THE FINAL GUN SWITCH THREAD!!

[Libby]

clericstryker said:

In the original draft, Robbie seems quite pleased that his father's just gone and capped his partner, but I can't remember whether that made it into the film or not. Seems I have a reason to spend the rest of today re-watching it.

No...this scene didn't make the film...it was replaced by the conversation about Robbie's classmate who was crying.

Having read the original draft, I'd thought about why KW might have changed it...

We were, of course, supposed to believe that Robbie was a loyal little Monastery boy, so the bathroom scene was a dramatic moment.

It's possible that Robbie was testing Preston to see his reaction, or alternatively, it may be a self-preservation technique, asking about reporting his classmate in order to reinforce his own 'obedience' to Father and deflect any suspicions.

Had we had the scene where Robbie appears to be 'proud' of Preston killing Partridge, it wouldn't have given scope for this to happen and may have affected the way we reacted to learning he and Lisa were off the dose. Just mho.

[Beagle]

Yeah, talk about ZOMBIE posting, but!!

So I'm watching EQ and I'm watching the entire raid, beginning to end, not just the clips that are always discussed.

Preston doesn't fire a shot, which I think is pretty amazing all on it's own. But, here's what I see.

A group of "sense offenders" with 1 (one?, one!) gun all walk behind a cleric, a known cleric, and I'll speculate that sense offenders know what clerics are, given that the underground existed in the city.

So you've got 1 gun, how many guys do you send in to get killed? What the hell kind of strategy was that? It doesn't make sense for these morons to do that, and they could have just shot him from 10, 20, 30 feet away, but no, they walked up behind him, and then, they won't leave without him. They ultimately force him to actively kill them or actively save them. Sounds a lot like a test to me.

Then, they manage to get caught, and Preston is COMPLETELY stunned based on his reaction to seeing them, meanwhile Brandt is talking about some "trap" that Preston had no idea about. Things starting to sound fishy yet?

THEN, the gun swap scene. WHAT causes Preston to hand a gun back to Brandt? First, he didn't want to kill the "sense offenders", then he's put on the spot, and he knows that he absolutely must. He's no longer just feeling at this point, he's THINKING, he's considering Brandt's enthusiasm and offer, and he looks at an "offender" and gets a signal. Was that signal "Please don't kill us yourself, let the firing squad do it"? I don't think so, that's pretty ridiculous. It looks like, and I think Preston UNDERSTANDS the signal to mean "Don't use his gun, it's a trap?"

I remember the first time I watched it, I thought the gun was booby trapped, that it would exploded in Preston's hand, I didn't realize there was a setup when I first saw it. Now, I'm thinking that this group of "sense offenders" were actually a covert squad designed to draw more out of Preston, lure him into various traps, like forcing him to walk out with them, walking into that contigent of guards he needed to slaughter without bullets, and then the final trap at the infamous gun swap.

So, now that I've given all the background, and put forth a new idea that I haven't seen on the boards yet, what the hell does it mean?

Was one of the offender/guards rooting for Preston, knew it was a trap, and helped him out? Or was the head-shaking offender/guard part of the twisted plot to make Preston feel confident that he's staying one step ahead of his partener? It seems to me like a lot of that raid was about "close calls". The bus passing in front of the on looking guard as Preston lead the "offenders" to safety. Beating the guards without bullets, and then the gun swap scene. That's at least 3 times Preston would have been made to feel that he was so close to getting caught and yet managed to have the advantage enough to survive, giving him the courage to contact the resistance and face father.

And if THIS is the case, then the reason Brandt acted surprised was INDEED because he was incahoots AND because the gun swap scene was INTENDED to happen the way it did (and Brandt knew it) AND that the supposed sense offenders that he was saving was actually a suicide squad of guards. Brandt was pushing one way, the offenders pushed another way, and Preston swapped the guns, without ANY good reason to. So they approach father and get the gun trace results. Preston knows he switched the guns, so he calls Brandt out on it. Brandt knows the guns were swapped, so he plays the part perfectly.

Which would mean that the trace was fabricated.

The ONLY plot hole this leaves, unfortunately, is that of Preston's intelligence. Preston knowingly swapped the guns after he killed a squad with his own. If that was the squad in question during the "trace implies brandt" scene, then Preston should have caught on immediately, knowing that the trace should NEVER have been put on Brandt, regardless of the swap, and freaked out completely, knowing what they were up to.

So, in the end, I don't have an answer, just more questions. But I think the theory about the group "sense offenders" that Preston saved in the raid being part of Father's/Brandt's plot has a lot to it.

Go watch that entire raid, tell me what you think.

[Godgy]

Maybe the director made a mistake or something, either that or he hid it very well. Anyway sine Kurt Wimmer is the director of Equilibrium he can pretty much make ANYTHING up to cover it.

[maji]

It is quite common in the film industry to edit/cut scenes in order to fit the movie onto a standard medium(DVD VCD etc).
Sometimes they screw up and delete scenes which are important to the movie plot.

[MisterAnderson]

I still say it was the ninjas.

[ukfevergalpacino]

nexus6 said:

OK, how about this:
--------------------------
Preston's pistol = A
Brandt's pistol = B

Earlier in the story:
Preston takes B from hood of car, gives Brandt A (1st swap).
The swap goes unnoticed by Brandt.
Later, Preston shoots sweepers with B.
In the "Gun swap" scene, Brandt gives A (he thinks it is B) to Preston.
Preston gives B back to Brandt, keeping A (just handed to him).
Brandt notices the switch, believes that he has A (in truth it is B).
Brandt arrests Preston, confiscating A.
Brandt believes he has confiscated B (having seen the 2nd swap).
The computer shows that the sweepers were killed with B.
Brandt produces, what he believes will be B (as proof).
Because of the 2nd swap, what he really has, is the confiscated A.

P.S. The whole "willing suspension of disbelief" for me, is the fact that their names are engraved on the guns (the magazine, specifically). *shrugs*

This is exactly what i thought happened after watching the film for the 5th time.

i always thought there was a swap b4 the dog killing spree, but no-one ever agreed with me

[pyro]

after watching EQ, last month i thought i had this completely figured out but i forgot ;D

good theory beagle but the tetragrammaton wouldnt kill its own just to test preston.

heres what i realized last year:

during the scene when the tetragrammaton find the dogs, preston is loading guns and talking to brandt. then a sweeper comes up and says that there is something behind the building. preston thinking that there were more sense offenders, switches [one of his guns or (magazine*) with brandt and gives it to him. they go behind the building and see that they are dogs.

during the wharehouse scene with the sense offender execution, preston switches his other [gun or magazine*].

now when the scene where dupont has preston arrested, preston is convinced that he successfully set up brandt but in realitly didnt understand how gun tracing worked and he was being set up anyway.

*the tracing methods could have been done with magazines instead of an individual's gun because the only thing indentifing the gun was the magazine.

also, only one gun was displayed on the monitor for the dog masscure trace and since clerics could own 3 pairs of pistols [4** on them, 2 in the car] tracing magazines and bullet casings makes the most sense

**watch the begining again where preston is about to coast through the doors into the dark room. hes wearing his black coat and takes out the guns from his pockets. why didnt they come from his sleeves?

argh, someone should write an awesome fan fic of how a tetragrammaton detective who investigates crime scenes that finds strange patterns with nether murders and then realizes the tetragrammaton is setting up the highest ranking cleric, hell i might even write that one ;D

[Witcher Wolf]

*No Carrier*

*click*

BANG!

[TheOtherBogusColonel]

I've worked it out!

Here are the facts:

Preston kills the sweepers in the nethers BEFORE the firing squad scene.

At the firing squad scene it looks as if he swaps a gun with brandt (Preston receives a gun with his right hand and returns one with his left hand).

At the end brandts gun comes up as the murder weapon and brandt has preston's gun.

THIS DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

Here are my theories (think hard before you dismiss them):

At no point do you see brandt with two weapons so you have no reason to assume he has two.

For brandts gun to come up as the murder weapon preston must switch it with one of his (more theories that only one of prestons guns is traceable) before he kills the sweepers in the nethers. There is strong reason to assume this happens just proir to the culling of the dogs when preston hands brandt one of two guns off the hood of the car (some online scripts suggest this is where the switch happens anyway).

It is safe to assume that only one of prestons guns is traceable as they only refer to a single gun at the end when brandt is condemned. So when preston kills the sweepers he has brandts traceable gun and his untraceable one.

At the firing squad scene if you follow it carefully it looks like he actually DOESN'T swap weapons. He receives it with his right hand, messes about with the firing mode with the thumb of his right hand, off camera takes hold of it by the barrel with his left hand and on camera returns it to him. Therefore brandt still has prestons gun as his personal weapon up until the end.

I feel that the confusion lies in the editing (rumoured to have been finished by a novice after the director lost his lead editor) and not the plot. Some online scripts suggest that once brandt realised he had prestons gun his flashback should be of the scene just prior to the dog culling and not at the firing squad, if this is changed it makes perfect sense. Even if it isn't changed the plot still works, with the flashback referring to the line "its better if you keep it" ie prestons gun, allowing preston to continue killing who he wants and for his gun to only be used in legitimate kills by brandt. It's also possible that scenes that make it clear when the gun is switched, how the tracing is done and whether or not preston is the only cleric with two guns ended up on the cutting room floor, this sort of stuff happens all the time.

What we need is a directors cut!

The problem with movies is that they are nearly always full of continuity issues and plot holes because a) there simply isn't enough time in a movie to justify every little thing and b) theres rarely enough time to get films perfect before they're released. You could also blame the music composer for not emphasising the swap moment prior to the dog culling or the cinematographer for not shooting it right, or the director and continuity people for not noticing the misleading flashback. But at least they got the rest of it SO right.

At the end of the day this minor plot issue doesn't really affect the fact that preston was going to win whatever happened because he was being conned.

If you can find any issues with this explaination then you're taking it too far, its a minor part of the film and you aren't supposed to go into this much depth. The only reason we have is because its unclear.

Thank you

"Always remember; you're unique, just like everyone else."

[JenGe]

Can you create for me a flow chart for the site?

[JenGe]

Or another idea. I would love to add an article about the "Gun Swap" to the site. Anyone interested in writing it?

www.freewebs.com/equilibrium-movie/fan_articles.htm

[JenGe]

stuartrenowden said:

I feel that the confusion lies in the editing (rumoured to have been finished by a novice after the director lost his lead editor) and not the plot. Some online scripts suggest that once brandt realised he had prestons gun his flashback should be of the scene just prior to the dog culling and not at the firing squad, if this is changed it makes perfect sense. Even if it isn't changed the plot still works, with the flashback referring to the line "its better if you keep it" ie prestons gun, allowing preston to continue killing who he wants and for his gun to only be used in legitimate kills by brandt. It's also possible that scenes that make it clear when the gun is switched, how the tracing is done and whether or not preston is the only cleric with two guns ended up on the cutting room floor, this sort of stuff happens all the time.

What we need is a directors cut!

OK, there are a number of holes in your theories...

1. The current film is "the director's cut."

2. Have you listened to the commentary? Wimmer has nothing but good things to say about William Yeh and in fact Yeh has done an interview for the site stating that Wimmer was over his shoulder (on the couch) the entire time (see here...)

My theory...Wimmer knew exactly what he was doing. He sacrificed the continuity of the sequence for the audience reaction. I could be wrong but the following from the DVD commentary suggests as much...

Kurt Wimmer -
This is interesting. This is a scene among many other scenes...you know I first cut this scene together. It uh...it didn't work.

I mean in conveyed the information but it really didn't work and you know I tested it and sat there with the audience and it really didn't have any impact. So I went back in with William and recut it and you know it's really extraordinary the alcomy of editing...juxtaposing images. We seriously recut the scene and then played it for an audience and they went nuts. They started applauding and it was an amazing lesson for me and William and I applied it to everything else in the film in terms of maximizing, you know, what we had to work with and squzzing every last bit of audience reaction out of it. I think that you have to be careful at some point not to be too calculating particularly when you are shooting the footage.

It's one thing that Dimension appreciated about me-slash-us was that I was one of those few directors that actually really liked to test films because first of all, you know, they are giving me an audience. Every seat in the theater is full. I mean how great is that? But to this day...I think we tested this five times...to this day I remember every testing & every nuance of the audience at every point, at every frame of the film and I paid close attention to it. And when they reacted to something I tried to figure out how I could pump up that reaction. When they didn't react where I thought they should I had to figure out, try and figure out what was wrong. And it was a very valuable process and Dimension actually really appreciated that because at the end of the day they are a very bottom line studio. They are not making films for them. It's not a vanity exercise for them where it basically's their only concern that I listen to what they say. They want to make a movie that makes money, that the audience is going to like so at the end of the day that was always the cord of last resort. I could always say if there's a disagreement, "Well, let's test it." In fact, I think they got to the point where they wanted to stop taking my calls because they knew I was going to say, "Let's test it." (Laughs)

www.freewebs.com/equilibrium-movie/commentaryb15.htm

[TheOtherBogusColonel]

I'll be honest my copy of Equilibrium is a download but I will be getting it on DVD because its awesome and I want the special features.

This commentary puts me at ease. It suggests to me that the confusion is caused by the editing and not a gaping plot hole. I can completely agree with the decision to distort the continuity in favour of the audience reaction, otherwise the film could have been quite dull. If I weren't an avid film fan (I'm studying it at uni) I would have just gone "woah, nice one" and ignored my slight lack of confusion.

So I'm gonna stick to my sequence of events, other people can add their own permutaions with ammo clips, gun tracing, multiple guns, conspiracey etc.

Here's your flow chart Jen (it's the best I can do for now):

-----

1. Preston swaps his (traceable) gun with Brandts at the car just before all the dogs are killed

|
V

2. Preston uses Brandts gun and his secondry (untraceable) gun to kill the sweepers when trying to free the dog

|
V

3. At the firing squad/execution scene Preston is offered his own gun back by Brandt but returns it (so he still has Brandts gun when he leaves). Please read my last post for my explaination of this scene.

|
V

4. At the end Brandt pulls out Prestons gun which hes had since the start and the trace shows Brandts gun was used (by Preston) to kill the sweepers (which it was).

And Relax

-----

I hope everyone agrees I've already spent too much of the last day or so working this out.

Also I'm gonna have to decline the request for someone to write an article on this as I've got too many other things on at the moment, but please feel free to use any of my words if you want.

[JenGe]

You can always read the commentaries transcripts but I really do recommend listening to it with the film. It adds a lot to the movie and what it's about.

I also recommed that you read Wimmer's interview that he did with CHUD...

[Greyflower]

stuartrenowden said:

I've worked it out!

Here are the facts:

Preston kills the sweepers in the nethers BEFORE the firing squad scene.

You are positively, absolutely right!
In fact, I meant the same, but my awful English… Shame on me! Of course, I should have used Past instead of Present . As you can see, years without practice make no good.

stuartrenowden said:

It is safe to assume that only one of prestons guns is traceable as they only refer to a single gun at the end when brandt is condemned. So when preston kills the sweepers he has brandts traceable gun and his untraceable one.

As for only one of the guns being traceable I don’t think it can be true. Here are my arguments:

1. If a cleric has two (or more?) guns but only one of them can be traced, the whole idea with gun tracing is of no use (he can easily use the untraceable gun for criminal purposes without running any risk).

2. ANY RIFLED BARREL CAN BE TRACED! It leaves marks on a bullet which are as individual as human fingerprints. So if even a gun is not registered as leaving a certain pattern of marks(though, in my opinion, all the legal guns in Libria are registered that way), it will be possible to find it if you examine the bullets shot from it.
The police must have gathered and examined all the bullets they could find at the crime site (this is the way it is done, as far as I know). So we can come to a conclusion that both cleric's pistols used there were identified as belonging to one and the same person (cleric Brandt), otherwise there would be two suspects (Brandt and Preston).

stuartrenowden said:

At the firing squad scene if you follow it carefully it looks like he actually DOESN'T swap weapons. He receives it with his right hand, messes about with the firing mode with the thumb of his right hand, off camera takes hold of it by the barrel with his left hand and on camera returns it to him. Therefore brandt still has prestons gun as his personal weapon up until the end.

Quite a nice observation. But in fact, the warehouse switch is not important for the plot. No matter which gun was given back, the sweepers had been killed and the guns had been traced already; and Brandt would take Preston's weapons anyway when arresting him.


Thank you very much for answering on the subject (according to my experience, the most usual way of greeting Russians at international forums is hurling dirt and banana skins at them). A good discussion is what I really need after two years of "silence". I'm looking forward for more messages from you.

As for the unclear points in Equilibrium... Well, I love the film not for its logic but for its perfect style.


P.S. What department do you study at? The thing is that one of the chapters of my university scientific project featured Equilibrium.

[TheOtherBogusColonel]

I study Music Composition For Professional Media (basically film and tv music). I haven't specifically studied Equilibrium I was just refering to the fact I study film in general.

I'm glad you found my take on the idea helpful, I'm sure it's not totally fulproof but it's how I like to imaginge it happens. I think that's the best way to look at it too, take all the different points and methods suggested by everyone and choose how you want it to have happened. And lets not forget; it's not real! People that think TOO hard about these sorts of things have too much spare time (I guess that includes me sometimes). Very few films are perfect for lots of reasons and at the end of the day that just needs to be accepted. The End. I hope.

P.S. I have nothing against Russians, I'm British for starters and I don't think any of us have anything agaist you, and lets face it none of us are perfect (if that's roughly what you're getting at).

[Greyflower]

[the7citieskid]

IMHO I agree with Esben here. Too many unknowns to determine but many discussed so far seem entirely plausible.

[Wraith]

Personally, I think the Gun Switch occurs before the Sweeper scene, right before the dog massacre. It's still moot because Preston uses *two* guns in the Puppy Fight.

I the important thing to think about is that a movie doesn't have to be 100% logically sound to be good. There are other examples of movies/shows I like that have things that don't make sense, eg:

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

Star Trek VI: They send *Kirk* of all people to negotiate with Klingons.

Signs: the entire plot is dependent on the fact that the aliens do stupid things that make no sense.

Star Wars III-VI: The first death star apparently takes 20 years to make. The second one takes two years and is "behind schedule"

[Prestan]

those points wraith, while true they don't necessarily make sense, are still plausible, if sense can stretch that far. the gun swap, on the other hand, is a plot hole, plain and simple.

It, along with Robbie's quick-fix 'gotcha' scene, are my least favorite parts of EQ. Luckily, they are only noticeable upon watching EQ more than once, so your first viewing will still leave you saying, 'this movie is flawless!' Ignorance is bliss, and EQ remains awesome.

The gun swap doesn't and never will make sense. But honestly, what sense can be pulled from an emotionless world where one man can kill 50 other men surrounding him with machine guns? Thats not the kind of world I look for sense in. That's just senseless, or, dare I say, a sense offense? (o that was terrible)

*gunkata salute.