"There’s too much violence in our movies – and it’s all unreal to me. I don’t know if you saw the denouement [of Breaking Bad], I happen to not watch the series very much, but I happened to tune in and I saw the most ridiculous 15 minutes of a movie -- it would be laughed off the screen. Nobody could park his car right then and there and could have a machine gun that could go off perfectly and kill all of the bad guys! It would be a joke. It’s only in the movies that you find this kind of fantasy violence. And that’s infected the American culture; you young people believe all of this shit! Batman and Superman, you’ve lost your minds, and you don ‘t even know it! At least respect violence. I’m not saying don’t show violence, but show it with authenticity."
Anyone who has seen Natural Born Killers might disagree. Or, for that matter, the recently released Savages. And Brian De Palma's Scarface, for which he wrote the screenplay. By this evidence, Stone might be considered the master of gratuitous theatrical violence.
Of course, as immersed as he is in his own egotism, Oliver Stone seems to have glossed over the point of the violence exhibited in Breaking Bad- it has consequences. In every case, violence has consequences.
For example, Jesse is engulfed in a pit of his own existential torture after he must kill Gale. In addition to this self-imposed sense of guilt that will probably haunt him the rest of his life, he risks his own life and is ultimately pursued bu Gus as a result of his actions. Walter also faces the consequences of his actions: he loses his family and , ultimately, his soul, and he spends his last moments alive cradling the meth that has ruined his life, because it is the only thing that has not deserted him. He is alone and sad and pathetic and evil. That is a direct consequence of the violence he has encouraged and participated in. In this, Breaking Bad and its writer Vince Gilligan clearly respect the severity and immorality of violence.
This is why it is important not to condemn the series finale as irreverent towards human life without seeing the entirety of the series. In fact, one could claim that same is true of Stone's Natural Born Killers. Take any fifteen minute chunk of the film and watch it out of context, and the viewer will be appalled at the level of fantastical, unrealistic, exaggerated violence the film luxuriates in. You would entirely miss its satirical elements (Note: Natural Born Killers is, in my opinion, a terrible example of satire. The film seems to operate on the basic theory that the best way to teach a person that violence is wrong is to beat them over the head with a baseball bat until they are bruised and bloody. Thus, it indulges in its own violence while simultaneously condemning it).
And as far as authenticity is concerned, Natural Born Killers is absolutely unconcerned with honesty in its portrayal of violence. It is highly stylized and completely unconcerned with realism. Its two main characters also escape with no permanent consequences. In fact, Mickey and Mallory end the movie touring the country with their picturesque family, not dead, not in jail, feeling no remorse.
However, I do understand that Stone is attempting to prevent his audience with a cautionary tale. Natural Born Killers proposes that if we continue to yield to the sensationalizing of violence in the media, this will be our fate: a world where serial killers are revered as celebrities. Where Natural Born Killers fails is its hypocrisy: how can we trust a film that is warning us against violence, yet displays so much fondness for self-indulgent cruelty? The truth is, we can't. Thankfully, Breaking Bad doesn't take the same missteps.
In regards to Stone's comment that the machine gun "robot" rigged to the trunk of the car is a joke: Walter White is, in the context of the series, a kind of brilliant MacGyver; he is able to remove he and Jesse from life-threatening situations with ingenious contraptions and a kind of inventiveness which is effectively equivalent to scientific witchcraft. Examples of this include the "bombing" of Tuco's drug den with phosphine gas and the dissolution of Emilio's body with hydroflouric acid. And that's only in Season One. So of course there is a small element of fantasy to Walt's inventions. A rotating machine gun robot arm does seem somewhat unrealistic, but those kinds of once-in-a-lifetime-maybe-this-will-work-this-is-a-long shot schemes is an important component of the character of Walter White.
Oliver Stone's ignorance, overriding sense of self-importance, and crippling hypocrisy seem to be in full display here. My advice to him: perhaps before criticizing Breaking Bad's integrity, you should watch the series.
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