History Fridge / Tusk2014

* FridgeLogic: The ending. [[spoiler: So, Wallace's girlfriend and best friend, upon finding the mentally shattered Wallace, decide that the best legitimate solution is to ''put him in a wildlife sanctuary to live out the rest of his days as a walrus''?! As opposed to, say, '''taking him to a legitimate medical authorities for help'''!?]]
** RuleOfCreepy =/= RuleOfFunny =/= RuleOfDrama =/= RuleOfSymbolism?
** I imagine it was his own decision. Like, it's a bonkers movie, but he's a walrus now. He's got two options: be released from the skin suit and go through life as a fully disabled man, without hands or feet or a sound mind, watching his girl and his best friend move on as he tries to live a human life fully dependent on someone's full-time care? Become exactly the kind of wretched, broken thing he used to ridicule for a living? ''Better to be a walrus.''
** The epilogue takes place a year later, so maybe in that time they ''tried'' to go a more humane route and failed: [[spoiler: He's a pretty much unheard of medical case, so it's possible they tried to seek medical help only to be told there was nothing that could be done for him other than euthanasia]]
*** Uh, no. [[spoiler: Medical science is pretty advanced, and it's extremely unlikely that some skilled surgeon would be unable to undo the work of a 70+ year old lunatic's amateur surgery. They could even count it as experimental since it's such a unique case and it wouldn't hurt their stats. Also, Wallace was in Howe's captivity for what? A week? A month? There's no psychologist who is even willing to try and deprogram him? And all of this is ignoring that Wallace ''cannot live as a walrus''. He can't eat raw fish, he can't stay warm in icy water, he doesn't have the lung capacity to stay under water. The entire ending makes precisely no sense.]]
*** The ''ending'' makes no sense, but a weirdo mutilating a guy and stuffing him into a walrus-shaped meatsuit, in such a way that not only does he survive the amateur surgery in a filthy operating theater, but manages to not die of internal toxicity due to a woefully unsanitary environment and a total lack of functioning walrus bowels, is ''totally okay''? That suit is a horrible combination of a onesie and a diaper, both made of human leather and designed to be completely sealed. If you're really gonna split hairs about it, Wallace probably should have died during the leg amputation because his completely untreated stumps would have left him bleeding out in seconds.
*** Given the FateWorseThanDeath situation Wallace faced a MercyKill would have been a more dignified method for him.
*** A MercyKill is against medical ethics in most countries and requires consent where it is legal, for [[ThoseWackyNazis reasons]]. However, if a patient objects to a procedure, you generally have to stop if it's at all possible--even if [[spoiler: it is undoing his transformation into a walrus]], no means no. This does raise a lot of ''other'' questions, though...
*** Most notable is the fact that Wallace is not in a sound mental state to make decisions about his own care and health. It's entirely possible that the best friend and girlfriend COULD have acted and got Wallace the care he needed, or at the very least got power of attorney to do so.

*** Uh, no. [[spoiler: Medical science is pretty advanced, and it's extremely unlikely that some skilled surgeon would be unable to undo the work of a 70+ year old lunatic's amateur surgery. They could even count it as experimental since it's such a unique case and it wouldn't hurt their stats. Also, Wallace was in Howe's captivity for what? A week? A month? There's no psychologist who is even willing to try and deprogram him? And all of this is ignoring that Wallace CANNOT LIVE AS A WALRUS! He can't eat raw fish, he can't stay warm in icy water, he doesn't have the lung capacity to stay under water. The entire ending makes precisely no sense.]]

** [[spoiler:We see how Wallace became the arrogant, condescending, offensive, selfish JerkAss he is by the time the film starts. He was a failing stand-up comedian, who became famous for viciously deinigrating people for the sake of it. The discussion about how crying "separates us from the animals" is important; as Wallace crying whilst trying to speak, shows that he has regained his humanity. So there is at least a ''kind of'' positive note in an otherwise DownerEnding]].
** [[spoiler:Why is the tagline "Let me tell you a story..."? Because it's Wallace's search for a story that led him to Howe and it's the stories Howe tells to Wallace that allows us to learn about him, Mr Tusk and why he wants to turn Wallace into a walrus. Going meta, the film was born because of a story Kevin Smith told Scott Moiser on his podcast, that they wanted to make into a film.]]
** The scene where Wallace buys a soft drink at a Canadian convenience store is flashed back to near the end of the film, but goes on a bit longer the second time. On the surface this is just done to add the plot point that he wrote down the address which lead Guy, Teddy, and Ally to track him down, but there are enough other differences that it can be interpreted as being played out RashomonStyle: The first time he basically gets the last word in his verbal sparring with the clerks, the second ends with them mocking him back and his only being able to muster a LameComeback ("You guys suck!"). Either the first version of the scene is Wallace's selective memory of it, or the girls are adding details to the story to make themselves the victors.

** [[spoiler:We see how Wallace became the arrogant, condescending, offensive, selfish JerkAss he is by the time the film starts. He was a failing stand-up comedian, who became famous for viciously deinigrating people for the sake of it. The discussion about how crying "separates us from the animals" is important; as Wallace crying whilst trying to speak, shows that he has regained his humanity]].

** They're Americans. They probably couldn't afford the absurd costs it would take to undo him.

** The scene where Wallace buys a soft drink at a Canadian convenience store is flashed back to near the end of the film, but plays out a bit differently the second time, which adds a bit of RashomonStyle to a scene that's otherwise insignificant beyond dropping a couple of important plot points. The first time Wallace gets all the good lines and the two teenage clerks end the scene with a LameComeback, the second time is basically the reverse. It ''does'' seem in-character for Wallace to remember the argument in a way that made him look better. On the other hand, the two girls have had a few days to stew over what happened that day together, and could have arrived at an exaggerated version based on what [[ComebackTomorrow they should have said to him]]. Wallace borrowing a notebook in this scene turns out to be the clue that leads Guy Lapointe, Teddy, and Ally to Howard Howe's house - the fact that he never actually writes down an address in the first version of the scene might imply that the teenage clerks' version of the story is closer to the truth.

** The scene where Wallace buys a soft drink at a Canadian convenience store is flashed back to near the end of the film, but plays out a bit differently the second time, which adds a bit of RashomonStyle to a scene that's otherwise insignificant beyond dropping a couple of important plot points. The first time Wallace gets all the good lines and the two teenage clerks end the scene with a LameComeback, the second time is basically the reverse. It seems in-character for Wallace to remember the argument in a way that made him look better. On the other hand, the two girls have had a few days to stew over what happened that day together, and could have arrived at an exaggerated version based on what [[ComebackTomorrow they should have said to him]]. Wallace borrowing a notebook in this scene turns out to be the clue that leads Guy Lapointe, Teddy, and Ally to Howard Howe's house - the fact that he never actually writes down an address in the first version of the scene might imply that the teenage clerks' version of the story is closer to the truth.

* FridgeLogic: The ending. [[spoiler: So, Wallace's girlfriend and best friend, upon finding the mentally shattered Wallace, decide that the best legitimate solution is to ''put him in a wildlife reserve to live out the rest of his days as a walrus''?! As opposed to, say, '''taking him to a legitimate medical authorities for help'''!?]]
** As absurd as the above is, it gets worse. [[spoiler: Walruses survive by having huge reserves of blubber and a prodigious capacity to hold their breath, allowing them to withstand the cold and catch fish to survive. A mutilated, insane man in a walrus costume has none of those biological abilities. So how in the hell would Wallace ''survive'' even a year in a wildlife preserve? A zoo, maybe, but in the wilderness, he'd drown, starve to death or freeze within ''days'' at most.]]

** As absurd as the above is, it gets worse. [[spoiler: Walruses survive by having huge reserves of blubber and a prodigious capacity to hold their breath, allowing them to withstand the cold and catch fish to survive. A mutilated, insane man in a walrus costume has none of those biological abilities. So how in the hell would Walace ''survive'' even a year in a wildlife preserve? A zoo, maybe, but in the wilderness, he'd drown, starve to death or freeze within ''days'' at most.]]