Discussion Film / KnivesOut

By its very nature, a whodunit movie's page is going to be pretty much one spoiler after another. To make it more readable (and easier to manage), should we do away with all the spoiler tags, and just post a big, scary notice on top so readers know what they're getting into?

Continuing from this ATT query: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/query.php?parent_id=86771&type=att this ATT query: is Lt. Elliot (Lakeith Stanfield) telling Marta and Ransom "Get Out!" an Actor Allusion to Get Out (2017)?

• Context/s: The scene from Get Out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG_KHjd_PSc around 1:25]]), scene from Knives Out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFj8ZnLZZus around 3:18).
• Arguments for: The scene where Stanfield's character yells "Get out!" at a garden party is widely considered the film's Signature Scene. A real-life cop would likely say something more formal when ordering suspects out of a car, so it may be an intentional statement on the part of the writer or actor.
• Arguments against: "Get Out!" is a stock phrase, so it could have been written in without being intended as an overt reference. The lines also have little in common in the way of context or delivery. Elliot is also shown to be a pretty brusque guy throughout the film.

To be honest I find this one unconvincing.

• Broken Aesop: Harlan becomes considerably less sympathetic if you buy into the view that billionaire (or millionaire) charity is not a sign of good character but a means of control. Harlan paid for his lazy children's habits and then proceeded to cut them off at the last portion of their life with no real plans to gradually ease them off or help them find better means. As such, he comes off as someone who lords over his family and is every bit as corrupt. The fact he "earned" the money doesn't necessarily mean that he's entitled to it since he's just the beneficiary of the same system he deplores.

Firstly, the movie itself directly addresses the means of control and lords it over his family points. There is a reasonably lengthy monologue where Harlan ruefully muses that his support for his children has instead smothered them and he has, consciously or not, kept them under his control instead of allowing them to develop their own independent lives. It is hardly a Broken Aesop if the movie is clearly arguing that such a state of affairs is not a good thing to begin with, especially if this is done through the character the example is complaining about acknowledging this.

Secondly, the movie also suggests (albeit in a blink and you'll miss it fashion) that Harlan is not intending to just cut his kids off without providing at least some kind of cushion or giving them some chance to prepare for it. When he fires Walt, he tells him that they will discuss it further the next day (or something along those lines), which heavily suggests that he is planning to work out some kind of severance package for him. We also clearly see him give Joni fair warning that she and Meg are not going to be getting any more money from him, and the one person to whom all this comes as a total surprise to — Linda — is also the one person who is wealthy by her own means and so does not need his inheritance anyway. While I can see how this one is easy to miss, the movie does seem to be suggesting that Harlan would have made moves to ensure that his family would have been eased into their new circumstances (or at least was not planning to suddenly cast them into poverty) had, you know, he not been rather suddenly killed. This seems to be more a function that Harlan is the sudden victim of a murder mystery rather than a flaw on his part or a mixed message of the movie.

And I have no idea where the whole stuff about how Harlan does not rightfully own his fortune just because he earned it comes from to begin with. Leaving aside the fact that this seems a bit questionable outside of a strict/hardcore Marxist ideological approach, the movie in and of itself clearly makes the case that being a Self-Made Man is preferable to just sponging off your wealthier relatives. While the whole idea of the Self-Made Man itself might nevertheless be challengeable from a Marxist critical perspective, the point of a Broken Aesop is that the story is mangling its own message, not just that the troper in question disagrees with the movie from an ideological standpoint. And in this case, say what you will about the message itself, the movie seems to be fairly consistent about it.

In short, I do not think this example belongs, and if it does it needs to be drastically reworked. At present, it just seems to be Entry Pimping to grind an axe about how Harlan is the real meanie without much to support it from the movie itself.

I removed something like this before from both the main page and the character sheet, but it keeps popping up so I wanted to discuss it here:

• Hypocrite: Richard seems pretty racist in a flashback when the family are discussing politics but notably, the woman he is photographed having an affair with appears to be a woman of color.

I do not think having an affair with a WOC by itself cancels out his racism. Her family could be immigrants he considers "good ones" who enter the country legally which still leaves his attitude towards illegal immigrants problematic. He could also have a Race Fetish or believe in Some of My Best Friends Are X (ie. "I'm not racist, my mistress is Asian") to excuse his own racism. Plus, he's still a jerk.

Thoughts?

Moving these from Casting Gag to here:

• Jamie Lee Curtis is the daughter of Tony Curtis, like her character Linda who is also the beloved eldest daughter (and powerful CEO) of author Harlan Thombrey.
• Don Johnson also plays Linda's unfaithful husband, while Johnson was in a famously up-down relationship with Melanie Griffith (who is also the daughter of Tippi Hedren).

Might just be me missing something, but the two Casting "Gags" about Jamie Lee Curtis and Don Johnson seem... kind of a stretch. At most, they're incredibly vague, but TBH I don't think they're examples of the trope at all beyond some thin similarities. The trope page states that a Casting Gag is "where an entire role mirrors or parodies an entire previous role or Real Life situation of the actor", but surely it has to be something a bit more specific than "he cheated on a romantic partner" or "her dad's also famous". If nothing else, if they are going to be added back onto the page I think they need to be made much more specific.