A thread for David Fincher's adaptation of GONE GIRL

I'm usually slow out of the gate, so I didn't really know anything about this until a couple of days ago. In light of Zodiac and The Social Network, and a cursory glance at what it's about, very interested.

Going by the book, this is a tough call: is it really a spoiler if the spoiler/revelation/surprise happens relatively early? At what point is the twist actually the plot?

Just saw this. Thought it was pretty good.

Kinda ridiculous how many reviews are regurgitating the line that Fincher "elevates" the novel somehow, when almost everything they're praising the movie for comes directly from the book. It's a remarkably faithful adaptation.

Up there with Zodiac as his best, enjoyed it more if i'm honest.

one bright note at least

http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2014/10/2/6896365/ben-affleck-refused-to-wear-a-yankees-hat-in-gone-girl

almost everything they're praising the movie for comes directly from the book

didn't the author of the book write the screenplay?

yeah.

I had heard she rewrote some stuff to make it different. No?

Not much apparently.

Flabby last act and one plot stand I found needlessly distasteful, but otherwise, my fave Fincher in a while.

hit some of the same gleefully blackened vibe that I get from prime Verhoeven, though it underlines its specific thesis more than any of his movies ever did iirc

could do a Silence Of The Lambs style Oscar sweep.

Just read the book this week—super black-hearted, and a lot of fun. Reminded me of Jim Thompson's A Hell of a Woman. Not sure I need to see the movie, though, especially if it's super-faithful. I didn't picture the husband looking like Affleck at all; they should have cast the dude who played the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network. But then there'd be basically nobody in the cast with real drawing power, so...

gonna watch it in about half an hour

could do a Silence Of The Lambs style Oscar sweep.

Affleck's gonna have to get nominated first, and there's at least three or four biopic slots pre-filled this year.

didn't picture the husband looking like Affleck at all

Haven't read the book, but I'm amazed it's taken this long for someone to cast BAfflleck *because* of his innate smugness and not in spite of it.

granted I read the book after knowing about the casting, but damn if affleck didn't seem to fit perfectly with nick dunne as flynn describes him.

Well! This was a bore.

1:45 has to be some kind of record for a first act

is it a spoiler to big up nph as bizarro christian grey?

Alfred review really makin me not want to bother w this

hey should have cast the dude who played the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network.

Winklevoss guy would've at least made Amy's marrying him plausible, but Affleck is such an offensive nothing in this movie that it's a peculiar kind of punishment to endure him.

is it ridiculous that i'm still enough of a fincher-stan in 2014 that i'll watch this (tho inevitably when it comes to HBO since i never see anything in theaters anymore)?

From the movie version it’s not clear why Amy is so bad.

Iirc, this is one big problem I had with the book. Like, I didn't care, because I wasn't sure why she was doing what she was doing, exactly. I prefer the twisted neo-feminist underpinning of "The Last Seduction"s vilain, I suppose, to "Gone Girl."

i dunno i kinda felt like it was pretty clear why she was so AMAZING

"amazing

"

clever not-really-subtext of the book is that she's clearly too good for him

R Pike is beautiful

is there an equivalent to hurdy gurdy man in this? Otherwise I will be let down

And hanging around (sorry)

Not really, but this had my fave of the Reznor/Ross scores so far

what's hanging around btw?

Radiohead '99 ref

Almost forgot, the instant the credits rolled, a girl who was very upset at no NPH schlong exclaimed "OK, so the radio lied!"

v sad there was no hurdy gurdy man equivalent but otherwise this was a blast.

a blast of suck

the only fun in the movie was the little bounce Pike did exiting the rented cabin after thinking she got away with everything

haha fuck yeah that was great.

Squarely halfway on the spectrum between Hitchcock and Side Effects.

Also, as far as a marriage thriller, enjoyed how different its resolutions were than 80s thrillers like Fatal Attraction and Pacific Heights.

NPH of course did well, but would have loved to see J Timberlake in that role as a variation on his Sean Parker.

Also given the predator-of-the-week outings on Twitter thought that this was very timely.

I enjoyed this plenty. Well made, cold and funny at the same time, great score. It fit my current state of mind re: marriage.

the sound was kinda crappy in the flashback-y early scenes especially one, in the bar when they meet first time. was almost incomprehensible at points. some people are suggesting (on IMDB etc) that it's *intentionally* bad in that scene! the sound was way off in the opening scene of The Social Network too. is DF's sound mixer guy tone deaf or something?

women be reading this book on trains.

continnuum of books every damn motherfucker reading on london underground: girl with the dragon etc -> 'One Day' by David Nicholls -> this

i read the book a couple of years ago and found it disappointing and way overhyped but i think i'll still see this, mainly for the love of rosamund pike.

piscesx I noticed the same thing, lots of mumbly near-incomprehensibility in the first half hour especially, all the banter btwn Pike and Affleck when they first meet especially

So how does this hold up to "Side Effects?" When I saw "Side Effects," my first reaction was that it was a better "Gone Girl." But I'm wondering if my reaction was mostly surface, based on the different ways they turned out. Which is to say, both are pretty ridiculous scenarios, but I found the conclusion of "SE" more believable?plausible?satisfying than the end of "Gone Girl" (the book). I also thought, once the screws started turning, that "Side Effects" was more fun.

I'm a fan of the book, but it's striking how many people (me included) felt a little deflated by the first big plot twist. I think it (mostly) recovers, however.

C'mon, Side Effects was terrible.

Believability/plausibility are completely beside or even against the point of this movie

There are people that liked Side Effects?

Thought of Gone Girl yesterday after seeing Phantom Thread.

And honestly thought Phantom Thread, while astonishing in acting and design, would have benefitted from Woodcock's livelihood being threatened at some point by his actions (wrong thread to go any further on that).

xpost

Right, obviously that makes sense - but I don't think the movie does a good job of making Amy much more than a (Flynn's words) "motiveless psycho"

i hated this movie but not as much as i’ve hated all the books trying to be “the next GONE GIRL”

This, moreorless:

But there are moments, several of them, in which Nick’s unsavory feelings about his complicated missing wife and about women in general—feelings that might be charitably summed up as “bitches be crazy”—seem indistinguishable from the filmmaker’s own vision of Amy as a black hole of ineffable female needs, moods, and desires

(From here.)

Thought of Gone Girl yesterday after seeing Phantom Thread.

I would not have, ever.

if you watched this movie and thinks Fincher likes, respects or agrees with the Nick character then idk what to say

if you're not cheering for Amy by the end of it you're doing it wrong

You shouldn't be cheering for anyone by the end of it! (Maybe Margo.)

still amazed they created an entire universe where no one has heard of a divorce

Yeah my impression was that they were both horrible people.

of course they are! but one is just an asshole and the other is charming and diabolically insane

i'm amazed y'all remember the plot of this thing

Why does it matter if the woman is actually a psychopath? This is total respectability politics bs for what the movie is about: men’s fear of losing preferred status in a system that rewards our own dehumanizing selfishness

The reaction of people being to her violent and extreme response to which acts as if this systemic inequity is then justified .... idk I think this movie is one of those times when it’s already about the things you guys are trying to bring to bear in critique of it

Rewording that first sentence: that ppl act like her violent and extreme response is a justification of this inequity ....

Losing preferred status is less it maybe than being about losing *control.* I can’t think of anything more resonant in all the insecure responses from men to “the current moment”

Also @ chuck Tatum how is she “motiveless”????? She explains her entire purpose!

I was gonna say, I seem to remember a key monologue.

affleck is a failed writer; she's shown to be the more successful writer. seems like the point of the odd ending is to show affleck being written into a reversed version of an archetypal 'woman's story' of marriage, one that was itself echoed in her fabrication of their story in her diary entries. now he goes about the house in fear for his life, unable to penetrate her inscrutable thoughts or read her emotions accurately. and now (inescapably?) he is trapped in a joyless performance that denies him any possibility of authentic human development through knowing and being known by another, intimately. it would be bonkers to have her return and have BOTH the detective and his lawyer (both reality-principle characters) believe that she had framed him, in a movie whose ultimate aims were in some sense realistic or whose genre were in some sense 'straight'. but they do because that serves to reinforce the sense in which affleck and pike are bound together in confinement from the world - she has trapped him. not with the baby, exactly, but with her revision of the myth of marriage, for which the baby is the dumb conventional social sanction, as validated by the performance for the media and the nancy grace or whoever knockoff. so the genre is one in which she must play out 'psycho' desires, out of vengeance, to magnify some version of the desires at play in 'realistic' analogues of the underlying plot of love and happy married life. if i quite had a read of the fantasy projection it is articulating, what i'd want to suggest is that it does it despite the risk of seeming to court MRA appeal because the MRA fantasy about women and men is one that it must activate to reject. not sure if it does that, though.

interesting that it goes to the trouble of having both their parents figure in the story, presumably in order to back-stop the interpretation of their roles in the marriage or in the roles of their self-scripted performances. they make a big deal out of her parents (mom, but dad somehow wholly on board with it?) stealing, or not stealing, but improving upon her childhood and life by writing her into a fictional character. affleck gets a sick mom and a mentally ill dad (who forgets himself, his family, apparently becomes just a font of vile misogyny). in her case at least, that makes the reclamation of the authority of 'writer' a clear goal. not as sure about him.

curious too that when he's conferring with his sister at the end, and she's wrecked by the news that he might stay because of the baby or whatever, she says 'i knew you before we were born', which sounds to me like the movie's somehow sanctioning the hilarious rumors the nancy grace knockoff feeds about the twins being too close (in the airport, the other passenger glares at affleck and says 'twin sister' in total disgust). not as literally true, but as one of the elements in the movie's myth-rewriting work. with his sister, his twin, there's a claim to knowledge of each other that somehow prefigures their birth into the world, i.e. society, into their social and gender roles as formed by that society. but as pike underscores after she has returned and they've had it out, perfection of the knowledge they have of one another is one of the key things at stake in their marriage, as marriage, too. so (as is already the case in real life) marriage is in competition with other forms of relationship in which people can find fulfillment. (this probably has something to do with why they make his affair be with a student, and him be a teacher: then we're on the same ground, life of the mind turning unplatonic, or over-poetic, sketched in just enough to allude to that cliche).

Interesting

wtf?

There are still tickets available to join me on the Avalon Waterways GONE GIRL CRUISE this September 15 - 22.

Details, deals, and full itinerary at the link below!https://t.co/Ct6KKnOGYO pic.twitter.com/KjRTe7RDkE

— Gillian Flynn (@TheGillianFlynn) July 23, 2022

this was one of the worst pieces of shit i've ever seen

lol

9 years old today (total classic, my fav fincher)

how was the cruise?

i need to rewatch this, i think i would enjoy it more now than i did at the time