MovieChat Forums > The Fury (1978) Discussion > Falling to his death. Would it have bee...

Falling to his death. Would it have been better if....(spoiler)


Robin dies by falling, but yet he could float in the air. Why didn't he just save himself???

You think it would've been better if John Cassavetes character would have shot him as he's hanging from the roof, and then he falls.

Plus it makes the Cassavetes character Ben Childers much more hated.

What do you think?

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If I remember correctly from the book, Robin was losing strength which is why he couldn't save himself. That isn't adequately explained in the film and does leave a few questions open there. I like your thoughts but I don't think Childress could have been too much more hateful than he was anyway.

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Robin had given up; he didn't want to live; he could have saved himself but didn't and resisted his father's attempts to help him. Similiarly, his father gives up and falls to his death.

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In the book, after Robin falls, Childress (called Childermass in the novel) says, "You could've saved your son Peter but you let him die"! Then he shoots and kills Peter.

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Also, in the book version Gillian kills Childress by suffocating him with a thick rain coat which makes it more dramatic and realistic. Not the blood gore fest exploding finale.

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Why on earth cry for realism in a story that features telekinesis and over-the-top government conspiracies as fundamental building blocks?

And I agree with what another poster says above - Robin doesn´t save himself because he doesn´t want to.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

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Robin's death scene was way too flawed considering the sequence that had gone before it showing how he could levitate himself. If it was explained in the novel fine, but film relies heavily on imagery to express it's self and not everyone would have read the source material.

I dont see Robin as giving up, just out of his mind and furious—even at his father—and was no longer able to rationalize. It's in-cohesive sequences like this that frustrate me with some of De Palma's films and I would say one of the reasons why much of his work fails financially and critically.

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The scene wasn't in-cohesive. Robin scratched his dad face to make him drop him.

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The scene wasn't in-cohesive. Robin scratched his dad face to make him drop him.
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Isn't that the point of the comments though. If Robin was able to levitate himself, why was his death a falling one?

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Isn't that the point of the comments though. If Robin was able to levitate himself, why was his death a falling one? 



To make it clear he wanted to die.

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I just made this same point in another thread.

The fact that he attacked the one person who could have pulled him to safety just as that person was barely managing to keep him from falling really seems to indicate that he either wanted to die and/or that his mind had given over completely to raw subhuman emotions (anger) and madness. Or maybe in his delirium he thought he was invincible.

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i think he just gave up in a sense,his own father took his grip off him and he just thought everything was useless.

like his father did a few seconds later.

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The other thing to consider is that maybe levitation when it's rising up a few feet off the floor involves different processes than keep yourself from smashing into the ground when falling from a greater height.

Or maybe it requires a certain amount of concentration that he wasn't able to achieve by that point in the course of his fury and his shock at seeing his father after so long, who'd he'd thought was dead.

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Why do you think Robin is dead?

The whole movie shows that Robin and Gillian are the same, twins, soul mates...ONE soul.

The ending is of two halves becoming whole into one new person. This is why we don't hear Gillian speak. She is more than what she was, more than Robin. She is something, someone new.

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