History Headscratchers / SilentHill

* Is it just me, or is Heather kind of a KarmaHoudini? It's always bugged me that she never really comes to her senses regarding what she came to Silent Hill to do. She never has a MyGodWhatHaveIDoneMoment that could have, I dunno, actually developed her character. With all of the disturbing foreshadowing of what her hatred is doing to her, she never stops to consider the consequences of her actions.

*** Excuse me? Basically what they did was say Ah yes, we can't have a man be protective and nurturing or willing to go to hell and back for his daughter. Only women are capable of those acts of love. A man can't be a parent, no, apparently if you don't have vagina you can't be a freaking loving parent because only women can can be concerned about their children, men have no connection to them and can't be portrayed that way. * eyeroll* Double standards at their prime, replacing a father with a mother just because a woman deserves it better, the unfair sex indeed. Following the poster above me, Girls, you've ''had'' a million and one mother protagonists, you changed our father protagonist because you couldn't accept a man being a loving, concerned and nurting parent trying to find his daughter! Get over yourselves!
*** May be [[{{Mediator}} nitpicking]], but I interpreted the above poster's remark as "[you (possibly gender-unspecified)] guys [at the studio], you ''had'' a male lead!" Not "Guys [in general], you ''had'' a male lead!" So the "Following the poster above me..." section of the response is most likely wholly unnecessary, and (unless it's been rewritten since this line was added) ''definitely'' unnecessarily caustic.
**** As that above poster, that is precisely what I meant. It was directed at the director and the studio heads for their sexism and hypocrisy, not men in general. I'm ... not sure how that was misread.

* Are we supposed to be okay with the mass killing at the end? Based on the flashbacks only a small number of the members of the Church were directly involved in burning Alessa (it's entirely possible that many of them had no idea it was happening) so why were they all killed?

**** To be fair, Rose was acting suspicious at the gas station.
**** And she DID just kind of kidnap her own daughter in a way....

** In all fairness, the plot arc with the cult pretty much ''had'' to be simplified. It was much less complicated than the version in the video game, and a lot of viewers still didn't get it.
*** Giving in to the idea that viewers are morons is hardly a good reason to justify dumbing down a brilliant storyline though, I mean if they didn't want to use the Silent Hill storyline why make a movie out of it?
*** You could make it a lot simpler without dumbing it down or totally messing it around. Even if they made them into a demon-worshipping cult, that'd make a lot more sense than making them Christian.
*** The religion of the cultists was actually pretty questionable. Even though they were obviously inspired by Puritan witch hunters, their symbol is a heavily modified Venus emblem, which suggests that they're probably some sort of (possibly goddess worshiping) cult. It seems like they might just be a very dumbed down version of the game's cultists. At any rate they never make any actual references to any real religion except for the writing on the walls of their execution room, and lots of cults in the real world misappropriate religious symbolism as their own.
*** I think it was nice. I was able to recognize a ton of references from the game and yet it was still a new story. It felt familiar, but still different enough.
**** Agreed. Christopher Gans was a fan of Silent Hill and it showed. The angles, the look, the music, and the creatures were all spot-on, which is more than I can say for most other video game films where the director has never played any of the games, but was given license over the project anyway.
*** The religion change was weird too. Claiming to be fully accurate and then fully changing the nature of Alyssa and the cult is rather stupid. You could dumb down the cult storyline and still keep it as the same kind of cult, you know!

** Again, she hadn't seen any monsters yet. Climbing all over someone's car instead of just trying to walk out through the mall like a normal person would seem like a ridiculous option to her then.

** Also, Heather could have thought he was a rapist, and judging from the first boss she encounters, she's very, very afraid of that sort of thing. Alternatively, I don't understand why she couldn't just climb up on the van in the alleyway (How in the hell did it get there, anyway?) and scoot off.

* Henry has been stuck in the room for days, he must have tried to break his way out of the room. It must not have worked. The room is supernaturally resistent to attempts to break your way out, and any apparent ways out are merely there to mess with you, or further the main villain's plot.

** Some are pretty symbolic. At the hotel, there are monsters called TwoBacks, which are some man women hybrid. Stem from Travisses negative view of relationships (considering what happened with his parents who can blame him). The straitjackets were based on the fact that his mother was in a sanitarium (it's also implied that Travis may have spent time there.) The female villians usually symbolize Travis's negative relationship with his mother, while the Butcher and the Sanitarium and Hotel bosses represent his inner demons (Butcher represents his darkness, hatred for his family, and inability to let go of the past, and implies that Travis might have been a serial killer, while the Memories symbolize his fear and hatred of his mother and father.)

*** Excuse me? Basically what they did was say Ah yes, we can't have a man be protective and nurturing or willing to go to hell and back for his daughter. Only women are capable of those acts of love. A man can't be a parent, no, apparently if you don't have vagina you can't be a freaking loving parent because only women can can be concerned abuot their children, men have no connection to them and can't be portrayed that way. * eyeroll* Double standards at their prime, replacing a father with a mother just because a woman deserves it better, the unfair sex indeed. Following the poster above me, Girls, you've ''had'' a million and one mother protagonists, you changed our father protagonist because you couldn't accept a man being a loving, concerned and nurting parent trying to find his daughter! Get over yourselves!

** Oh GOD, don't get me STARTED on that! If I could, I'd probably go over and smack the everloving shit out of the person who made that idea - and then the comment about why.
* I can accept that a movie can deviate from the original source, but 'most faithful movie adaptation' ''my ass''. They turned almost everything into its total opposite! They turned the evil Dahliah into a loving mother. They turned the demon-worshipping cult into fanatical christians. They burned Alyssa to 'purge' her of evil instead of amplifying her dark powers. The demon is the 'dark part' of Alyssa instead of something incubating inside her. I could go on and on, but for god's sake there was no need for any of these 180 degree changes! Or did they just want to diss on Christianity when they had the chance?

*** Giving in to the idea that viewers are morons is hardly a good reason to justify dumbing down a brilliant storyline though, I mean if they didnt want to use the Silent Hill storyline why make a movie out of it?

*** The religion change was wierd too. Claiming to be fully accurate and then fully changing the nature of Alyssa and the cult is rather stupid. You could dumb down the cult storyline and still keep it as the same kind of cult, you know!
* "Oh honey you're having terrible nightmares about a horrible, evil place? It's ok, I'll kidnap you to take you there against all common sense, your father's wishes and any concern abuot your well being, I'm sure that will make it all better."

* Officer Cybil's suspicions when she first sees Rose and Sharon. At that point she has absolutely no reason at all to think that there wass anything suspicious about Rose, so what did she do? She decides to go over to the child in the car and to follow them.

**** To be fair, Rose was acting suspicious at the gase station.

** Especially since in the movie it is public knowledge that Silent Hill is very dangerous, even at the pseudo-normal levels. Rose clearly researched this place and should know (just as her husband did) that the fires burning are so dangerous that people can't live there. So of course the best way to handle this is to take your mentally ill child and go there without even hiring someone who would have a reasonable chance of knowing how to safely navigate such a place.

* People who say that Lisa is only sixteen in this game. She's 23. [[spoiler:Fake Lisa in [=SH1=] is based on Alessa's memories of the real Lisa, so she doesn't have to be "aged-up" like a normal person would be.]] Also, nurses aren't sixteen.
**Um, yes she is. She was killed a few days before the events of the first game, so if she was 23 in Origins, she'd be 30 in SH1. SH1 Lisa isn't fake, she's a ghost under Alessa's influence. And yea, nurses CAN be 16, if they're trainees not kept on the official payroll and are bribed into silence and secrecy with sex and drugs.