Today, I explain why Morgan Freeman was used so poorly in Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.
In Remember to Forget, we spotlight pop culture stories that I wish I could forget, but I can’t, so I instead share them with you all, so you’re stuck in the same boat as me!
SPOILERS FOR NOW YOU SEE, NOW YOU DON’T, the third film in the Now You See Me film series.
The most recent film in the Now You See Me series (the first in NINE years), was a fair enough film. All of the Now You See Me films have been pleasant enough.
However, I have a MAJOR issue with the most recent film. Morgan Freeman has been in all three films in the series. In Now You See Me, he was Thaddeus Bradley, the secondary antagonist, while in Now You See Me 2, he was revealed to actually be secretly on the side of the heroes this whole time, and was actually the HEAD of the mysterious group of heroic magicians known as The Eye, who give the magicians known as The Horseman assignments. At the end of the film, he retires, and gives over his role as the head of The Eye to Mark Ruffalo’s character, Dylan.
Well, in the third film, he comes out of retirement to help the Horsemen on an assignment for The Eye to stop a villainous money launderer. During the adventures, he is accidentally fatally shot by a French policeman (it’s really absurd that the French cop shot him. He barely moved).
Fair enough, no one has ever died in these films, so I get the desire to up the ante, as it were, in the third film, but here’s the problem – we learn at the end of the film that this was all just a personal vendetta by Charlie, one of the young magicians that work with the Horseman in the film.
The Eye was never involved, but rather, Charlie faked the messages to get his heroes, The Horseman, to help him. So Thaddeus died while being tricked by one of the nominal heroes of the film.
And…well…that’s fucking stupid.
Thaddeus Bradley dying is fine, but Thaddeus dying while being tricked into helping some dude’s personal vendetta against his evil half-sister? And no one even BRINGS IT UP at the end of the film? It’s awful!
He dies, and we don’t even see Charlie get broken up about the fact that him tricking everyone led to Thaddeus dying. It was just not a part of ANYTHING. It didn’t really have ANY impact, and we never got to see Charlie show any guilt.
Everyone’s just celebrating at the end of the movie with no mention of Thaddeus. Dylan even comes back to the film (Mark Ruffalo only appears in a cameo) without any mention of his predecessor being dead.
Just a terrible piece of writing in an otherwise fun movie.
Now, Morgan Freeman is obviously old as shit (he’s 88). It is very possible that he wouldn’t return for the fourth film in the series no matter what. But you don’t kill him off like that. It was just DUMB.
Could he easily return in the fourth movie if they felt like it? Of course, but as of the end of this movie, he’s dead dead, and that’s dumb dumb.
If anyone has a suggestion for a Remember to Forget, drop me a line at brian@poprefs.com!
