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Butch Cassidy and Thelma and Louise |
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A key point in this film is that Butch and Sundance are the same both at the beginning and at the end of the movie. Although they try going straight in between, it does not work out for them, and they realize that they are not suited for anything else except the life of robbers. At the end of the movie, they seem unaware that they are surrounded by the Bolivian army as they try one last time to beat the odds. Having won every time before, it is likely that they had no idea that they were outnumbered this time. The movie freeze-frames as they emerge from the building, and multiple rounds of shots are heard as it is clear that they have met their death. Interestingly, they have found themselves in numerous tight spots earlier in the movie where it seemed that they would not survive. When they try to escape from pursuers that chase them to the edge of a cliff, they take a chance and jump into the water below and are washed downstream, surviving what at the time seems like an impossible jump. Thus, when they die at the end, it is after the viewer has been sitting on the edge of his seat for numerous close calls throughout the film and has begun to view the two men as nearly indestructible. Thelma and Louise do share some traits with Butch and Sundance. Like the men, they are robbers pursued by the law. However, unlike them, Thelma and Louise are rank amateurs who happ |
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Contrasting the characters' growth in the two films, there is another marked difference. In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Butch and Sundance pick up a few extra skills along the way, such as learning to speak Spanish, but they are essentially unchanged at the end. They are still robbers at heart, and there has been no epiphany that convinces them to take a new path and commit to it from that point on. Their abortive attempt to go straight is just a brief detour from their usual modus operandi, and nothing really changes in them. Thelma and Louise, however, undergo a conversion experience during their film. Unlike Butch and Sundance, Thelma and Louise have misery behind them that they want to escape-lives of abuse that are better left behind. The women want to emerge from what has hurt them in the past and find a new life with more positive results. As the movie progresses, they seem to evolve into different women, but it is not a beneficial evolution; it is more like a descent into a worse hell than the one they left behind. Still, having been liberated from the mundane lives they came out of, they do not want to resume them where they left off. At one point, Thelma tells Louise, "Something's like crossed over in me and I can't go back" (Scott). "Thelma & Louise." Metacritic. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Thelma & Louise have superficial similarities, but at their heart, they are vastly different stories. It is only the plots that resemble each other. The feel and the message of each movie are so divergent from the other as to be completely different genres, and the if that is not sufficient to establish the differences between them, the viewer's feeling at the end is. In the last moments of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, while there is sadness at the men's demise, there is a satisfying sense of closure, too, at lives well lived and the many enjoyable moment |
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