Those of you who've watched the 1980s version of The Twilight Zone will get the title reference. And probably some of those who haven't.
One day, every superhero across the Omniverse is given a black box with a big red button on top in the mail. A set of instructions inform them that if they should ever press the button, Earth and every other land mass capable of supporting life will be transformed into a Utopia with no poverty, illness, war, etc. It will also kill them and send them straight to Hell, with no chance of escaping, and the Hell will be modified depending on how much suffering the hero can take. There's no time limit.
So who decides to sacrifice themselves and push the button?
Magneto isn't really a hero, but ignoring that, I don't think the folks you mentioned would be so trusting. All(?) of them have been mindf**ked before into believing things that weren't true or didn't exist.
I tracked down and watched the Twilight Zone episode you were referring to online. Original premise: Mysterious stranger offers a married woman a box with a button sealed under a dome. Also a key to unseal the dome and permit the button on the box to be pressed. When pressed, someone the woman does not know will die and she gets $200,000 dollars.
They established the woman in this screenplay as such a _____ ...
In fact, she was SO over the top dislike-able, SO absolutely ridiculous, unreasoning, and hostile in her demeanor, I wondered,
if the rest of the Twilight Zone episodes are like this, how in the WORLD did the show stay on air long enough to get to this, the 50th episode???
On the other hand, they showed her this way by first showing us her interaction with her husband, a stuttering milquetoast of a man who could actually learn a thing or two from Sean Connery.
Because of this, I thought the episode would end with the death of her husband, a man she clearly did NOT actually know in any meaningful sense.
I was surprised to find the episode did NOT end that way.
However, I was curious enough to locate the original source of the screenplay, a short story by someone named Mattheson.
HIS story, the original, actually DID have exactly what I suspected -- the pressing of the button resulting in the husband's death.
The money the wife received was insurance money covering the husband's accidental, untimely death,
and the stranger saying exactly what I thought he would, that the wife did not actually know her husband at all.
The TV version, however, has a far more "just desserts" resolution.
KMC Community Forums
Mar 12th, 2014 12:40 AM
