Do you think that Oldboy (2003), was perhaps just too far fetched?

I know it's a movie but by the climax I was palming my face and shaking my head.

SPOILER

Basically in the climax the villain, Woo-jin reveals to the main character Dae-su that he hypnotized him into having sex with his own daughter and falling in love with her, as part of his revenge plan.

But then Dae-su accepts the Woo-jin's word, hook line and sinker without any questioning or demanding any proof, and just cuts off his own tongue without any hesitation. He just goes completely crazy.

All the villain did was show Dae-su, his old photo album, which he took from his house before. Woo-jin then puts new photos of the grown up Mi-do in the photo album, and thereby making Dae-su believe that that is his daughter. But how can Dae-su tell they are the same person just because some new photos of an older supposedly Mi-do, have been put in the album?

The actress who plays Mi-do looks considerably different than the pictures of the little girl before it, and Dae-su never questions if this is all trick and that if the adult Mi-do, is a completely different person, possibly working for the villain.

I mean if you think about it, the changes of this plan coming off and actually manipulating two people to fall in love, are very unlikely, especially when you don't want just any two people to fall in love, but a very particular two people, who never met, in a matter of speaking. The chances are a 1000 to one it seems.

So Dae-su immediately trusts the Woo-jin is telling the truth. Why? Woo-jin kidnapped Dae-su for 15 yeas, and murdered his wife and framed him for the murder.

So because Woo-jin did that to him, how can Dae-su believe anything that comes out of Woo-jins mouth, without at least getting some sort of DNA taste before going completely crazy and cutting off your own tongue? How can Dae-su believe him at all after all that?

So I found the climax to be very far fetched and very hard to accept, perhaps too ridiculous. The movie also has a subplot, where the villain not only has kidnapped Dae-su but has also kidnapped several other people over the years, and all holds them in a downtown building.

This is never explained in the movie, as I have watched it twice, and it still didn't explain why this is. I mean this a guy who wants to avenge what Dae-su did to his sister. That's got nothing to do with kidnapping all these other people and then running a whole criminally operated enterprise out of it.

Plus Woo-jin is suppose to be this smart mastermind who can pull off such a complicated and unlikely crime where anything can go wrong, but he makes mistakes such as having a take out food delivery service, actually deliver to the building where all the kidnap victims are being held. Not just to the building but to the exact floor of the building and actually allows the delivery people to use the elevator to the exact floor.

What kind of a kidnapper allows this? And we are suppose to believe this guy can cross all the Ts, and dot all Is to pull off a such a complicated plan.

So I find the movie to be a very good premise, and I give it props for being a very interesting ride while watching it. It's just when it's over, you realize how far off the rails it's gone. But what do you think?

They're insane.

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First of all the "villain" didn't own the kidnapping building. It was a service he employed.

They fell in love because they were hypnotized. It wasn't about odds, it was about manipulation of the subconscious. Although, it's probably not that hard for a sex-starved middle aged man to fall in love with a beautiful young woman like that.

I didn't see any issue with getting food delivered. How was that a mistake?

Dae-su didn't immediately trust Woo-jin. It's been a while since I watched it, but I seem to remember him going through intense doubt and disbelief, but the photo album was what sealed the deal. You have to look past the fact that they have to use actors that don't look exactly the same, and try to understand that from the characters' perspectives it would be obvious seeing photos of the girl growing up that she was his daughter. When everything was finally revealed all the pieces fit into place.

I think ironpony's issue is that the food was supposedly so easy to trace back to the prison building, which I also put down to being part of Woo-jin's master plan.

Oh okay thanks. I understand that all the pieces fell into place, but when all the pieces are being manufactured by Woo-jin, you can't really trust the pieces.

As for the prison being a service that Woo-jin he employed. Why would there exist such a service that kidnaps all these people and holds them in a building?

Also, if Woo-jin wanted Dae-su to find the building, by having him being able to trace it back through restaurant deliveries, then why are the other people who work for the kidnapping service okay with that? Wouldn't they say to Woo-jin "you're going to get our kidnapping enterprise found out, if you keep sending take out deliveries to this place three times a day!". Wouldn't they be pretty upset over having to risk being discovered when a restaurant service keeps delivering there?

Yeah, it's far-fetched. It's a crazy movie. But it's crazy immediately. I'm a believer in the idea that you generally need to accept a movie's core premise uncritically. Movies can have plot holes or contradict their own internal logic, but you can't watch, for example, The Expendables and then be annoyed that people aren't reloading often enough.

That's an extreme example, but I think the same basic idea applies here: this movie lets you know it exists in a heightened reality very, very early on. To decide to watch the movie is to accept that premise, the same way watching The Lord of the Rings is to accept the premise that magic is real.

Movies are full of things people would never do. That's one of the reasons we make them in the first place.

Yeah I know what you mean, it's crazy on purpose. Some movies are like that, like The Game (1997), or The Truman Show (1998), I just felt that Oldboy could perhaps be done less crazily, and that the building full of kidnap victims was not really needed, plot wise. For example, in a movie like Ranson (1996), when they kidnap a boy, and hold him for ransom, the boy is the only kidnap victim.

They didn't need to employ a kidnapping service to store him in a building full of other kidnap victims in a building, in the middle of downtown New York. I just thought they could do away with that whole subplot.

Nah, I think it's stylized enough to get away with it and I believed him so I think Oh Dae su would too.

And he was hypnotized so....

Oh okay, I guess I didn't what to believe that would come out of his mouth after all he has done at that point.

However, what was the motivation of the kidnappers who held people captive in the building? Why were they doing it, with all the other kidnapped people?

Quite simply, they were running it as a for-profit business.

But how does one profit from that though, and what did this have to do with the main villain story?

Like literally any other business (criminal or otherwise), it profits when people are willing to pay for it (and given its extremely illegal nature, the prices are likely to be rather high). As for what it has to do with the villain, it's an easy way for him to outsource the imprisonment of Dae-su (which is integral to his plan).

This has to stop!

I guess people like Lee Woo-jin use it. Wealthy people or some other criminal types who want to make someone suffer. One can imagine the “rent” isn’t cheap but it’s really besides the point of the story which answers your second question: nothing in particular. It’s not as major a plot element as you’re making it out to be.

I love how Iro of all members is the one who never loses patience with Ironpony

I don't either actually, he just seems super curious and while his questions can be silly at least he's interested in finding out alternate views on problems he had with certain films. It's not difficult to avoid his threads.

"But why male models?"

But seriously, it seems like it would just be rude to lose patience with ironpony and their constant questions. Some of them do seem like the answer should be obvious (especially the last one), but as noted it's not difficult to answer them either. The question is whether or not answering ironpony's questions is helping them learn how to ask less questions by teaching them how to reach their own conclusions.

Yeah, i do get peoples issues with Ironpony. I just find him super endearing even though they can be frustrating, they are just so polite no matter how hostile what they're responding to is, and "Oh okay, thanks" is the best MoFo catchphrase

Sorry for turning this into a discussion of Ironpony i was responding to UltraViolence's "This has to stop".

While op seems orgasmically full of him/herself with each replies, typical-chat-hunter-over-extended pattern, but the always rationalistic approach way far-fetched, crucified what suppose to be enjoyment~appreciation in irrationality spectrum


In short word im not fan of, still, one free with the platform it got

Sorry for the questions, I don't mean to be full of myself or anything like that. I just don't buy into certain parts of movies are having trouble understanding, and they leave me scratching my head, so I just like to ask questions about the plot, that's all.

Like I know the idea of kidnappers being able to rent a business for their victims is not complicated, I just had trouble buying into the idea, cause I didn't think that the kidnapping rate was high enough to make a rent business out of it. Plus I didn't think that kidnappers would be willing to pay for a rent, when they can just hold someone hostage in a place they own for free, or a lot less money in comparison.

There's a certain mystique behind the inner-workings of Oldboy that is a common-thread in similar films with dark subject-matter. Simply put, while you might not buy into the idea of a company that will hold kidnapped victims, it's the fine-line of mystique and the secretive nature of the criminal world that allows it to carry a felt realism.

For instance, look at a film like Hostel, which is set in Slovakia. Chances are, Eli Roth didn't find a shred of precedent suggesting such areas would exist inside Slovakia, but it being unknown and the simple fact that, theoretically, some place like Hostel could exist, helped it carry a felt realism.

There's a mind-set in the world about certain matters, that there's a criminal underbelly shrouded in mystery, be it human-trafficking or child sex rings (some of them have even been proven to exist), things like the dark web, etc. that allow a means of anonymity, or conspiracies suggesting hidden organizations. Although it might feel far-fetched to you, with each criminal case that adds fuel to the fire, it's become a very real paranoia in society that there exist shady organizations (some even large-scale) and this exploits that paranoia.

If you question if the kidnapping rate was high enough to make a business out of it, consider the fact that in the United States alone, thousands of people go missing every year. If you question if kidnappers would be willing to pay for rent, when they can just hold someone hostage in a place they own for free, consider the inherent risk of having a hostage in a place you own, especially if you have enough money to "outsource them" to a different location.

Theoretically, there's no reason such a place couldn't exist. This film is a theoretical example of what it might look like if it did, and thereby, in the film's logic, there is a market for it.