r/movies • u/vexerplusone • 9h ago
Discussion Any thoughts on Zardoz?
I saw this movie when I was in a vacation when me and my brother stayed up and we were 10 and 12. It’s super bizarro with ultra violence, and lots of nudity, and Sean Connery flying around in a stone triangle. So much to unpack it ha to be one of the strangest big celebrity movies I have ever seen.
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u/NoPossibility 9h ago
I really like it. It’s insane, obviously made by people on drugs, but the central idea of the film was great and very original for its time. Too original in many ways. It’s also a British psychedelic satire kind of sensibility which I don’t think many general viewers will have developed a taste for. You have to kind of watch it seriously, but be open to the intentional absurdity of some elements and just let the film play out on its own terms.
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u/ZorroMeansFox r/Movies Veteran 9h ago
It was John "Deliverance" Boorman's personal passion project; and I think it's a genius failure with one of the most original central ideas ever for a Science Fiction film.
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u/RepFilms 8h ago
I thought it was Connorey's passion project
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u/ZorroMeansFox r/Movies Veteran 8h ago
You thought wrongly. It was conceived, written, directed, and privately financed by Boorman.
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u/I_might_be_weasel 8h ago
Connery in Zardoz is a funny story. He didn't want to do it because he didn't understand what it was about. But his agent talked him into saying it would be a big hit and make lots of money and help his career. After none of that happened Connery decided to never do a movie again if he didn't understand the script. This policy led to him turning down playing Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. So then he reversed that policy which led him to taking the starring role in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. When that also flopped, he just retired.
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u/culturedgoat 8h ago
You lose some, you lose some
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u/I_might_be_weasel 8h ago edited 8h ago
And sometimes you casually tell Barbara Walters you
gothit your wife.3
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u/angusthermopylae 9h ago
I love it. It's the perfect mix of campy nonsense and legitimately interesting writing.
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u/MovieMike007 Not to be confused with Magic Mike 9h ago
It's the best movie to ever feature Sean Connery in an adult diaper.
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u/Standard_Olive_550 9h ago
Two years ago, I gave this movie an earnest chance-fuck the memes, fuck the riffs, lemme just watch this flick on its own terms and see what I truly think. Didn't enjoy it. It had some amusing moments (the examination scenes where they're trying to coax an erection out of Connery's character was funny) but goddamn, this flick was too long and didn't offer enough to overcome its poor reputation, in my eyes.
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u/leoschot 9h ago
This is how I felt about Barbarella.
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u/Standard_Olive_550 40m ago
I liked Barbarella, not as much as I had hoped and maybe a rewatch would help that, but it wasn't nearly as dull as Zardoz, to me.
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u/gweeps 9h ago
Watch Outland instead. It's a much more interesting, lesser-known, Sean Connery genre movie. Or The Hill. Or The Offence...
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u/we_are_sex_bobomb 9h ago
Outland is one of those movies where I’m surprised it never got immortalized in the same way as something like Blade Runner.
It is a visual feast, and atmospheric as hell. And the cat and mouse games in the climax are pretty thrilling with some surprisingly gnarly violence. It’s a damned good ride.
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u/HerculeTheChamp 2h ago
In my opinion, Outland feels like a spin-off to Alien, set in the same universe.
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u/almo2001 8h ago
Mad Magazine's parody was in the "High Moon" section. Which is amazing because there were people on a moon on drugs, and it's a take off on High Noon.
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u/VibeChatIncarnate 8h ago
Zardoz might be the most politically cohesive narrative I’ve seen in film. Rather than being haphazardly arranged and enigmatic, the plot is very intentionally structured to recreate a specific narrative. Let me explain…
This is about a bestial, virile man confronting effete intellectual elites. He represents man in a natural state as compared to their unnaturally prolonged and unrooted existence. His pragmatism, power, and purity is irresistible to them to the point that both sides cannot exist while the other survives. He finds hidden knowledge which elevates his conscious to a new level. He destroys the elites and their world, seeding a bloodline of genetically superior humans, our next evolution.
If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s a fundamental narrative of 20th century fascism. If anyone is curious for more of an explanation, I can comment some more. Suffice to say, this narrative can be incredibly compelling and that’s why fascists used it (and still do). If you can dig up a clip of Alex Jones describing the core conspiracy that he believes in, he’ll say that liberal elites want to manipulate us into depopulating the Earth and simultaneously advance technology to the point where they can live forever. If you take his word for it, he thinks people are currently planning to make Zardoz a reality. I’m assuming that Boorman is not a fascist and he’s just fascinated by the power of this story and knew exactly the way to put it to film.
If you love campy 70’s sci-fi and you want something on the opposite end of the political spectrum, try Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. It depicts an America that has restructured its entire society around the institution of ape slavery and the slave revolt that follows. It fucking rules if you’re into this sort of thing
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u/Invisible_Mikey 8h ago
I LOVE "so bad it's good" movies with a budget. This one's kind of like Logan's Run, and John Boorman's an interesting wacko director, like Ken Russell.
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u/Vanquisher1000 8h ago
I couldn't say that Zardoz was 'good' or 'bad.' It's weird, so it just is.
One thing I'm curious about is part of the opening monologue, where we see Arthur Frayn's disembodied head floating against a black background. He says that the story is "rich in irony and most satirical." Assuming that these aren't just buzzwords John Boorman threw in, what is the irony and satire in Zardoz? Is there some 1970s cultural reference that would be lost on anyone who didn't live through the era the movie was released in?
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u/systranerror 8h ago
I remember quite a while ago when I lived with my parents and they had cable TV with HBO and Showtime or whatever, I caught it on TV and watched it even though it seemed incredibly weird and bad, but I found myself very surprisingly liking it and even though I've never watched it again I've always remembered thinking it was a good movie
One little detail of worldbuilding I remember liking specifically was when he was on a screen or computer or whatever and it said "applz" or "applez" I forget how it was spelled, but it was showing that spelling would likely change to reflect pronunciation in the future and it seemed like a good guess
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u/blackadder1620 7h ago
it makes more sense while you're on drugs. it still doesn't make much sense, but it helps i feel.
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u/HoboSkid 6h ago
Watched it super blazed with some friends. I think that's probably the only good time to watch it really based on my recollection. When on weed it's hilarious.
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u/saveable 9h ago
One of the worst movies that begins with the letter Z.
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u/leoschot 9h ago
And one of the best movies that start with Z is Zathura.
It's not really relevant, but I feel like people should talk about it more
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u/Curious_Associate904 4h ago
Sean Connery's outfit... Whenever I hear Zardoz, I can only think of that outfit.
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u/atreides78723 9h ago
I know someone who started a Zardoz podcast. He got three episodes in the can, but never published them. :(
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u/HardSteelRain 8h ago
I talked my Mom into taking me to the drive in to see it,mostly on the merit of Beethoven's 7th in the commercial . Turns out that was the only good thing about it. My Mom slept through the whole thing. I must have liked it at the time somewhat because I read the novelization...which I still have.
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u/roger3rd 8h ago
The movie is crazier than barbarella. In my old age I’ve begun to look like zardoz (the rock thing)
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u/Cool_Cartographer_39 7h ago
The gun is good, the penish is evil...
2nd best Webley Fosbery movie appearance
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u/crazydave333 7h ago
I saw it for the first time when I was nine. I was a big James Bond fan as a kid and Connery was my favorite Bond. After I'd exhausted all of those movies, I got my mom to rent me Zardoz because, well, it was Sean Connery, and science fiction. Two things I loved.
It went over about as good as you could expect.
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u/qumrun60 4h ago
I saw it just after college shortly after it came out. It was playing at a second-run theater with a 75-cent admission fee. A friend recommended it to me with the words, "It's not actually good, but it's worth 75 cents." I couldn't disagree. It's strange, interesting, turgidly paced, and unintentionally funny.
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u/MikeSizemore 3h ago
Zardoz triggered my parents having ‘The Talk’ with me, but during commercial breaks so it didn’t get in the way of the movie. I was maybe ten and it was on TV quite late at night and my mum walked in at the point there were a lot of erections and diagrams.
‘He shouldn’t be watching this!’ ‘He’s fine,’ said my dad, rolling his eyes.
They then argued a bit about my exposure to tits while I tried to work out what the floating head was doing. Then the ads kicked in and I got a rough breakdown of the birds and bees. All went a bit over my head as I just wanted to watch Connery shoot people with his revolver.
Still one of my favourite movies.
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u/TheGlen 9h ago
In the dark future there is no love. No death. No hope. No pants. No plot.
I believe this movie is held up as an example of why we don't pay actors in cocaine anymore