History Headscratchers / Wishmaster

** 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.'

** 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

* 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?

* “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.

** 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

** 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 dosen'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 minimial 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."

** Suddenly discarding his JerkassGenie 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?!

* Another try at disarming the Djin 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?

* What happens to those who's wishes are granted and their souls are taken, are they free in the end? Or they remain [[AndIMustScream trapped forever]]?
** 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 dosen't count as a wisher).

** 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 prophesy is fulfilled... Causing all out wars until then... sigh

** 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...."

* "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

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* 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 th emovie 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.

*** 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 her sins 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.

* What's with the main characters being women? It's the same for Candy Man. Nothing wrong with a female kicking demon/ghost butt, but I notice they are always female.

* Do the Djinns grant you deadly wishes for shits 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.

** 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."

** 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 LotusEaters reality where your current state of mind doesn't change.

** Djinn removes himself from this universe, but is free to cause havoc in another one.