I know it was only 5 years sooner than the film was made, but why go through all the effort to turn back the styles in the film. And yes, a mere 5 years but a big difference in style between 1978 and 1983. The music, clothes, etc. not like today where 2015 would be unrecognizable from 2003.
shareI suspect its so they can say that Christine is 'officially an antique' (20 years old).
And also so it makes sense that LeBay's brother is still alive to *add to the story*.
I'd say this cloud is Cumulo Nimbus.
Didn't he discover America?
Penfold, shush.
That's they way I saw it. Also it was also the year Halloween came out.
(Family Guy)There is no Peter, only Zool.
There is one theory that King started writing the book in 1978 and never bothered to change the year. And in the big picture, writing a book in a specific year has no bearing on what a potential director would do in the adaptation.
Even if it was set in 1983, it would still make the '58 Plymouth an antique. It just so happens that it was 20 years old in the book, a nice round number.
Christine is mentioned in the book as a '58 Plymouth on the first page of Chapter 1. About 8 pages later, Arnie talks about the significance of the age, the movie line is almost verbatim. Later in chapter 10, there is mention of Grease just coming out and Dennis taking a date to the movies. So the book setting is 1978.
Lastly, I don't think Halloween coming out the same year has any significance on the movie Christine. Except that yes, John hn Carpenter directed both.
I never said that it did. I was just mentioning it as the coincidence that it is.
(Family Guy)There is no Peter, only Zool.
"I suspect its so they can say that Christine is 'officially an antique' (20 years old)."
Which isn't even correct. The movie is set in California, and the minimum age is 25 years old. The same goes for many, if not most, other states, including here in Maine (which is Stephen King's home state). If they'd set it in "present day," the car would have been 25 years old.
20 years isn't even all that old for a car. It isn't unusual to see 20-year-old cars on the road, and it's easy to get parts for 20-year-old cars. Also, cars don't get as dilapidated as Christine in just 20 years. I've had a 2001 Dodge Dakota since 2011 and the original factory paint is still in decent shape, and so is the interior. I've never washed it, let alone waxed it, and it's always been outside. Christine looked like a car that had been sitting in a junkyard for 50 years, not a 20-year-old one-owner car that had only stopped being used 6 weeks ago.
We're talking about a car that fixes itself. Maybe she deteriorated when there was no one to love her.
share"We're talking about a car that fixes itself."
Is that right? I've only watched Christine probably fifty times over the past 35 years. I wonder how I missed that.
"Maybe she deteriorated when there was no one to love her."
There's nothing in the movie which establishes, suggests, or even hints at any such thing, and it doesn't logically follow from the car being able to fix itself either, given that fixing is the exact opposite of deterioration. In fact, we do see some scenes at the end of the movie where, once again, there was "no one to love her," i.e., after Arnie was killed. What did the car do? It started fixing itself even while being run over by a bulldozer. Then after it had been crushed into a cube to be used as scrap iron (which is about as "unloved" as it gets), it was still trying to fix itself.
Well, the ending can be explained. The car didn't start regenerating right away either when Arnie bought it and started repairing it. It took some time to awaken "the fury" in Plymouth. Likewise, once the fury was awaken, it took time to die, hence the car didn't start falling apart right away when Arnie died. Arnie and Christine had a symbiosys and together they were stonger, feeding their love to each other, but they were also separate entities.
"There's nothing in the movie which establishes, suggests, or even hints at any such thing"
There was little room for such a scene and showing a car deteriorating unnaturally would ruin the big scene later on, when Christine repairs itself for the first time. After the assembly line scene, the next time we see Christine, it is in total ruines. Maybe the guy who sold the car to Arnie knew and saw how the car turned into pile of trash. His line to Dennis "you don't know half as much as you think you do, shitter!" implies this car has powers no regular car does. Its a story about a possessed car, so its not necessary following logic.
The car started immediately, idled and ran without stalling, and was driveable without doing any work to it. That means the battery was charged, the ignition points, distributor cap contacts, rotor button, coil terminal, ignition switch contacts, and spark plug wire terminals weren't corroded, the accelerator cable wasn't seized, the various moving parts in the carburetor weren't seized, the leather accelerator pump diaphragm in the carburetor hadn't rotted away, and the brakes worked. Those things are all at odds with your "accelerated deterioration" fan theory.
If a car goes through ~50 years' worth of outdoor abandonment-induced deterioration, whether natural or artificially accelerated, it absolutely will not simply start and drive. At the very least the battery will be dead as a door nail and the brakes will be seized. Additionally, the starter (and/or its relay/solenoid), alternator, carburetor, and accelerator cable will probably be seized as well, the piston rings will probably be stuck to the cylinder walls, and the ignition system will be full of corrosion.
"Its a story about a possessed car, so its not necessary following logic."
I didn't say anything about the logic of the story (though all stories have to follow their own internal logic, else you get plot holes), I said that your fan theory doesn't logically follow from anything presented in the movie. You might as well assert that Christine can fly. That assertion wouldn't logically follow from anything in the movie either, therefore it would be a baseless assertion.
She had some powers left to keep her operational...
shareAgain, you're simply making stuff up, stuff which is in no way supported by anything in the movie. Take away Christine's powers and it's just a regular car, and cars (and anything else) deteriorate at a normal rate, which is determined by the conditions of its environment.
shareDude, the car and it's powers are fictional. The deterioration is just what happened. Feel free to think up a reason.
share"Dude, the car and it's powers are fictional."
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
"The deterioration is just what happened. Feel free to think up a reason."
I already know the reason, i.e., the prop department overdid the weathering/aging effects on the car.
I like that thought, that it took some time to unleash "the fury" in Christine. I see it that way, that she went neglected for many years, and regained strength from Arnie's love (sort of like how later in the original "A Nightmare on Elm Street" Freddy Krueger gets his power from the energy of fear he creates in the teenagers he terrorizes.).
shareI'm glad you had better luck with your model of Dodge Dakota: my mother & I inherited a 1999 Dakota from my father in January 2006, and it had one thing after another wrong with it (and my father took care of his vehicles). After many repairs, we finally dumped it in 2015, and it only had 71,000 miles on it! What a tour of smelly duty it ended up being:-).
share"I suspect its so they can say that Christine is 'officially an antique' (20 years old)."
They got that wrong though. 25 years old is the minimum age to register a car as an antique auto in many, if not most, if not all states. That's how it is in my state (Maine), and more importantly, in California where the movie is set. 1983 would have been a better year to set the movie in because, first, that was the year the movie was released which makes the production easier. Second, Christine being 25 years old would truly make it "officially an antique," and third, the extra 5 years makes it a little more believable that high school kids would have a 1968 Dodge Charger and a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro, both in good cosmetic condition.
I think they just kept it set in 1978 bc that was the year in the book. There was probably no reason to make it modern for 1983. I think it adds to a movie to make it set in an older year- even if it's just 5 years.
share50s nostalgia wasn't a thing in the 80s
shareThat's when the book took place. In the 70s, there was nostalgia for the 50s, so King was no doubt trying to cash in on that (we now know Stephen King is a shameless opportunist, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that he was just trying to write something very commercial at the time).
share