Who killed Llewellyn Moss?

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!! In No Country For Old Men, I always thought Anton Chigurh caught up to Moss and killed him. But the Wikipedia summary seems to imply the Mexicans found him and killed him before Anton got there. Which is it?

The latter. It's a mite confusing the first time because it's so sudden (and so contrary to normal cinematic convention), but it's definitely the Mexicans.

Not sure why, but I got a kick out of reading this post first without any context of the OP or recognizing the name, Moss.

__________________
"My Dionne Warwick understanding of your dream indicates that you are ambivalent on how you want life to eventually screw you." - Joel

"Ever try to forcibly pin down a house cat? It's not easy." - Captain Steel

"I just can't get pass sticking a finger up a dog's butt." - John Dumbear

Shouldn't the title be considered a big, umm, spoiler?

Anyway, I thought it was fairly obvious it was the Mexicans. After all, we see them all jump in their truck just as the Sheriff is arriving, and everybody's screaming. Chigurh arrives later at night, which is the more arguably "confusing" scene where you're not sure if he's there at the same time as the Sheriff, but that's another thread.

__________________

I'm honestly not sure how to handle spoilers when films get over a decade old. Open to argument on what the policy should be there.

I'm super strict about spoilers, in general. I've usually had friends who were younger than me, so it felt natural that they hadn't seen the same movies I had, and I didn't consider obvious that they should have had, since birth, already seen all the moves made before their time.

There's a joy in discovering Jaws, Terminator, Citizen Kane, Plein Soleil or Psycho for the first time, whatever your age. Just going "this movie is from 1937 therefore you're supposed to have seen it already" sounds like bad faith to me.

That being said, this thread title isn't terribly spoilery, unless you remember reading name Llewellyn Moss on this forum as you start the film. Possible, but unlikely. The 1st post, containing the film title, could afford a spoiler tag, though.

I say.

This one is borderline for me. As Flicker noted, I seriously doubt people would remember the name after reading, then going to watch the movie. I've seen it a handful of times and had to google No country for Old Men/Moss to know who that was. MAYBE a spoiler for the movie title, but this one is so loose in describing anything anyway that I wouldn't have thought on that without this question being asked to begin with.

*Edit*
Huh.... I've been looking for an excuse to take this movie on again. Thanks!

Like Flicker, I'm very strict on spoilers... but on the argument of whether people will remember the name or not, whoever clicks, will also read the title of the film, so it's more than a name. It's all there.

I've also never understood putting a certain time frame to "spoilers" because it assumes that everybody will be exposed to every film at the same time, which obviously is not true. I could make an argument about spoilers that are so popular that have seeped into the general pop culture (i.e. Darth Vader being Luke's father, "it was Earth all along", etc.) and yet, I would still have my reservations.

Well now..... Look here, Mr!
*rolls up sleeves*
no. wait. this ... I'm just bored at work. Nevermind me.

What’s next? Spoiler for who shot J.R?!
Montgomery Burns?!

*Slams door on way out*

I think we need a new spoiler thread (or I should get my arse off the armchair and dig around for an older one). Would be fun, though. My take on it varies. I’ll spoiler-tag everything here, though I’m the kind of person that generally doesn’t mind spoilers. Certainly don’t understand militant attitudes towards them.

I watched the 5th season of Breaking Bad a bit late and yes, reading around/arguing with a friend about whether WW is in love with Jesse, whatever that means, I came across an article that included the line . Guess what, to paraphrase some members above, that did nothing without context. I mean, Didn’t impact my enjoyment at all, and BB shares the top spot among my all-time favourite shows with Hannibal.

A dictatorial stance on spoilers does border on the ridiculous quite often. In the first weeks of the pandemic I was discussing the times something was spoilt for me (yes, that was the actual topic of the discussion) with someone. I mentioned Ford versus Ferrari and my external contextual knowledge from working on an F1 account that meant I knew . The other person waited a day to reply and then said, “I was planning on seeing that.”

I mean, what?

My own stance on it is, as cinephiles, it’s a rare luxury to go into a film knowing nothing. I kind of don’t expect it. Also spoilers can almost inform understanding, where you’ll pay attention to the deeper implications, not the so-called “twist”.

As to an “age limit” to spoilers, I agree everyone matures and discovers and watches things, including classics, at different times, so that’s not super-helpful.

I agree with this in a very literal sense, but I think it gets murky if we start to dip below "supposed to" or anything which applies to all older films. But, for the sake of argument, if someone says "Luke, I am your father" (misquote aside) in some joking context, I'm not sure it's reasonable to be mad at them for spoiling Empire.

That said, I think we could come up with any general posture/policy, whether strict or loose, and still easily find edge cases or exceptions that would render it seemingly silly in a particular instance.

There's the question of common knowledge. We live in a culture where luke-i-am-your-father is as well known as it-was-the-wolf-disguised-as-grandma, greeks-were-hiding-inside-that-horse and this-dracula-guy-will-turn-out-weird. So, mad no. But sad, it may be in a way : it means that nobody can experience that scene with its intended shock ? It would be lovely if some people would.

Of course that theme has foggy borders. It would be great to watch Jaws without knowing that it's a , to watch Terminator without knowing that , or that Terminator 2 scene where converge towards without knowing that . For instance. But it's difficult. These big surprises are part of the story, the pitch, the marketing, the poster, the reason to go see the film. We have very few occasions to go see a film blindly, and, well, few movies make it worth the risk.

So, it's a general issue. Almost metaphysical, for movies. A film has to be self-contained, that is, to function without requiring outside information, such as poster images, tagline, or even title. Yet, on the other hand, spectators can hardly ignore the infos provided by these. It's hard to be entirely surprised by the return of the living dead in Return of The Living Dead.

The relation between movie stories and beforehand knowledge is very, very weird, and very ambiguous. This means indeed (as usual) that strict global rules are always wrong. Still, rule of thumb is "give surprise a chance" wherever it's realistic.

Costs/benefits, and all that. I leave the film as as wish I had found it, and I like to be surprised by the story.