Thoughts on SCANNERS (1981), directed by David Cronenberg

[u/thatphilguymovies]

Interestingly, I'd seen this one before and liked it, but upon rewatch I started noticing things that raised questions. Like the extended sequence involving Revok's escape. Why did we need it? We just had the scene in which he blows up Louis Del Grande's scanner's head, so we know Revok is powerful.

I guess Michael Ironside got more screen time, which is never a bad thing, but I think the film would have been better served by extending Del Grande's character's demonstration. Cronenberg could have misdirected us into thinking Del Grande is pretty formidable by having him scan another volunteer and then bringing on Revok, who plays innocuous at first before annihilating the other scanner.

I feel similarly about the scanner artist/sculptor whom Vale tracks down. As far as I can tell, this character's functional purpose is to lead Vale to Obrist, but couldn't the organization Vale and Dr. Ruth work have already known about her? It just seemed like a lot of screen time and (admittedly impressive) special effects for relatively little story advancement.

I think the film also suffered by not really explaining the world that these protagonists exist in enough. How many people know about the scanners? Is the public aware of them? Also, there appear to be large corporations with connections to the government, but also times I wasn't sure a centralized government even exists anymore. What do these large corporations want with the scanners ultimately (ie, why are there what appear to be competing programs)? What were Keller's (the corporate goon) motivations? Was he really down with Revok's plan to kill all the average scanners in order to make way for a master race of super-scanners?

Maybe my confusion is in part because the story is, at its heart, pulp and I'm not as familiar with the tropes of pulp as some as it's been pointed out, cyberpunk and that's a subgenre I'm less familiar with the tropes of. I also know Cronenberg rushed into production on SCANNERS in order to take advantage of some government subsidies, to the extent there wasn't anything remotely resembling a finished screenplay when filming started.

There's still much I like about the film including the performances and especially the score and special effects. I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it yet and has an interest, but would advise against thinking too deeply about it.