Trying to make some sense out of snatchers
Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 3:48 am
This is a line of thought that has been going through my mind for a while now. It seems to me that the weakest point in the storyline of Snatcher was Elijah Modnar/Madnar. I could never get the hang of his motivation. He's in love with Jamie but knows he can't have her. He sabotages the Chernotron research facility releasing Lucifer-alpha, and then the three of them enter cryosleep. Elijah wakes up first, can't bring himself to wake Jamie and instead continues the suspension of her and Gillian before leaving.
What I can't understand is why exactly Elijah chose to continue the snatcher program by himself? What did he hope to gain by that? What would have been the ultimate goal he strove for, what would he have achieved in the end if it hadn't been for that one unlucky plane crash? Admittedly Elijah seemed somewhat insane in the end, but that alone makes up a poor villain in my opinion. The snatchers themselves seemed to hold humans in low regard for their common psychological weaknesses such as their tendency towards fear and doubt, but I can't remember Elijah echoing those sentiments.
Let's take a look at SD Snatcher then. There Elijah is not as much the mastermind there, but the unlucky prisoner of his own creations. He built a "Master Snatcher" who apparently devised the plan to wipe out the mankind by a new strain of the Lucifer virus. This scenarion still contains the original problem: why did Elijah continue the snatcher project by himself? Furthermore this goes back to the frankensteinian tradition of man's creations turning against himself, and often cyberpunk consciously seeks to distance itself from that, usually showing how humans are perfectly capable of being monsters all by themselves.
At this point I am beginning to have great doubts for Kojima's ability to write villains with credible motivations.
What I can't understand is why exactly Elijah chose to continue the snatcher program by himself? What did he hope to gain by that? What would have been the ultimate goal he strove for, what would he have achieved in the end if it hadn't been for that one unlucky plane crash? Admittedly Elijah seemed somewhat insane in the end, but that alone makes up a poor villain in my opinion. The snatchers themselves seemed to hold humans in low regard for their common psychological weaknesses such as their tendency towards fear and doubt, but I can't remember Elijah echoing those sentiments.
Let's take a look at SD Snatcher then. There Elijah is not as much the mastermind there, but the unlucky prisoner of his own creations. He built a "Master Snatcher" who apparently devised the plan to wipe out the mankind by a new strain of the Lucifer virus. This scenarion still contains the original problem: why did Elijah continue the snatcher project by himself? Furthermore this goes back to the frankensteinian tradition of man's creations turning against himself, and often cyberpunk consciously seeks to distance itself from that, usually showing how humans are perfectly capable of being monsters all by themselves.
At this point I am beginning to have great doubts for Kojima's ability to write villains with credible motivations.