ksmith | Welp

I can see the scene now...

"Hey, you know how you make it really different?"

"How?"

"Well, remember how No. 6 always had No. 2 by the short hairs? Even the one who was a woman? By the short hairs? He burned through them like flash paper, and in the end the last one died and No. 6 escaped and returned to his life in London?"

"Yeah."

"Well...what if this time, we flip it? What if this time, No. 2 has No. 6 by the short hairs and burns through him and in the end makes him do what he wants him to do? Convinces him? backs him in a corner, even? And in the end--this is great--No. 6 becomes the new No. 2, and the old No. 2 goes back to his old life in New York?"

"No. 2 wins?"

"Yeah--isn't that great? it takes the whole mythos and turns it right on its ear!"

::ponders::

"But if the bastard wins--"

"Yeah, isn't it great?"

"If the bastard wins--"

"Yeah?"

"If the bastard wins--"

"You said that already."

"--then who do you root for?"

"What do you mean?"

"Who's the hero?"

I take their point in a way. I really do. it was an interesting construct. An interesting exercise. I can see it cycling, with Michael passing on the mantle to some other poor schlub a few years down the road, when he realizes that Curtis wanted out for a reason and he realizes what that reason was. But in the meantime, they took one of the classic Man vs The System tales and cut its heart out. It's a lovely clockwork, but clockworks have no soul.

Or as my Dad used to say when the end of a movie threw him for a loop, "Wasn't that the shits?"