger]

I agree about context, D_B. This video makes Hacksaw Ridge look like it was just an excuse for a gorefest of a movie, but it wasn't. Those parts that were shown in this video were indeed extremely graphic, but the movie wasn't really about the horror of war, it was about how one man's compassion and urge to save lives could persevere through it. The action had to be brutally depicted to provide the necessary contrast. From memory, there isn't even any war action in the movie at all for about the first half of it, which dealt with the main character's struggle to be accepted for active duty as a medic whilst staunchly refusing to even carry a weapon. I thought it was actually quite an inspiring story.

[BinnZ]

You guys can stomach more than me, that's for sure. I was seriously shocked when watching the full 10 mins of horror. I sort of like the music. I used to listen to this type of music when I was a youngster. Hasn't changed much since then. But it's not exactly lighting me up anymore either.
However, this horror show really got to me. Probably the music opening up the more sensible parts of my consciousness (man, what a word is that ) made me really receptive for the brutal cruelty of war.

I haven't seen the movies these fragments were taken from, so to me it was a logical train of cause and effect where I saw a man stabbing another (enemy) multiple times like a maniac and the guy searching his arm that just had been ripped off. Pure irony.

[Art Blade]

it's probably like being either able or unable to stomach really hot chili. Some can, some can't. I'm not proud of being able to watch or see stuff like that and to stay cool but I've always been a bit on the tough side when it comes to those kind of things. What I can't stand though is watching torture which is why I hated that part in GTA single player when you had to torture that one guy. I really, REALLY hated that and tricked the game by just shooting the right guy by chance without waiting for the torture to extract sufficient information to identify the guy I had to kill. The game handled that well, probably anticipating someone might do what I did.

[fragger]

I'm kind of the same, Art. I can watch stuff like this, but I couldn't bear to watch anything like the Saw or Hostel movies which are deliberately made to be as cruel and graphic as possible just for the sake of it. I can put up with graphic scenes in war movies when they're in the right sort of context, such as Saving Private Ryan or Hacksaw Ridge, which are essentially anti-war in nature. Those films don't glorify the horror, whereas ones like the Saw movies wallow in it.

I'm not into graphically violent films per se, I prefer either cerebral, "thinking" movies, or light escapism. It's why I don't like Quentin Tarantino's w0#k - not only does the violence in his movies exist purely for its own sake, but I think his movies are painfully shallow. Terrible, even. I don't know why he's held in such high regard, I really can't see it. But anyway. I'll only put up with graphic violence in movies if it's genuinely warranted.

I like a good historical drama as well. I recently watched Bridge of Spies with Tom Hanks, which I thoroughly enjoyed as both a great period piece and as an intelligent "slow suspense" film (does a movie set in the 1960s qualify as a "period" film? Dunno how much time has to elapse before a point in history earns "period" status ).

[Art Blade]

yep, same here, indeed. Chainsaw massacre, and all that type of horror movies that are drenched in blood of people eating themselves and cutting up others, no thanks. I don't like cruelty, particularly torture involving cutting off or ripping out bits and pieces of someone's body. How on earth can that be entertainment? Not my cup of tea.

Regarding period films.. no idea, they're films, period. 

[fragger]

 

[BinnZ]

I guess I'm kind of strange then. I find the torture scene super entertaining. It triggers something inside of me that is hidden 99.9% of the time but MAN have I enjoyed being Trevor in that dark factory. It felt as if a little devil came out of me and took control for a short while.
I also like movies where cruelty is the main goal. Not all of them. I've seen the first Saw movie, with one guy in one room, the whole movie trying to get out. It was crazy. Later I've seen fragments of the newer saw movies, they ware horrible. Constant switching scenes, too many victims...

The Quentin Tarantino movies are my favourites. Maybe you find them shallow, maybe they are. What I like about them is the vibe. Tarantino knows like no other to catch the rush of things, to make you feel you're actually part of it. Pulp Fiction is my all times favourite, but I also like Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, Death Proof and Django Unchained.

When I was a kid I never liked films with a lot of blood. I remember a Dutch movie which was very popular when I was 12 years old, it was called AmsterDamned. Great film, I watched it later. You might want to check it, it's a Dutch movie but I bet there's a version on the net with English Subtitles.
I didn't dare to watch it back then. It scared the *bleep* out of me.

I do like horror books. I read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft. In these books you find a dark pulse that is both attractive and repulsive. Maybe I find a bit of that sensation in Quentin's films too. In a different way.

I'll only put up with graphic violence in movies if it's genuinely warranted.

Why is that? Can it ever be?

[Dweller_Benthos]

The first Saw movie was more an interesting psychological experiment, with some gruesome action that was needed to get the plot going. The main question, "Would you cut your own foot off to escape and save your child?" is one you hope to never have to find the answer to. (And was also asked in the first Mad Max movie, when the last of the gang is chained to the burning wreck that is about to explode and Max gives him the saw and tells him it will take 10 minutes to cut through the chain and much less time to cut through his leg, to get away from the pending explosion, you never know how it ends as Max drives away). But anyway, Saw was mostly two guys chained in a basement with a supposedly dead person and had to figure out why they were there and how to get out. Both had pressing reasons to leave and when the opportunity arose, did they have what it takes to make the difficult choice?

I never watched any of the Saw movies after that as it was obvious from the trailers that they were just "Let's put 4 or 5 people in a room with various devices of dismemberment and see if they get out". Same goes for the first Friday the 13th movie. Sure, it was gory, but it was more a story of revenge and mental illness that a mother had after the death of her son. The whole Jason thing didn't come about until the later movies when the dead boy was somehow resurrected as a full grown man killing machine. I've only seen bits of one or two of the later movies, enough to know they have nothing else to offer.

[fragger]

"Torture Porn", I believe they call it. Not because it's sexual, but because a fascination with cruelty and gore replaces sex as the sole rationale for making the film.

I don't mind horror if there are strong psychological and suspense elements to it - in which case I suppose it's more "thrillers" that I like. The original Alien springs most immediately to my mind as an example.