Everything GREAT About Equilibrium!

[Music] [Applause] the first years of the 21st century a third world war broke out mankind could never survive a fourth solid elevator pitch for this movie's existence no world war four post world war three i can admit that it's a little goofy prison break is just sitting here staring at a painting but there's a good chance this was just recently found and more to the point is that in a world where this is no longer legally allowed to exist you would stop taking it for granted i'd be staring in an old coke can for a swooping typography if art had been outlawed you know what to do die is it die i feel like it's die i'm guilty of a little hero worship when it comes to christian bill he's in a lot of things i love so a shot like this always feels epic even though at this point he was just the guy from reign of fire american psycho and newsies but whatever his stoic emotionless amongst the chaos look is a perfect intro for his character also klaus bedell gets a win for this little flourish [Music] yes you're not crazy this is very matrixy but there is a solid reason behind it all beyond just sean bean and christian bale look tight and black conformity just a little glance that plants the idea in your brain that ned's not like the others he always was too pure for the seven kingdomeen libria and you're free to call this matrixy as well but i'm not about to take anything away from kurt wimmer or dion bibi the dp responsible for a crap ton of films i love looking at a hyper stylized brain blurring effect and there's a full 22 seconds of darkness and mostly silence leading up to it where preston is assessing everyone's locations and stressing the audience right out it's real burning so you might be wondering why authenticity matters artists are to prints a print but once you destroy the original no more prints or copies can be made so they'd consider to win beyond just destroying some art the addition of the people screaming in the background is a nice touch as a little reminder that when you destroy history it's more than just the physical media that's lost how long preston till all this is gone we've burned every last bit of it we'll get it all eventually it's not super duper subtext but this movie is rife with people saying something that can be interpreted in multiple ways obviously preston is lamenting the slow pace of destruction while partridge is mourning the loss even conflating the destruction of every last bit of it with humanity itself something we get into more later just plain amazing lighting blocking framing composition all of it that you were very nearly a prodigal student knowing almost instantly if someone is feeling ah no am i am i gonna have to take a win off here is this like those people who use integral to mean filled with integrity prodigal and prodigy are not the same wait no this gives us an opportunity for a cinema once word of the day [Music] how is it that you came to miss it i've asked myself that same question sir i don't know a nearly unforgivable lapse cleric great way to establish what this rule is like he starts by attempting to say preston is a prodigy but ends with essentially a warning because he didn't rat out his wife quicker because you tread on my dreams appropriate coming from the most treadon actor of all time or is it dead on a heavy cost i paid gladly and there's your quandary to consider do the negatives of emotion outweigh the positives hey so also fun side note sean bean has always been always a win but for some reason he wasn't in fellowship so like what i think he just got outshined by some other always a win actors anyway dude's always a win then making preston shoot him through poetry badass good guy do you think i should report him another to add to the list of multiple meaning lines there's potential that robbie is just playing the dutiful student checking to make sure his dad isn't feeling but i think it's more likely that he's checking to see if his dad has maybe crossed over to the dark side wait the the light the emotional side i love that he just springs to action breaking bones because of course he and his family are above reproach little pleasantville homage here not really but preston's wife is entirely oversaturated while preston is washed out then she transfers that life to him with a kiss but he returns to gray as she's taken away excellent subtle attention to detail feels like a good time to talk about bb and wimmer's use of shadow and stark contrast with bright lights and how much i just plain love it i appreciate that it was a series of unfortunate events that led to preston's sense crime it makes sense and it's more realistic than having him just wake up one day and decide to go against everything he's believed his entire life look at you look at you another double meaning statement accusations switching to inquisition almost admiration hey split diopter that's a fun subversion spinning the camera around to show that preston redirected brant's gun you exist to continue your existence what's the point breath is just a clock that's really what boromir was talking about before what's left of humanity when we're just surviving the gun cutter treats the gun as a total weapon while keeping the defender clear of the statistically traditional trajectories and that's all you need to know about that makes the master of the gun carters an adversary not to be taken like haha if you could only listen to your own advice uh amazing scene you can feel that wave of endorphins rushing in for the first time and yeah can you even imagine since most drugs either reproduce the effects of our hormones or actually trick your body into releasing them this would be like taking an opioid for preston he would feel high the john denver kind of high rocky mountain high although he liked other kinds of you get the point so the impulse to sober up totally makes sense actually noticing a stunning sunrise for the first time could feel like a bad trip to someone who's never felt anything before also christian bale's workout routine everyone always gives christian so much credit for bulking up for batman begins but he's just about as huge here so he was big but lean for this and reign of fire then went deathly skinny for the machinist then quickly bulk back up for batman begins opiate of our masses just in case you weren't sure if any parallels were being drawn i mean i too paid the price for love gladly but i wouldn't mind a little something to take the edge off the claustrophobia i'm feeling just watching this yeah no i know but that's an ssri benzo pro cm is prozac plus valium oh it's so clear now the comparisons to 1984 at all are totally fair but it's all worth it in moments like this where they convey the concept so succinctly with no dialogue no explanation just the monochromatic toned outfits under flickering fluorescence marching upstairs to wind down the clicking breath clock something as simple as touching cold metal an innocuous action this woman clearly uses to feel alive in the sea of oppression another mind-blowing experience for preston i'm honestly not sure if this was deliberate or not the purpose is to show preston noticing the conformity that he used to just blindly accept but the camera lands almost askew making me wonder if it's not just preston starting to see the cracks in that conformity nice grab claire compliments interesting argument for utilizing your senses i mean duh cheesy but effective appropriate reaction it's likely preston's heard music before but it would be like tasting ice cream while your tongue is coated in wax or looking at a beautiful painting with black and white glasses that have cross-hatching on the lenses you can acknowledge that it exists but never really truly experience it these animals were defended by women and children put them down easily oh gosh i feel like there's a statement in there about our own current culture we all just sort of shrug at the murder of women and children but a puppy don't you dare kill a puppy and on each gun shop they cut a frame or two out to add to that jarring effect and awful things pressing his feeling some of these animals ought to be tested for disease yeah it's actually easier to test them once they're dead but that little cognitive dissonance plays right into branch suspicions which if they've been building for a little while now they're elevated here but also saving that little puppy it's not the message that is important it is our obedience to it did hitler say that was that is he just quoting hitler now wait a minute i'm gonna give a cliche dodge here for not having mary look directly into the camera because that would have been the cliche thing to do here's a fun filmmaking trick if you don't get coverage of your subject entering the vehicle just reverse the shot of him exiting or this is a co2 absorbing car and equilibrium was actually displaying the answers to all our climate related problems yeah it's that one oh this guy is clearly a wife when come on he knew but it was too late the gunkata had come for him actually he didn't even know it happened too fast so let's talk about the liberia symbol style as muzzle flashes actually that's it although deep down i'm hoping that the muzzle flash happened organically and the symbol came from them fun fact unlike the matrix no wires were used in this movie everything was done with trampolines and just good old-fashioned acrobatics also yup so no wonder bruce wayne took so easily to the league of shadows training he was basically already a ninja it's my job to know what you're thinking i'm wondering how your face feels i love the switch back and forth between level and dutch tilt really leaning into preston's increasing stress wait so is bale essentially telling tay diggs to mind his footing no more remakes kerwimmer's dead did it just get seriously brutal in here at some point you might wonder why these idiots won't stop standing in circles around dudes specifically trained to kill guys standing in circles around them but then there would be no way for us to find out that cleric guns have little glass breaker things on the butt of their guns what are you doing nicely done cleric we have to assume brant knows by now but wants to see how far gone preston is and he also potentially takes joy in messing with him very definition of teamwork i guess teamwork gotta give women credit for building tension around a simple insert of a finger moving a dial is he gonna kill everyone nah sense offender knows of course the feeler notices dude he just gave you a different gun that's his left hand maybe i'm reading to this a tad too much but i feel like there's this idea at play that everyone else missed this picture and the connection to mary because you need your feelings to be a good detective so another split diopter but i just want to point out the interesting aesthetic choice to create a delineation parallel to the wall edge it actually draws less attention to it than most in case you're wondering how preston knew that was a false part of the wall the entire part of that bookshelf is a different color and looks completely separate some very few of us have to force ourselves not to feel culinary isn't for everyone a possible little hint that father 2.0 or 4.0 whatever he is actually feeling himself that's not experiencing emotions are you playing with me cleric also that good night and another little hint that the kid has stopped his interval he usually calls his dad by his name another insanely emotionally charged scene over the simplest of gestures don't seeing her one last time will only make it harder to do what you have to do still holding up for that william thickner solo movie fun fact that makes this probably super confusing for most but two actresses are playing viviana preston alexis summer is this one but when they went to shoot the flashback scene of her arrest they couldn't find her so they cast maria calzone as preston's wife i think this could be a little confusing it's not so much that learning he was present for his wife's execution is some kind of twist or revelation it's more like he literally stood by last time as his wife was burned alive because he felt nothing for her it didn't stand out to him as an important event because it was just another day so he rushes out of the room hoping to not let history repeat itself emily watson is always a win i've always really loved her red dragon punch drunk glove but sometimes you never know if you just like the characters and maybe you're biased but watching her react to a fire that's definitely not actually in front of her clinches it you can feel her trepidation from the heat and another expectation subversion in your run-of-the-mill brave new giver fahrenheit 1984 movie you don't expect them to go full burn the main lovages alive but they went for it oh man and the stress again of knowing he's about to be caught also another appropriate reaction the trace shows that it was your gun in the nether with the sweepers he switched them see i have his gun now of course you do he took it when you arrested me okay this is what you would call a plot hole the general consensus is that scenes were reordered in editing so this scene should have been before this scene but i get what they were going for and let's just say that maybe tracing the gun only determines who currently has it so preston kills the sweepers and the nethers with his own gun and then switches it with branch so that it will be in his possession should this ever happen also none of this matters because dupont was playing them all like a fiddle anyway do you think that's entirely necessary for my being to exacting i'm not feeling that sounds a lot like emotion there brant which while we're theorizing so does this and so is this i think it's possible brant was feeling at the very least we know that prozium doesn't eradicate emotion entirely since earlier he said get my interval adjusted that means it's a spectrum too much you're a zombie not enough you're screaming as you're pulled away the only thing that disturbs me sir i've never had the honor of meeting him that's like a segue on my level i've been more careful in the future oh well since mom so that'll just warm your heart especially thinking back to how cold he was with his sister stop that he was protecting her teaching her to pretend she was taking prosium little last supper there press tutus we've never met no equilibrium predicted deep fakes entirely without incident no and i love that everything father says to preston could be said right back to him actually it's like the third reversal to make you feel like you'd won capturing the resistance was a ruse to make father think he'd won then father captured preston while making him think he'd won and now preston switched it back again you ask him for it okay so that's amazing but also because preston has been trained so intensively in gunkata it makes sense that he would just sort of turn off his brain and become an instinctual murder machine i mean your blood pressure pulse and respiration shouldn't flatline but you get the idea they're trying to convey and we all know it's fantastic this is about as matrixy as this movie gets but i'm not about to complain about some gunkata madness with the little second genus reloading and preston has lots of multi kills but i can't not win a backflip double no look kill okay that's a straight up quadruple kill and he rainbows a g36 to kill four more guys two through a door this video is never gonna make any revenue is it worth it and we finally see behind the curtain ec10 doesn't apply to father with the paintings on the walls his ornate desk and the chandelier also the implication that both father and brant are off prozium fourth thinking you've won switcheroo but it's like they don't know he's batman although he's less bail bat and more bat-flecked with respect to body count also just so much brutality mind the uniform cleric i plan to be wearing it for a long time i'm sorry tay diggs i love you but if there was ever a more appropriate comeuppance i mean i'm sure there are but the idea that preston was basically toying with him during training or at worst just overcome with his new emotions just also was that a lightsaber sound like was that the exact sound of anakin decapitating a sith lord oh the early 2000s this effect was created and then used in every action movie still love it also how gorgeous is this shot i use for the teaser frame even dupont's disgusted phase something you may have noticed is that the beginning of this film has barely any blood in it but as we progress the blood increases just like preston waking up to all the killing that he was so desensitized to before as a big sword fight fan well you know but since this movie is at least partially about these super soldiers that treat pistol play as a form of martial art on par with revolver ocelot it's a superb way to end it all is it really worth the price i pay it gladly all back and comeuppance space hey if you've got to destroy some computers i see no reason to use anything other than gunkata in fact i'd be disappointed if you didn't saving your william figner and the puppies alive clearly this is meant to be a victorious moment but you can't help but notice that war is immediately back not saying war is worse than genocidal slaughter just that it wasn't a consequence-free action and while preston is crying happy tears for freedom i can't help but also believe he's feeling the payment this is the one time you have to check to be sure look i get that equilibrium isn't going to work for everyone i'll even admit that 17 year old lee may have had a different appreciation for movies than he does now but dang it if i don't still love this movie it just sort of hits the appropriate beats of totalitarian dystopian futures throws in gunkata because of course it does and pretty much rides christian bale's acting chops until boom see a face what a moment but honestly this is one of those movies and actually sorry to anyone who watched this video before the movie that you just need to stumble onto one day on tbs or tnt because everyone still has cable right you'll be surprised by its poor rating but when people like me build it up too much i guess it's just easy to throw stones at it it's just 1984 with guns the matrix with no subtlety the giver but loud i don't know i found that it sort of blended all those things and a few others like fahrenheit 451 and brave new world into a fun action movie but i personally find the matrix comparison annoying just because well first the invisibles neuromancer dark city second wearing black leather and doing martial arts wasn't invented by the wachowskis perfect it maybe but style is really the only comparison you can draw and even that's been deliberately dulled to grey and beige in all things monochromatic the hardest part about making a movie with characters that aren't supposed to convey motion is that it could and if you're true to your premise should get really dull somehow bale is captivating even when he's emotionless but like i said prozium would be incapable of completely eliminating feelings i joked about bran's little smile here but is being smug and emotion kind of if you didn't get the self-satisfaction from it why would you bother and even with a catch-22 premise i just love how seriously these actors take this movie it gives the whole thing such credibility this isn't overacting this is an actor who understands what a man who'd never felt emotion would go through he's gonna fall to pieces in public kinda like that thing liquid ocelot did in mgs4 where he turned off nano machines and everyone was hit with the weight of everything they'd done two mgs references in this video should i play through that entire series and do a few everything great about videos for each game that could be fun i think it's on my mind because there is at least a part of me that loves this movie because it's such a video game right down to boss fights with the final boss's office being the last step before destroying the mainframe i've talked a lot about themes and what this movie is trying to say but there's no reason to pretend it's some dystopian masterpiece i don't think it was really intended to be it's a story we've heard before what it is and why a lot of people love it is the pure wish fulfillment i've learned over time that mary stews slash gary stews are often my favorite characters don't get me wrong if rocky doesn't get knocked down there's no story but i also have a vivid memory of running out of the room and crying as a kid when tongpo was kneeing jean-claude van damme to death my dad had to come get me and let me know that kurt sloan is winning now for the record it was on tnt or something that's how i was exposed to all those amazing movies as a kid but sometimes you just want to see a flawless hero win every fight and actually a second on the record was that jean-claude van damme was throwing the fight to save his brother so technically he was a flawless hero but i think it's a large part of why we love preston he's this machine and the only cleric or even character really in the entire film that actually believes in libria everyone else is either feeling or pretending to not be feeling so because he believes in the system he's been turned into a super soldier and regardless of your feelings on the importance of emotion i think we can all agree the ability to turn it off makes you pretty dangerous bran here is concerned with his freaking uniform before battle bye bye face sadly this movie has had a large and vocal cult following for long enough that we've come back around to people being upset if you call it underrated now so whatever much like most of the movies i do i don't need you to like it the vast majority of us who do love this movie get that it's a cheese fest that's part of the fun even wimmer gets that he explicitly states multiple times that this movie isn't meant to be a warning or a look at a potential future even the way 1984 was when it was written it's an alternate reality fantasy with gun-fu swords and a man fighting for his right and everybody's right to feel how could i not get behind the hat hope you can have fun with it as well next week a really incredulous movie [Music] eh [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: CinemaWins

Views: 727,042

Keywords: Equilibrium, Everything Wrong With Equilibrium, EWW Equilibrium, EGA Equilibrium, Sean Bean, Christian Bale, Cinema Wins, CinemaWins, EGA, Movie Wins, Film Wins

Id: QaBjclLud3A

Length: 21min 5sec (1265 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 10 2019