History Fridge / Equilibrium

* Preston is so enraged at the end of the film that his emotions flatline, putting him into a TranquilFury that allows him to perform the GunKata with perfect effectiveness, outpacing all of his opponents, who are all either emotional or artificially dulled emotions from Prozium.

* On the first viewing, one might find the acting laughably bad: for a world with no emotions, way too many characters (Brandt, Dupont, Preston's kids) so obviously display them. It's not a flaw, but {{foreshadowing}}: Preston is the only named character still on Prozium at the beginning of the movie.
** Brandt seems off because he's on Prozium but, according to the director, his dosage hasn't been properly calibrated. For the majority of the film he's either over or undermedicated depending on the scene.
* The scene where Preston pistol whips a bunch of guys surrounding him isn't just to make him look badass: during training, GunKata is described as "treating the gun as a total weapon, each fluid position representing a maximum kill zone". This includes using the gun as a club, [[CrazyPrepared in case things come to that]].
* Gun kata relies on perfect emotional control. That is why [=DuPont=] engaged in EvilGloating towards the end, and why they left Preston his guns; Take away Preston's sword, then take away his gun kata, and make him take the mooks on with nothing but his now useless guns.
** Which adds another level of Brilliance: the result was pissing Preston off so much he went from barely controlling his emotions to full-on TranquilFury; in other words, he burned through all his crazed, unfamiliar emotions until he had only murderous rage: perfect, and completely controlled. Which made him even more effective at GunKata.
* Related to the question of just how many people weren't actually medicating. All the people stiffly walking about, ignoring everything around them, etc. could in many cases just be people over-compensating for ''not'' being medicated. You don't need emotion to react to someone bodily running into you. Probably even the folks on medication are making a conscious act of acting like implacable [[TheStoic stoics]].
* So Preston, for all his skill and dogmatic support for the system, turns out to be surprisingly bad at finding out who isn't on medications. But it all makes sense -- the cabal that runs Libria probably aren't stupid enough to promote those who would expose their secret, eh? Preston, too inept in this regard to pose a danger, was deemed safe until he brought down the system for unrelated reasons.
* The moment Preston enters TranquilFury, he achieves perfect emotional control. In other words he became the very epitome of his society's ideals but without the use of drugs. The {{irony}} is that it comes in the form of a paragon of those ideals who will no longer tolerate that very society's continued existence. Especially rich since the system ends up being built on hypocrisy.
* How anyone could possibly think it was a good idea to have a society like this? Turning off the fear, hate, and anger at a cost of turning off the empathy and compassion is an obviously terrible way to counter "man's inhumanity to man", and people with no emotions actually aren't very good at day-to-day functioning (in particular, at making decisions).[[labelnote:*]]There have been serious studies in psychology on this subject; it turns out that it's a lot easier to "feel like you want it" than to analytically reason your way into deciding whether it accomplishes your goals.[[/labelnote]] As it happens, turning off empathy and compassion and giving everyone so much decision fatigue that they'll just do whatever they are told is actually a really good way to keep subjects in a tyranny in line.
** Yep. That explains why [=DuPont=] is a hypocrite, plus likely most of the other high-ups (Father himself probably too while he was alive). It's a good facade to make them the head of a totalitarian state. They can just get away with [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem breaking their own laws]], after all.

* How anyone could possibly think it was a good idea to have a society like this? Turning off the fear, hate, and anger at a cost of turning off the empathy and compassion is an obviously terrible way to counter "man's inhumanity to man", and people with no emotions actually aren't very good at day-to-day functioning (in particular, at making decisions).[[labelnote:*]]There have been serious studies in psychology on this subject; it turns out that it's a lot easier to "feel like you want it" than to analytically reason your way into deciding whether it accomplishes your goals.[[/labelnote]] As it happens, turning off empathy and compassion and giving everyone so much decision fatigue that they'll just do whatever they are told is actually a really good way to keep subjects in a tyranny in line.

* On the first viewing, one might find the acting laughably bad: for a world with no emotions, way too many characters (Brandt, Dupont, Preston's kids) so obviously display them. It's not a flaw, but foreshadowing: Preston is the only named character still on Prozium at the beginning of the movie.

* The scene where Preston pistol whips a bunch of guys surrounding him isn't just to make him look badass: during training, gun kata is described as "treating the gun as a total weapon, each fluid position representing a maximum kill zone". This includes using the gun as a club, [[CrazyPrepared in case things come to that]].

* Related to the question of just how many people weren't actually medicating. All the people stiffly walking about, ignoring everything around them, etc. could in many cases just be people over-compensating for ''not'' being medicated. You don't need emotion to react to someone bodily running into you. Probably even the folks on medication are making a conscious act of acting like implacable stoics.

* The moment Preston enters Tranquil Fury, he achieves perfect emotional control. In other words he became the very epitome of his society's ideals but without the use of drugs. The irony is that it comes in the form of a paragon of those ideals who will no longer tolerate that very society's continued existence. Especially rich since the system ends up being built on hypocrisy.

* On the first viewing I actually found the acting laughably bad: for a world with no emotions, way too many characters (Brandt, Dupont, Preston's kids) so obviously display them. Only on later viewings did I realize it was not a flaw, but foreshadowing: Preston is the only named character still on Prozium at the beginning of the movie.

* On first viewing, I had a lot of problems with the premise, because I couldn't see how anyone could possibly think it was a good idea to have a society like this: turning off the fear, hate, and anger at a cost of turning off the empathy and compassion is an obviously terrible way to counter "man's inhumanity to man", and people with no emotions actually aren't very good at day-to-day functioning (in particular, at making decisions).[[labelnote:*]]There have been serious studies in psychology on this subject; it turns out that it's a lot easier to "feel like you want it" than to analytically reason your way into deciding whether it accomplishes your goals.[[/labelnote]] On the second viewing, I realized that while that is true...turning off the empathy and compassion and giving everyone so much decision fatigue that they'll just do whatever they are told is actually a really good way to keep subjects in a tyranny in line.

* On first viewing, I had a lot of problems with the premise, because I couldn't see how anyone could possibly think it was a good idea: turning off the fear, hate, and anger at a cost of turning off the empathy and compassion is an ''obviously'' terrible way to counter "man's inhumanity to man", and people with no emotions actually aren't very good at making decisions.[[labelnote:*]]There have been serious studies in psychology on this subject; it turns out that it's a lot easier to "feel like you want it" than to analytically reason your way into deciding whether it accomplishes your goals.[[/labelnote]] On the second viewing, I realized that while that is true...turning off the empathy and compassion and giving everyone so much decision fatigue that they'll just do whatever they are told is actually a really good way to keep subjects in a tyranny in line.

* The moment Preston enters Tranquil Fury, he achieves perfect emotional control. In other words he became the very epitome of his society's ideals but without the use of drugs. The irony is that it comes in the form of a paragon of those ideals who will no longer tolerate that very society's continued existence. Especially rich since the system ends up being built on hypocrisy.

* On the first viewing I actually found the acting laughably bad: for a world with no emotions way too many characters (Brandt, Dupont, Preston's kids) so obviously display them. Only on later viewings did I realize it was not a good, but foreshadowing: Preston is the only named character still on Prozium at the beginning of the movie.

* Related to the question of just how many people weren't actually medicating. All the people stiffly walking about, ignoring everything around them, etc. could in many cases just be people over-compensatign for ''not'' being medicated. You don't need emotion to react to someone bodily running into you. Probably even the folks on medication are making a concious act of acting like implaccable stoics.

* FridgeLogic: For someone who is stated as being one of the best Tetragrammaton Clerics, Preston is a remarkably bad judge of character when it comes to rooting out sense offenders. Let's go down the list, shall we?
** His partner, Partridge.
** His wife.
** Both of his kids.
** His ''new'' partner, Brandt.
** His ''boss'', [=DuPont=].
** This gets to the point where one might suspect that Preston was the ''only'' Librian still taking his meds, and simply could not tell the difference. Of course, given his CrazyAwesome close-quarters combat skills, it seems that he made his entire reputation on his ass-kicking abilities alone.

* How and ''why'' did LaResistance bother smuggling the ''original'' Mona Lisa closer to the City? I get that it would probably take the Clerics a while to sack the Louvre during the initial governmental transition, giving the Resistance time to steal it first, but why would subsequent Resistance members move what amounts to a Holy Grail closer and closer to their enemies?

* Related to the question of just how many people weren't actually medicating. All the people stiffly walking about, ignoring everything around them, etc. could in many cases just be people over-compensatign for ''not'' being medicated. You don't need emotion to react to someone bodily running into you. Probably even the folks on medication are making a concious act of acting like implaccable stoics.

** Which adds another level of Brilliance: the result was pissing Preston off so much he went from barely controlling his emotions to full-on TranquilFury; in other words, he burned through all his crazed, unfamiliar emotions until he had only murderous rage: perfect, and completely controlled. Which made him even more effective at GunKata.

* Gun kata relies on perfect emotional control. That is why [=DuPont=] engaged in EvilGloating towards the end, and why they left Preston his guns; Take away Preston's sword, then take away his gun kata, and make him take the mooks on with nothing but his now useless guns.

* Gun kata relies on perfect emotional control. That is why DuPont engaged in evil gloating towards the end; Take away Preston's emotional control, take away his gun kata, and the mooks can take him down.

* The scene where Preston pistol whips a bunch of guys surrounding him isn't just to make him look badass: during training, gun kata is described as "treating the gun as a total weapon, each fluid position representing a maximum kill zone". This includes using the gun as a club, [[CrazyPrepared in case things come to that]].