JCC ~~** OFFICIAL **~~ WOCKY NEWS DEPOSITORY THREAD. TOS MINDED. MOD APPROVED. PROBABLY

-Misinterprets everything about ROTJ.

 

Likes the show "Kings" and appreciates a good "shout out" in an anniversary thread.

 

I think you guys are wildly misinterpreting these films. This has to be understood in the broader context of the series. The sequel especially helps bring things into focus. While Michael is pulled down the path of the violent crime, he repeatedly questions why "[his father] was so loved and I'm so hated." Or, put another way, why is Michael's family destroyed when Vito's was not, despite their identical profession? Well, first consider that the only traitor we see in the series is Fredo, who happens to be unmarried. Going further, we also have a chance to see Vito's rise to power. Early on, he's often shown interacting with his wife. At this point, I think it's notable that his activities are things like helping immigrants advocate for rights from their landlords, or freeing people from brutal protection rackets. By contrast, by the time he is old age, the interactions with his wife become much less prominent, and his dealings have become decidedly darker as well. He is now involved in corrupt Hollywood deals, gambling, prostitution, and other vices himself. Are we to chalk this up to coincidence?

What we see in Sicily is the apogee of these trends. Having found the perfect wife, and spending the maximum amount of time with her, Michael transcends to a state wherein he commits no crime at all. Neither does he have any desire to. His rapid departure after death demonstrates that it was already safe for him to have returned. He simply saw no reason to. Instead, planted firmly in marriage by a traditional and full-bodied courtship, he was content to live out his life in the Sicilian countryside, aspiring to neither power nor wealth. He had attained his own best life, which Apollonia had been critical in fostering in him by subduing his bad tendencies and promoting his good ones. The mutual bond of love had curbed his excesses.

Now compare that to the wholly inferior Kay. From her very first moment onscreen, she is giggling and guffawing at every single aspect of his family. They both have huge aspirations for their relationship and how it will fit into their larger lives. But their courtship was improper and they did not love each other. Thus, despite (sort of) putting more visible effort into it, Kay fails miserably at trying to end the family's entanglement in organized crime. Likewise, Michael's hope to become more accepted in America are blown up in his face when his unloving wife deems to describe crime with the racist euphemism "this Sicilian thing." Because presumably, no other ethnic group has ever formed organizations to break the law before. So in this way, the two marriages become allegorical for the broader message. Apollonia, though of humbler backgrounds, follows the traditional path prescribed by society, and is the more beautiful and successful. Kay, like organized crime, seems the easier path to everything he wants, but is ultimately miserable failure, void of love or happiness.

 

All this time he's been discussing Apollonia, I thought it was regarding Purple Rain.

 

It's more than fair to assume that Michael was never going to stay in Italy, especially after hearing of Sonny's death (of which, obviously, he did return). He may have found a "perfect" wife, but you don't think he still didn't care for, and wanted to do things for the family back home? And say Fabrizio doesn't betray him, which (in)directly leads to Apollonia's death... I think she ends up with Michael back to New York. A possibility of her being corrupted/hardened/disillusioned, whether fully or just to some degree, by the life in America could still help to lead Michael down the dark paths seen in The Godfather Part II.

 

Well can we agree that it was a good thing that Coppola left out the idiotic sub-plot involving Sonny's lover's magical vagina surgery and the creepily descriptive pages of the procedure?

 

Yes. That is exactly what I think. I am sure he would love and still wish good things for his blood relatives, just as he loved and cared for Apollonia's family. But he was not interested in a life of crime anymore. That was the whole point of that segment.

 

I found his favorite YouTube channel.

 

When did Wocky shave his head and get dishonorable tattoos?

 

I do not approve of this for multiple reasons. First of all, there is too much humor and cynical, worldly sarcasm here. In the next place, it is just some capitalist push for one more worthless thing. In the third place, I do not think we should make a spectacle of people bathing and disrobing. There is nothing about this I enjoy.