Line #54 Headscratchers/Wishmaster


1	* I have to admit that I haven't actually watched the movies, just heard of them, but there's something that's been bugging me since I actually started thinking about them. To my understanding, the Djinn of the film are {{Jackass Genie}}s who, after they grant a third wish, are all released from captivity forever; however, they do ultimately ''have'' to grant your wish, they just do it in as nasty a fashion as they can get away with. So what's stopping someone from just wishing that all Djinn were destroyed forever and finally putting an end to things?
2	** It's been a while, but if I remember correctly the heroine's freebie starter (granted by the Djinn to "get her in the spirit of things") wish is for the Djinn to "blow his brains out, right now." He manifests a gun, puts the barrel in his mouth, and blows the back of his head out. It regenerates, and he comments something along the lines of "that which is made cannot be unmade," implying that the Djinn cannot be wished out of existence, merely imprisoned.
3	*** It is possible to wish for whatever event that freed him to be un-done, which re-sets the time-line to that point, and continues on, without whatever event that freed Djinn ever happening. This way, whatever wishes he granted during his time with a person are null and void, as he was never released to grant them in the first place. It does not kill Djinn, but it does fix the life of the person who was unfortunate enough to come across him, and anyone else who came into contact with Djinn during this period.
4	** The Djiin cannot destroy that which is eternal; which includes himself and evil.
5	** In the second film, the protagonist tried wishing the Djinn to destroy itself or go away. It could not do either because it would make the prophecy unfulfillable. So for all its power there were limits.
6	** The third film does introduce one way to kill the Djinn: an angel's sword. However, it isn't exactly the easiest thing to do and only the summoner can kill him with it. Thus the Djinn wasn't lying: he ''can't'' destroy himself in any way, and he had no real reason to say 'Oh, I can't kill myself, but you could with an angel's sword.' The fourth film shows if you word it right, you ''can'' make the Djinn give you a weapon that can kill him.
7	* Couldn't you use your third wish to gain control over Djinn? That way, you could minimize the damage they could do and rule the world.
8	** Depends on how you phrase it. More likely the Djinn would twist it into "Fine, you control the actions of the Djinn for a moment in time. Now onto the destruction of humanity," Or "You already control the Djinn. It's called wishing, and each command counts as a wish. If you want to control more, you'll have to work out a deal with each Djinn individually." Tampering with the Djinn's essential nature typically doesn't work, as they are eternal beings who are that way because God created them that way. If you wished precisely that "I wish that the Djinn inflicted minimal damage and I ruled the world" might be granted as "Granted. All of humanity is dead. But we left all of its lovely buildings and possessions perfectly intact. You now rule a world of corpses with only the Djinn as company."
9	* "I wish for wishes to be granted as the wisher would interpret them." Problem solved.
10	** "Okay, fine then." Evil Man then does so for exactly ''two wishes''. The wish was granted, and now he can be evil again. Problem back with a vengeance.
11	** Three wishes being granted still unleashes the Djinn's hordes as well.
12	** Second wish: "I wish that every single djinn in existence is resealed into an absolutely unbreakable prison for all eternity."
13	*** "Very well. The Earth will now serve as their new, absolutely unbreakable prison for all eternity. And of course, 'unbreakable' doesn't preclude it being 'unlocked', so the universe is still ours too. Oh, I'm sorry, did you say 'as the wisher would interpret them'? Well, now that I've explained this wish to you, that's how you're interpreting it. Next wish?" {{Jackass Genie}}s can be ''very'' hard to manipulate, especially when, like the Djinn, they're willing to twist words around into outcomes that only InsaneTrollLogic would've predicted. Of course, if the Djinn's really cunning he'll just nod and say "done" until the last wish is granted, and ''then'' start springing the legalistic snares.
14	*** Also that might fall under the "impossible to grant" territory. In the second film a wish for the Djinn to go away forever doesn't work as the prophecy of their being freed needs to be possible to fulfil.
15	* This troper's problem is why the Djinn has to be an ass in the first place. Sure, it makes for a better story, but given the selfish nature of some people, wouldn't it be in the Djinn's best interest to just say, "Fine, I'll grant your wish exactly as you want," just to keep the ball rolling and get to that third wish faster?
16	** The Djinn don't view humans as much more than means to an end, the Djinn probably derives some twisted pleasure from making people suffer, awfully human for an immortal being.
17	** Yeah, he's evil and he likes torturing humans. He does simply grant wishes without being a JackassGenie when it's in his interest to do so (like when he's granting the pivotal three wishes), but when he's just granting extra wishes to get through people, he sees it as a chance to inflict some mayhem along the way. Even in the prologue, when he twisted the king's second wish, it seemed to be with the intent of pushing him into immediately making the final wish ("then wish it away, sire, just wish it away").
18	*** That seems to be his pattern: seduce the wisher with the first wish going well so they will make a second wish, then make the second wish go disastrously wrong and then they'll waste their third wish to undo the damage from the second wish.
19	*** Indeed, this is exactly what it did to the heroine of the first movie. She wished to understand him so it took her to it's prison and scared her with a dog and then left, telling her it was going to kill her sister which forced her to use her second wish to escape.
20	** What if the wisher just wanted one or two things in life, and the Djinn fulfilled them, and then didn't want wish for anything else? The Djinn wants the wisher discontent, and then they panic and make lots of wishes.
21	*** It would take an inhumanly careful person to lead their life without ever once wording a wish for the tiniest thing. Don't ask this person there for their seat on the bus, or that douchebag there two rows in front of you at the movies to shut up. "I wish you'd let me finish just ONE sentence, Ma!" Oh shit, you popped the cork, the Djinn are coming!
22	*** Plus the Djinn is not that patient and will create chaos around them and torture those they love until they make the third wish.
23	* The heroine of the second movie wishes that the cop she shot was alive again so she could qualify as "a woman with a pure heart" and thus use the Banishing Spell. Two things here:
24	** She's a thief. Apparently she never killed before but does repairing one crime really nullify all the other ones?
25	*** The film is running on a faulty understanding of Christian morality. She repents of her sins so according to most Christian denominations Jesus will forgive her for all of them but the film's writers seem to think that murder is unforgivable so she had to undo that in order to be forgiven. In fact Christian dogma holds that pretty much ''any'' sin can be forgiven if the sinner is truly contrite. I mean I'm not Christian myself so I may be wrong on that but that's always what I've been told.
26	** Suddenly discarding his JackassGenie manner Djinn actually grants her wish as desired and completely rewrites the cop's fate, returning him home as if nothing happened. Uhm, why not make him alive...in his grave?!
27	*** Or bring him back as a brain-eating zombie who now wants to eat his family instead of greeting them?
28	*** If I recall correctly, the only robbery she ever mentions committing is the one at the beginning of the movie, and in the montage she's shown secretly returning all the stuff she stole. That made up for it... I guess. And maybe the Djinn just wanted to get the second wish over with quickly so they could move on to the third, so he couldn't be bothered to twist things around.
29	*** Actually, if I recall correctly she wished specifically that she hadn't shot him, not just that he wasn't dead. It also explains why the cop's family weren't freaking out when he came home.
30	*** No, the actual line is "I wish the man I shot was alive again." I watched the scene again.
31	*** IIRC the cop coming back to life wasn't what actually defeated the Djinn; it was the fact that it cleansed the soul of the woman who had killed him, since it created a world in which she never actually did so. So even if the Djinn had dickishly decided to bring the cop back to life in his coffin underground, the end result -- that the woman no longer had a murder on her soul -- would still be the same (as even if the cop suffocated underground, that would be on the Djinn, not the woman). The fact that the cop was brought to life and returned home to his family as if nothing had happened was just the creators demonstrating that good had triumphed over evil instead of muddying the waters by good triumphing over evil but evil getting a last little JerkassGenie moment in out of spite.
32	* Another try at disarming the Djinn through wishes. "I wish that you never ever grant another wish to anybody else, including me" or "I wish that you never speak with or contact in any way or even approach any human being closer than, say, 10 km, ever again, after you grant this wish". Would that work?
33	** Eeeeh... Not really. The Djinn can fulfill those two wishes simply ''by exterminating humanity altogether''. In this way, the Djinn won't be able to grant another wish to any human any more --and, definitely, he won't speak with, contact in any way or approach any human being any more. I don't think this would be the intention of the person making the wish, no?
34	*** Nope, he apparently cannot undone eternal things, which, if I understand the Wishmaster universum correctly, also imply human souls. However it will also mess with prophecy making it impossible to fulfill.
35	** Or he fulfills it by making humanity something other than humanity. What if it was fulfilled by making every human a host for an imprisoned Djinn, technically they wouldn't be human any more and the legions of the Djinn would walk the earth in place of mankind. The Djinn then wouldn't be speaking to any one that was human. Then he wouldn't have to grant wishes, there would be no need.
36	* Another try. The Djinn can go anywhere, do anything, as long as a human told him to. What if a human told him "Get Lost." Or for that matter "Stay lost."
37	** "Get lost" doesn't imply "be where no one else is", as there are plenty of folks in the world who don't know where they are or how to get where they're going. Or he could produce a box set of a [[Series/{{Lost}} certain TV show]] and get Lost.
38	* I wish that you were back in the gem, bringing no one else along with you."
39	** That's pretty much what Alexandra ''did'' wish for at the end of the first film (and it works!), only with time alteration included.
40	** Unless the wisher specifies forever, then the Djinn will just visit his home in the gem and then return. After his imprisonment is broken, the gem became his home anyway, complete with a torture chamber/throne room.
41	* Here's one I've been wondering about -- How would the Djinn screw you out of a wish like "I wish for [[TheOmnipotent complete omnipotence]]" or "[[AndThenJohnWasAZombie I wish to be a Djinn like you]]"?
42	** Since one of the Djinn's powers involves their ability to steal dead people's faces and imitate them, the Djinn would probably fulfill the second wish by either killing you and then continue to wear your face or release a second Djinn from their imprisonment to demonically possess you. There, you're a Djinn, but you're either dead or not in control. Alternatively, he might turn you into a weak, imp of a Djinn and then transport you to the hellish home dimension where all the other Djinn are imprisoned where you can be tormented and bullied forever by all the other more powerful ones. For the first wish, I don't know, maybe he would interpret omnipotence as sexual prowess rather than god-like ability?
43	** I'd think he'd probably... Just grant the second. (And interpret the first as the second.) Then the wish-maker would be, exactly as they asked, a being of pure evil committed to bringing about Hell on Earth. Any disappointment the djinni would feel in not screwing one person would surely be assuaged many times over by the second-hand glow of all the many future fuckings-over their new progeny dishes out.
44	** Wishing for omnipotence is probably another one that simply cannot be granted. The existence of a creator god in the franchise's 'Verse has been established and they created the Djinn (for some reason) and are presumably more powerful and one would assume the Djinn can't simply make a human outdo them.
45	* Yet another try. [[LogicBomb I wish for you not to grant this wish.]]
46	** And he doesn't grant that wish, but you already spent one; two to go.
47	** Doesn't work. It ''does'' waste a wish ([[MindScrew until it doesn't]]), but say the Djinn goes ahead and doesn't grant the wish, which means he did grant the wish, which means he didn't, which means he did... it's a ''very'' tricky attempt, since at best the Djinn will be [[PuffOfLogic retconned out of existence]]. Alternatively the Djinn will rewrite the universe's logic to fulfill the wish, or at worst, it will cause a RealityBreakingParadox and omniversal ApocalypseHow.
48	** What's really interesting is that the Djinn ''was'' defeated through a LogicBomb tactic in the movie. Alex wishes for him to rewrite history, but he granted her third wish by doing so. So the Djinn were released, but they were never released, because they were released, because they were never released...
49	*** Not really; Alex's wish was that the worker wasn't drinking. The Djinn can grant that and he simply wasn't drinking so now we're in a version of reality where he was sober. The Djinn doesn't have to physically be there for that to have happened so the usual time paradox issues don't apply.
50	** Once again this is likely just a wish he can't grant. He can't break fundamental metaphysical rules of the universe so a wish that is a paradox in itself probably just doesn't work.
51	* What about these? To get rid of the djinn: "I wish you would do nothing but continuously blow your brains out, from now, for all eternity." To enslave the djinn: "I wish you would fall in love with me in a total, perpetual and completely selfless way."
52	** For the first: "Fine. But you have to watch it happen. I am eternal, gifted with a resilient mind. I imagine you'll go mad from the sight of seeing it blown out after a relatively short time. And when eternity runs out we'll keep each other company in the dark until you make your other two wishes. Oh, and you didn't specify that I feel pain or discomfort while performing the act."
53	** As for the second wish, two possibilities. 1. Djinns express love by having their spouses rule with them and trying to make as many humans suffer to please their spouses. Or 2. the third or fourth (I forget which) implies that the Djinn cannot grant wishes of love, because love has to be given; it cannot be forced.
54	*** In the third movie a man wished for two beautiful women who were in love with him to appear. They did, and then ripped him apart in a sadomasochistic frenzy, while the Djinn said something like "Isn't love beautiful?". Presumably those two beings ascribed to alien concepts of love that results in horrible murder. It might be the case with wishing for the Djinn to love you, and it would end badly.
55	** The Djinn makes a man named Yu do just what the wisher wants. Oh sorry, you meant "you", not Yu?
56	* How about "I wish that you, and any other creatures called Djinn at any point of time would ever interpret any information as wishes." Theoretically, it disables all Djinn (even if they change the name of their species) to ever accept wishes (though it backfires a bit on those people who were indeed called djinns for any reason).
57	** No, no it wouldn't. Interpreting any information as wishes would mean they would be granting wishes all the time, from every person that spoke to them (since speaking is a form of information), communicated with them, in addition to granting wishes from non-human sources. They would become infinitely more dangerous, and uncontrollable than they already are. They would charge the stone of the secret fire in no time, and in addition be causing tremendous chaos. A better wish would be "I wish that you would be incapable of interpreting any information as wishes."
58	*** Pretty sure that's what they meant, and simply forgot to add the N. Not sure how well it would work though.
59	** Wouldn't work; the second film states that they can't grant any wish that would make freeing the Djinn race impossible and this qualifies.
60	* I'm getting the vibe a lot of people that posted here didn't see the movie and just "want to be that guy" to utterly defeat the Djinn. Here's what you don't get if you don't watch the movie: At the start the Djinn is imprisoned before he can grant his third wish to a seemingly babilonian or egipcian-like king who had already had two wishes granted, among them "to see things never seen before" thus enabling the Djinn to graphically gore the court before his eyes in pretty twisted ways. That's how the Djinn is imprisoned in the Opal and grafted into a statue OUTSIDE OF VIEW. The statue is eventually unearthed (implying the kingdom was wiped off the earth) and shipped to a museum. During unloading of the box containing the statue, it is broken and the opal released. I don't remember the exact circumstances, but the opal comes to be nearby a dying person, who wishes not to die, enabling the Djinn to use his body as a host but preventing more wishes from being granted. The plot of the movie resolves, but just as a general idea of how twisted the words can get, at one point in the movie a guard prevents the Djinn from entering a room by just saying he should leave; but then commits the "mistake" of uttering something along the lines of "you could enter, but only by going through me, and I'd like to see that" and thus the Djinn turns around, turns the guard into a panel of glass and literally walks THROUGH him, killing him in the process. In order to defeat the Djinn the protagonist luckily remembers the name of the crane operator that unloaded the statue (she was related to the museum in some way) and wishes that operator to not have been drunk that day, allowing him to do his job properly so the statue was never broken. This wish was a last resort desperate move on the part of the protagonist; it ultimately resovles favorably because the script says so; but there really was no way of knowing if it would have worked like it did; so any and all statements on the sense of defeating the Djinn at its own game are pretty much deluded, or rather, wishful thinking ;) The Djinn proves during the first movie that he's one hell of a legalese exploiter to his own convenience and I seriously doubt any human could outwit an eternal demon at lawyering.
61	** Most people probably ''have'' seen the movie, but:
62	## The Djinn can only be defeated through wishes (at least until the sequels...), so the temptation to try it is natural. The guard for instance did sort of beat the Djinn at his own game by wishing for him to leave (except since he's not the one who freed him, he still has to give his soul up anyway, and the Djinn can still return later). It's his taunt to the Djinn afterwards that undid it.
63	## Corrupting wishes is just a fun game, hence the [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=8izhward9hxaz5cihbmrw5q1&page=1 forum thread]] dedicated to it.
64	:: As a side note, the Djinn is patently aware of how dangerous these attempts are. He openly scoffs at the protagonist for thinking she could outsmart an eternal being from between dimensions.
65	* What happens to those whose wishes are granted and their souls are taken, are they free in the end? Or they remain [[AndIMustScream trapped forever]]?
66	** They were free in both films. In the first film, the events were undone, and we see all the people alive again, including Robert Englund's character and her boyfriends, even though they all made wishes. In the second film, all the people who made wishes come back to life after the Djinn is forced to give them up. The only thing that remained unchanged was the Djinn, who kept the face that he stole from the cadaver (who wasn't alive and so doesn't count as a wisher).
67	* Is Djinn from Wishmaster 1 and 2 the same Djinn from Wishmaster 3 and 4? Are they two different demons? I know they are played by 2 different actors.
68	** There's a lot to indicate it. The stone in the original was trapped in the statue of Ahura Mazda, while the second was in a box. There's no rule stating there can only be one Djinn in the world at a time. It also might be a different continuity and the events of the first 2 movies didn't happen, as there are some differences in the rules concerning the Djinn.
69	** Plus the random angels only start showing up in 3 & 4.
70	* In the third film, one girl wishes she could hide where no one would find her. The Djinn proceeds to show up and.... um.... shove her face into a cage full of rats, which eat her eyes. He adds "no one will ever find you in there", as though that makes it any more logical. Oh yeah, then her friends find her. What.
71	** Yeah, at first it seems like he's gonna turn her into a rat, which would make it so that no one could find her, and that's what it seems like has happened until we actually see her lying on the floor.
72	** There's a reason why the 3rd and 4th films get a lot less love than the 1st and 2nd...
73	* Okay, let me take a crack at it. "I wish for you to remove any and all versions of yourself, past present and future, from this universe forever, without causing any circumstances or consequences that I, as I currently propose this wish, would not desire in my current state of mind."
74	** Again, the Djinn can't grant a wish that would make him stop existing, as he's an eternal being.
75	** Djinn removes himself from this universe, but is free to cause havoc in another one. Or he interprets universe to mean your own perception of it, leaving him free to do as he pleases only you are unable to perceive him or be affected by anything he does, and then he locks you in a LotusEaterMachine reality where your current state of mind doesn't change. Since you don't know it's happening, you cannot desire it not to happen.
76	* Ok, forget all the crafty wishes. What would happen if the wisher just told the Djinn to go f*ck himself?
77	** Djinn splits himself into two beings, and then forces you into a threesome.
78	** Or contorts himself. That's exactly what he did to a lawyer in the second film when his client wished for him to go f*ck himself.
79	* Do the Djinns grant you deadly wishes for sh*ts and giggles, or do they really misinterpret them as something else? I get the feeling they know dang well what they're doing, they just enjoy killing people and causing chaos.
80	** The Djinn are definitely evil and want to lay waste to humanity. That is stated in the opening credits. If a Djinn can get away with killing just one human per wish, they will always do it.
81	* Would this work? "Djinn, I wish for you to turn yourself into a powerless immortal human, and remain in that form FOREVER!"
82	** "The essential nature of the Djinn is eternal, weaved into the fabric of the cosmos by God himself, and even I cannot change that. Try again."
83	* "I wish that you're unable to purposely bring harm to anyone nor grant any wish other than this one and my next two wishes UNTIL my third and final wish, which you may only be allowed to grant ONLY after I say 'Djinn, I'm ready to grant my last and final wish from you'" and now I not only saved the world but if I play my cards (words) right, I have an extra wish with no need to use the third wish. CHECKMATE
84	** Everyone on Earth is now an invincible statue, frozen forever in a state not unlike death. "You told me not to harm anyone. Now they are incapable of being harmed by anything. Now about those other two wishes...."
85	** Okay, yeah.. Maybe avoiding the "purposely bringing harm to anyone" part but other than that, you have to admit there's not much that can go wrong here. Unless, the Djinn gets so impatient of being trolled by a human that he starts stealing identities working his way up to powerful people until he can lock the wisher up in a max secure prison until the prophecy is fulfilled... Causing all out wars until then... sigh
86	** So, your wish is that he: A. Is "unable to purposely bring harm to anyone"; B. Is unable to "grant any wish other than this one and my next two wishes"; and C. you wish that he can only grant a third wish after you say "Djinn, I'm ready to grant my last and final wish from you" (which, I assume, you just said). That's not one wish, but three. YOU LOSE.
87	* “I wish for every Djinn to be released into an alternate dimension where no life exists so that they cannot hurt anyone ever again.” This might work.
88	** "The 'alternate dimension' is this one (remember, we're not native to this dimension so it's indeed an alternative dimension FROM OUR PERSPECTIVE. I originally came here from an entirely different dimension, so when you say 'released into an alternative dimension' I say 'that already happened and I'm now standing in it and now I can bring all my friends here as I've always wanted'). A foreign land is a still foreign land even if you're standing in it. And now we can say that no life exists here because the Djinn race wiped them all from existence, and now there's no need for hurt any one ever again."
89	* What would happen if the wisher kills themselves before making their third wish? And not through wishing their own death, but by shooting themselves in the head or something. What then?
90	** The Djinn has to find a new host to grant three wishes. Remember, in the start of the first film the king made 2 wishes, and died without ever making a third one.
91	** The wisher can't kill themselves. A person tried shooting the wisher to keep her from wishing in the second movie, but the bullets didn't affect her. It has something to do with the link that is established by the wisher and the Djinn. Maybe he shares his invulnerability with them for the duration.
92	* First wish: "I wish you are locked in an unbreakable chest". Second wish: "I wish this unbreakable chest that you are locked in is transported to another planet". Sure the box could eventually be found by people exploring space and possibly unlocked via lock-picking or something similar, but by the time technology has advanced to that point you'll likely be long dead and unable to make your third wish. Then the djinn will likely be the problem of the person who unlocked the box.
93	** "Done." "What?" "Oh, I'm sorry you must have blinked. I was imprisoned in an unbreakable chest on another planet for a microfraction of an instant in time since you didn't specify how long I was to remain in the box. You should have wished for "for eternity or something," but since you didn't I was allowed to be creative. Also 'unbreakable' doesn't mean unlockable, so I installed an automatic release function on it. Now you've got one wish left." Or alternatively, the box is about the size of a small closet and you're locked in with him since you didn't specify how big the chest had to be, and he created around both himself and you because you were standing next to him, and you didn't specify that he can't take anyone into the chest with him. You're now trapped in close corners in an unbreakable chest on Mars with the Djinn, and he wants his third wish.

Context Headscratchers / Wishmaster