MovieChat Forums > The Magnificent Seven (2016) Discussion > So, why did he want them off their land?

So, why did he want them off their land?

posted 8 years ago by deltajvliet
14 replies | jump to latest

It made no sense, he was just being evil for the sake of being evil. You need a population to run the mine, to provide food for the miners, to provide entertainment and banking and general services for the miners. If you drive everyone out, you're a king with no subjects. What's the point?

It's not like there was anything worth mining under the town's buildings. I didn't get the "stick your hand in this jar" thing either.

I can promise you a day of reckoning that you will not live long enough to never forget.

[–] marcus_stokes2000 8 years ago

They mention gold, but it's also shown that he gets a sadistic pleasure in ruining people's lives.

Hawkeye: Do you know how it feels to be unmade?
The Avengers

[–] eric-280 8 years ago

Agreed, this was the most 'evil for the sake of it' bad guy I've seen in a long time.

Liberal snowflakes think that making profit = evil (unless they're the ones making the profit), so they can't comprehend the idea of a capitalist striking a reasonable and mutually beneficial deal with the locals.

[–] ehaas-3 8 years ago

The powerful make "reasonable deals" when they are forced to by a functioning legal system (as a group I mean; every class has good individuals).

He wasn't doing it for motiveless evil, either. He wanted to vastly expand his mining operation and there was a town and farms in the way.

He'd have to pay a hell of a lot to make it worthwhile for all those farming families to agree to immediately evacuate, letting this year's crop die.

Anyway, the big bully vs. ordinary farmers is a long established Western trope.

[–] eric-280 8 years ago

Your point about it being a trope is well taken. But, rich guys make reasonable deals rather than pay a *literal army* to go and commit capital crimes. I know the movie is making the case that he wants to mine under the farms? I guess, but that doesn't mean it makes sense. :D

[–] ehaas-3 8 years ago

LOL

You've got a point that his way of dealing with it had to be pretty damn expensive, too!

[–] peggygeordie 8 years ago

Exactly.

[–] dayvit78 8 years ago

And while it would have been nice to learn more about what his original motivations for being so sadistic were, we at least know that it has been his modus operendi for a long time. We learn that when Chisolm is talking about what he did to homesteaders in Kansas. Apparently, he started building his fortune that way and was so successful, he continued the same methods in the West.

[–] peggygeordie 8 years ago

Oh, come on. Please show a little more sophistication. Liberals understand the need for profit - just not raping the land, fouling the air and caring nothing for the future or their employees profit-making.

Presumably even the store owners and farmers planned on turning a profit, building up some security and leaving a business or farm for their kids.

[–] peggygeordie 8 years ago

It was really a ridiculous premise and he was a ridiculous villain with no plausible motive or any compelling leadership or goal that would compel an army of men to hurl themselves into that kind of battle. It undercut the whole movie.

Eli Wallach in the 1960 version was both plausible and interesting. He wanted to rob the village and keep it producing so he could rob it again. He killed to make sure no one would cross him, not for the love of killing.

What did Bogue offer? A cough and a twitch? He was duller than the dirt in the jar.

[–] gnome-5 8 years ago

Maybe you missed the fact that they were protesting the fact that his mine was fouling their river. No clean water, no farming, etc. Nothing particularly ridiculous about that -- except that you somehow missed it.

His "reasonable" capitalist offer was $20 per plot -- basically pennies on the dollar for them to leave.

And "goal to compel the army" -- they were basically Pinkertons, hired guns who were accustomed to using force to help industrialists get what they wanted. Plus, they thought they were only going to have to root out 7 gunmen...

[–] thebricks 8 years ago

I started laughing so hard when he murdered the townspeople left and right.

And he didn't expect retaliation of any kind? Seriously?

I don't even think the US Army would have let that go, regardless of how rich Bogue was.

[–] ehaas-3 8 years ago

If you're talking about his first violent entrance into town, he controlled the sheriff and deputies who could all swear that he was acting in self defense and that the church burned because the priest had been carelessly smoking.

As for the final conflict, all he had to do was win, and "what victims?" They're all at the bottom of his mine. If anyone asks, he paid them off in cash and they went away.

If the authorities know there was a massacre, he can say that he bought the land and these were violent squatters whom he was well in his rights to remove. He probably has forged documents ready to demonstrate this.

The Army would be unlikely to intervene since he isn't a foreign invader or a Native American. The only people to possible care would be a few US Marshalls with nowhere near his resources.

[–] thebricks 8 years ago

Absolutely ludicrous assessment and wrong.

[–] samhmd-7489 8 years ago

The Mining he was doing was going to poison the land and water, and the people there legally owned the land meaning if some of them did make it to a Legal Office with any power he'd be in trouble.

So he wanted the land to avoid that issue later on.