Us (Jordan Peele, March 22, 2019) Movie • Page 12

That moment made me laugh hard, but in hindsight it’s also really disquieting. That whole sequence is the one time where the humor actually made things creepier for me instead of providing relief.

 

Guys I love this movie. I’ve thought about it all day and it gets better and better. Can’t wait to see again.

 

This is what I was looking for, thanks guys!

Also thought the significance of Sign Man being the precursor to the action when they see him being wheeled into the ambulance played into it some, like he is the literal sign bearer that bad things are about to start happening.

 

This was enjoyable, but I'm definitely way more conflicted on this than I thought I would be, even after keeping my expectations in check... it feels really clunky, especially with how it handles exposition

and I despised the twist even if it makes sense under the whole class allegory, it felt too easy and I never considered it because it seemed so cheap.

 

I enjoyed the film...it was funny, engaging, and certainly entertaining. Having said that, while I appreciate it conceptually, I don’t think I love the execution. Subsequently I don’t think I’m as sold on the allegory as a whole...despite the fact it was an interesting take on it.

 

I think it’s a really fun and enjoyable movie with a good amount of problems, some easier to look past than others. The more I think about it, the more I feel the twist at the end is rather unnecessary. I wouldn’t mind if maybe that was hinted at and it could be something we could debate over, but having it so explicitly spelled out feels unnecessary

 

I guess I forgive the twist because by the time we got to it I had already accepted the likelihood. It does seem like a moot point - all analysis aside.

 

I feel like they could have bypassed the exposition scene showing it actually happen and instead cut to black after the shot of Lupita smiling at her son. I think that would have been sufficient

 

I guess I still struggle to see the point of their “plan.” Is it just for symbolic reasons? What is the end goal I guess?

 

The twist is good because it makes explicit that the dopplegangers were victims of their environment -- that they weren't subhuman but had the same capacity to adapt to the "real" world as anyone else. Adelaide was able to escape from the underclass by doing something horrible and then buried it in her subconscious in order to cope with being in a new, better society while everyone else suffered.

 

Can we talk about the adelaide/red monlogue scene and how awfully composed that scene was shot wise, it was so bad I was distracted
Rest of the film looked great so I'm wondering if that was something that had to be reshot or what.

 

Essentially that if given equitable access, anyone is able to thrive despite their starting point in life? Or is it primarily to confuse the viewer or contend that in this scenario it is seemingly impossible to determine good Us versus bad Them?

 

Yeah I dunno what was up with that, it legit looked like something from an anime

 

I understand the point, I just think it would have been possible to reach the same conclusion without it holding your hand.

Regardless, I do enjoy this movie and wanna see it again.

 

Class revolt. Hands Across America was a fundraiser meant to bring awareness to world hunger and homelessness, but the doppleganger HAA turns that on its head by sending the message to the world "we are here, and this is the consequence of you trying to ignore us."

 

I gotta do a quick rant before I read up on anything or think pieces, just a bunch of quick reactions:

Gotta say, pretty disappointed. I came in with really high expectations based off the trailer, all the buzz, all the reviews, and I felt like this was a lot of big ideas that didn't really connect to anything. I got a lot of questions
1. I called the Lupita twist like five minutes in, I mean they basically gave it away with the snaps in the trailer. But it leaves so much unanswered, and makes the actions of the "tethered" Lupita so confusing. She wasn't the shadow girl, forced to live underground, she had her life stolen. She was taking it back. Through her first long exposition and her second one that never comes up, I guess to keep the reveal to the end, but it doesn't make sense. "What do you want?" "My life back."

2. If the tethered don't have souls, Jason and Zora only have half a soul? and the tethered children should also be half human. Is this why they're the only ones able to kill apparently? based on the body count and lack of visible humans.

3. The tethered were created to control people above? But by who? And do they? They seem to be generally matching actions but never really shown to have influence in reverse. Jason moves his tethered backwards into a fire but that's the only time that's shown and the tethered never have that ability on the human versions. It seems inconsistent at best.

4. The quote about tunnels at the beginning was so dumb, and we're supposed to believe there are tunnels across the country for clones that were organized by one non-clone Lupita? It just seems like a problem of scale. If it was a small sample size of a one community cloned it would make sense to have Lupita and a few other families, which could still cause terror, but the sheer size of this makes it seem so impossible and ludicrous that it loses some impact.

5. They were eating also cloned rabbit meat? What were the rabbits eating? Pretty clean down there for no visible bathrooms. They have a whole country built underground below the sewers filled with rabbits? Its just so much, even if that big hallway with rabbits is a great visual.

6. So there is an entire duplicate country's worth of soulless people underground. They are able to organize and plan a take over, despite being controlled by the actions of their doubles above ground. Where the hell do they get millions of matching red jumpsuits? Where do they get millions of scissors? Its just too much, it doesn't even come close to making sense, and it really throws me out of the suspended disbelief.

7. So non-tethered Lupita gets dragged down and replaced by tethered Lupita, and the human version wearing the hands across america shirt obsesses over that? To make a statement? and teaches millions of doubles (who clearly lack some mental capacities in one way or another) to do that and also do it very still for like a full day? I get the symbolism of the paper hands being cut but this is just too much, its silly and ineffective.

8. Lupita wasn't tethered and she inspired them by dancing? She knows about the above world! They don't! That should be enough to make her a leader. She has knowledge of the world she was taken from, that they should want, that normal people take for granted. The dancing thing made no sense as a point to make her the leader, being non-tethered made much much more sense for that and its not even brought up until the end for that twist. Big mistake. That should've been revealed earlier with a bigger twist at the end or something, it really convoluted the plot in ways that didn't make sense.

9. Lupita comes in with a story and they play games with their tethered and give them a chance but the Heidecker family gets stabbed immediately without any exposition? Along with the rest of the world? Hey millions of people, no fucking around get straight to murder and then hand holding, but me, as a non-tethered I'm going to really milk this, and give the half-tethered family a chance to win.

10. The stuff about "Americans" feels real real half-baked. If that's the message you wanted to give its not clear, seems tacked on, and just doesn't add up with so much of what was shown in the actual film. I don't know if there is a clear message here. We don't know who doesn't have a soul? Get better organized? I don't know, thematically it was a mess, there's so much going on and it didn't add up to a clear message.

11. Jason knows his mom isn't the human version, does he know he's only half human? What does that mean? Is there a difference or was it just luck of the draw? This is the Hugo Treehouse of horror episode basically only everyone on the planet has an evil twin and they all get scissors and organized for murder at the same time and then do hands across america again and also it doesn't make sense.

Still looked cool and was well directed with great performances and good funny moments but this plot was overwhelming with stuff and lacked cohesion. I thought it was going to be satisfying but I feel let down.

 

I don't think it's meant to confuse anyone. It makes the point that there is no actual "good us" or "bad them," that it's all relative to your position in society. I guess it "confuses" the audience in the sense that it completely subverts our understanding of how the Us world works: even if you felt sympathetic to the Tethered, there was still the conception of them as the zombie product of this freak experiment. But instead we realize that Adelaide isn't secretly "bad Adelaide" simply by virtue of her being born a Tethered -- she's just as human as everyone else

Maybe if they did it a different way entirely, but if they kept everything the same and just omitted it, then it would have been impossible to infer that; sure it was probably on everyone's mind after that first scene, but there was nothing else in the film to draw the inference. We wouldn't have known why Red could talk or why her voice was like that, nor would there be an explanation for why the Tethered were able to break free

 

For some of these about how the world would have "worked," I just suspended my disbelief and trusted that Peele didn't need us to see all the sewer systems and how resources were obtained and what exactly the government project was about -- he even said in one interview that he has a whole mythos in his head but didn't want it to distract from the actual point of the film, which it would have. Like, it's an allegory. When watching Get Out it doesn't really add anything to learn how the Sunken Place and mind transplant actually worked lol
For the rest, especially about how you think of it thematically, I'd just recommend reading some thinkpieces and interviews and past posts in this thread. I don't feel like I have every single weird thing understood perfectly, but reading other opinions on it in just the past 24 hours has made me appreciate it much, much more

 

Get Out worked because it was so grounded in reality. There was one family, who used hypnotism and a brain surgery to do some kind of body replacement. It was out there, but not ridiculous. The scale of Us is just so so so large, worldwide tunnels, a weird connection that is not explained, one person getting switched once (how'd she get up that path and that escalator and why was there even a connection? Any chance that one of the tethered could get out or a human get in would be catastrophic. that should be locked up.) and also the fact that the tethered were abandoned by whoever created them, were able to organize (somehow) and were suddenly able to get free and kill people en masse. Its so much to suspend disbelief for, I wish they cloned just like one family, or even just a small sample size of a town.

The scale being too overblown and issues with the motivations of Red done to not reveal the twist are my biggest problems. There is just a lot that doesn't add up and I expected so much more.

 

I think of Us as an allegory to the point where I’m not sure I need to make the existence of the tethered world make sense. If it was supposed to be some futuristic dystopia that clearly laid out where our society could go on a literal scale, I’d have issues. But obviously it’s not. It’s a more poetic film than anything. So it’s very easy for me to suspend my disbelief in the literal details. It also helps that everything that develops in the movie serves the message Jordan Peele had in mind the more I think about it.

 

I feel you on a lot of this

 

Seriously, I really hate the last shot, lol — so corny and just beats you over the head.

 

It’s been floating around reddit and I need someone to pay attention to it for me to confirm but in the last shot the son’s reflection apparently is Pluto.

 

I loved this, especially the more I think about it. For me, this was a stronger film than "Get Out". It wasn't quite as scary as I was initially hoping but JP has already cemented a style of filmmaking with his own unique vision and messages, something a lot of modern horror films are lacking. I liked the symbolism of the single down escalator, easier to fall in class than to rise up. I now have a crush on Lupita Nyong'o. She was fantastic, deserves an oscar nom.

 

Seeing this tonight! Cant wait!